“What have you been busy with lately?” He set down his chopsticks, took out a paper napkin to wipe the corners of his mouth, then poured a glass of water to rinse.
Jiang Du’s smile was always shy. She said: “Interviews. Writing articles.”
“You?” Wei Qingyue laughed in surprise. “Interviews? You’re this shy — and you’ve done interviews? How come you didn’t come to interview me that day?”
Jiang Du touched her hair with self-consciousness. “To interview you, you’d need Huang Yingshi — I’m not at that level. And honestly, I’m not keen on interviewing people like you. I prefer interviewing ordinary people — small, everyday lives. For instance—” She spoke slowly, eyes blinking gently at Wei Qingyue, gauging whether he actually wanted to hear.
“For instance what?” Wei Qingyue sat beside her and quite naturally extended his arm to rest it behind her on the back of her chair, crossing his legs and giving her his full attention. This posture placed Jiang Du entirely within the sphere of his presence; Wei Qingyue was, at his core, a very commanding person.
Jiang Du glanced outside. Not far away, beneath the darkening sky, an elderly woman sat on a folding stool selling flowers, looking about.
She pointed and said: “Like that grandmother there. I want to know what she’s thinking. How much does she earn each day? Why does she come out to sell flowers — is it because money is tight, or to pass the time? If I ever had the chance to make a documentary about a city, I’d want to focus on people like them.”
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Wei Qingyue tilted his head and looked in the direction she pointed: “I remember you told me about a documentary once. I watched it — it was far from my world, but…”
“It moved you deeply, didn’t it?” Jiang Du turned, and their eyes met unexpectedly for a moment. She couldn’t look away in time and stared at him, transfixed, for a few seconds.
“Actually not that deeply moved — I just thought: oh, very bleak, but they’re still alive. Everyone has their own hardships,” Wei Qingyue shrugged. “I knew that already, so I didn’t cry as easily as you women do.”
Jiang Du lowered her eyelids and said softly: “I hoped that people who watched the documentary might find some strength in it. Not that they have to be moved to tears.”
“Shall I watch it again?” Wei Qingyue was still watching her with a sideways grin. He cleared his throat lightly, tapped her shoulder to signal her to stand, and said: “Just finished eating — shall we take a walk together?”
The two of them stepped outside. Wei Qingyue picked up where they had left off, pursuing the matter: “What do you mean you’re not keen on interviewing someone like me — what kind of person am I?”
Jiang Du hesitated, then answered honestly: “The very unfamiliar kind.”
“Unfamiliar in what way?”
“Very clever, very confident, ahead of the times, full of cutting-edge technology and new techniques, the kind of person who can speak fluently on any subject and always moves upward. Huang Yingshi has interviewed many accomplished individuals — most of them not that young, though of course there are younger ones, like you. She also did a piece on a well-known livestreaming host. To be honest, I don’t really understand what these people are so excited about, what they’re all caught up in. I can’t grasp them.” Jiang Du spoke always in that slow, gentle way, and her expression finally allowed Wei Qingyue to pinpoint clearly where the subtle sense of detachment came from — faint, and yet not cold.
“When it comes down to it, I’m very ordinary, and I don’t like making a fuss over things. But I’m still curious about the world — that’s why I ended up in this field, where I get to meet all kinds of people.” Noticing that those eyes of Wei Qingyue’s had not left her face, Jiang Du unconsciously touched her cheek. “Would you like to say something about yourself?”
“Like what?” Wei Qingyue asked, knowing full well.
Jiang Du was thrown off balance and immediately tried to recover: “Nothing — I just said it without thinking.” She was the same as ever — not the slightest pushiness when the other person was unwilling to talk.
Wei Qingyue continued anyway: “My story, if told from the beginning, would be quite long — starting from when I left in 2007, all the way to now. Nothing quite as grand as an epic, of course. Sometimes lucky, sometimes wretched.”
He asked whether she minded him smoking. Jiang Du considered it and said, go ahead, just one.
Wei Qingyue lit the cigarette. The wind carried the smoke away, dispersing it. It tousled his hair too, and for an instant, as it fell over his brows and eyes, she could see the boy he once was. But he had filled out into the physique of a man — no longer slight, his shoulders grown solid and broad.
He began to speak — of his studies, of his work, of returning to China and starting a company with his senior classmate. The sustained, high capital investment eventually led to their startup being acquired by Lingdong Technology. He had then come to Lingdong, taking charge of planning, research, and operations management in the autonomous driving division.
Jiang Du listened, thoroughly absorbed. Wei Qingyue finished his cigarette, and the last of the ember drifted on the wind and fell into her hair. He apologized sincerely and carefully brushed her hair clean, and close by her ear came the low, warm sound of his laugh.
The two of them were standing very near each other. Jiang Du stood still and let him tend to her hair. Wei Qingyue said suddenly: “I’ve been wanting to touch your hair for a long time. I always thought it should be very soft — and sure enough, it is.”
Jiang Du looked at him in surprise. Wei Qingyue said: “Don’t look at me like that. What I mean is — I’ve had my eye on you for a long time.”
Jiang Du went red, and fumbled to change the subject: “How did it happen that your startup company collapsed?”
Wei Qingyue was still absorbed in touching her hair, and replied with an absent air: “Too early stage — couldn’t hold on until it reached profitability. It was 2015, I’d just come back to China. My senior classmate thought autonomous driving had great prospects and left his company to start his own. I was interested too, so we took the plunge together. Later, we ran into financing difficulties, the funding chain broke, and the only option was to sell ourselves to Lingdong.”
At the phrase “sell ourselves,” something glimmered in Jiang Du’s eyes. Wei Qingyue slowly let her hair fall, and said simply: “I could sell myself to you too.”
His eyes were so bright, reflected against the early autumn night sky.
Jiang Du’s breath caught and collapsed all at once, every ounce of strength drawn out of her in one pull — but her heart pounded with an extraordinary force, thud, thud, thud. Perhaps she should rename herself after that sound — her heart doing nothing but pounding away all day and all night. How was she supposed to respond to that? She had been intending to bring up a few work-related topics with him — she had thought of many things to talk about in the time before he came looking for her. Jiang Du’s mind was a tangle of chaos…
“Some time soon — shall I formally sell myself to you?” Wei Qingyue concealed nothing of his desire for her. Even more plainly, he said it outright, cutting through her spiraling thoughts.
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