Tan Xiao, Rapunzel in human form, possessed powers of adaptation almost nobody else could match. Well, since things had come to this, he might as well sleep first.
He took a hot shower, fell into bed, and slept straight through until ten the next morning, local time.
It was the rainiest season in Geneva. Drizzle had fallen all night and showed no sign of stopping. Tan Xiao went to the window and looked out. Mist rising from Lake Geneva had completely hidden the distant Alps.
The silent lakeside estate, enveloped in rain and fog, seemed more than ever like an island cut off from the world.
Tan Yun had still not summoned him, and the servants barely spoke to him either. He had originally wanted to strike up a conversation with someone and borrow a phone for a little while. Instead he discovered that the staff had not only been instructed to speak to him as little as possible, they were also forbidden from bringing their own phones into the estate.
Without a phone, without internet, and without anyone to talk to, he could only find a few books in the study and take them back to his room.
Three mornings later, the rain finally stopped. Tan Xiao went outside to play and unexpectedly discovered the family kept a Great Dane. The dog was as quiet and taciturn as everyone else in the house, barely making a sound. No wonder Tan Xiao had heard nothing of it all these days.
But the dog was remarkably sensitive to human goodwill and quickly took to Tan Xiao, who liked it at once. It was docile, so Tan Xiao untied its lead and ran around the estate with it. What a pity he had neither phone nor camera. A dog that handsome against the beautiful lakeside scenery would have made incredible photos.
Around noon, the sun appeared briefly, and the fog over the lake thinned. Tan Xiao spotted a small old-fashioned yacht moored at the pier. He knew how to pilot a yacht and wanted to take the dog out. Half an hour across the lake would bring them to Évian, a French town famous for its water and flowers. There probably were not any flowers at this time of year, but he could at least go and hang out with some French people.
The dockworker, of course, did not dare hand him the keys. After speaking with the butler over the radio, he stiffly refused the unfortunate young master under house arrest. The weather forecast said it would rain again that afternoon, he claimed, and the lake would be unsafe.
The young master wanted to chat with the dockworker a little longer, but the man bowed and left.
Tan Xiao had no choice but to play with the dog in the garden. Sure enough, rain began falling again late in the afternoon. He took the Great Dane back to his room.
“Do you have a partner?” he asked the dog in German.
Naturally the dog did not answer. It lay down and rolled over, presenting its belly.
While petting it, Tan Xiao repeated his question in his halting French. Still no verbal response. Finally, he boasted in Chinese, “You German dogs are hopeless. Our Chinese village dogs hold meetings every day. I’ve never attended one, but I bet some of them are even responsible for making PowerPoint slides. How come you can’t even talk?”
The Great Dane understood even less. It tilted its head at him.
Then Tan Xiao decided the dog was simply too handsome and adorable and gave it a thorough cuddling. It was enormous, but possessed a capybara’s placid disposition, and clearly liked him too. It let him squeeze and squish it any way he pleased.
Playing with a large dog took a lot of energy. When Tan Xiao could not keep up anymore, he held its face between his palms and said, “I must miss my husband so much. Why do I think you even look a little like him?”
He burst out laughing at his own remark. If Zhang Xingchuan heard it, he would probably faint from outrage.
“Do you know why I brought you up here?” Tan Xiao asked, hugging the dog’s neck. “You’re the only one here who’ll play with me. If I don’t keep you close, I might not see you tomorrow.”
But during the night, after Tan Xiao had fallen asleep, the Great Dane was taken away anyway.
Another week passed. Tan Xiao lay against the window, watching the rain. Today it was falling so heavily that even the lake had vanished from view.
He felt mentally unwell. Perhaps he had caught a cold? Or perhaps he was simply going out of his mind from boredom. He kept waking shortly after falling asleep. Days of fragmented rest had made his thoughts sluggish. Sometimes he even imagined sounds: his phone vibrating, Siri’s mechanical voice, Zhang Xingchuan calling his name.
During the first few days he had still eaten enthusiastically to keep himself healthy and energetic. A foolish hunger strike? He would never do such a thing.
But over the past two days his appetite had declined too. The kitchen kept preparing elaborate dishes from different countries, yet he could barely eat any of them.
