Work Text:
In retrospect, it all happens because of Nie Huaisang.
“Da-ge’s brother says we are too removed from regular people.”
It’s 6:00a.m. on a Monday, and Lan Zhan is drinking a cup of jasmine tea in the wide white-paneled kitchen he and Lan Huan share. Outside, rain is washing over a verdant bamboo forest, the sound a soft susurrus in the backdrop. He’s sitting at the low, traditional table, a slim MacBook Air on its surface displaying a page of equations.
Lan Zhan looks up, cup halfway to his lips. Lan Huan is there, spoon in a bowl of vegan congee, wearing a pressed white shirt done up at the cuffs with cloud cufflinks. The cufflinks were a gift from Lan Zhan for his most recent birthday, solid platinum. Lan Zhan frowns. “I beg your pardon?”
“We’re too remote, live too distant from the rest of the populous to understand what people really want, or need.”
Lan Zhan considers this carefully, because Lan Huan deserves his full attention and respect. Had the point been put to him in the boardroom, he would most likely have quashed it immediately. “We have extensive customer and population surveying, using well-defined and proven sampling methods. Our product development is well-informed by quantitative and qualitative information.”
“But you and I live in a house on the mountainside like a pair of princes in a castle, developing tech that most people couldn’t afford with their life’s savings.”
Lan Zhan puts his cup down, the thin bone china grey where the tea sits within it, like the shadow of the sun through a new green leaf. “Is that important?” he asks. “The tech we develop is for use by large industry and governments, not individuals. What matters is that we are developing solutions that will help save our planet, not that the average consumer understands how it works.”
Outside thunder booms somewhere in the distance. The house is cooled to a comfortable temperature, the air purified by filters in every room. The windows are all wide and triple-paned, highly energy efficient. On their other side the world is warm, humid, damp; bamboo glints in the gleam of lightning light. The morning storm will blow itself out before it’s time for them to leave for the office, the rain drying up in the heat of the early autumn sun.
“That’s the kind of thinking Nie Huaisang believes we need to address. Ultimately public opinion does matter to our work. We would be more successful in our mission if we incorporated their views and understandings. Governments don’t make decisions in a vacuum.”
Lan Zhan waves at the screen of his laptop. “Their understandings will do nothing to change this,” he says. Lan Huan looks at him, his dark eyes staring into Lan Zhan’s soul with an ease that never fails to amaze him. “I don’t have the time,” adds Lan Zhan, careful to keep any trace of petulance from his tone.
“You can make the time. I’m not asking you to go out into the street and start quizzing strangers. Just… rub shoulders with the people out there a little. Take the train. Go out and buy a coffee for yourself, instead of sending Lan Jingyi for it. Make an effort, a-Zhan.”
“Cloud Recesses is a Fortune 50 company, ge. I can’t just go out and ride the bus.”
Lan Huan smiles. “Are you concerned about your image, didi? Worried you’ll be spotted by one of the hoards of women who write you social invitations to their fancy parties? If you answered one or two of those invites you’d have less to worry about.”
“Ridiculous,” mutters Lan Zhan.
“Then what? Would it be so bad, to see how ordinary people live? You and I have been sheltered since we were children. Da-ge’s brother isn’t wrong; our world-view is skewed. If we drift any further, we risk losing sight of what the rest of the world really wants – not just what it needs.”
Lan Zhan, recognizing a lost cause when he sees it, sighs lightly. “If I take the train this morning, can we agree the appropriate effort has been made?” he asks.
“I’ll consider myself satisfied, for now.”
“Very well,” says Lan Zhan, and turns back to the equations on his screen. There’s something missing, a way to balance the output he hasn’t found yet. It’s been niggling at him for days, this design for a new model of tidal energy. If they could get it right they could power cities with renewable, green energy. But as he gets closer to the conclusion of the proof, it all falls apart.
He texts Lan Jingyi, then works at the math for another half an hour before rising to change out of his taijiquan clothing. Lan Zhan begins every morning with meditation and taijiquan, practicing push/pull techniques and the flow of energy through the body to keep him supple, limber and strong. Four times a week he adds in a weight training routine, but this morning was just the taijiquan and his body feels good: strong, responsive. He changes into a dark suit with a pale blue tie, carefully shaping his dark hair into a sharp business style. He’s ready to go before seven, laptop slid into a white messenger bag along with his phone and wallet.
Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui are waiting outside with umbrellas and no car, for once. The dark Tesla is in the garage, and they’re standing outside the front door looking up at the clearing sky with questioning gazes. Lan Zhan, before leaving, reaches down and snags an umbrella from the porcelain stand by the door where the housekeeper regularly replenishes them.
“We’re taking the bus today, laoshi?” asks Lan Sizhui.
“The bus, then the train,” affirms Lan Zhan. What would be a forty-five minute drive in the car will be a ninety minute trip by public transit. He will make it into work later than usual, although still by 8:30.
“Long day,” comments Lan Jingyi. “What?” he hisses under his breath, at a look from Lan Sizhui.
Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui are not, exactly, bodyguards. They’re members of a distant branch of the family who don’t have the education to be taken into the family business, but are both pleasant and hard working, and excel at martial arts and defusing tense situations. Lan Huan, CEO of the Cloud Recesses and inheritor of the company’s near-trillion dollar worth, has official bodyguards. Lan Zhan, worth billions but not tens of billions and unwilling to be followed around all day by men in sun glasses and earpieces, has Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui. He also has training by a military instructor in assessing dangers and forcible escape. There are regular refresher courses where he inevitably escapes before Lan Huan.
The bus is crowded and hot, the fan overhead blowing heated air over them and circulating the smells of body odor, deodorant, cigarettes and perfume. The people riding at this hour are mostly businessmen and women making their way into the city from the outlying suburbs. The tailoring of their clothes is cheap, shoddy, their shoes soiled and worn. Lan Zhan stands towards the back, sandwiched between his two guardians, and bumps along with each pothole and speed bump.
Fortunately it’s a short bus ride to the train station. Their stop is one of the first on the line, and when the train pulls in they secure a corner spot with two two-person seats facing each other across a table. Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi sit down facing opposite, projecting a serious and threatening demeanor, while Lan Zhan puts his bag down onto the empty seat beside him and sets up his laptop on the table. Might as well get some work done while he’s out here brushing shoulders with the great unwashed.
Three stations in he’s made little progress on his work but has begun to swelter in his suit. The air conditioning in the train seems minimal, and outside the sun has come out to beat down on him. Were he in the Tesla he would be almost at work, cool and crisp and ready to start the day in a productive mood. He glares down at the laptop and types in a few permutations of the next segment of the equation; he can tell even as he’s hitting the keys that it won’t work. The train leaves the station, pulling forward with a jolt, everyone rocking with the momentum.
“Oh hi, hey there,” says a man’s voice, a little breathlessly, as suddenly someone starts to drop into the seat beside him. Lan Zhan reacts barely quickly enough to grab his bag out of the way before it – and his phone inside it – are crushed.
The man who has tumbled into the seat next to him is probably exactly the kind of person Lan Huan conjured up in his imagination when he foisted this whole exercise off on Lan Zhan. He’s young, thin, tanned, wearing a t-shirt and cheap cotton blazer in a loud red/black tartan pattern and black skinny jeans with scuffs at the knees. His hair has gone too long without a cut, tucked untidily half-behind his ears; he has a black fang earring in one ear.
All of this Lan Zhan observes in a moment, even as he glowers at the man who has just fallen into his seat. And then the man looks up at him and Lan Zhan is frozen momentarily by the strength of his smile, his eyes half-closed with it and his teeth just a little bunny-ish behind plush lips. He has a thin face, the jaw not too strong but finely curved, the cheekbones high and cut-glass. “Hey, hey, sorry for plummeting on in like that. When these trains start to move they don’t stop, huh?” He wriggles down, as if making himself more comfortable in the seat. “Ohh, it’s nice to sit down. God there was a crowd on the platform. Lucky me to get this seat. And next to such a handsome gege, too.” He smiles again, digging at Lan Zhan a little with his elbow. Lan Zhan leans back stiffly.
“Please don’t,” he says, voice tough as old wood. Across from him Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi are sitting bolt upright, ready to move.
“Aww, I don’t bite,” laughs the man beside him. “Not even at such a scrumptious meal. ‘Sides, your two guard dogs look like they’d take a bite out of me if I tried.” He smiles at the two Lans across the table too, as though their terse, watchful gaze doesn’t dismay him at all.
The train gives a final jerk and then they’re up to traveling speed, wheels snicking along the tracks, countryside slipping by outside the window to Lan Zhan’s right. The train is crowded although not full, a few commuters standing, bags and backpacks at their sides. The cushions on the seats are old, worn, smell faintly of upholstery cleaner. Lan Zhan shifts slightly, feeling his shirt beginning to stick to his back with sweat.
“You look hot,” says the man in the seat beside him. He has a messenger bag of his own and digs into it; across the table both Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi sit up sharply, eyes fierce. He digs out a mini-fan, plastic, battery-powered, and switches it on. Laughing he turns the stream on Lan Zhan. Surprisingly it is cool, almost pleasant, a little refreshing in the sweltering heat. “Nice, huh? You can borrow it if you want; you look waaay hotter than me. I grew up in the south, this much heat is hardly even noticeable.” He plunks it onto the desk in front of Lan Zhan, kicking out a little stand with his thumb so it sits up on its own. “Wouldn’t want your beautiful suit to get rumpled. That must’ve cost at least 3,000 RMB.”
As a matter of fact it had cost 60,000, made to measure by his Shanghai tailor.
“Thank you,” murmurs Lan Zhan, through his teeth. The man flashes yet another smile – he seems to have no shortage of him, no self-restraint to keep from grinning every five seconds.
“No prob! I only really have it for the other guys at work anyway; they get so whiny if the thermostat goes above 35.”
