An Afternoon Made for Conversation Chapter 11

 

Chapter 11 – after

Meng Ou's tone was casual and matter-of-fact, as though they were just ordinary good friends.

They might not even count as friends, just two musical-theater enthusiasts who had only recently met online.

In any case, there was not so much history, not so much entanglement. It was a very simple, pure invitation.

Faced with such an invitation, Xiang You could not say what she was feeling.

She simply admired Meng Ou's openness.

After sending the invitation, Meng Ou waited patiently.

There was only one-third of the drink left in his cup. At this point, he should probably drink as little as possible.

Otherwise, once the cup was empty, there would be no reason to keep sitting there.

Unable to drink the beverage, he touched the cup instead.

His large, knuckled hand had room to spare around the round cup, his thumb slowly running downward, one section at a time, along the frosted pattern on the side.

He wore a watch on his wrist, half of it hidden beneath his shirt cuff.

It had a black leather strap and a metal face, and looked very understated.

It was probably not some big-name luxury brand that would make people gasp, but it was likely not especially cheap either.

Just the sort of mid-range watch that people like him, not yet successful but needing to disguise themselves as successful, or needing to look as though they had great potential for success, ought to have.

“City A... it's too far.” Xiang You thought for a moment before saying.

“I'll get you a plane ticket. Who knows, maybe you could even go during the day and come back after the show that night.”

Presumably, this “successful businessman” was just as considerate and aggressively ambitious when dealing with clients in the business world.

“So, you're going to fly all the way there and back just to see Les Misérables?” Xiang You asked, laughing helplessly.

“Isn't it worth it?” Meng Ou countered.

It was as if someone had tapped her on the crown of the head with a little hammer. Xiang You froze.

Was it worth it?

Wasn't it worth it?

She liked this musical, and she liked this theater company too.

She had been looking forward to it since high school, and she did not know how many times she had watched recordings of their earlier performances.

For some people, these things were a hobby. For others, they could even be elevated to the level of faith.

Xiang You certainly did not reach that height, but even among hobbies, there were different degrees of devotion.

She was probably the middle-range sort.

She liked it very much, and was not content to simply watch it through a screen. She was willing to spend money and time to see it in person.

But she did not love it enough to throw everything else aside for it.

In college, she had already given it up once because of a final exam.

And now, it seemed there was even less reason for her to go.

She was too busy. Work and studying for her exams had left her exhausted in both body and mind.

She was no longer as energetic as she had been when she was young, when she could fly around from place to place just for fun.

Thinking about it, it was a little ridiculous. She was only in her twenties, still young, so how had she already begun reminiscing about the past?

So, even if it had not been Meng Ou inviting her, she probably would not have gone.

Xiang You suddenly felt a little sad.

Sad for herself.

“Let's just forget it.” She smiled politely and shook her head slightly.

Meng Ou was stunned for a moment. The corners of his eyes curved downward, and his lips moved almost imperceptibly.

If this corner had not been quiet enough, she probably would not have heard those three words:

“Because of me?”

Xiang You pressed her lips together.

Given their relationship, this suspicion was actually not particularly narcissistic.

If it had been the Meng Ou from before, the truly narcissistic one, he definitely would have said...

Forget it. Don't think about it anymore.

It was better to seriously face the Meng Ou standing before her now.

“No.” Xiang You answered honestly.

Meng Ou suddenly let out a sigh of relief and gave a bitter smile. “I guessed as much.”

“Actually, I really do want to go see it, but I'm just too busy. Before, I didn't even necessarily have time on Sundays to go out and walk around like I did today.” Xiang You did not know what had gotten into her. Suddenly, she launched into a long explanation.

“You've worked hard.” Meng Ou's tone was very serious. “Is it still the same job as before?”

“No, I switched jobs.” Xiang You felt that the atmosphere had become a little tense, so she put on a deliberately carefree smile. “My salary went up by three thousand.”

“That's impressive.” Meng Ou nodded with considerable approval. “That's a pretty substantial raise.”

“Tch.” Xiang You smiled and curled her lips. “Don't tease me. No matter how much my salary went up, how could it compare with people like you who start out with high salaries?”

“High starting salaries are because the cost of living is high too.” Meng Ou let out a soft sigh. “Rent takes up the biggest chunk, and after food, transportation, and all the other basic expenses, you might not even be able to save that much each month.”

“And yet you still insist on staying in City A.”

Xiang You said it with a smile, in a joking tone.

She really had meant to casually make a joke. It had just slipped out before she could think about it.

But once she had said it, the atmosphere that had finally warmed up cooled down again.

“You're right.” Meng Ou lowered his eyes. “Why do I insist on staying there?”

She had not expected Meng Ou to react like this.

They had talked about this topic before, and it had been completely different then.

A thousand days had passed. Perhaps both of them now had their own considerations, shaped by what they had personally experienced.

But Xiang You could not bring herself to continue along that line.

They had already argued over so many of the same old points before. Why make herself unhappy over them again after all this time?

So instead, she began finding good things to say about City A on his behalf. “It might not be easy at first, but once you've established yourself there, it'll be fine. Once you get a household registration, the education and medical resources there aren't something other places can compare with.”

“How many college students graduate there every year? How many of them want to stay?” Meng Ou had started running his fingers down the glass cup, section by section, again. “And how many of them actually manage to stay?”

Of course Xiang You knew all this.

She had researched it back when she was in college.

She had not even waited until graduation was approaching before thinking about it. She had started considering and planning for it as soon as she entered university as a freshman.

“If you don't give it a try, how do you know you won't be the one who makes it?” Xiang You said.

Meng Ou shrugged. “I did try.”

“And then?”

A little over two years really was not that long. A lot of things were only just getting started.

But it certainly was not short, either.

Meng Ou fell silent.

His usually defiant, unruly face now showed a rare weariness.

His deep-set eye sockets concealed his eyes. With the light gone from them, they became a pair of dark, shadowy pools.

“Let's change the subject.” Xiang You broke the silence.

She had just been about to start some random topic when Meng Ou spoke abruptly. “I'm a person who cares a lot about face.”

At first glance, the sentence seemed completely out of nowhere.

But Xiang You knew what he was going to say next.

He really did care about face. Whatever he did, he liked to show off a little.

It was the same with his grades, actually. In high school, on the surface, he seemed to spend every day doing nothing worthwhile. It was only after Xiang You got together with him that she learned he actually worked very hard in private.

It was just something he found difficult to control. He did work hard, but his grades still went up and down.

So he pretended that he did not care about it at all. That was another kind of caring about face.

“So, if I just slink back like this...” Meng Ou could not finish.

It seemed that even merely saying it aloud was unbearable for him.

“The people who love you won't care about those things.” Xiang You comforted him very seriously.

But soon, she saw Meng Ou raise his eyes and look at her thoughtfully.

“Is that so?” Meng Ou's voice was very soft.

“So your parents definitely wouldn't think that way about you. As for other people who don't matter, why care what they think?” Xiang You hurriedly added.

“Mm...” Meng Ou nodded. “My mom has always wanted me to come back, because I'm an only child. My dad, on the other hand, told me to stay there. Then, once I bought a house, I could bring them over.”

As for their parents' opinions, there were actually disagreements in Xiang You's family too.

She was an only child as well. Her mother always felt that even staying within the province was too far away, and wished more than anything for her to return to their hometown.

Her father, meanwhile, thought that rather than staying in a place like Changrui, which was neither particularly good nor particularly bad, she might as well go a little farther south.

Of course, he did not expect her to be able to afford a house. Instead, he wanted her to quickly find someone within the province and tie herself to him, then go south together and make a life for themselves. Because he had heard that people there generally were not willing to marry someone like her from another place.

“Then what do you think?” Xiang You asked.

“Ah...” Meng Ou sighed. “Everything's temporarily settled down now. If I stay, I might regret it. If I really leave, I might regret that too.”

Xiang You gave a soft “Mm.”

If that was how he thought about it, then why had he just said, “Why do I insist on staying there?”

She felt like her attempt to comfort him had been a little wasted.

“How about...” Meng Ou might have realized something was off too. He stretched out his arm and lightly tapped the tabletop on her side with a bent finger. “Like you just said, let's change the subject.”

“To what?” Xiang You had already forgotten what topic she had been about to bring up.

“Just chat about whatever. Any good books lately? After graduation, I feel like I've only been reading books related to work. Didn't you used to love reading novels? Have you got any recommendations?” Meng Ou casually opened up a new topic.

Though clearly, he had brought it up very casually. It was obvious he had only just racked his brains to think of something.

Only then did Xiang You realize that she was more or less the same.

What she read was either work-related or about preparing for the civil service exam. Was she supposed to recommend a whole stack of Chalk Education books to him?

“Um...” Xiang You gave two dry little laughs. “How about you pick another topic?”

