Chapter 55 - Extra Undercurrents
“...I’m here to keep up with the latest industry trends and, while I’m at it, take a look at the local companies.” With a practiced ease, he reached into his breast pocket and produced a business card, placing it delicately atop the stack of research materials cradled in Lu Sheng’s arms.
“I’m staying at the Ritz—” He paused, his gaze flickering downward to the name printed on the cover of Lu Sheng’s academic paper. A slow, ambiguous smile spread across his face, one that suggested more than mere professional interest. “If Professor Lu is interested in commercializing her results, perhaps we could find a time to grab a coffee and chat.”
The subtext was thick enough to stifle. What they would actually discuss, when they would meet, and where that conversation might lead remained pointedly unsaid.
Lu Sheng was scheduled to fly back to her university the following day. That evening, after a final dinner with local friends, she found herself walking alone along the coastline. The rhythmic pulse of the tide against the shore provided a somber metronome for her thoughts. Without realizing it, her footsteps slowed until she came to a complete halt. Her hand, buried deep in her pocket, was tightly gripping the business card she had received earlier that day.
Leaning against the cold salt-sprayed railing, she finally pulled the card out. She held it up, letting the pale, silver moonlight illuminate the elegant script.
*Kenneth Xiao. Xiao Fengtai.*
It was a name that felt old-fashioned, almost anachronistic in its classical elegance, yet it belonged to a man who moved through the modern world with such predatory grace.
Back in her student days, she could never have imagined that she would one day find herself in this position—flirting, however tentatively, with the former lover of the man she had once harbored a secret, hopeless crush on. The irony was a bitter pill, coated in the sweetness of serendipity.
Driven by a sudden, inexplicable impulse, Lu Sheng pulled out her phone. Her thumb hovered over the screen before she typed a message to Jiang Tong, a man she hadn't contacted in a long time.
“Senior, have you ever done anything that you truly regret?”
She stood there in the silence of the night, the only sound the distant roar of the waves. She waited. A few minutes passed, the screen of her phone casting a cold blue light onto her face, before the device buzzed.
Jiang Tong’s reply was brief: “What’s wrong?”
Lu Sheng stared at the words, her fingers frozen. She didn't reply immediately. The phone began to grow warm in her hand, and a thin layer of nervous sweat dampened her palm. She felt like a thief standing at the edge of a great secret.
Finally, another message arrived from Jiang Tong.
“I have no regrets,” he wrote. “I’ve made mistakes, certainly, but I don’t regret them. Looking back now, every decision I made at the time was the best choice I could have made given the circumstances and the strength I had then.”
*So that’s how it is,* she thought.
A faint, bittersweet smile touched Lu Sheng’s lips. She relaxed her grip. The small white card, once held so tightly, was caught by a sudden gust of wind. It fluttered through the air like a dying butterfly, tumbling down into the darkness where the black undercurrents of the sea waited to swallow it whole.
***
**Glossary of New Terms:**