Sometimes he was frightened. Perhaps Tan Yun meant to leave him here forever, forgotten. Perhaps that was his punishment.
And Zhang Xingchuan? Why had he not come yet? Had he been unable to find him?
Or had Zhang Xingchuan run into difficulties himself, perhaps even danger?
At other times Tan Xiao regretted telling Zhang Xingchuan, on the day they parted, that he absolutely had to come for him. He wished he had never said those words.
Zhang Xingchuan ought to be back in China, living the peaceful, happy life of an entrepreneur. He ought to forget Tan Xiao. That would be better.
Suddenly, in the window glass, Tan Xiao saw his own reflection shedding tears against the curtain of rain.
It startled him awake. A modern person accustomed to constant streams of information and social contact could not remain in such extreme human isolation indefinitely. His mind was beginning to fail him. His emotions were going numb, and even his ability to think seemed to be deteriorating.
He hurriedly reconsidered what had just gone through his head. Let Zhang Xingchuan forget him? Absolutely not.
Hurry up and find him! What sort of husband was that idiot Zhang Xingchuan?
Yet the brief burst of mental activity soon faded. He began to feel bored and exhausted again, glancing around now and then. Where was that phone ringing? Was someone calling him? Was anybody there?
That evening, two unfamiliar white people came to his room, a man and a woman, neither particularly young.
Confused, he greeted them in German. “Hello.”
They both froze for a moment. The man asked, “Can you speak English?”
Switching to English, Tan Xiao replied, “Yes. Who are you?”
“How do you feel right now?” the man asked.
“Pretty good.”
“Do you remember what day you arrived here?”
“Ten days ago.”
The man and woman exchanged a glance.
“Are you lawyers?” Tan Xiao asked.
“We’re doctors,” the woman said.
“Have I caught a cold?”
“How have you been sleeping lately?” the female doctor asked.
“Not very well,” Tan Xiao said. “Am I sick? What’s wrong with me?”
“Is anything bothering you physically?” she asked.
“Do auditory hallucinations count? I miss my phone so much that I keep hearing it ring. Sometimes I hear my husband calling me too.”
“Your husband?”
“Yes. I’m married. He’s Chinese.”
The two doctors fell silent for a moment.
They asked him a few more very simple questions, and he answered them all. Only after they had left did Tan Xiao belatedly wonder what kind of doctors they were. Even traditional Chinese medicine involved looking, listening, asking questions, and taking the pulse. These two only asked questions?
He was getting ready for bed when the butler arrived with two pills, explaining that the doctors had prescribed cold medicine.
“Thank you,” Tan Xiao said.
“Would you like a more comfortable pillow?” the butler asked.
“No. I just want to sleep on my own pillow,” Tan Xiao said politely. “But thank you.”
“Good night. I hope you have a pleasant dream.”
After the butler left, it took Tan Xiao another beat to realize that the man had been unusually talkative today.
He slept wonderfully that night, straight through until the sun was high in the sky. Well, not quite. It was still overcast. There was no sun.
Not long after breakfast, he saw a car driving toward the house along the main avenue lined with plane trees. A few days earlier, he would have immediately steeled himself for an epic confrontation with his sister Tan Yun.
Now he only wondered who had arrived.
From the moment Zhou Ruofei entered the room and laid eyes on Tan Xiao, he knew something was seriously wrong.
Tan Xiao was an exceptionally quick-witted kid. His eyes and expressions were always lively. Even fresh from sleep, he would never normally turn his head this slowly, stare so woodenly, or wear a face so devoid of expression.
It really was as though someone had taken possession of his body. Zhou Ruofei felt a jolt of dread.
The doctors had told Tan Yun that the extreme pressure and social isolation had left her brother with sleep disturbances, mild auditory hallucinations, a distorted sense of time, and slowed bodily awareness. Without intervention, the next stage could be dissociation of personality, potentially developing into what ordinary people called mental illness.
“Big Brother?” Tan Xiao said. “What are you doing here too?”
Cold sweat broke out on Zhou Ruofei’s forehead. “I… I’m…”
“Did my sister send you?”
The question came as a tremendous relief. At least Tan Xiao could still think normally. Things probably were not quite as dire as the two doctors had made them sound.