Meng Ou froze for a moment, then suddenly burst out laughing.

“How did my little literary prodigy get so thoroughly wrecked by this damn work too?”

Xiang You's heart suddenly skipped a beat.

My.

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A Thought That Lasts Forever Chapter 8

 

Ecuador (8)

After Luo Jingming left, Tan Guhong lay on the bed, bored out of her mind, resting with her eyes closed. After a while, a sudden burst of arguing and commotion came from outside.

At first, Tan Guhong paid it no mind, but the noise came closer and closer, and in an instant it had reached the tent. It was several local men, cursing and shouting obscenities.

Tan Guhong sensed that something was wrong. She turned over and got out of bed, limping as she intended to go see what was happening. Suddenly, the entire tent shook violently. Several screams followed, then the sounds of heavy objects hitting the ground one after another. After that, everything around them fell silent.

Lifting the curtain, Tan Guhong looked outside. There, sprawled on the ground outside the tent, were four or five sturdy men. Some clutched their arms, others their legs, all crying out in pain. A large crowd had gathered around them, yet no one dared step forward. Everyone stared fearfully at the Asian man standing guard at the entrance of the tent.

“What happened?”

Tan Guhong asked A-Kun.

“There no enough bed space. They want snatch tent.”

A-Kun replied in less-than-standard Mandarin. Then he glanced at her, his brows drawing tightly together.

“Go back. No get out bed!”

As he spoke, he ignored Tan Guhong’s reaction, reached out and grabbed her by the arm, hauled her back into the tent, and tossed her onto the bed.

His hand clamped around her arm like an iron pincer, squeezing until it hurt. Sitting on the bed, she rubbed her shoulder and gave him a half-smile.

“You’re a little heavy-handed, aren’t you?”

Whether with her or with the people outside.

The arms and legs of the men lying on the ground were bent at varying angles. All of them were broken. She had not seen A-Kun strike, but it was easy enough to imagine that his fists and feet were brutally hard, his attacks swift and merciless.

A-Kun gave a derisive snort. He seemed about to speak, but then appeared not to know how to pronounce the Mandarin words. He frowned for a moment before finally forcing out a few words:

“They leave, still have people.”

They had left, and there were still others.

Tan Guhong understood. “Kill one to warn a hundred, to intimidate the others?”

A-Kun gave a cold laugh and neither confirmed nor denied it.

Although his attitude toward her was still terrible, Tan Guhong could not help feeling that the inexplicable hostility he had once held toward her had somehow, just as inexplicably, disappeared.

When Luo Jingming returned, Tan Guhong asked him about it. He was not surprised at all.

“Because I already told him.”

“Told him what?”

He smiled, with a hint of meaning in his eyes. “Told him that you are… someone we can trust.”

……

Tan Guhong spent two days in a tent at Kunda Hospital, after which she was transferred to Moraleja Hospital in Quito. Parts of Quito had also been affected by the earthquake, but overall the number of casualties was not high. The country lay along a tectonic plate boundary, and with major and minor earthquakes happening every few days, both the government and the people were already accustomed to them. Disaster relief proceeded at an unhurried pace, reconstruction proceeded at an unhurried pace, and everyday work and life continued.

Moraleja Hospital was one of the finest private hospitals in Quito, with good facilities and a pleasant environment. Compared with sleeping, or rather not daring to sleep soundly, in a filthy outdoor tent, it was incomparably better. But with an injury to her leg that kept her confined to bed, the long recovery period was truly hard to endure.

Especially with Luo Jingming watching her so closely, strictly forbidding her to walk, strictly forbidding her from getting the wound wet, and strictly forbidding her from eating anything spicy, stimulating, or considered harmful to a healing wound. And then there was A-Kun, stationed stubbornly at the door with a deadpan face and dead-fish eyes, never saying a word. The whole setup looked exactly like a wife and her senior maid guarding against a cheating husband. It was enough to drive anyone crazy!

Day after day, night after night, she finally made it to two weeks later.

After the doctor removed her stitches, Tan Guhong looked at the wound on her leg, not yet completely healed and still somewhat grotesque, and let out an almost imperceptible sigh.

Seeing her, Luo Jingming frowned slightly and could not help smiling. “Take good care of it. It won’t leave a scar.”

“Hard to say. I’m prone to scarring. Even if I scratch a mosquito bite, it leaves a red mark. So ever since I was little, I’ve been especially careful to avoid getting hurt and leaving scars.”

He had originally thought she was simply worried that a scar on her leg would look ugly. Only now did he slowly understand what she really meant.

The selection standards for Air Force pilots were extraordinarily strict, demanding extremely high levels of both physical and psychological ability. One of the requirements during the medical examination was that if a person had long or severe scars, or scars exposed outside the clothing when wearing short-sleeved or short-legged clothing that affected their appearance, they would very likely be eliminated, in order to prevent discomfort, or even more dangerous reactions, under conditions of depressurization at high altitude.

She had once been one of the Republic’s elite Air Force pilots, selected from among thousands, so close to the blue sky, and yet so far away from it.

“Forget it. None of it matters anymore.” She smiled faintly.

“I can leave the hospital this time, right?” she asked him, perfectly composed, with a hint of mischief.

Luo Jingming knew that being kept under such tight control these past few days had left her restless and irritable, and that she probably wished she could escape the hospital, and Ecuador, at any moment. He found it somewhat amusing.

“So eager to go home. Do you miss home?”

Tan Guhong paused, then said slowly, “Actually, I don’t want to go back to China.”

“Why?”

The reason she did not want to go back was a long story. She pondered for a moment before summing it up. “Because if I go back at this time, I can forget about going abroad again this year.”

After her parents died, she had spent her childhood alternating between her grandfather’s home and her maternal grandfather’s home. But as she grew older, she preferred staying with her maternal grandfather. It was not that her paternal grandfather’s family treated her badly. Quite the opposite, they treated her too well. Her grandfather, Tan Zhenyan, had also served in the military when he was young and had been comrades with her maternal grandfather. After the founding of the country, he went into diplomatic work, and the younger generation of the family had all been influenced by him. Her father had also worked in diplomacy. And the Tan family, from top to bottom, was full of boys: a whole crowd of uncles and male cousins, with her the only girl. Given her lonely circumstances, she was practically the darling of the entire family, showered with endless affection. Yet the Tan family was deeply traditional. They believed that a girl should behave like a girl: she should be gentle and obedient, dignified and well-mannered, and they had always opposed her attending a military academy.

After going through one setback after another and having no choice but to return to school and continue her studies, Tan Zhenyan was heartbroken, but at least he breathed a sigh of relief. After she graduated, he eagerly arranged for her to enter a certain ministry, where she could rise smoothly through the ranks if she wanted a career, or live a stable, leisurely life if she did not.

But Tan Guhong knew that her temperament was not suited to officialdom and that she would never be able to pursue a political career. Once she went in, it would be nine to five, marriage and children, with retirement visible at the end of the road. Perhaps that was simply how her whole life would turn out. But she did not want her whole life to turn out that way.

So without a second word, she turned around and ran off to spend an entire year at a China State Construction engineering project department in Equatorial Guinea, Africa. It was a remote backwater where birds did not even shit, the political situation was unstable, disease ran rampant, and there was nowhere to spend money even if you had it, unless you wanted to hand it over to bandits.

Over the course of that year, Tan Zhenyan went from flying into a rage, to fuming angrily, to putting on a hard front while secretly softening, until finally he was completely helpless and could only let her do as she pleased.

But he established one final bottom line: she had to come home for the Lunar New Year.

Overseas assignments were signed for one year at a time. It was May now, so she could only wait until the following spring to sign another one. But if she went back to China at this point, Tan Zhenyan would certainly subject her to all kinds of lectures: about her work, about marriage, about all the things she neither cared about nor wanted to hear.

So she genuinely did not want to go back.

He asked, “If you don’t want to go back to China, where do you want to go?”

“So many places…” She smiled. “The world is so big. There’s nowhere I can’t go.”

“Then how about traveling around the world?”

She thought he was joking. “I don’t want to ride in a hot-air balloon.”

“Not a hot-air balloon. I mean a round-the-world flight route.”

She froze for a moment. “You mean…”

“If you want to visit the greatest number of places in the shortest possible time, the best choice is a round-the-world cruise.”

Luo Jingming smiled and spoke slowly:

“Next Friday, the Queen Anne cruise ship will depart from New York Harbor in the United States. The voyage is expected to last ninety-nine days and cover twenty-seven thousand nautical miles, passing through five continents, three oceans, and two canals. Along the way, it will stop in Iceland, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, the Maldives, Japan, Hawaii, and Mexico, completing a circuit around the world before returning to where it first began. Along the way, you can see the Northern Lights, stroll along the Champs-Élysées, watch the sunset over the desert and the sunrise over the sea. So? Interested?”