Lan Zhan frowns. “That’s a dangerous temperature for work conditions.”
“Oh hey, sure, but when your A/C blows out every other week what can you do? We all get by the best we can, money doesn’t grow on trees. Even a gorgeous guy in a fancy suit like you’s taking the train!”
“Mn,” agrees Lan Zhan shiftily. He turns his attention back to his screen, hoping that he has done his duty by engaging in adequate small talk.
Unfortunately his gregarious neighbour apparently goes by a different standard. “Hey, d’you mind if I charge my phone from your laptop? No viruses or anything, I swear, but it’s gonna be a brick in an hour if I don’t get some life into it and my boss’ll kill me if I miss any more of his texts.”
“Actually, I –”
Lan Zhan doesn’t have a chance to argue before the absolute rube sitting beside him jams a USB cable into his computer, the other end connected to his phone. The computer displays a pop-up telling him a Huawei phone has been connected. “Excuse me,” he says, icily, reaching out to unplug the cord.
Beside him the man reaches out and takes his hand, his grip light but warm, careful. “Holy crap, you have gorgeous hands. I mean. Are you a model? Like, a hand model? For, I don’t know, creams and stuff? If not – you should seriously talk to someone. Wow, your skin is amazing.”
Lan Zhan pulls his hand back, thin-lipped and affronted, and the man laughs and rubs at the back of his head. “Sorry – that was a bit weird. It’s just – my hands are a mess, so I notice it. I wish I could have nice hands like you, but hell I’d need a time machine I guess.” He holds out his hands and shows that, while the bone structure is finely tapered, his fingers long and thin but with strength to them, they’re covered in scars and small white burn tissue. “Perils of being a mechanical engineer. I’ve always got my hands in something I shouldn’t.”
Lan Zhan, who is certified in both mechanical and electrical engineering, frowns. “That is extremely careless,” he says. The man besides him shrugs, apparently unaffected by his disapproval.
“I mean yeah, sure. But sometimes shit happens, and personal safety goes out the window, right?”
“Absolutely not; safety is the essence of good practice,” replies Lan Zhan, a little heatedly. The man next to him blinks, eyes wide. “And injuries like that speak to negligence, nothing more.”
“Well, it’s an argument I’ve heard,” says the man. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
“I –” begins Lan Zhan, before abruptly remembering that he can hardly out himself as one of the two heirs of a multinational clean energy empire. “I studied engineering, in school.”
“Oh – cool. Always love to meet a fellow gear-head. None of the engineers I went to school with looked like you, I’ve gotta say. I probably would have attended class more regularly if they had.” That grin again, stupidly bright, so easy. Regular as the sun. “These your friends? Fellow engineers?” he motions at Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi, whose appearance of imposing guardianship is starting to wilt in the face of this man’s indefatigable good humour.
“Relatives,” replies Lan Zhan.
“Oh yeah, I see it now. You guys travel in packs, huh? Well, you probably have to, otherwise you’d have already been mobbed by all the eligible women on the train.”
Lan Zhan stares at him quizzically.
“Because you are crazy beautiful, is what I’m getting at.”
Lan Zhan raises his eyebrows.
“Oh my god don’t pretend you don’t know that. I told you already – model material.”
“I have been told my personality is… off putting,” says Lan Zhan, slowly.
“Well, you are a bit gruff!” agrees his seat-mate. “But I mean, you seem like a nice guy. You were worried about my health and safety failures, even when I wasn’t. Most people just laugh that shit off, you know? If I’m not worried, why should they be?”
“That speaks to nothing more than credulousness,” says Lan Zhan in a low voice; the darkness of his tone fails to register on his seat-mate who’s still smiling, albeit more softly now. There’s still a warmth to it that Lan Zhan feels like a heat lamp, even through the heat of the train.
“And hey, you let me borrow your laptop. I know a pal when I see one.”
Lan Zhan glances across at Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi, trying to convey confusion and questioning in his glance. Is this what normal people are like? Is this the standard of normality?
He sees nothing in their faces that answers his question.
“Tell me, gege,” he says, and the thrum of his voice as he uses the overly-familiar title makes something inside Lan Zhan throb a little, a tightness he hasn’t felt before. “Where are you going at 7:30 on a Monday morning? I hope it’s not something boring, like work. Much better if you’re heading off on a tropical vacation, or going to try a new karaoke salon.”
Lan Zhan looks down blandly at the suit he’s wearing, and is met by a laugh.
“Yeah – I know. Dumb question. It’s work, right? It’s always work – that’s where everyone on this train is going. I’ve been taking it for years, and whenever I sit beside someone I always ask them, and that’s always the answer. Just once I’d like it to be ‘I’m running away to see the world.’ Never is, though.”
“It hardly seems likely,” says Lan Zhan.
“That’s what makes it fun, don’t you think?” He’s met by such an earnest gaze, so much energy and enthusiasm, that it takes him aback. No one he deals with at work behaves this way, is so motivated and energized by the sheer fact of having a mundane conversation. The talks he’s in at the office are slow, serious, methodical.
