“What are you doing here?” Zhao Buxi was equally surprised to see the man he’d just had a run-in with appear again.
Wasn’t he in Beijing?
Wasn’t Beijing enormous?
Outside tourist attractions, if someone bumped into the same person twice in one day in Beijing, even an old man from a traditional courtyard house inside the Second Ring Road would say in his authentic Beijing accent, Oh, come on, don’t make me laugh.
Where do you think you are, Beijing?
Running into the same person twice in different places on the same day? That’s some bullshit you’re spinning.
One hour earlier:
That morning, Fang Peizhi had finally managed to wrest half a day off from the complicated business of investing and the noble cause of education.
He was particular about his quality of life. Even on a day off, he wouldn’t waste time lying around in bed doing nothing.
After getting up, he ground some coffee for himself and had planned to bring a serving to the student who had moved in yesterday.
A few days earlier, when the new graduate students had enrolled, that student had noticed him missing lunch and shared some dumplings with him. They were delicious; he could still remember their fragrance.
But the student had already gone out early.
Fang Peizhi drank his coffee alone. Between checking financial news and stock prices, he planned to bake a few cookies.
He had only just put them in the oven, before turning it on, when he received word about the blind date his family had arranged.
The news wiped out every last bit of his good mood. It even drove him to the heartless, inhumane thought that he might have been better off working than taking a break.
The oven had a timer, but he wasn’t foolish enough to leave it running when no one was home.
The baking tray was too long for the refrigerator, and the dollops of raw cookie dough squeezed onto the parchment couldn’t be put back into the piping bag.
Frustrated, he had no choice but to throw the dough away and order a new, larger refrigerator online.
Everything that had happened since he opened his eyes seemed to foretell a day of misfortune.
He changed clothes, took his car keys, and left. Half an hour into the drive, a seventy-something old woman who moved like lightning burst out of the bushes and threw herself onto the ground half a meter ahead of his car.
Fang Peizhi braked promptly, opened the door, and got out to check on her.
The old woman was obviously an experienced scammer. Her yellowed, cloudy eyes kept darting around. The moment she saw the driver emerge, she began howling at the top of her lungs.
She had more energy than the students he supervised.
She had chosen the spot with impressive precision. Half a meter, only two steps for an adult. If the driver had braked too slowly, he really might have hit her.
If Fang Peizhi had been in a good mood, he might have asked what she planned to do if she actually got herself badly injured.
As it was, he had no patience for it and went straight back into the car to pull up his dashcam footage.
The frail, elderly woman lay on the ground wailing miserably, while the Maybach stood cold and merciless behind her without a shred of human warmth.
Knock, knock…
As Fang Peizhi tapped through the dashcam recordings, a muffled sound reached him, as if someone were speaking from underwater.
He lowered the window. Zhao Buxi bent to peer inside and stopped mid-sentence when he recognized him. Fang Peizhi’s gaze, too, settled on Zhao Buxi’s slightly upturned lashes.
“You hit someone.”
Fang Peizhi stared at him for a few seconds, then opened the door and got out.
The door swung open without warning. A sedan was stopped beside them, waiting for the light, and there was little room to maneuver. Fang Peizhi emerged almost brushing against Zhao Buxi.
One long leg slid between Zhao Buxi’s legs. Fang Peizhi was half a head taller, with very fair skin, an open and elegant appearance, and a bearing that unmistakably suggested his social class.
“Which eye saw me hit her?” Fang Peizhi asked.
Zhao Buxi couldn’t believe the man had hit someone and still had the nerve to act so arrogant. He’d seen the car strike the old lady from the roadside with his own eyes.
The woman was now rolling around in front of the car, apparently bursting with “energy.”
“Both eyes, obviously! You hit someone, and you’re just sitting in your car?”
How could a person have such terrible manners?
Fang Peizhi looked at him. “Are you related to her?”
Before Zhao Buxi could reply, Fang Peizhi plainly lost all interest in talking and refused to waste any more time on this. “Forget it. How do you two want to settle this?”
He had naturally assumed that Zhao Buxi and the old woman were working together.
The instant the woman heard him ask how to settle it, her back stopped hurting and her legs were suddenly fine. She was so full of energy that she could have knocked down a university student with each fist, competed for first place in a thousand-meter fitness test, and lived by the motto I’ll leave your boyfriend in the dust.
She gave a fake little cough and spoke in a voice like a rusted gong. “Just give me some money. Enough to get checked out at the hospital.”
Zhao Buxi thought she looked perfectly respectable. “See? The old lady isn’t running a scam. She’s not even asking for much, just the cost of a hospital examination.”
He thought the driver should count his blessings that the woman hadn’t been seriously injured. Otherwise, he’d have been paying until he didn’t have a pair of underpants left.
It was a hot day. The delicate skin just below Zhao Buxi’s lashes, high on his cheeks, was slightly flushed.
The old woman was lying on the road, but Zhao Buxi hadn’t dared help her up. What if she was hurt and moving her made it worse?
Then, to his surprise, she rose shakily to her feet on her own.
She deliberately trembled as she walked toward the car. Zhao Buxi couldn’t bear to watch and offered her an arm.
“Thank you, child.” The woman gave him a “kindly” smile with all the warmth of a nuclear blast, then addressed Fang Peizhi. “I’m not asking for much. Just give me a little.”
Zhao Buxi nodded. “Right. Just what she’s entitled to.”
The old woman held up one open hand.
Zhao Buxi hissed, already feeling the sting. Five thousand? That seemed like a lot. Hospital tests shouldn’t cost five thousand, and if she had health insurance it might only be a few hundred.