His unhurried voice carried a hint of seduction. Without realizing it, Tan Guhong began sketching out all kinds of scenes in her mind. She was momentarily lost in thought. She opened her mouth, and only then managed to find her voice again.

“But there isn’t enough time. There are all those visa procedures…”

“The cruise company can take care of them.”

“And according to regulations, I have to fly back to China from Ecuador. The project department…”

“None of that is a problem. You’ll come back to San Francisco with me, and I’ll take care of it for you. Right now, the only thing you need to consider is whether you are willing to board this round-the-world cruise.”

He smiled and placed his phone in front of her. On the screen was the detailed itinerary for the Queen Anne from its official website, and the name of the website was none other than Orient Cruises.

Orient Cruises was the high-end cruise company under the Yaozhong Shipping Group, and the man before her, Mr. Luo, was its executive director.

Tan Guhong was half amused and half exasperated. “Boss Luo, you take your job a little too seriously.”

“Isn’t the art of doing business about never giving up on any potential customer?”

He took her right hand, bent down, and gave her a perfectly proper gentleman’s kiss on the hand, just like the British gentleman in the advertisement on the website. With a smile, he recited Orient Airlines’ advertising slogan:

“Follow me, I can take you anywhere in the world.”

Follow me, I’ll take you to the ends of the earth.

……

Three days later, at Quito International Airport, Tan Guhong and Luo Jingming were waiting in the lounge for a flight to San Francisco.

It was obvious that she had been seduced by him.

Going somewhere far away. It was an eternal subject.

The Peach Blossom Spring was far away. The Garden of Eden was far away. The Promised Land flowing with milk and honey was also far away.

Distant countries and foreign cultures could always bring unknown surprises and adventures. When economic and time conditions allowed, traveling around the world was a temptation no one could easily refuse. It was the kind of impulse that came only once in a lifetime, the yearning dreamed of by people trapped in lives of reinforced concrete and urban routine, the kind of capital one could still boast about to one’s grandchildren at seventy or eighty, even if one had lived an otherwise ordinary life.

So why should she refuse?

Just before boarding the plane, standing before the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows in the departure hall, Tan Guhong made a long-distance call back home.

After a long wait for the call to connect, the moment it did, enormous music, screams, and the laughter of men and women came roaring through the receiver, a chaotic din that was almost deafening.

Tan Guhong frowned and pulled the phone away from her ear. She was just about to roar, Huo Qiaonan, what the hell are you up to this time?!

But he spoke first, his voice filled with surprise and emotion:

“Xiao Hong, you actually remembered my birthday? You even called me specially? I’ve known you for more than twenty years, and this is the first time you’ve ever remembered my birthday!”

Tan Guhong was speechless. After hesitating for a second, she went along with it. “Yeah, I was just giving you a surprise. Happy birthday! And don’t call me Xiao Hong.”

She was three months older than him, after all.

As always, Huo Qiaonan pretended not to hear her. He laughed and said to someone on the other side, “My sweet childhood friend even called me from overseas specially to wish me a happy birthday!”

And then everyone on that side shouted together:

“Happy birthday!”

“Happy birthday!”

The noise nearly made Tan Guhong drop her phone. Unable to take it anymore, she roared, “Get yourself somewhere quiet to take the call, will you? I’ve only got one good ear!”

“Okay, okay, don’t get angry. I’ll go outside right now.”

When the voices on the other end finally grew more distant and it became quiet, Tan Guhong let out a long sigh of relief.

“I thought it was the middle of the night where you are. You still haven’t finished going crazy?”

“This is the second round. We’re only just getting started. How are things in Ecuador? Have you missed me?”

“It’s Ecuador…” Tan Guhong corrected him. “I’m about to leave. I’m not going back to China yet. I’m going on a round-the-world cruise…”

“Traveling around the world? Cool~~” Huo Qiaonan whistled.

“But I’m not planning to do the entire route. There’ll be plenty of chances to take it slowly later. There’s no need to see the whole world this time. Hmm… from New York to Shanghai. About two months or so. If my family asks, you know what to say.”

She did not plan to tell her family, but at least someone had to know where she was.

Huo Qiaonan hesitated. “I… what am I supposed to say?”

“Say my engineering project was delayed.”

Huo Qiaonan was surprised. “Aren’t you a translator? How did you end up working on an engineering project too?”

Tan Guhong deeply regretted entrusting anything whatsoever to Huo Qiaonan. “Enough, enough. Just shut up. I don’t need you to say anything.”

“No problem. This I can do.”

“Oh, right…” she asked as though it had just occurred to her, “Does Grandpa Liang’s family have a cousin named Luo Jingming?”

“That’s right. Why are you suddenly asking about him?”

“I saw some news about him online a few days ago. Are you close to him? Is Grandpa Liang really planning to groom him as his successor?” she asked half-jokingly.

It was not entirely a joke, either. A few days earlier, while she had been bored in the hospital, she had actually searched online for news about Luo Jingming. But the results had been extremely limited. The children of the shipping magnate’s family had always loved the limelight and were highly active in their social circles, with plenty of followers on their personal social media accounts. By comparison, this young master was much more low-key. Although he often represented Old Master Liang at important events, his whereabouts in private were a mystery. No gossip scandals, no detailed personal information. If it were not for the fact that the shares he held and the positions he occupied were steadily increasing, the public probably would not have noticed him at all.

“Who knows what Great-Grandpa is thinking? Even my grandpa, his own younger brother, can’t figure him out. I’m not particularly close with this cousin. I’ve only met him a few times in total. All I know is that he grew up in San Francisco, in the United States.”

“Mm. What else?”

“He studied business administration in Toronto, Canada.”

“What else?”

“When he was seven or eight, his parents, my aunt and uncle, died.”

“What else?”

“Other than that… I don’t really know.”

Tan Guhong took a deep breath. “He’s your actual cousin?”

She even knew all of this, and she had known it ten years ago, when they first met!

Huo Qiaonan was puzzled. “Then what exactly do you want to know?”

“Forget it, forget it. Pretend I never asked.” Tan Guhong was helpless. She had been the one saying she was not interested, and digging into someone’s affairs behind their back really was not very nice.

“Nothing else. Go on and keep going crazy.”

“Hey, wait! When you come back to China, remember to bring me a birthday present from Ecuador!”

“It’s Ecuador…” Tan Guhong corrected him patiently. “What do you want?”

“I want a local specialty, something you can’t get anywhere else!”

She gave a half-smile. “Ecuador’s specialty is spit-spewing alpacas. Want one?”

“Sure, sure! Alpacas are great! I want an alpaca! But how are you going to lead it through airport security…”

Tan Guhong finally lost her patience and slammed the phone down.

“Goodbye, then!”

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A Thought That Lasts Forever Chapter 7

 

Ecuador (7)

A group of robbers fled, scrambling and rolling as they went, leaving only Tan Guhong and Luo Jingming behind, along with a car with a blown tire.

“You carry a gun on you?”

Tan Guhong folded her arms, looking at Luo Jingming expressionlessly.

Luo Jingming said unhurriedly, “You should know that the United States is a country where guns aren’t banned.”

“That’s not a good reason.”

He smiled. “I don’t think now is a good time to quibble over that, either.”

“Fine…” She spread her hands. “Then what do we do now?”

Just now, the two of them had practically reenacted a race for their lives. They had blown through a checkpoint, blown a tire, crashed the car, and even fired a gun, only to arrive at the same outcome in the end: they had still lost their means of transportation, and she had also acquired a bruise on her arm.

“Sorry. I’ve never liked sitting around waiting to die…” He put away his gun and walked toward her. “But I’ll take responsibility for what I did.”

“What are you doing?”

She watched him half-crouch in front of her, not quite understanding at first.

“I’ll carry you. We’ll walk. It’s still eight kilometers to the town.”

She didn’t want to trouble him like this, but she couldn’t think of a better choice for the moment. A man who wasn’t even willing to negotiate peacefully with the robbers certainly wasn’t going to sit around waiting for a passing car to give them a ride when one was almost impossible to come by. Besides, her leg had been bleeding nonstop, and the white fabric of her shirt was already completely stained red.

After hesitating for a while, she sighed.

“I’m heavy.”

She wasn’t fat, but she was tall and slender. Carrying her for eight kilometers would hardly be an easy task.

“Surely you’re not heavier than a grizzly bear.”

When he saw that she still wasn’t moving, he pulled her arm over, put some strength into his grip, and had her lie against his back. After adjusting her position slightly, he straightened up and carried her entire body on his back.

“What?”

She wondered if she had misheard his comparison. Why a bear?

He carried her and strode forward, seemingly without effort. As he walked, he said, “I studied in Canada before. During the holidays, I went into the mountains with my roommate to hunt bears.”