“I prefer the predictable,” replies Lan Zhan, slowly.
His seat-mate seems unphased. “Guess that’s why you’re wearing the 3,000 RMB suit and I’m wearing a thrift-store blazer,” he says cheerfully. “Still, I made you think about it!”
“Mn.”
He turns to his laptop and tries to consider the equation on the screen. But in truth he’s highly aware of the man beside him, the long lines of his legs under the table, the way his jeans stretch thinly over his strong thighs, the turn-up of his jacket cuffs revealing slim, fine-boned wrists. The little fan blows cool air over Lan Zhan’s face, which is welcome because he suddenly feels just a little hotter, his skin uncomfortably warm.
“Oh hey, that looks wicked.”
The man is leaning forward over his arm, staring at the numbers on the screen. Lan Zhan’s first instinct is to reach out and snap the laptop closed, hide his proprietary information. But as he turns to stare in shock at this man who clearly has no sense of societal norms, he sees the bright eagerness in his eyes, the keen attention as he takes in the figures that may, if Lan Zhan can wrangle them, lead to the development of the next tech to ground-break clean energy.
“Wow, really gnarly. Some kind of energy transfer, huh? It’s not working right, though. Funny, you’ve done a ton of work on it. Looks like you’ve taken each argument apart and put it together again a few times… mm, that piece is elegant. Oh, and there, that was smart,” he says, pointing out two strings of equations. “I guess if it was me, I’d do it backwards,” he says.
Lan Zhan looks at him. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“Every equation has two sides, right? Here you’ve reduced it to its simplest form, but it doesn’t have to go that way. If you broke it apart like you’ve done on the left side, maybe you’d find some additional symmetry. Here, like this.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets and pulls out a cocktail napkin; opening his bag he roots around until he finds a pen. He starts out at the equals sign and moves rapidly right, deconstructing Lan Zhan’s argument as simply as a child might break a whole number into fractions. “Nothing is ever one-sided; that’s an overly-reductive way of looking at it. Instead, think about the whole of the equation, what it’s trying to tell you. Here.” He tosses the napkin at Lan Zhan; it’s littered with numbers and brackets and signs, a whole constellation of new ideas. “Just some thoughts. That’s my stop coming up now – good chatting with you.”
He reaches out and unplugs his phone as he stands, tucking it and the cord into his bag.
“Wait,” says Lan Zhan, suddenly fearful, desperate, although he doesn’t know why. The man turns back, looking over his shoulders with eyebrows raised. “I – your fan –”
“You keep it. Such a good-looking gege needs to look sharp, hm? Catch you later.” He smiles one last time, bright as a flare, and then he’s jogging down the corridor as the train comes to a stop to force his way through the crowd and out the train’s doors.
Out on the platform Lan Zhan catches a last glance through the windows of his tall, lanky form making its way towards the turnstile, and then the train is moving and the red and black blazer is gone – he’s gone.
And all Lan Zhan has left is a cocktail napkin and a cheap plastic fan.
***
“Vice President Lan?”
Lan Zhan looks up. He had been staring at his screen, where he’s started to de-construct the right side of the equation in the way the stranger had suggested. It’s already opening doorways, ideas, new thoughts that he had never considered. He doesn’t want to be here stuck in this meeting about share prices and government relations, he wants to be digging into a potential solution to the problem that’s been plaguing him for months.
“Mn?”
“We were wondering which course of action you prefer – a round of 1:1 meetings with key individuals from the party, or a brief survey of a wider audience?”
Lan Zhan feels a lick of frustration, of irritation at being posed such mundane, business questions. Although he has a part in running the company’s business the majority of his role is a technical one, and right now he resents being pulled away from it for politics. “In-person meetings usually prove more productive than paper surveying at gathering information and swaying opinions,” he says. He shouldn’t have to say this – surely the advisors they hire should be more than able to come up with an engagement strategy.
“Of course, a very logical argument, laoshi. As expected from our VP.”
The meaningless flattery rankles. Just this morning he had been the target of far more florid, more unreasonable flattery. But looking back on it, he hadn’t minded it nearly as much, the appeals to his good looks, his good nature – as though any stranger could know anything about his nature.
He escapes the meeting and ducks into an empty office. In his own top-floor office he’s too traceable, easily located by anyone with a question requiring vice presidential approval; when he’s not in the lab his days are filled with meaningless interruptions and phone calls.
Here, now, he wants to focus on this new idea that’s bubbling, simmering in his mind. It’s exciting, it’s refreshing and he feels energized in a way he had forgotten he could as he digs into it, unfolds it like a paper crane to show the simplicity of the single paper square underlying the shape.
***
No one finds him until the end of the day. He looks up at the knock on the door around five and sees Lan Huan standing there, eyebrows raised. “I wondered where you had gotten off to, a-Zhan,” he says dryly, stepping inside. “You’ve missed two meetings with the launch team.”
“All they want to discuss is politics and communications. Uninteresting. Unnecessary, at this stage.”
