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The tinkling tune of a notification rang out from Jiang Yanli’s phone at the same time as Wen Qing’s buzzed against the scratched surface of their shared desk. She reached out to retrieve it from her handbag, but just then, Mianmian stuck her head around the office door as well.
“Do you both have a minute?” she asked.
Yanli nodded and let her phone stay where it was. It had only been her regular notification sound, not the one she’d set for family or the emergency one, in case A-Xian texted.
Mianmian came fully into the room. She leaned against the short bookcase next to the door while the other two swung their office chairs around to face her; there wasn’t room for three people to comfortably stand here for long.
“We have a prospective new client,” she began. “I’ve told him I’m not certain we’ll be able to take on his case, though not why. I want to discuss it with you both first.”
Yanli and Wen Qing’s eyes briefly met. The private investigation business wasn’t so hot that the fledgling agency could afford to turn down work without a strong justification.
“Lan Qiren called me this morning. The full details of what we talked about are already in your email. It’s a missing-person case.”
“Lan laoshi?” Yanli asked foolishly, as if hearing her old teacher’s full name was the strangest part of this.
“Mm.”
“Did he know who you were, before he called?”
“Yes, actually.” Mianmian raised her eyebrows. “He gave me very discreet, deniable congratulations on leaving Jin Guangshan’s staff.”
“But he presumably doesn’t know—” She gestured between herself and Wen Qing, Mianmian’s staff of two, neither of whose names was on the agency’s door or its website.
“No, I’m fairly sure he doesn’t,” Mianmian said. “Which gives us something of a conflict of interest.”
Wen Qing, ignoring their exchange, was scanning the notes Mianmian had sent them both. “There’s only one place he can be,” she said. “Yanli, I think we need to go in person.”
“You can take the car,” Mianmian offered, as if she’d expected nothing else.
“I’ll fill the tank,” Yanli said—the least she could do, since she doubted they’d get any reimbursement from the Lans.
“Just stay safe, okay?”
Wen Qing gave a tight nod and rose from her seat, eyes already full of calculations. Yanli followed her out of the office and down the narrow stairs.
Yanli drove first, for nearly two hours, and then they stopped at a motorway service station and switched over. She balanced a cardboard cup of burnt coffee on one knee and her phone on the other, keeping an eye on their little red dot as it glided across the satellite map towards a certain city, a certain address on the outskirts she wasn’t really supposed to know. When she and A-Cheng had visited A-Xian before, they’d met in a rented room closer to the city centre. ‘Neutral ground’, as if A-Xian was on the enemy side of some battle lines.
She was so tired.
The long rays of the afternoon sun caught on Wen Qing’s hands on the steering wheel, lighting up each of the fine hairs on her forearms. Yanli caught herself staring at the tiny ruby studs in Wen Qing’s earlobes, the way the ends of her grown-out bob brushed against her shoulders as she turned her head to check for oncoming traffic. At her own feet sat her leather handbag, the scuffs on its corners meticulously covered up with shoe polish.
When they pulled off the motorway and into a denser network of roads, Yanli had to follow the map and direct Wen Qing more actively. It was work that distracted her from the anxious twisting of her stomach, and she was grateful for it.
Wen Qing parked opposite the small, terraced house just at the time when the area’s schoolchildren were arriving home. By unspoken agreement, they both sat in the car until the street was briefly empty before hurrying up to the front gate, which hung glumly from one hinge onto the overgrown path.
Behind the dusty net curtains, shapes flickered too quickly to be identified. Yanli pressed the doorbell and then, when that made no sound, rapped a knuckle against the door itself. She heard the shuffling of footsteps and the squeak of a peephole shutter.
At length, the door was opened on the chain. Floating in the gap, a luminously handsome face peered silently down at her.
“What did I tell you?” Wen Qing murmured behind her.
“Lan Wangji,” Yanli said, relief rushing into her like cold air. It came out too loud. She was acting like a sister instead of a detective. “It’s been a long time. I’m so glad to see you. Is A-Xian there? Is he—”
The door shut in her face.
From the other side came the rumble of voices, no words clear enough to make out. At least it didn’t sound like an argument.
Yanli hovered uselessly on the doorstep, biting her bottom lip, until she heard a dial tone and Wen Qing’s quiet voice.
“A-Ning? It’s jiejie. Let us in now, please.”
At last, the door creaked properly open. In the dim hallway of her foster brother’s refuge stood three tall young men, each awkwardly trying to shield the other two from any danger Yanli and Wen Qing might have brought along with them.
“I will not return home, no matter what shufu wants,” Lan Wangji said, pushing Yanli’s phone back across the coffee table towards her.
He was sitting next to A-Xian on a two-seat sofa that was not, quite, small enough to justify how closely the two of them were squeezed into it together. Whenever A-Xian was not contributing to the conversation, he leaned against Wangji’s shoulder in a way that made her heart ache, it was so much like the scrawny child she remembered from his first days in the Jiang house. He looked healthier than she’d seen him in a long while, though.
Wen Ning, meanwhile, was sitting on the floor so that Yanli and his sister could have the room’s two armchairs. He’d brought them all mugs of builder’s tea and said very little, except for asking if she took milk and sugar.
“We’re not here to convince you to go home,” Yanli said. That would have been the case even if they’d come here professionally. “If you want to do absolutely nothing, stay right here and never talk to your uncle again, that’s up to you.”
Wangji took this impassively, but she saw the distress that passed across A-Xian’s face at the thought of it.
“If you want me to pass on a message to Lan lao—Lan Qiren, I can do that too,” she said.
“It would probably make things a lot easier if you let him know you’re alive and well,” Wen Qing pointed out.
Her brother leaned his head back against the arm of her chair. Wen Qing brushed a hand comfortingly over his hair.
“Well, yes,” Yanli said. “If he doesn’t get an answer from us, he’ll likely try asking another firm.”
A-Xian’s hand moved to squeeze Wangji’s knee. The two of them shared a series of intense looks—or at least, she thought they did. A-Xian’s mobile features were as easy to read as they’d ever been, but she would have to spend a lot longer getting to know Wangji to be able to tell what his part in the exchange was.
“Don’t worry,” A-Xian told her at length. “We have a plan. Well, Lan Zhan has a plan, and he might be even more of a genius than me. Yanli jie, I think things are really going to be all right, now.”