“Aren’t bears protected animals?”

“Not in Canada. There are too many grizzly bears there, and they often injure people and livestock. The government offers rewards for hunting bears, and spring and autumn are the legal bear-hunting seasons. That bear wasn’t fully grown yet, but it still weighed close to two hundred kilograms. We were practically exhausted to the point of collapse trying to drag it back to camp.”

So in the end, he and his roommate from Russia had no choice but to butcher the bear right there. It was an extremely bloody scene.

After hearing this, Tan Guhong remained silent. For one thing, her leg hurt and she was weak, and she didn’t feel like talking. For another, she felt that she was finding it harder and harder to see through him.

Three days ago, they had been complete strangers, and she had thought she knew him inside and out.

Three days later, they seemed to have become much more familiar with each other, yet she discovered that she knew almost nothing about him.

Suddenly, he hitched her higher on his back. The movement tugged at her wound, and the pain nearly made her cry out. She couldn’t help smacking his back.

“What are you doing?!”

“Don’t fall asleep. Talk to me. You need to stay conscious.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I haven’t lost that much blood.”

She couldn’t see the expression on his face, but she could hear the smile in his voice.

“But you can’t expect me to carry you while you sleep and walk these eight kilometers all by myself, can you?”

She was helpless. “Fine.”

But now that she was supposed to talk, she didn’t know where to begin either. After thinking for a while, she slowly said, “Actually, there’s something I wanted to tell you the first time I met you, ten years ago.”

Her soft breath brushed against his ear. He paused, then asked, “What?”

“Your Mandarin was downright terrible back then.”

He was silent for a moment, then suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter. She could feel the faint vibration of his chest from where she was on his back. In the slightly cool night breeze, the heat radiating from his body passed through his thin clothes and into hers.

“I was telling the truth.”

“I knew that already.”

“I don’t think I ever actually said that back then.”

His laughter carried a touch of helplessness. “But every time I opened my mouth, your eyes told me exactly that.”

“Oh, sorry.” She had thought she had hidden her contempt quite well, but ten years later, she tried to make up for it. “But your Mandarin is really good now. Your pronunciation is clear and precise, and you don’t have an accent at all. You’re even more standard than mine.”

“You can’t blame me. My father’s family is originally from Guangdong. He immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was very young. Back then, Mandarin hadn’t even been implemented on the mainland yet. He only knew how to speak Cantonese. Most of the Chinese friends my family associated with were from Guangdong too. When I was little, I even thought all Chinese people spoke Cantonese, and that Cantonese was standard Chinese.”

And so, ten years ago, Luo Jingming, who thought he was speaking perfectly standard Mandarin, met Tan Guhong, who had grown up in Beijing speaking a full-on Beijing accent. The two of them were practically talking past each other, unable to communicate at all.

She also remembered the details of their first meeting all those years ago and couldn’t help laughing.

Ten years ago, Old Master Liang’s seventieth birthday banquet was held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. Luo Jingming had returned to China with his maternal grandfather, coming to China for the first time in his life, and coming to Beijing. They were supposed to meet then, whether at the birthday banquet or through an introduction arranged by their elders. In any case, it should have been a formal and courteous occasion. Instead, through a strange twist of circumstances, they met privately ahead of time because of a disastrous blind date mix-up.

Tan Guhong’s maternal grandfather, Liao Rongguang, and Liang Nianbang’s family had been family friends for generations, their ancestors having shared a deep friendship for several generations. What the elders had originally wanted to arrange was a match between Huo Qiaodong, the older cousin who had returned from studying in Britain, and Liao Bingyan, the cousin from Tan Guhong’s maternal uncle’s family. Instead, one of them left his cousin, who was unfamiliar with the place, there by himself, while the other tricked her cousin, who had just graduated from high school, into coming out. And so, in the end, Tan Guhong and Luo Jingming found themselves staring awkwardly at each other at the appointed meeting place.

“You’re not Huo Qiaodong, are you?”

“Me a?”

“Huo, Qiao, Dong?”

“No, you’re Liu Bingnan?”

“What?”

“Liao, Bing, Nan?”

“Of course not!”

That scene was practically a disaster.

Almost every sentence had to be repeated twice between them. Through gestures and guesses, they finally pieced together what had happened.

Later, after learning that Luo Jingming, who had grown up in the United States, was returning to China for the first time, Tan Guhong extended the hospitality of a local and took him around Beijing. As for whether they actually went to the Forbidden City or the Temple of Heaven, she could no longer remember. Maybe they went to both. Maybe they went to neither, and only wandered around Qianmen and Dashilan. That year, Beijing was hosting an important event, so security was extremely tight. He had neither an ID card nor a passport with him, and could barely take a step anywhere.

Ten years. It really was an incredibly long stretch of time. Especially those ten years between one’s teens and twenties. For many people, that alone encompasses all the joys and sorrows of an entire life. She had gone from being spirited and full of promise to having her wings broken halfway through, from regaining hope to falling into complete despair. She went to university, then graduate school. She went to Argentina, went to Equatorial Guinea, and later came to Ecuador. Her life had risen and fallen dramatically, her heart tempered by ice and fire, until in the end it settled into peace. There were regrets, and there were disappointments, but all of that pain and hardship was the youth she had no regrets about.

And what about him? He, too, had grown from that gloomy-eyed boy who stumbled through Guangpu, his body carrying a melancholy that was almost morose, into the mature man he was now, gentle and refined, courteous and well-mannered. His countless thoughts and feelings were all hidden behind those gold-rimmed plano glasses. Without even thinking about it, she knew they must be full of things that could not be spoken.

How mysterious the passing of time was, and how fickle fate could be.

Her body grew colder and colder, Luo Jingming’s voice farther and farther away, and Tan Guhong’s consciousness increasingly blurred.

The very last image in her mind was of the pitch-black night, stars filling the sky. In the land of the equator, surrounded by mountains, someone carried her along an empty, lonely highway, just walking on like this, walking on and on…

……

Tan Guhong was awakened by a burst of commotion. Her consciousness gradually returned. She tried to move her body, only to be stopped by a sharp pain in her leg. With difficulty, she opened her eyes and slowly looked around.

She found herself in a fairly spacious white tent, lying on a simple folding bed. There was no one else inside the tent, but outside, there seemed to be people everywhere, with constant noise and commotion.

She listened carefully for a while and heard words like “doctor” and “surgery,” guessing that this was probably a hospital. Only then did she belatedly remember everything that had happened before she lost consciousness. She pushed herself halfway upright, pulled back the blanket, and discovered that her right leg had already been properly bandaged and immobilized.

“You’re awake?”

A shaft of sunlight suddenly streamed in. She squinted and looked up, only to see Luo Jingming lift the curtain and walk in.

He had changed into clean clothes and had just washed up. He was not wearing his glasses, and the ends of his hair over his forehead were still dripping slightly with water. Seeing her sit up, he stepped forward to help her upright and took the pillow from the side, placing it behind her back.

“How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

He unscrewed a bottle of mineral water and handed it to her. She took a few sips, moistening her throat, then asked, “Where are we?”

“The central hospital in Kunda Town. There was a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in northeastern Ecuador. All the hospitals are overcrowded now, and there aren’t enough wards, so they had no choice but to put up tents in the open spaces. Don’t worry. Your leg has already been treated. There’s a minor fracture, the doctor put in some stitches, and you were given a tetanus shot.”

She had known nothing about any of this. “How long was I unconscious?”

“One day and two nights.”

That really was a long time. Being out of contact for this long, the project team must have been frantic with worry.

Taking advantage of the hospital’s intermittent, weak signal, Tan Guhong called the project team to let them know she was safe and briefly explained her current situation. She reassured Wang Xiaoyue, who had been worried about her safety ever since hearing about the earthquake, and exchanged a few brief words with Cheng Haoran.

It seemed her trip back to China would have to be postponed for the time being.

She put down her phone and looked at Luo Jingming, who was sitting nearby, unable to stop herself from asking, “Weren’t you going back to the United States?”

“There’s nothing urgent. Besides, I couldn’t possibly leave you here by yourself.”

Tan Guhong admitted that he had a point. Things were chaotic outside, and she was grateful that he was staying here with her. It was just that some things still needed to be made clear.

“Let me see that gun.”

Luo Jingming glanced at her without saying anything. He unfastened the gun from his waist and handed it to her.

Tan Guhong took hold of the grip, running her fingers over the cold body of the gun, and smiled.

“An Italian Beretta? No wonder you shoot so accurately.”

He smiled. “Good eyes.”

Without another word, she kept moving. Slide, magazine, spring. In an instant, she had taken the gun apart into a bedful of parts, her movements clean and decisive.

His eyebrows lifted slightly, and he indicated with his eyes that she should continue.