“Some might say that our relationships with our state sponsors are extremely necessary,” replies Lan Huan. He pulls up a chair. “What are you working on?”
“The power flow calculations for the new tidal generator.”
“I see. Still stuck?”
Lan Zhan shakes his head. “It’s a little soon, but I think I may have found a way around the central issue.”
“Oh?” Lan Huan leans in, looking at the screen where instead of hitting a brick wall and trailing into nothingness the equation has now nearly completely resolved itself. “A-Zhan, this looks promising,” says Lan Huan, sounding surprised. “How did you solve it? This is far further than you’ve been for weeks.”
“I met someone. On the train,” admits Lan Zhan. Lan Huan’s eyebrows rise. “He gave me some new ideas.”
“You met a mechanical engineer capable of disentangling the generator’s power equations on the train?”
“As it happens, yes,” says Lan Zhan. “Thank you, ge, for your suggestion.”
“I – it wasn’t what I intended, but you’re welcome. What’s his name?”
Lan Zhan swallows. There’s a sudden lurch in his stomach, a hollowness there that he’s been trying to ignore. It has been becoming more and more apparent all afternoon; the further he got on solving the equation, the more bereft he felt. “I don’t know,” he says. “I didn’t ask.”
“A complete stranger on the train solved the equation you’ve been pondering over for months, and you didn’t ask his name?” says Lan Huan.
“I – he did it so quickly, and then he ran out to get off at his stop,” mutters Lan Zhan, eyes falling to the keyboard.
“A-Zhan, you realise this could be a significant liability for the company. He could demand a share of the IP. He would probably be right to do so.”
Lan Zhan looks up slowly. He thinks back to the man with the damaged hands, with the sunny smile, who had tossed the cocktail napkin at him and left him his fan like it was nothing. He shakes his head. “I don’t disagree – but I don’t think he would.”
“You can’t know that. We have to find him. You have to find him.”
Lan Zhan nods. In his pocket sits the cocktail napkin, carefully pressed into his wallet. “I would like that,” he says.
***
The obvious first step is to ride the train again. Lan Zhan, along with Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi, take it again at the same time the next day, riding in the same cab. Eventually the fourth seat in their section is taken up by an elderly lady with a cane; there’s no sign of the good-humoured engineer. Lan Zhan asks the train attendants if he’s known to them, but they shake their heads – they see thousands of passengers each day, and remember few of them. Lan Zhan can’t help but judge them for not having noticed someone so distinctive.
The next step is to get off at the station their mystery man got on and off at, and ask there. This too turns up no lead.
There’s little else from the train perspective that makes sense for Lan Zhan to pursue; he hires a firm of private investigators to ride the train at all times looking for his erstwhile seat-mate, equipped with a careful description of his features – lanky, tall, pleasant features, soft chin and sculped cheekbones, slight buck teeth, bright smile. Lan Zhan also equips the detective team with the mandate to search mechanical engineering graduates roughly his age in the city now. He even sends Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi to accompany the investigators, riding the train back and forth throughout the day.
Lan Zhan starts out early with confidence, an assurance that they would meet again. How hard could it be to find so bright a person, someone who stands out so much, like a flame in dead wood?
A day passes. Then two. Then three.
He works at the generator development, the completion of the equation to drive its power flow, with an almost frantic energy. His mood feels feverish; it feels almost fey. This stranger showed up in his life just when he needed a new direction, a new way of thinking. Maybe he’ll show up again if Lan Zhan can complete the work, if he can make it all unfold the way it’s supposed to, the way this stranger saw in a single glance.
As he works, though, other thoughts begin to crowd in. The heat of the train, and how his mystery man was kind enough to carry a fan for his colleagues. The way he nudged Lan Zhan in the ribs, so easy with his touches, so quick to laugh and joke. The warmth, the softness of his hand as he took Lan Zhan’s to exclaim over his beauty, to praise him and rib him both at the same time.
Most of all he remembers the brightness of his smiles, smiles that never seemed to stop unfurling, a nature that was so good, so easy-going, so full of praise and kindness.
At home more women in his social circle send him invitations for drinks, parties, socials. He throws them out. He’s not interested in these women and their diamonds and their Versace dresses. His whole life has been taken up with pristine tailoring and gifts measured in carats. For the first time he considers the unpretentious beauty of an unlined cotton blazer, of jeans that are scuffed at the knees. Of a smile that has nothing to hide.
In the middle of the night, when he slept soundly before, he finds himself waking to remember a burn scar over the sharp knuckle of a thumb, to remember the sheen of light on a matte black earring. He dreams of scattered pieces, cold empty dreams full of yearning for something he can’t piece together, a statue broken into fragments. Every time he thinks he’s put it together it falls apart again, lost to an endless desert sand.
Four days. Five.