But her hair was gray, and elderly bodies weren’t like young ones. Any injury could have consequences that couldn’t be undone.
He turned toward Fang Peizhi. “Just give her five thousand.”
The figure startled the old woman so badly that she hurried to correct him.
“Not five thousand! Not five thousand!”
Zhao Buxi smiled. See? I knew it couldn’t be that much.
“Then how much? Five hundred?” he asked.
He heard the old woman quaver in his ear. “Five hundred thousand.”
“…”
Zhao Buxi’s smile froze as he looked at the wicked old crone before him.
So this is what I get for being sincere.
He had genuinely believed she’d been hit. Who would have thought she was actually running a scam? He immediately let go of the arm he was supporting and turned to meet Fang Peizhi’s look of Anything else you’d like to say?
“…”
Zhao Buxi licked his lips. He was healthy, and his lips were naturally moist, but for once he didn’t know what to say.
The sweat of embarrassment might as well have been tears.
The police arrived shortly afterward.
Responding to the report, they obtained surveillance footage from the traffic-light intersection several hundred meters ahead.
The old woman was a practiced hand. Her fall was so skillful that on camera it really did look as if she’d been hit by a car.
If you ignored the part where she’d sprinted into place.
But the footage didn’t completely rule out the possibility that the car had grazed her, so the police requested the recordings from Fang Peizhi’s dashcam.
The video showed the car driving steadily, slowing as it approached a pedestrian crossing near the intersection. It clearly captured the entire incident: the woman suddenly darting out from the roadside to stage a collision, and Fang Peizhi getting out to check on her.
It was unmistakably a deliberate accident scam.
The old woman was immediately fitted with a pair of gleaming silver bracelets: handcuffs.
With the truth revealed, Zhao Buxi felt a little embarrassed that he’d accused the victim. “Um, about earlier…”
Fang Peizhi ignored him, got into his car, and drove off. The rear of the car, its taillights shining, disappeared down the road.
Zhao Buxi was left thoroughly rebuffed, rubbing his nose with a finger.
He thought that would be the end of it. Little did he know that the two of them would meet again almost as soon as the matter was settled.
A meeting between China and the United States only lasted a hundred minutes. These two had already spent that much time in each other’s company on the very first day they met.
Meeting the same person twice in a single day in a city as vast as Beijing was either fate or a crime.
And Zhao Buxi’s reaction certainly didn’t constitute a violation of Article 50 of the Public Security Administration Punishments Law of the People’s Republic of China.
Lin Juexiao looked from one man to the other. “You know each other?”
Fang Peizhi answered crisply, “No.”
What a coincidence, you’re eating here too… Before Zhao Buxi could even say it, he swallowed the greeting. If the other man said they didn’t know each other, he wasn’t going to humiliate himself trying to be friendly. He lowered his head and continued eating.
Fang Peizhi and Lin Juexiao sat down and began their blind date to the accompaniment of Zhao Buxi’s meal.
Hearing the slurping beside him, Fang Peizhi frowned involuntarily.
How could anyone make so much noise while eating?
Zhao Buxi was enjoying his food. His table manners weren’t ugly; he was simply rather loud when eating noodles.
Fang Peizhi could tell Lin Juexiao didn’t want to be on this date either. The fact that she’d chosen a crowded, noisy restaurant heavy with cooking fumes was proof enough.
Without beating around the bush, he explained directly, if tactfully, that his family had pressured him into coming.
Lin Juexiao instantly became the poet Wang Bo himself: A kindred spirit can be found across the seas; even the farthest corners of the earth feel close.
“What a coincidence! Me too. They wouldn’t stop pushing me. I absolutely had to come. I’m sick of all the nagging.”
Still, Lin Juexiao liked what she saw across the table. She knew little of Fang Peizhi’s family or career yet, but his face and physique certainly appealed to her. She ventured, “Do you have a girlfriend?”
Fang Peizhi: “Yes.”
His family was always asking whether he had a girlfriend. Sick of the question, Fang Peizhi had bought a cactus, named it Girlfriend, and let it prick anyone who got too close.
Lin Juexiao couldn’t hide her disappointment. Of course a man this handsome wouldn’t be available. He already had a girlfriend, and his family had forced him onto the date.
Since he was taken, she wouldn’t interfere. She said graciously, “I wish you and your girlfriend a long and happy life together.”
“Thank you.”
As a courtesy, Fang Peizhi offered to drive her back to work. “My car is parked nearby.”
By coincidence, Zhao Buxi had also finished eating and was fumbling with the ride-hailing app on his phone, preparing to head to Capital University.
Little Tiger had used his phone to call a Didi once before, and the address was still saved. That spared Zhao Buxi the struggle of typing it himself, only to have no idea whether he’d entered it correctly.
Lin Juexiao smiled. “No need. My office is just up ahead.”
They said goodbye and went their separate ways outside the restaurant.
Zhao Buxi also emerged. Ride-hailing drivers went by the pin on the map, so he stayed by the roadside rather than wandering around.
The next moment, an imposing black sedan pulled up in front of him. The ride-hailing app showed that his car was black too.
Zhao Buxi opened the door and slid smoothly inside.
“Driver, 5888.”
Fang Peizhi: “…”
Zhao Buxi: “…”
Holy crap! Why is it him again?!
Before Zhao Buxi could recover from his surprise, his actual ride-hailing driver called his phone.
Dressed in yellow and fingering a string of polished beads, the driver let out a high-pitched shriek from his electric vehicle. “Holy crap! Get out! Get out right now! Do you have any idea whose car you got into? That’s a Maybach!”