Xiao Fengtai hung up the phone, only then noticing a string of new message notifications on WhatsApp. Frowning at the little red circles, he didn't open the app; instead, he swiped into Bloomberg to read the financial news.
The ECB announced the end of quantitative easing by the end of the year, Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, another shooting occurred in the United States, and an earthquake in Japan left three dead and twenty injured... His finger paused, his eyes still fixed on the screen. "Is the gift ready?"
Hearing this, the secretary turned eagerly from the front seat. "It's ready. Would you like to see it now?" He made a move to reach for his bag.
"No need," Xiao Fengtai stopped him coldly. "Just give it to me when I get out of the car. Is it still the same restaurant?"
"Yes... Would you like to go somewhere else? I can notify Mr. Matsuoka immediately."
"It's fine. I haven't had Japanese food in a while anyway." New message alerts kept popping up at the top of the screen. Xiao Fengtai simply tossed the phone aside and closed his eyes to rest. "Wake me when we arrive."
Matsuoka Kiyoshi had graduated early from the University of Tokyo and had been working in investment banking in London for eight years; the sell-side service mindset was ingrained in his very marrow. When Xiao Fengtai slid open the door to the private room, he saw, as expected, Matsuoka sitting ramrod straight on his knees at the low table, pouring tea into Xiao Fengtai's cup.
Hearing the door, Matsuoka raised his phoenix-like eyes slightly and gave a cold, dignified nod, gesturing for him to sit across the table. The table was laden with an array of exquisite dishes. The raw fish offered a contrast of red and white, and the black porcelain plates were garnished with delicate yellow chrysanthemums. Two paper hot pots bubbled away in a corner of the table—Xiao Fengtai disliked being disturbed while eating, so Matsuoka had timed it perfectly, having the servers set the table in advance.
*Does he know that he is the most appetizing dish on this table?* Xiao Fengtai thought to himself. A cold, beautiful man with ivory skin, jet-black short hair, and brows like distant mountains. He possessed that fox-like look unique to certain Japanese features, with long lashes and eyes that swept upward at the corners. Yet, his three-piece suit was meticulous, his silver-grey tie knotted perfectly, locking away all temptation and allure beneath his fair throat.
If it weren't for this kind of relationship, I’d really want to hire him as a secretary, Xiao Fengtai thought with a hint of regret. These days, finding a thoughtful and meticulous secretary was harder than climbing to heaven; he could afford any salary.
Matsuoka glanced at the box pushed toward him but didn't move. Xiao Fengtai smiled. "Congratulations on the promotion."
A crack appeared in the man’s cold, calm expression. He opened the box, looked inside, and a faint smile touched the corners of his lips. "I should be the one thanking you."
"Don't be a stranger." Xiao Fengtai clicked his tongue and picked up his chopsticks first. "Let's eat. We have a lot to do tonight."
He placed a deliberate emphasis on "a lot to do," watching with a sense of mischief as a faint flush crept onto the man's cheekbones.
Matsuoka worked in the glitzy, decadent world of finance, yet his private life was more bland than Japanese sake; among a pack of "beasts in suits," he was practically a rare animal. During a year-end dinner, his big boss had gotten drunk and joked about introducing him to his daughter studying at Cambridge. Xiao Fengtai had come to the UK this time for an investment strategy conference and to catch up with university alumni. The beautiful Matsuoka had become the youngest Asian MD at Bank M, gaining a bit of fame in their circles. Friends working in the City, unaware of their connection, had told Xiao Fengtai stories about this "ice beauty" as a bit of gossip. Xiao Fengtai had simply smiled without comment.
They hadn't seen what he was like in bed.
By the time they finished, it was nearly midnight. Matsuoka ordered room service. After a deep exchange of physical intimacy, the estrangement caused by their long absence had vanished. Finally, they didn't have to put on an act of table manners; they could sit casually at the head of the bed wrapped in quilts, holding plates of pasta.
"Why didn't you reply to my messages?" Matsuoka asked suddenly. "If it weren't for Mr. Luo, I almost thought you weren't coming."
Mr. Luo, the secretary in the front seat, likely never imagined he would be mentioned in his boss's pillow talk. Xiao Fengtai didn't want to dwell on such tedious questions. He reached out to wipe a smudge of tomato sauce from the corner of Matsuoka's mouth and licked it off his fingertip. "When will you have time to come to Asia? I want to eat the Japanese curry you make."
Matsuoka lowered his eyelids, the tips of his ears turning red. "I just got promoted, so it's hard to take leave right now. Maybe... maybe at Christmas."