***
“I want to go public,” Lan Zhan tells Lan Huan at breakfast. Lan Huan is eating granola with oat milk; Lan Zhan is eating fruit congee. The sun hasn’t quite risen yet outside but the morning is going to be bright, clear. The house is, as always, spotless, pristine. For some reason Lan Zhan can’t help but think of worn cushions, the smell of upholstery cleaner and a struggling A/C. He had absolutely never prized those things before, but the association makes him yearn now, makes him miss something keenly, even if he’s not quite sure what.
“Do you think that’s wise? If we haven’t been able to find him by now, he may disappear on his own.”
“He isn’t a problem to be erased,” says Lan Zhan, a little sharply. He and Lan Huan haven’t talked much about the mystery man, beyond the fact that Lan Huan is concerned about the impact on the company’s holdings.
“I’m not suggesting he should be erased, but he may very well be a problem,” says Lan Huan.
“He is a good person,” says Lan Zhan.
“A-Zhan, I appreciate your perspective, and your sudden championing of this man. But be realistic. You spoke to him for twenty minutes on the train. You know nothing about him other than the fact that quite obviously he doesn’t have much money. If he brings a suit to claim IP from us, it’s a gravy train for life.”
“Are you saying he shouldn’t be compensated for his contribution? His work didn’t solve the problem, but it got me much closer. It will be resolved soon, very soon.”
Lan Huan looks at him, trying to read him and looking puzzled by what he’s seeing. “I’m saying we can’t jeopardize the company’s financial success for the sake of a total stranger.”
“Ge, the company has billions. We can afford to pay him out, if we find him. He will accept a reasonable sum. I am sure.”
“You can’t know that.”
Lan Zhan stares back, mulish. Lan Huan sighs. “A-Zhan, I’m glad you had such a positive experience. Truly, I am. But please, don’t lose perspective. You hardly know this man.”
I think I may be in love with this man, Lan Zhan finds himself thinking. And, quite suddenly, he’s choking on his congee.
The bowl falls to the table where it spins, rice and fruit dribbling out onto the table. Lan Zhan coughs, leaning forward, gasping for breath. The world grows very close very suddenly, terror ripping through him as he tries to draw in breath and can’t, the horror of death approaching at meteoric speeds.
And then Lan Huan slaps him on the back, hard, and he spits out a mouthful of congee onto the table in what may be the least elegant act he has ever committed. He coughs and wheezes while Lan Huan rubs his back, huddled up close behind him murmuring comforting words.
“Apologies,” he grits out when he can speak again, picking up a napkin to rub at his wet mouth.
“Are you alright?” Lan Huan’s eyes are wide, his hand still rubbing Lan Zhan, his touch careful, full of love and worry.
Truthfully his lungs burn and his throat is sore, but mostly what he feels is embarrassment. “I’m fine. Thank you, ge.”
“Okay. Okay.” Lan Huan takes a breath and draws back as Lan Zhan straightens; he runs a hand down his tie, flattening it. “I just – I want you to do what’s best for both you and the company, a-Zhan. You have to be sure that finding him is that thing.”
Lan Zhan looks up, absolutely certain. “Ge. I need to find him.”
Lan Huan meets his gaze, then slowly nods. “Okay. Then we go public.”
They start small, with anonymous Missed Connections articles on the city’s social media pages. That turns up nothing, so they put up posters at the train station where their mystery man boarded and departed. More silence.
“We have to go big,” says Lan Zhan. It’s late afternoon and he’s sitting alone with Lan Huan in one of Cloud Recesses’ boardrooms.
“Why are you so determined to find him? At this point it’s been long enough that he’s probably forgotten about it; it’s much the better option that we don’t locate him.”
Lan Zhan swallows. The idea of not finding him, of never seeing that smile again, hearing that laugh that Lan Zhan had drawn out so easily without any intention to… it scalds him inside, burns away at the lining of his stomach, his lungs, his heart. The pain is white-hot, and it flashes over every time he thinks of those bright eyes, that wide smile.
“Ge. He was special.”
Lan Huan looks doubtful. “I know that he was smart, that his idea was –”
“No. Not his idea. Him. He was… bright. Funny. Warm. Our family has given us everything – wealth, comfort, education, purpose. But never warmth. Being with him… it felt so easy.”
Lan Huan shakes his head – not with doubt, but with wonder. “A-Zhan, is he really so special? You may be misremembering, blowing it out of proportion. You could be disappointed in him, if you do find him.”
“I won’t be,” says Lan Zhan. “We need to go bigger.”
***
He does an interview with a local TV station. He has done brief, factual news releases before, has been interviewed by reporters to provide details on projects and innovations. This is nothing like that.
He dresses carefully, in a dark suit with a blue-and-silver tie and a silver cloud-engraved tie-bar. White pocket square, slight make-up done by the TV crew to even out his skin tone under the bright studio lights. The make-up artist tells him he could be doing product promotion; he tunes it out. It rings hollow, false, in a way the stranger on the train’s praise hadn’t for all that it had been said with laughter in his voice.