She smiled lightly. The parts went back into her hands one after another… She installed the recoil spring, pulled the slide back into place, inserted the magazine, chambered a round, then raised her hand and aimed directly at the person in front of her, saying casually:

“Two-pound spring.”

Only then did Luo Jingming’s expression finally change slightly, though it was impossible to tell whether it was because of her movements or her words.

After holding the standoff for two seconds, Tan Guhong suddenly laughed. With a slight turn of her finger, she redirected the muzzle, engaged the safety, and tossed the gun back to him.

“That’s a movie line. Just kidding.”

Luo Jingming raised his hand and caught the gun. His eyes, no longer concealed behind his lenses, were deep and unreadable, his expression difficult to make out. After a long while, he said quietly:

“Sorry. I haven’t seen it.”

“As for me, I’m not particularly good at shooting, but at least I’ve been exposed to it since I was little.”

Old Master Liao had joined the military when he was young. He had fought through the Chinese Civil War, the Korean War, and later the Vietnam War, spending half his life at war. Her eldest maternal uncle was a soldier, her second maternal uncle was also a soldier, and even her mother, when she was alive, had been a researcher in military theory. She had grown up in such a family. She played with bullets at three and went to the shooting range at five. She still had enough of an eye for these things.

The shots he had fired that night had involved virtually no time spent aiming, almost amounting to blind fire, yet he had achieved such precision. His marksmanship was already far beyond merely being “good.”

Even taking the most charitable view, even if he had been obsessed with guns since childhood and had practiced IPSC, even if he had undergone extensive professional shooting training, the psychological composure required to fire at a real person from close range without even changing expression was not something an ordinary person could possess.

Luo Jingming heard what lay beneath her words. He did not get angry, his expression remaining as calm and unruffled as ever.

“What do you want to know? I’ll tell you everything…”

She shook her head and said unhurriedly, “I’m not that curious. I don’t like prying into other people’s private affairs. Who you really are, what your past is, I’m not that interested. As far as I’m concerned, being Old Master Liang’s grandson is enough.”

“And then?” he picked up her words.

“And then? There is no then…”

She spread her hands innocently. They were not people traveling the same road. They had simply happened to accompany each other for a stretch of the journey. Where they had come from and where they were going no longer mattered.

“Oh, and then there’s one more thing. Thank you.”

He did not understand at first. “For what?”

“I said thank you for carrying me to the hospital…” She laughed. “Honestly, there really aren’t many people who can carry me.”

If she counted them all up, there were only two: a younger male cousin from her second maternal uncle’s family, and Huo Qiaonan. The former was a soldier and could lift her up and spin her around, while the latter could not even carry her three meters. All those muscles he had built at the gym had gone to waste.

A rare hint of gentleness showed through her delicate features, brought on by her weakness. He looked steadily at her for a long time, and finally the corners of his lips curved upward.

“I told you. You weigh less than a grizzly bear.”

With that, he lifted the curtain and walked out the door.

“I’m going to buy breakfast. A-Kun is outside. Call him if you need anything.”

✦

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A Thought That Lasts Forever Chapter 6

 

Ecuador (6)

After a full day of rushing about, Tan Guhong and Luo Jingming returned to the guesthouse in the village. They would spend the night here. It was neither peak travel season nor a popular destination, and over the course of the day they had not encountered many tourists. In this guesthouse, they were in fact the only two guests.

The place was run by an indigenous couple. The owner was taciturn and spoke little, while his wife was simple and kind, warmly hosting them. With yellow skin and black eyes, and the natural flush on her cheeks from living at high altitude, at first glance she looked very much like one of China’s ethnic minorities, evoking an immediate sense of familiarity.

Because they had arranged things in advance, by the time they returned, the landlady had already prepared dinner for them. It was a few simple traditional indigenous dishes, grilled fish, wild vegetable flatbreads and the like. The presentation was not particularly appealing, but the taste more than made up for it.

While they were eating, Tan Guhong suddenly felt something soft brush against her calf. She quickly pulled her chair back and looked under the table. She had thought it might be a cat or dog kept by the хозяева, but instead it turned out to be a child hiding underneath.

“What is it?”

Luo Jingming bent down as well. There, beneath the table, was a little girl of four or five, with a straight fringe haircut. Her chubby face was marked by two patches of highland red, and her large jet-black eyes darted about as she looked at them. Being discovered filled her with delight, and she giggled non-stop.

The two of them exchanged a glance, unable to suppress their amusement.

The landlady hurried over just in time, pulling her daughter out and repeatedly apologizing to the guests, scolding the child a few times. But the little girl seemed not to hear at all, her eyes fixed intently on the plate of fried potato cakes on the table.

Tan Guhong laughed. “Let her have some. We haven’t touched this.”

As she spoke, she picked up the small woven basket filled with fried potato strips and handed it to the little girl, bending down to pat her round little head. “Remember to wash your hands after eating.”

The little girl took the basket, then suddenly lifted her face and planted a loud kiss on Tan Guhong’s cheek, making a crisp “bo” sound. Then she turned and ran off in quick, thudding steps.

Tan Guhong wiped the saliva from her cheek, caught between laughter and exasperation. When she looked up again, she saw Luo Jingming watching her, his eyes smiling.

“You’re very popular with children.”

“It seems so. My cousin’s kids are about this age too. Every time I go home, they cling to me…” even competing over who would marry her when they grew up, “but actually, I’m not very good with children.”

Seeing the faint trouble in her expression, the smile at the corner of his lips deepened.

Children and animals alike are simple and clear-hearted by nature. They can judge good and evil by instinct. Whoever is upright and kind will naturally be drawn close to.

After dinner, the two of them went upstairs to rest.

In the narrow corridor on the second floor, every few steps along the wall hung a wooden mask in traditional indigenous style. The lines were rough and unrestrained, faintly suggesting the spirit of animals. They were painted in bright colors and adorned with vivid feathers, standing silently in the half-light and shadow, fierce and solemn.

Tan Guhong stopped, examining them one by one. Luo Jingming followed behind her.

“Do you think that when ancient people first created masks, it was to protect the face, or to imitate beasts for hunting?” she asked.

“Probably both. But there’s another purpose too, to hide oneself, and to intimidate the enemy.”

She smiled. “The way you put it reminds me of Prince of Lanling.”

In the chaotic era of the Northern and Southern dynasties, the young general born with strikingly beautiful features who had to wear a ferocious mask on the battlefield.

“Sometimes I think, he was born onto ancient battlefields, and to intimidate the enemy he had no choice but to do that. If he were born into the modern business world, to hide himself, he might still have to make some kind of ‘adjustment.’”

For instance, having perfectly normal eyesight, yet deliberately wearing a pair of plain glass spectacles.

She looked at him with a faintly teasing gaze.

He met her eyes calmly, not denying it.

Their gazes crossed, and for a moment neither spoke.

Suddenly, all the masks on the wall began to tremble slightly. The wood knocked softly against the stone wall, producing a series of clicking sounds. The mask closest to them, covered in red feathers, slipped silently from the wall. In the instant it hit the ground, in a flash like lightning and sparks, Tan Guhong saw her own startled face reflected in Luo Jingming’s pupils.

“It’s an earthquake!”

She immediately grabbed Luo Jingming’s arm and ran downstairs. He quickly kept pace, pulling his arm free only to wrap it around her shoulders protectively as they hurried down the stairs.

The house was small. In just a few seconds, they had reached the doorway. By then, the primary waves had already passed, and the surroundings were enveloped in an ominous, deathly stillness.

Just as they stepped outside, she suddenly realized something and sharply turned back, confirming what she had glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. In the small dining room, the landlady’s little daughter was still sitting under the table, unaware, eating her potato cakes.

“Wait!”

Tan Guhong flung off Luo Jingming’s hand and rushed back, pulling and dragging the little girl out from under the table. She scooped her up and ran for the door.

At that moment, the deadly secondary waves finally arrived. The ground began to shake violently. The entire house trembled, windows creaked, tables and chairs slid across the floor. All the masks on the second floor fell one after another and shattered. Cracks split open across the walls in an instant.

A metal rack piled with decorations in the corner suddenly toppled from behind and to the right, crashing hard onto Tan Guhong’s leg. Her right leg gave way and she dropped to one knee, a muffled groan forced down her throat.

Ignoring the injury, she gritted her teeth and got back up, half crawling, half stumbling toward the door. Luo Jingming caught her, along with the child in her arms, pulling them outside. At last, they escaped the house.

They stood in the open courtyard, watching helplessly as the small guesthouse building was crushed as easily as a child’s toy by an invisible hand. The scattered lights both near and far, together with the countless stars in the pitch-black sky, all trembled incessantly in their vision.

After an unknown length of time, the shaking finally stopped. All was still. Silence stretched across the land.