Then again, that made sense. If they had understated his condition to Tan Yun and something irreversible happened, they would have had no way to account for it.
“How do you feel?” Zhou Ruofei sat beside Tan Xiao and touched his forehead. It was not a particularly meaningful gesture. Psychological distress did not necessarily cause a fever.
“Pretty good. I slept really well last night. I feel much better today.”
“Your sister was frightened. She called me last night and told me to come as fast as I could. I think she might have been crying.”
Tan Xiao did not understand. “What happened to her?”
Instead of answering, Zhou Ruofei asked, “Do you hate her now?”
Tan Xiao looked at him strangely. “No. I’m already starting to forget what she looks like.”
“…” Zhou Ruofei fell silent.
A moment later, he said, “You don’t know yet, do you? Everything outside has turned into complete chaos.”
“How so?”
“Your husband has been raising hell in Geneva. He came here and sued M Hotel Group. People on American social media have been talking about it for days. ‘Chinese travel app stops at nothing to collect debts, incites worldwide Chinese boycott of M Hotels with authorities secretly fanning the flames’… Never mind. Some media outlets just love sensational anti-China headlines.”
Tan Xiao suddenly laughed. Something seemed to switch on behind his eyes. “So what if we’ll stop at nothing? Those deadbeats owe WenCheng tens of millions! We barely have any money to begin with. We work hard for every cent. Why should they get to keep what they owe us?”
“That’s not all.” Zhou Ruofei noticed that the more they talked, the more Tan Xiao came back to life, so he continued sharing news from outside. “He and that lawyer turned your house arrest into a diplomatic issue. Heaven knows what else they did, but the embassy even got in touch with your family through the Swiss police and demanded that the Dorias restore a Chinese citizen’s freedom. They’ve been wrangling over it for nearly half a month.”
Tan Xiao had been smiling, but the last words left him bewildered. “How could it have been half a month?”
Zhou Ruofei’s face grew grave. He felt Tan Xiao’s forehead again. “Little brother, today is your twenty-first day here.”
Lawyer Hua was a naturally gifted workaholic. For years she had needed only five or six hours of sleep a night to remain full of energy for her work. When she was younger, she had been a champion of overwork, and ill-intentioned people had often remarked that she pushed herself so hard it was as if she were constantly pumped full of stimulants.
Only after spending more than half a month working alongside Zhang Xingchuan in Geneva did she truly discover what it meant to work as though injected with stimulants. What it meant to go all out.
Since arriving in Switzerland, Zhang Xingchuan had become a regular visitor to the embassy, the arbitration center, the police station, and local media offices. During the first two days, before the matter had attracted any attention, he hit a wall everywhere except the embassy. Nobody cared about some small-time Chinese business owner who had come to Europe “to collect a debt.”
The embassy staff were conscientious. They immediately activated the emergency consular protection mechanism. After verifying Tan Xiao’s identity, they provided legal guidance and channels for assistance and demanded that the local police intervene.
Before Zhang Xingchuan arrived in Europe, Lawyer Hua and the local lawyer she had retained had already filed a report with the police. Zhang Xingchuan also approached them after arriving. But the police were obviously dragging their feet, unwilling to provoke the Doria family for the sake of a Chinese citizen. They dismissed the lawyers and Zhang Xingchuan on the grounds that Julian bore the Doria surname and the matter was a family affair.
Only after the embassy became involved did the local police finally approach the Doria family. The Dorias’ lawyers merely offered evasions. One minute they claimed Julian was ill and recuperating; the next they said he had left Geneva to relax in France.
Lawyer Hua demanded visitation rights, at the very least the chance to confirm her client’s mental and physical condition. The opposing lawyers still refused to provide a concrete answer. The arrogant old white man was undeniably skilled at combining legal maneuvers, and he infuriated Lawyer Hua so much that upon returning she cursed him in Cantonese for three solid minutes.
WenCheng’s debt dispute with M Hotel Group was submitted to a Swiss arbitration center. M Group’s legal representatives were searching for every possible loophole, stalling in the hope that WenCheng would eventually run out of patience and swallow the loss.
Had WenCheng sent only its legal team to negotiate, that might well have happened. The company was young, its legal team relatively inexperienced, and its knowledge of foreign law inadequate.