The interviewer is a woman, young middle-age with her hair in a careful up-do and freshwater pearl earrings. She greets him with a bubbly smile and handshake and thanks him for his time. The set is a pair of chairs half facing each other, a table with glasses of water in between. It’s on a raised platform surrounded by lights and boom mics and cameras. He takes a seat feeling off-kilter, hot beneath the blazing lights. A tech counts them down, and then the interviewer – Ma Xiaolin – is speaking to camera. “I’m here today with Lan Zhan-xiansheng, a vice president at Cloud Recesses. Many of us know Cloud Recesses as one of the jewels of modern-day China, a clean-energy corporation at the forefront of international innovation. And yet recently, Lan-xiansheng travelled to work on the train as part of an effort to be more in tune with the people needing the technology his company is creating. While on that train, he met someone special. Lan-xiansheng, can you tell us more?”
Lan Zhan looks at the interviewer, not the camera, as instructed. She looks eager, leaning forward slightly, her lips parted. Like a vulture, ready to scoop up the details of his story. He sits straight-backed and keeps his expression neutral. “I travelled into work on the train on Monday, September 18th at 7:15. While I was on the train, a young man I don’t know got on at Longcao station and came to sit next to me. He was – unusual. Funny, upbeat. A mechanical engineer. We talked about work, a little. I was working on a complex problem; he offered some insights about the solution. And then he left, getting off at Yongde station. I’m trying to find him again.”
The reporter nods, smiling. “What’s so special about this young man that Lan-xiansheng has pulled out all the stops to try to find him?”
“I – we only spoke for a few minutes, but I could tell he was intelligent, and had a good heart. For either of those things, or for both of them, I would like to meet him again.”
“You say he offered you insights on the problem you’re working on. Your work must be quite technical – very complex. Isn’t it unusual that someone you met on the train could understand it, never mind offer insights?”
“It is,” he agrees, trying to keep from retreating into stiffness, into bland neutrality. “That was part of what made an impression on me, his talent in my field. But also his kindness, and selflessness.”
“It sounds like quite a meeting,” smiles Ma Xiaolin, with what Lan Zhan can’t help but read as insipidness. “And was he good-looking, this young man?”
Lan Zhan’s mouth tightens. “His features were good. He wore a black and red tartan-patterned jacket, and a fang earring. His hands were lightly scarred.”
“Quite an original young man – he doesn’t sound like the type of person Lan-xiansheng probably meets in the boardroom! But they say variety is the spice of life.” She laughs a little; Lan Zhan doesn’t join her. “If there was one thing you could tell our viewers about this story, what would it be?”
Lan Zhan considers, then speaks slowly. “On Monday, I met someone who changed the way I think about the world. I want to meet him again.”
Needless to say, the interview explodes.
***
By the next day, Lan Zhan is making news across China. Cloud Recesses heir searching for missed connection. Modern-day fairytale as elite social prince searches for man he met on the train. It’s in the news, on the radio, in the paper and magazines. Lan Zhan’s face is splashed over the internet: serious, careful. The video plays on the sides of buildings, and in the TVs displayed in electronics stores. I met someone who changed the way I think about the world. I want to meet him again.
He gets letters, phone calls, emails. Dozens of them, from men he doesn’t know. Has to have the private investigators screen them, because these are hoaxes, or wannabes, men who are hoping to capitalize on his emotional fragility, on his need for a connection.
None of them are the man he’s looking for.
***
Days turn to weeks.
Lan Zhan rides the train, again and again. The same train at different times, different trains at the same time. He looks for a tall lanky man with too-long mussed hair and rumpled clothes, a man who looks comfortable in his body all the same. A man with a smile that can brighten the room who laughs easily and never stops talking.
He doesn’t find him.
***
Two weeks go by before Lan Zhan has one final thought.
Scars. His mystery man had scarred hands – machine failure. Burns, cuts. It’s not impossible it would have been reported in the news. None of the scars looked new; they must have been at least a year old. And by his age, he can’t have been working as a certified engineer at a level capable of solving that equation for more than a year or two.
Lan Zhan sits down at the computer and starts a search. First with the local newspaper. Then national ones – Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu. He’s looking for a report of an engineer injured in some kind of industrial accident. Some things are more important than safety, his seat-mate had said. What?
He searches newspaper after newspaper – Wuhan, Tianjin – before he remembers what else he had been told. I grew up in the south, this much heat is hardly even noticeable. He pulls up Hong Kong, then Guangzhou, then Shenzhen.
Outside it’s dark, night insects buzzing against the light pouring out from his windows, the bamboo grove surrounding the house nothing but shadows. Lan Zhan goes through cup after cup of tea, the house keeper bringing them up to him every hour.
He finds it in a local Shenzhen newspaper. Engineer injured preventing mechanical fire at coal factory. The article describes a failure in some piece of venting machinery, and that in order to free it and end the risk of a possible explosion in the heart of the factory, a young engineer had climbed up into the vents and fixed it by hand, badly injuring himself in the process.
There’s a picture – it’s blurry and black-and-white, but there’s no mistaking the smile on the young man’s face.
And, printed right there in the article, is what he needs. A name.
Wei Ying.