"Try on the watch? I don't know if the size is right for your wrist." From the moment they entered the door, they had been in a heated embrace, leaving clothes, ties, shoes, and socks scattered from the hallway to the bedroom. Xiao Fengtai picked them up one by one and dressed himself. Returning to the bedside, he saw Matsuoka still dazed. "What is it? Not satisfied?"
Matsuoka forced a smile. "How could I be... I should be thanking you. My promotion to MD was largely thanks to the projects you introduced."
Xiao Fengtai chuckled and gave him a light peck on the cheek. "You're so cute."
In his heart, Xiao Fengtai didn't feel any deep emotional entanglement with Matsuoka Kiyoshi. But he frankly admitted that he quite enjoyed Matsuoka's purity. People need a sense of ritual, especially someone like him who lived day after day in a world of calculations and schemes; even a bit of performed sincerity was a good thing.
Besides, Matsuoka's "service" was excellent—serious and abstinent on the outside, but wild and sweet in bed, tight-lipped, and never causing trouble. Although his heart had grown a bit wilder over the years, he remained one of the most sensible and obedient among Xiao Fengtai's bed partners.
"I didn't do much; it was all your own merit." Xiao Fengtai put on his overcoat and found the car keys the secretary had left in his pocket. "See you in Tokyo."
Matsuoka didn't speak, his eyes revealing a naked reluctance to see him go. Outside was the cold, damp London midnight; inside was warm and dry, with a beauty on the bed. Xiao Fengtai struggled for a few seconds, but thinking of tomorrow's schedule, he decided to follow his routine and return to his Hyde Park apartment.
Perhaps Matsuoka had other plans too—after all, the suites at the Mandarin Oriental were quite nice. Xiao Fengtai sat on a sofa in the lobby, waiting for the valet to bring his car to the door. In those few minutes, several beautiful couples checked in. Though they varied in age and skin tone, their expressions were remarkably similar: a surface of formulaic indifference and calm, with a faint but obvious tension flickering in the corners of their eyes and brows. He found it amusing, and a strange thought suddenly popped into his head: the forecast for London tomorrow morning was rain; how many of these couples would be lying in bed together, listening to the sound of rain tapping against the window?
Xiao Fengtai was not a man given to sentimental whims. Yet this thought clung to him strangely, causing him to have a series of odd, fragmented dreams throughout the night. Early the next morning, sporting dark circles under his eyes, he drove himself to the villa where Mrs. Xiao lived. The butler gave him a few discreet looks as he welcomed him but said nothing.
Xiao Fengtai pretended not to notice the inquisitive gaze. "How has Grandmother been lately?"
The butler led him up to the second floor, a bitter smile on his face. "That depends on how you define 'well.'"
Mrs. Xiao sat in a rocking chair by the window, wearing a soft, loose woolen sweater. Her white hair was combed neatly, but she was losing it heavily, and her scalp was faintly visible at the back of her head—it wasn't a very dignified sight. She stared out the window, her face ashen, her eyelids swollen and half-drooping to reveal clouded pupils.
The window was cracked open slightly, letting in the crisp chirping of birds and the fresh, cool morning breeze after the rain. However, the old woman's head nodded rhythmically; she was nearly dozing off.
Xiao Fengtai sat down beside Mrs. Xiao, his tone and expression a forced display of cheerfulness. "Grandmother, how have you been lately?"
Mrs. Xiao seemed to be startled awake. She slowly turned her head, scrutinized him carefully for a moment, and then silently turned back, staring blankly at a small bird hopping on a tree trunk outside.
She no longer recognized him.
"The Madam is rarely lucid for more than a few weeks at a time now," the butler whispered behind him. "You... you should come see her more often."
When they had met two months ago, Mrs. Xiao was already like this. Xiao Fengtai had held onto a pointless fantasy, thinking she was just tired in the evenings and would return to her old self after enough rest. In his heart, he was unwilling to associate the frail, confused old woman before him with his grandmother. Her image in his mind was forever frozen in that summer when he was eighteen—dressed in a long black velvet cheongsam, holding a slender silver cane, her pace slow but her back as straight as a pine. She spoke slowly, rarely showing emotion, but her gaze was sharp, able to see right into the depths of his heart.
With one hand, she had torn apart his first love and his earliest fantasies of the future. She had been so cunning, determined, and fierce; he had thought she was indestructible, never imagining she would ultimately lose to time.
"I thought I would hate you for the rest of my life," Xiao Fengtai said softly. "Who would have thought you'd use a trick like this?"