Then, immediately, came the screams. Shouts. Cries. The voices of men and women, and the wailing of livestock, all tangled together in the darkness.

At that moment, the хозяюшка returned from outside the courtyard. Seeing the half-collapsed house, she let out a scream, dropped the half-sack of corn in her hands, and stumbled forward.

“Here!”

Tan Guhong called out to her. The хозяюшка hurried over and took her sobbing daughter from her arms. Without even pausing to thank them, she rushed to the half-collapsed house, fell to her knees, and shouted her husband’s name, trying to find any trace of him.

Tan Guhong and Luo Jingming exchanged a glance, hearts still pounding, emotions in turmoil.

“Your leg—”

He crouched down to check her injury. Only then did her awareness fully return, and she felt the tearing, agonizing pain in her calf. Looking down, she saw a long gash along the outer back of her right leg, a large patch of blood spreading across her light-colored jeans.

“Ah… this might be troublesome.” Her face was pale as she gave a wry smile. “Not sure if the bone’s injured.”

“To the hospital.”

But this indigenous village lay deep in the mountains. There was no hospital at all, only an old practitioner somewhere between a pharmacist and a shaman, with very limited medical skill. At this moment, his courtyard was already crowded with injured villagers, some with broken limbs, others bleeding from the head. He was completely overwhelmed.

Following directions from the villagers, Tan Guhong was helped by Luo Jingming to the old man’s house. After standing outside the courtyard and observing for a while, she came to a conclusion.

“No point relying on him. I suspect his wound treatment might not even be as good as mine. Let’s go to a hospital in a nearby town.”

“Alright.”

“Wait, I don’t mean now.” She grabbed him. “We leave at dawn. There’s just been an earthquake. The roads aren’t safe. Besides, Ecuador doesn’t have the best public security. Traveling at night, we could run into robbers.”

Luo Jingming refused outright. “No. The rack that hit you just now was covered in rust. You need a tetanus shot immediately.”

“That's only a what-if. Which matters more? There's no need for us to take that risk.”

Luo Jingming smiled faintly, not quite a smile. “You should have thought of that when you rushed in to save someone just now.”

Tan Guhong gave a helpless look. “What could I do? I'm PLA.”

When saving a life was that simple, how could she possibly stand by and do nothing?

“OK, Comrade PLA, then right now I think your injury matters more. We have to take that risk.”

Luo Jingming didn’t give her a chance to refuse again. Half dragging, half carrying, he forcibly took her away.

The small family who ran the guesthouse had, in a single night, been thrown into complete upheaval. Their home had collapsed, the male owner was buried in the rubble, his fate unknown. The woman was organizing neighbors to try and rescue him. After asking her clearly for the direction of the nearest town, Tan Guhong said her goodbyes. Before leaving, she hugged the little girl standing blankly in the courtyard, at a loss, and quietly slipped a stack of US dollars into her pocket.

“Don’t be afraid. Be good. Your parents will be alright.”

Next door was another guesthouse, where a Korean couple was staying. Fortunately, they were uninjured. At this moment they were flustered and unsure what to do. Seeing fellow Asians, they came over to speak. When they learned Tan Guhong and Luo Jingming planned to leave overnight, they hesitated. The man wanted to go with them, but the woman firmly refused. In the end, they chose to stay in the village and decide what to do the next day.

The jeep parked in the courtyard had, fortunately, not been affected by the earthquake. Tan Guhong was helped into the back seat by Luo Jingming. She lowered her head, glanced at her injured leg, then took off her shirt, intending to bandage the wound.

Luo Jingming stood outside the car door. She wore only a close-fitting black athletic tank top. Her slender neck, delicate collarbones, and the soft curve of her chest were all exposed. She bit into the fabric to tear it open, then pulled hard with both hands, ripping the shirt apart. The muscles along her lean arms were smooth and well-defined, her movements clean and efficient.

His breathing faltered for a moment. He lowered his gaze, concealing the faint ripple in his eyes.

“I’ll do it.”

As Tan Guhong lowered her head, she felt a jacket, still warm with body heat, draped over her shoulders. Luo Jingming took the half-torn shirt from her hands, crouched halfway down, pulled her injured leg closer, and carefully rolled up the fabric of her pants. Using the half bottle of mineral water left in the car, he cleaned around the wound, then tore her shirt into strips and meticulously bandaged it.

“Not bad,” she said, forcing a smile through the pain.

“Practice makes skill,” he replied.

He looked up and smiled as well. A few loose strands of hair fell across his forehead, his cheek smeared with a streak of dust and grime, his clothes wrinkled and disheveled. He looked battered, yet his expression remained calm.

They had just survived disaster, yet both of them remained unexpectedly at ease. That in itself was rare.

He took out a few mint candies from his pocket, placed them in his palm, and held them out to her.

“Want one?”

She laughed. “You really like mint candy, don’t you?”

She had already seen him eat it several times.

He neither confirmed nor denied.

She almost said, do you think I’m a three-year-old? But the pain in her leg had her breaking out in sweat, and a distraction wouldn’t hurt.

She picked one, tore open the clear wrapper, and placed the ice-blue, translucent candy into her mouth. There was none of the sweetness she had expected. The sharp, cooling sting of mint shot straight to her head, followed by the bitter saltiness of sea salt. Completely unprepared, she nearly choked up tears, coughing a few times as she asked, baffled,

“How do you even like this?”

And eat it so calmly, so persistently?

But the sharp pain in her leg did ease somewhat.

“Clears the head.”

He smiled, popped one into his own mouth, shut the car door, and got into the driver’s seat. Starting the engine, he reminded her,

“Sit tight. Don’t hit your leg.”

After the earthquake, all network signals had collapsed. They had no idea about the details of the quake or the extent of the disaster. Information was completely cut off. And in this country, one could not expect military or police rescue teams to mobilize quickly. They could only rely on themselves.

The houses in the village were closely packed, and the population dense, so the damage was severe. Once outside the village, however, the road was not too badly damaged. There were occasional fallen power lines and rocks that had rolled down from the mountains, but they did not encounter any large-scale landslides along the way.

The nearest town was only about half an hour away, but the route was desolate. Unlike the road they had taken earlier, there were no farmlands or houses in sight, and not a single other car appeared ahead or behind.

Along the way, Luo Jingming drove at high speed. When a road sign indicated that the town was eight kilometers away, a row of makeshift barricades suddenly appeared across the road ahead.

Tan Guhong’s heart tightened. This was common in Ecuador, in remote mountain areas. Bandits would hide nearby, set up roadblocks to stop passing vehicles, then surround and rob them.

She spoke quickly, “Local bandits don’t usually kill. They just want money. Take out all the cash. I’ll talk to them. Give them whatever they want.”

Luo Jingming did not respond. He only said lightly,

“Hold on.”

As soon as the words fell, instead of slowing down, the car accelerated. His hand shifted gears, his foot slammed down on the accelerator, and he drove straight at the barricade at full speed.

The barricade was only made of wood, not particularly sturdy. The mountain jeep had a solid frame. With a loud crash, the barrier was smashed aside, and they broke through.

But the bandits had a backup plan. Beyond the barricade, the road was scattered with triangular tire spikes. The tires were punctured and burst instantly. The car shuddered violently.

Tan Guhong gripped the handle tightly, while Luo Jingming held the steering wheel firm and slammed the brakes. Barely managing to keep the vehicle from flipping, the car spun across the road two and a half full turns before crashing into the guardrail and finally coming to a stop. The shrill screech of braking echoed for a long time in the silent night.

Tan Guhong was protected by the seatbelt and the deployed airbag and was unharmed. She shook her head hard, breathing rapidly to steady herself. When she looked up, she saw the bandits who had been lying in ambush by the roadside emerge, climbing over the barrier and gathering toward them.

One, two, three, four. Four in total. Likely realizing they had encountered tough opponents, they all drew knives, and one of them held a spear.

She knew this would not end peacefully. Just as she was about to speak, Luo Jingming had already opened the car door and stepped out, leaving behind only one sentence.

“Stay in the car.”

Her heart tightened. She could tell he had skills, but one against many was still a disadvantage, especially when the other side had weapons. A direct fight was not wise. She did not believe he had the odds in his favor.

The four men saw him step out and began closing in toward the driver’s side.

“Wait!”

Tan Guhong shouted loudly in Spanish, struggling to open the car door and get out. Enduring the sharp pain in her leg, she moved around the front of the car.

This process took no more than ten seconds.

Within those ten seconds, four gunshots rang out in succession. Front, back, left, right, each shot grazed past the bandits’ heads and clothing. Not a single one hit, yet all four men had just brushed past death.

Tan Guhong stopped in her tracks, standing before the car, staring in disbelief at the scene.

