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Tao Ran had always believed that some people changed with time and some merely became more elaborate versions of themselves. Fei Du, apparently, belonged to the second category.
He had been a beautiful, unnervingly self-possessed boy when Tao Ran first met him, the sort of child who had already learned how to smile without offering anything behind it, how to turn politeness into a locked door and silence into a weapon. Years had sharpened all of that into something far more polished. The boy had grown into an elegant young man in an expensive coat, with his hair arranged carelessly enough to suggest that a great deal of care had gone into it, and with the same lazy smile resting at the corner of his mouth as though the entire world had just made a mildly amusing mistake in his presence. Tao Ran had barely managed to think, He grew up, before Luo Wenzhou, standing beside him, went completely still.
That, naturally, was the moment Tao Ran understood there would be trouble.
Fei Du’s gaze moved over Luo Wenzhou with leisurely precision. It started at his face, dropped briefly to the badge, returned to his face, and lingered there just long enough to become insulting if one knew what to look for. To anyone else, it might have resembled surprise. Tao Ran knew better. Luo Wenzhou apparently did too, because the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Captain Luo,” Fei Du said pleasantly. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Luo Wenzhou smiled back with all the warmth of a man inspecting a suspicious package. “President Fei. That’s understandable. Your eyesight must have suffered from spending so much time admiring yourself in reflective surfaces.”
Tao Ran closed his eyes for one brief, prayerful second.
Fei Du only looked more delighted. “Still concerned about my health after all these years? I’m touched.”
“I’m a police officer. Public safety is my responsibility.”
“And I’m a danger to the public?”
“To pedestrians, possibly. Drivers too, if you keep dressing like that near intersections.”
A less experienced observer might have heard two old acquaintances exchanging jokes. Tao Ran, who had survived enough years beside Luo Wenzhou to recognize every shade of his sarcasm and had known Fei Du since adolescence, heard the unmistakable scrape of two knives being sharpened against each other.
He stepped between them before either could discover whether verbal homicide was prosecutable.
“Fei Du,” he said, smiling despite himself. “It really has been a long time.”
The change in Fei Du was almost imperceptible, which was perhaps why Luo Wenzhou noticed it immediately. His eyes softened first, the practiced amusement giving way to something warmer, younger, unexpectedly sincere.
“Tao Ran-ge.”
Luo Wenzhou made a quiet sound beside him.
Tao Ran did not need to turn his head. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was breathing.”
“Try doing it less judgmentally.”
Fei Du laughed, low and pleased, and Luo Wenzhou’s expression suggested that Tao Ran had personally betrayed the entire criminal police division by causing it.
Luo Wenzhou, however, had spent years complaining about Fei Du while somehow knowing exactly which university he attended, what car he drove, which articles had mentioned his company, and whether Tao Ran had remembered to send him a message on his birthday. Fei Du, meanwhile, had perfected the art of pretending Luo Wenzhou barely existed while collecting every change in his rank, habits, appearance, and temper as if preparing an academic thesis entitled On the Continuing Irritations of Captain Luo.
Apparently, years apart had done nothing to cure either of them at all.
“You look tired, Tao Ran-ge,” Fei Du said, turning his attention back to him. “Are they overworking you?”
“They?” Luo Wenzhou repeated.
Fei Du glanced at him. “Management.”
“I am management.”
“Yes,” Fei Du said thoughtfully. “That explains it.”
Tao Ran bit the inside of his cheek.
Luo Wenzhou folded his arms. “Interesting. I was just thinking President Fei looked tired too. Running a company must be difficult when half your working hours are dedicated to bothering police officers.”
“Only selected police officers.”
“How exclusive.”
“I’ve always had standards.”
“And yet you’re here talking to me.”
Fei Du tilted his head, eyes bright with the particular malice that, on him, somehow looked like flirting filtered through plausible deniability. “I said I had standards. I didn’t say they were high.”
There was a beat of silence.
Tao Ran looked from one to the other and experienced, with startling clarity, the memory of two children crouched in a sandbox, each gripping one end of the same plastic shovel and insisting with perfect sincerity that the other had started it.
The only difference was that these children were grown men, one of them carried a service weapon, the other probably owned the building nearest the sandbox, and the shovel was apparently Tao Ran.
“Wonderful,” he said. “You two are catching up.”
Both of them turned toward him.
“We are not,” Luo Wenzhou said.
“Absolutely not,” Fei Du agreed.
Their answers arrived so perfectly together that Tao Ran stared at them.
Then Fei Du looked at Luo Wenzhou.
Luo Wenzhou looked at Fei Du.
Something passed between them—annoyance, recognition, an old rhythm snapping unexpectedly back into place—and both looked away at exactly the same moment.
Tao Ran almost laughed.
Perhaps that was what catching up really looked like for them. Not affectionate questions about the missing years, not polite summaries of careers and relationships, but remembering where to press, which words would provoke, which expressions meant the insult had landed. Their hostility had always contained too much attention to be simple hostility. Even now, after years, they moved around each other with the ease of people who had never entirely stopped rehearsing the next argument.
Fei Du slipped his hands into his coat pockets. “Tao Ran-ge, are you free for dinner?”
“No,” Luo Wenzhou answered.
Fei Du did not look at him. “I wasn’t asking you.”
“And I’m answering for him.”
“Captain Luo, has the bureau expanded into hostage negotiation from the hostage’s perspective?”
“Tao Ran has plans.”
“I do?” Tao Ran asked.
“Yes.”
“With whom?”
Luo Wenzhou paused.
Fei Du smiled.
Tao Ran watched the entire disaster unfold and decided, with the serenity of a man surrendering to fate, that perhaps some lost time deserved to remain lost.
Then Luo Wenzhou said, “Us.”
Fei Du’s smile faltered for less than a second.
Tao Ran saw it.
So did Luo Wenzhou.
And there it was again—that ridiculous, invisible shovel between them.
Tao Ran sighed. “Fine. All three of us. Dinner.”
Neither protested.
Which, frankly, was the most alarming thing that had happened all evening.