Enrolling at Cambridge was the last thing Xiao Fengtai had done to obey Mrs. Xiao. After starting school, he had completely let himself go, doing the opposite of everything she wanted. Despite the old woman's rage, threats, and pleas—even when she personally traveled to Cambridge to seek a reconciliation and used every trick in the book—he never saw her again.
Until his father brought the news that she was suffering from moderate Alzheimer's.
He gently covered the old woman's hands resting on her knees. The skin felt rough and cool to the touch, like a piece of dried wood. The old woman stared indifferently out the window, unmoved by his touch.
"I lost." Xiao Fengtai wanted to smile, but his eyes grew hot, and his throat was so choked he could barely make a sound. "Those things... I regret them deeply. Can you hear me?"
The only response was the soft rustle of leaves in the breeze.
The butler had already left the room, and it was still early before he had to leave for the airport. Xiao Fengtai sat quietly by the old woman's side, watching the morning light grow bright, as the sound of bicycle bells and the laughter of tourists drifted up from the path outside.
He suddenly remembered that ten years ago, he had stood by this very window to take a photo to send to Jiang Tong. They weren't together yet back then. Having been separated so abruptly, he hadn't realized he was missing Jiang Tong, and he had even felt smug about his "generous friendliness" in sharing the sights of London with him. He took photos of his meals, photos of his walks, never letting go of his phone for a moment. His grandmother had thought Jiang Tong was his little lover and urged him to show her a photo.
Her intuition had been truly sharp.
"...I'm not helping him," he said to the old woman, his expression hesitant, as if he were trying to convince himself. "Huaqing is a good business. I believe in the prospects of CD30."
He gradually grew agitated in the silence. "How could I possibly help him? I'm going to use this investment to carve a pound of flesh from him—what right does he have to expect my help?"
"Back then, I begged him like that, following at his heels like a fool, offering him my whole heart. A heart so many people would kill for! He ground it into the dirt, crushed it, scattered it like ash, and then said it was for my own good."
"I will never forgive him," he said viciously.
The old woman closed her eyes, her head lolling to one side, letting out a soft snore as if she had fallen asleep.
Xiao Fengtai looked at her peaceful sleeping face and gave a bitter smile.
"Yes, I'm taking my anger out on others," he whispered. "I hate him, and I hate myself. Even if you hadn't intervened, with the vast difference in our status, and being so young and naive, how could we have gone the distance?"
"It wasn't his fault... I was the one who pushed us to that point."
If he had known how to suppress his feelings and move slowly, if he had been able to put himself in Jiang Tong's shoes instead of constantly pressuring him, if he hadn't let his emotions cloud his reason when the cards were on the table... But adults never seek the "ifs" in life.
Time was almost up. He stood up and gently embraced the old woman's thin, frail body.
"You were right. We shouldn't have been together from the start," he said into Mrs. Xiao's ear.
He had been too young then. He thought that by living in such a family, he had already seen through the coldness of human nature, not knowing that there was a transparent filter between the world he saw and reality. Those who loved him had used means that were far from gentle to shield his eyes from the true ugliness of life.
He should have lived in that glass greenhouse for much longer, until he had broken through that cold, safe wall with his own self-perceived cleverness.
"You were right. Without those... those 'icing on the cake' emotions, I'm living quite well."
At eighteen, he had quickly and fully recognized his place in this world through a cruel and painful process. Afterward, he had decisively abandoned those illusory expectations that clouded his perception and brought only pain, weakness, and confusion.
"I regret it so much." His tears dripped onto the old woman's cheek. "I didn't get the chance to say 'I love you' in Chinese."
He even knew how to use idioms like "mirage" now. He had used the startup capital his father gave him to make a grand display in the mainland, causing the fund to grow rapidly. He could speak Beijing dialect with the rhotic accent, Cantonese for "hello," and Shanghainese for "thank you." She should be proud of him, shouldn't she?
The most serious and far-reaching consequences of the mistake he made ten years ago were only manifesting today.
He had forever lost the person in this world who loved him the most.
***
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 松冈清 | Matsuoka Kiyoshi | A Japanese investment banker in London. |
| MD | Managing Director | A senior rank in investment banking. |
| 镜花水月 | Mirror flower, water moon | An idiom referring to an illusion or something unattainable; a mirage. |
| 文华酒店 | Mandarin Oriental | A luxury hotel chain. |
| 阿兹海默 | Alzheimer's | The neurodegenerative disease. |
| 剜下一块肉 | Carve a pound of flesh | Literally "carve out a piece of meat," used here to mean taking a significant or painful toll/profit from someone. |
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