Under the streetlight, Luo Jingming held a gun aimed directly at the forehead of the bandit holding the spear. He wore only a thin T-shirt, casual as if he had just returned from a walk. The dim light outlined the sharp contours of his face, and his gold-rimmed glasses reflected a pale gleam.

Yet his expression was not cold or severe. It was as gentle and refined as ever, a faint smile even lingering at the corner of his lips.

He spoke, his tone indifferent:

“Fuck off.”

✦

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A Thought That Lasts Forever Chapter 5

 

Ecuador (5)

The night stretched long and slow, and she slept without dreams until dawn.

In the early morning, Tan Guhong pushed open the window. Cold air rushed against her face, and the blue sky and white clouds at an altitude of more than three thousand meters were especially refreshing.

“Morning.”

She turned her head and saw Luo Jingming standing by the window of the room next door. He leaned against the sky-blue window panel, wearing a thin white shirt with the buttons at the collar undone. He was not wearing his glasses, and there was still a trace of the lazy drowsiness of someone just waking in his brows. His gaze was hazy and quiet, like mist-shrouded mountains and rivers.

“Morning, but…” She pointed at her own hair with a finger, then pointed at him. “Um, you…”

He realized what she meant and raised a hand to touch his hair, only then discovering that a few strands had rebelliously sprung up, completely defying gravity.

The strands were exceptionally stubborn. He tried to smooth them down, but it was completely useless.

“You must have slept badly last night.”

“The pillow was too low. It was uncomfortable to sleep on.”

“Me too. So I slept with two pillows stacked on top of each other.”

“I didn't think of that…”

They looked at each other for a moment before breaking into laughter at the same time.

Not far away, El Panecillo was bathed in the morning light, and faintly, the statue of the Virgin could be seen glimmering with spots of gold and red. For a brief moment, the worldly wariness, coldness, and distance between them seemed to have faded somewhat compared with yesterday.

Who was it that once said travel was the easiest way to bring people closer together?

Regardless of the past or the future, at least today, they were companions setting out on the road together.

The Andes Mountains run through central Ecuador. The country is home to numerous volcanoes and experiences frequent earthquakes, with many highland volcanoes surrounded by beautiful scenery. Today's destination was Quilotoa Volcano, southwest of Quito. Among the surrounding mountains, it was famous for its emerald-colored volcanic lake.

The journey from Quito to Quilotoa took about five hours. The two rented a mountain jeep locally and drove themselves there, with Luo Jingming at the wheel.

The roads along the way were in very good condition, the weather was good, and there were very few cars. The atmosphere between them was also somewhat more relaxed than yesterday. Tan Guhong teased him:

“What happened to your little sidekick?”

She naturally meant the man named A-Kun. The bodyguard was extremely conscientious and dutiful. Yesterday, he had followed them around Quito as well, only keeping his distance while remaining within sight and never approaching. When he was not wearing that gloomy expression, he simply looked like an ordinary Asian man and would not attract anyone's attention.

Luo Jingming replied, “I gave him the day off. He doesn't need to follow me. Besides, there won't be any danger in Ecuador.”

“Doesn't he speak Chinese? I've never heard him talk.”

“He does, but he only speaks Cantonese, not Mandarin. A-Kun is Filipino. He's the son of the nanny who took care of me when I was little. We grew up together.”

“He's pretty skilled.” His arms were long enough to reach past his hips, and the web between his thumb and index finger was callused. He was an excellent fighter, as well as a good marksman.

“Not bad.”

“What about you?” She glanced at him.

“When I was little, I learned a little for self-defense. I'm not particularly good at it.”

He neither confirmed nor denied it, and she did not ask any further. The subject ended there and was not brought up again.

Long journeys were always more pleasant and relaxing with a companion. The two chatted idly on and off along the way, and before long they arrived at the intermediate city of Latacunga, where they went into town to eat.

It was called a city, but in reality it was little more than a small town. Still, unexpectedly, even such a small place had a Chinese restaurant.

Tan Guhong stood in front of the distinctive bright-red sign, trying to read the spelling on it.

“Chifa? Does that mean eating?”

“It's the Cantonese pronunciation of ‘吃饭,’” Luo Jingming said beside her. “There are places like this in the United States too. Supposedly, toward the end of the Qing dynasty, large numbers of laborers from China's southeastern coast crossed the ocean to the other side of the Pacific, doing hard work in agricultural cultivation, road construction, and mining. Whenever food was served, Chinese cooks would always shout, ‘吃饭!’ Over time, South Americans came to call eating Chinese food ‘CHIFA.’”

Tan Guhong nodded and smiled. “Back in those days, most of the people who went abroad to make their fortunes were from Guangdong. I suppose Cantonese ended up being more widely spoken overseas than Mandarin.”

Although it was Chinese food, Chinese restaurants that opened overseas inevitably adapted to local customs, often becoming almost unrecognizable. So, with perfect mutual understanding, the two chose another barbecue restaurant next door instead.

Ecuadorian barbecue was basically grilled meat along with grilled fruit, seasoned with salt and mayonnaise. The flavor was strange, but not difficult to accept.

“I'll drive for a while later…” Tan Guhong said after they finished eating.

“There are only two hours left. There's no need.”

“It's fine. I have an international driver's license. With two drivers, there's no reason to let you do all the driving and get tired.”

Luo Jingming did not refuse again. After the two paid the bill and came out, he bought her a cup of coffee from a vending machine.

“For driving after a meal, so you don't get sleepy.”

“Thanks, but no…” She shook her head, still wary, refusing the drink. After hesitating for a moment, she said, “Actually, I don't drink coffee.”

He looked puzzled. “Why?”

“I'm especially sensitive to coffee. After I drink it, my nerves stay stimulated for a long time, and I can't sleep at all.”

“It's still early.”

She paused. “Do you remember the last time I went to the inn to find you? You poured me a glass of sidra, and I took a sip.”

“And then?”

“Then that night, I didn't fall asleep until eight the next morning.”

That serious? Seeing her solemn expression, he could not help laughing. He downed the coffee in his cup in one go and said with a smile:

“Okay. I'll remember that from now on.”

The journey through the second half was much quieter. She sat in the driver's seat on the left, while he sat in the passenger seat on the right. The two did not talk much, so she simply turned on the car stereo.

The car was old, and the CD was old too. An unknown band played, the lead singer's voice hoarse as he sang the same love song over and over:

“I don't like you, but I love you

(我不喜欢你，但是我爱你)

Seems that I'm always thinkin' of you

(我似乎一直都在想念你)

You've really got a hold on me

(你真的虏获了我)

You really got a hold on me

(你真的虏获了我)……”

Along the way, they crossed the undulating, seemingly endless Andes Mountains. The vegetation changed as they went, with fertile farmland here and there, peaceful green fields, and flocks of sheep. Different crops and plants were different colors, and from a distance, it looked as though the mountains and rivers had been draped in a patchwork quilt. Accompanied by the singing in their ears, their mood seemed to stretch endlessly toward the far distance.

Near the volcanic lake was an indigenous Inca village, where travelers passing through would stop to rest. There were several guesthouses in the village. They casually picked a family-run inn that looked decent, put down their backpacks, took a short rest, and then headed for the volcanic lake.

As they left, Tan Guhong saw that Luo Jingming had finally changed into something more relaxed and casual, and she could not help finding it amusing.

The man's manner was traditional to the point of being old-fashioned. No matter where or when they were along the journey, he had always been impeccably dressed in a suit, making himself look several years older for no reason. Now, wearing sneakers and casual clothes, he finally looked younger.

They passed through the village and climbed up the mountain. To reach the volcanic lake, they first had to get to the summit before turning back down toward it.

Quilotoa Volcano had been dormant for more than seven hundred years, with its last eruption occurring in 1280. The area was shrouded in clouds and mist throughout the year, making it difficult to see the volcano in its true form. But today they were lucky. The sky was clear, with white clouds against blue, and there was, unusually, no heavy fog.

Because it was located in a highland mountain region, the altitude here was extremely high, making the climb exhausting. The two said nothing. One followed the other in silence, steadily making their way upward.

After reaching the summit, they descended the mountain. After rounding a slight bend, Lake Quilotoa suddenly crashed into their view without warning.

Encircled by mountains, a silent lake shimmered with rippling light, tranquil as a mirror. Beneath the sunlight, it reflected shades of color that shifted from emerald green at the edges to deep blue at the center, like a gigantic emerald, and yet also like jade nectar poured down from the Nine Heavens.

As the ancients said, “The world's extraordinary, magnificent, unusual sights are often found in dangerous and remote places, where people seldom go.” Without seeing it with their own eyes, no one could imagine that there was a shade of blue in this world beautiful enough to intoxicate the heart, beautiful enough to make you instinctively want to cry.