***
With his name and age, it doesn’t take the PIs long to trace Wei Ying. He’s an engineer working for a small green energy start-up in town, one of the hundreds of nameless companies that will probably fail because they have no people or no funding or no vision.
Lan Zhan calls the office himself, and learns that Wei Ying has been off grid for two weeks on a study of wind farms in the mountains of a neighbouring province; he’s due back today. They even know the train and time.
Lan Zhan drives to the nearest station on the route, accompanied by Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi. They buy their tickets and wait on the platform. In the distance the train sounds its blaring horn. Lan Zhan’s heart is rabbiting in his chest, his back sweaty in the warm autumn air. It’s humid again today; his hair is sticking to his forehead, his skin damp.
The train draws up in a puff of dust and hot air and they board. It’s not rush-hour now and the majority of the seats are empty, no passengers standing. The A/C makes hardly any impact on the heat or the humidity; the train is sweltering. They walk down from the first car, checking each seat as they roll on their feet with the motion of the train like sailors on a swaying ship.
In the last car but one, Lan Zhan is looking down the line when he suddenly spots a familiar mussed head of hair poking up overtop the headrest, a long arm in a cheap tan jacket hanging over the edge of the seat arm.
He takes a breath, then steps forward to look down at the man sitting there reading something on his phone. All three seats surrounding him are empty.
“Is this seat taken?” asks Lan Zhan, his throat strangely thick.
Sitting on the purple-hued seat, his missing seat-mate looks up. His eyes widen, and then he smiles. So brightly, his eyes almost closed with the excitement of his expression. “Hey! It’s you! I was wondering if I was gonna see you again. This wasn’t your train – where’re you heading?”
“Right now, to find you,” says Lan Zhan. “But after that – anywhere. Even running off to see the world. But I wanted – I hoped – maybe we could start with dinner.”
His mystery man – Wei Ying – blinks. His smile softens, something less bright but somehow warmer, like a fire dying back to build up heat in its core. “Oh yeah? Right, you came all this way to ask me out to dinner. I thought I was supposed to be the tease here.” He laughs good-naturedly. Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi fade politely into the background, nearby but not too nearby.
Lan Zhan shakes his head. “Not teasing. I did come all this way to ask you out. Since we met… every day since we met, I regretted that I didn’t get your name. Or your number.”
Wei Ying’s eyes widen. “Really?”
“Really. My name is Lan Zhan. And I would like to ask you out.”
“I – wait. Lan Zhan. Like, Cloud Recesses Lan Zhan?”
Lan Zhan nods.
“Oh my god – I was just reading an article. About you.” He holds it up on his phone: Cloud Recesses VP Seeks Missed Connection. “Wait – is this me? Fuck. Tell me it’s not me.”
“It is you,” says Lan Zhan, slowly, carefully. Momentarily, he’s unable to read Wei Ying, to tell if this is excitement, or dread.
“Oh my god. Cloud Recesses VP Lan Zhan is looking for me? Why? I – is it about the equation? Did it fuck everything up? I don’t think it could, but –”
“Wei Ying. May I call you Wei Ying?” He pauses, sees Wei Ying’s eyes grow if anything wider, but he nods. “I was very impressed by your solution to the equation. But no. I sought you out because I wanted to meet you. Because… after we parted, I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he admits. “If this is unwelcome, I will go now and you don’t have to think about it again. But –”
Wei Ying reaches out, and catches hold of his jacket. “Don’t. Go,” he says, shakily. “I – it’s not unwelcome. I mean. I regretted it too, not getting your number. But I figured a handsome, rich, cultured gege like you wouldn’t want me hanging around anyway.”
“Wei Ying – I want you hanging around. I want to know more about you. I read about your accident, in the coal plant. And about your new company, working on green energy. I want to know more about that. And – you. Just – you.”
For a moment, Wei Ying goes very still. He’s still holding onto Lan Zhan’s sleeve but now his lips are parted just slightly, his eyes tight with some powerful emotion that Lan Zhan can’t quite read. “You really went public looking for me? Searched me out and tracked me down here?”
Lan Zhan nods.
“Because you talked to me for twenty minutes in the train?”
Lan Zhan nods again.
“I – that’s kind of crazy, you know? I mean – you don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’re kind, and smart, and funny. I know you are easy going and put others before yourself. I know you don’t mind the heat, and your sense of style is eclectic, and you aren’t a very good judge of men’s suiting,” says Lan Zhan.
He says it all just to make Wei Ying smile – and he does. He smiles, and then laughs, and then tugs at Lan Zhan’s arm. “Lan Zhan. Can I call you Lan Zhan?”
Lan Zhan nods, smiling just lightly.
“I wanna go to dinner with you. I want to know about this fancy, beautiful, talented gege who was riding the train with us plebs and who doesn’t really know how to dress for the weather but looks gorgeous anyway.”
“Can I have your number?” asks Lan Zhan.
Wei Ying cocks his head to the side, and smiles. “Lan Zhan – you can have anything.”
END