This time Zhang Xingchuan had come himself. He did not know much about European law either, but he understood the key to resolving the dispute was speed. He had to build public pressure in a short time and leave M Group as little room as possible to stall. Alongside conventional legal routes, he found local media outlets willing to report on the matter. He also instructed WenCheng’s public relations team in China to contact domestic news outlets and issue factual statements about M Group’s deadbeat conduct. No melodramatic sob stories. Just facts: how the deposits had been frozen, how much transaction revenue was being withheld, and the precise dates and amounts.
WenCheng was still riding a wave of public goodwill in China following its previous confrontation. It had successfully resisted pressure from a foreign corporation, and now it was still being cheated out of tens of millions?
Were they supposed to pay for winning? Why? This was not the Qing dynasty!
Public outrage exceeded Zhang Xingchuan’s expectations. M Group’s previous apology had been nothing more than an attempt to placate Chinese customers. The anger of feeling deceived came roaring back, and boycotts of the group’s hotels became even more intense than before.
Zhang Xingchuan realized he might have a chance to kill two birds with one stone. He promptly agreed to a live interview with a Geneva news outlet. In addition to stating that negotiations with M Group had officially begun, he mentioned a “friend” who had disappeared after coming to Geneva.
“Are you implying something?” the host asked.
“I just want to find him and take him home.”
Some local internet users uncovered the identity of this “friend”: the mixed-race young master of a shipping empire. But the post was quickly deleted, and the account that published it was promptly banned.
Zhang Xingchuan was running out of avenues to pursue.
If everything else failed, he would have no choice but to storm the estate by Lake Geneva. He had already found the address. But the approach became a private road two kilometers before the property, and entering private land without permission… Switzerland was also a country where civilians could legally own guns.
The turning point came on his second Monday in Geneva.
He was waiting in the hotel lobby for Lawyer Hua to come downstairs. They were going to the embassy that day.
A call came from an unfamiliar Chinese mobile number. Thinking it might be a journalist, he answered.
“Hello,” said the voice on the other end. “I’m Tan Xiao’s doctoral supervisor.”
More than ten days earlier, on the day Tan Xiao flew to Geneva.
He had left Beijing’s first snowfall behind and traveled through the long night. After sleeping for a while, he had awoken and messaged Zhang Xingchuan that he wanted ice cream.
At the time Tan Xiao had wondered what else he could do for himself. Rapunzel at least had her long hair. What did he have?
He was twenty-four. His mother had given him life, and the Doria family had supported him all these years. What did he actually have that belonged to him?
Zhang Xingchuan had once asked him why he liked studying so much. Wasn’t he supposed to be a salted fish?
Tan Xiao had said it was to avoid working. But that was not the truth. Since childhood, he had known there was nothing he could truly call his own. He used to think there was no point in working because he did not need money. Studying, however, was fascinating. What he learned became his, and nobody could take knowledge away from him.
The process of acquiring knowledge had also given him a place and an identity in society.
The boundary between night and day appeared at the horizon. Sunrise above the clouds entered Tan Xiao’s eyes, but it did not feel as though the sun was rising. It felt as though a beam of light had torn the darkness open.
Tan Xiao sent an email each to his doctoral supervisor and his postdoctoral supervisor. Dear Professors, if I don’t report for my postdoctoral appointment on time in a few days, something must have happened to me. Please help me.
More than ten days later, his doctoral supervisor contacted Zhang Xingchuan.
A young scholar with a PhD in Finance from Qing University, who was about to join the Boya postdoctoral program, had gone missing in Europe.
The university would write formally to the Chinese embassy in Switzerland and make a full report to the Department of Consular Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Lawyer Hua hurried into the lobby. She found Zhang Xingchuan sitting on a sofa with one hand covering his eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously. “Do you feel unwell?”
Zhang Xingchuan lowered his hand. His eyes were a little red. “Senior Sister, I think I’ve run out of roads to take.”
Lawyer Hua immediately said, “Then don’t go anywhere today. Stay here and rest.”
“No. No, that’s not it.” Zhang Xingchuan suddenly smiled, words spilling out almost incoherently. “My wife, Senior Sister, you know him. He’s young, but he’s exceptional, and he’s so clever. I had no road left to take, so he found a road for himself.”