The two stood side by side, stunned into silence by the overwhelming grandeur of nature. Neither said a word.

The extreme beauty of the landscape remained reflected on their retinas long afterward, its impact striking deep into their minds and hearts. For a moment, Tan Guhong felt the blood rushing faster through her body, her heart pounding violently inside her chest. A phantom ringing filled her right ear, and she staggered slightly.

Luo Jingming stepped forward and caught her by the arm.

“Altitude sickness?”

“No…” She shook her head. Altitude sickness did not cause symptoms like this.

“Then… is it your right ear?”

She looked at him and smiled. “You really did know.”

Otherwise, he would not have spent the entire journey, whether they were walking or sitting, intentionally or unintentionally, always staying on her left. Even when they were driving, she sat in the driver's seat and he simply stayed quiet.

Her right ear was deaf.

“I knew a little…” He paused. “I'm sorry.”

Using the strength of his arm, she steadied herself and shook her head, somewhat helplessly. “It's all in the past.”

It was not that she did not care. It was simply that it was already in the past.

Her parents had died in a car accident when she was three. She grew up at her maternal grandfather's home. Her grandfather was a soldier, and so was her uncle. From childhood, she had been immersed in their influence, and her only dream had been to become a soldier, to enlist in the military. At eighteen, she finally got her wish and was admitted to an Air Force pilot academy. Her future seemed bright. Unfortunately, not long afterward, a sudden case of deafness brought on by a minor cold caused her to lose her chance at the blue sky just like that.

After dropping out, there followed a long and painful period of treatment. Six months later, she had barely recovered her hearing, but she could never again meet the standards for becoming a pilot. Then she repeated a year of school and took the college entrance examination again, gave up on herself and casually chose a major, and drifted through university in a daze. A few years later, her hearing had basically recovered. As luck would have it, the university was recruiting for the military. Unable to give up, she threw herself into military life once more. All her passion, all her hope, was ignited again. She considered military academies, national defense students… She imagined countless possibilities for her future. But, alas, alas, none could withstand the twists of fate.

The brutal intensity of the training caused the sudden deafness to recur. This time, her right ear lost its hearing completely.

She was discharged from the military because of her illness. From then on, she and military green could never meet again.

“For a very, very long time, I couldn't get past it. I didn't understand. Why could something I'd worked so hard to obtain from childhood be destroyed so easily? It was only one deaf ear. Look, I can still hear sounds, and I don't even need a hearing aid. What's different about me from a normal person? But no. I have a thousand paths I can take. The only one I wanted to take was the one I couldn't.”

“Guhong…”

He called her name softly, wanting to say something. But with only those two words lingering between his teeth, there was already a thousand kinds of desolation, ten thousand kinds of loneliness. Beneath heaven and earth, a solitary figure, with no companion in sight.

She interrupted him. “But I told you, it's all in the past.”

The heavens and earth were vast, magnificent and grand. Standing beneath such a sky, upon such a mountaintop, you could sincerely feel just how small you were, and how laughable all those obstacles in life that you once thought you could never get past really were.

She turned her head. Her fair, delicate face was calm and unburdened, a smile lingering in her brows. “If one road doesn't work, I still have a thousand other roads I can take, don't I?”

Not everyone who encounters a setback has to become hysterical, give up on themselves, and slide into the abyss of darkness.

In this materialistic, pleasure-driven world, falling into depravity and indulgence is an easy thing. Using tobacco, alcohol, sex, even drugs, any means that can give the body brief pleasure while deceiving oneself and numbing the heart, all of it is astonishingly easy.

What is rare, however, is clarity. To remain awake, alone and in pain, throughout this long and barren life.

So all these years, she had traveled in every direction. She wandered without stopping. She saw mountains, she saw waters, she saw heaven and earth, she saw all living beings. She was searching, desperately, for her own road.

Even if she would always walk it alone.

After all, where in this life is one not walking alone?

……

The mountain weather was unpredictable. On the way back, a thick fog suddenly rolled in, shrouding the entire mountain in haze. The mist was everywhere, making it impossible to tell which way was which. Neither of them had brought a compass. Fortunately, they encountered some merchants driving pack horses. They rented two horses, and the merchants led them back to the village.

They had not rented the horses for transportation in the first place, so neither of them mounted. Instead, they simply held the reins and followed slowly behind the pack train, walking side by side.

“It's a shame we won't get to see the lake at sunset.” Tan Guhong sounded a little regretful. The evening clouds spread across the sky, casting themselves over the emerald-colored surface of the lake. The view must have been beautiful.

He paused, then slowly said, “Perhaps we can get up early tomorrow to watch the sunrise.”

“Will we have enough time?” She was tempted. She quickly calculated their itinerary. Tomorrow was Monday, and her flight would leave Quito in the afternoon.

“If we head back immediately after watching the sunrise, we should make it.”

“Then it's settled.”

She really did love this scenery.

“Okay.” Seeing her expression relax, he smiled too.

Suddenly remembering something, she asked him, “Do you know San Mao?”

“I do.”

“Have you read her ‘Heart Lake’?”

“No.”

“She once traveled alone throughout South America and came to a volcanic lake in Ecuador, where she wrote this piece. She had a powerful feeling that in her previous life, she had been an Inca woman by this lake, herding sheep, catching fish, hunting and gathering medicinal herbs, living in peace with the world. She married a kind husband who loved her deeply, but ultimately died in his arms while giving birth.”

She smiled. “There are no words that can prove where Heart Lake actually is. Perhaps it really is Lake Quilotoa.”

He did not answer immediately. After a moment of silence, he asked her, “Do you believe that people are reincarnated?”

“No.” She was an atheist. She believed only in this life, not the next.

The mountains were wrapped in clouds and mist. They could not see the road ahead or the way home, and even each other's faces seemed to have become indistinct.

His voice betrayed no emotion. “That's a shame. Perhaps you'll miss a lot of things.”

“You believe?”

“I never believed before. Later, though, I began to hope.”

She was curious. “Do you follow a religion?”

“No.”

“Are you a theist?”

“No.”

She laughed. “You don't believe in religion, you're an atheist, yet you believe in past and present lives?”

“I wouldn't call it belief. It's just hope. Belief puts the initiative in someone else's hands; hope puts it in your own.” He smiled too. “Besides, isn't this perfectly normal? Chinese people have always been this way. We pray to gods and worship Buddha, and we observe all the proper rituals, but that doesn't mean we believe. It's different from Western religion.”

Not fanatical believers, not people who simply submit to whatever fate brings, but a subtle kind of transaction. I offer you my worship, you grant me your protection. We each get what we need. If you fail to answer my prayers, naturally I'll find another mountain to worship.

He looked ahead, a faint smile at his lips, his eyes deep behind his lenses.

“When I was little, my family also worshipped Lord Guan. Rather than saying we believed in Lord Guan, it would be more accurate to say that we respected the two things he represented: ‘loyalty and righteousness.’ When I grew up, I stopped worshipping him, because I felt that one's fate lies in one's own hands, not in Heaven's.”

When he was little, he did not understand. He would ask his father whether Lord Guan could protect their family and keep them safe and well, and whether worshipping Lord Guan meant they no longer had to do anything themselves.

He remembered for the rest of his life how Luo Zhanfei lifted him up and told him, word by word:

“A-Ming, remember this. Chinese people may pray to gods and worship Buddha, but we never sit around waiting for death. We have never been the kind of people who look up at the sky and thank Heaven for its blessings.”

“Not like Americans.”

“We never thank the god.”

“We are the god.”

✦

No movie recommendation today. Instead, I recommend a book, San Mao's 《萬水千山走遍》.

Book description: This book recounts San Mao's travels through Mexico, Honduras, Panama, and other places, along with what she saw and heard along the way, as well as the local customs and culture.

Recommendation: San Mao was a woman who had been through too much hardship, possessed too much talent, was too free-spirited, and was also far too stubbornly devoted. She was a famous Taiwanese writer. She dropped out of school as a teenager, withdrew into herself, and rebelled, and later went abroad to study in Spain, Germany, and the United States. There, she met José, a man who loved her deeply. After the two married, they settled in the Sahara Desert and built a home together from nothing. Life was both difficult and sweet, and she wrote many classic works.

But later, José died unexpectedly, and San Mao suffered a devastating blow. She traveled alone throughout Central and South America, searching both for a way forward and for a way home, and turned everything she saw and experienced along the way into this book.

It is difficult to imagine that in the 1980s, she traveled alone to so many remote corners of the world that few people had ever visited, bringing us stories and poetry from those distant places. She was so free, and so brave. She traveled across a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers, yet sadly, she still could not make it past the obstacle in her own heart. One day in 1991, San Mao took her own life in a hospital. At last, she could be reunited with her José.

The “Heart Lake” mentioned in this chapter comes from this book.

✦

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