On the top floor of T City's oldest five-star hotel, the dim sum restaurant was packed as always.
Si Chen had her heart set on a window table, even if it meant waiting over an hour. Si Yuan couldn't fathom why, so she handed him her credit card and sent him off to the mall next door. With those long-craved traditional dim sum so close, she felt the occasion deserved a few photos for her social feed.
The window looked out over the old iron lift-bridge, still operational after all these years A few hawkers gathered at its foot, selling roasted sweet potatoes and small trinkets. But with malls multiplying across the city and online shopping pulling customers away from the old quarter, only the occasional out-of-town visitor still came by for a photo op.
A hundred-year-old pedestrian street. A sixty-year-old bridge. A hotel that had been standing for over forty years.
And the two of them, together for ten years, if you counted from the day they'd first met by that bridge.
It had been an early summer evening, the after-work crowd streaming past in a hurry. Everyone was rushing—except him. By the time Si Chen ran breathlessly to the bridge, Yu Hao was already there, a few flyers in hand, clearly having been there for quite some time.
He had looked almost surprised to see her. It had only been an offhand matchmaking attempt by her store manager, after all.
"Yu Hao, you don't have a girlfriend yet, do you? Si Chen's a lovely girl, why not get to know each other?"
"Yu Hao's hardworking and reliable, always on time with deliveries, never complains about lugging heavy stock around."
"Si Chen's a good girl—bright and pretty!"
"She's off at six. Why don't you two meet at the bridge at half past?"
They only understood later why both had shown up: neither of them could bring themselves to break a promise.
They crossed the bridge together and wandered the bustling pedestrian street, Eason Chan's Ten Years—the same song, it seemed, from every open doorway
Now, a decade later, Si Chen sat by that glass window at the top of the hotel, gazing down at the bridge and the street below, both quieter than they used to be.
She thought: if ten years ago, neither of them had shown up…
She would never have known him.
And he would never have been hers.
What stranger would she be standing beside instead?
So what about the next ten years?
Would they end up strangers?
"Chen!"
She looked up, startled. The man before her spoke with unhurried composure, a handsome face, a faint smile at the corners of his lips. His well-cut suit had already drawn a few glances from nearby tables.
"Kaiwen? …Small world."
"I had a client staying here, my driver just took him back. I came up hoping to grab a bite, but it looks like…quite the wait."
"It is…"
"Mind if I join you?"
Before she could weigh her answer, Kaiwen had already settled into the seat across from her with easy confidence, idly toying with the cutlery in front of him, and refilled her teacup without missing a beat.
What could she say, really?
"Of course not,"she said, suppressing that small flicker of unease. She offered a smile. "It really has been a long time, hasn't it."
Yes. Far too long.
She reached for the cup of fragrant chrysanthemum pu'er tea, but the freshly poured tea was still too hot to touch.
This composed, polished man was nothing like the boy she remembered. Time might not change a person entirely, she thought, but it had a way of softening old feelings—leaving him feeling at once familiar and like a stranger she was meeting for the first time.
Words were slow in coming. Fortunately, the first round of dim sum arrived just then, filling the silence. It was Kaiwen who finally spoke.
"Sunny mentioned she ran into you in A City, a couple of years back. And Ms Daisy's coming back to Yinghua next Saturday, she specifically asked to see that troublemaker she used to teach."
The name moved Si Chen deeply. Ms Daisy, the American teacher who had loved her and wanted to pull her hair out in equal measure. The memory that stood out most was the day the woman had finally run out of patience and, through gritted teeth, managed only: "Chen, you are a real troublemaker!"
And her younger self had just spread her hands, the picture of unbothered innocence: what could you possibly do about it?
Looking back now, she could feel the heat rising to her cheeks.
"I really was insufferable back then," she said quietly, almost to herself.
Kaiwen held her gaze for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was gentle.
"She'll be thrilled to see you. She always said the naughty ones were the sharp ones."
A small smile found its way to her lips. Across the table sat the boy who had been her partner in every scheme and misdemeanour she could remember—and just like that, she was back in it: being sentenced to the school library in third grade, pilfering food at the charity fair, fabricating arguments at the debate competition, engineering a "minor" disaster in science class. Kaiwen had been there for all of it.
Those years had gone so fast. And they had been so good.
"What's your number these days?"
He picked up his phone, his gaze not leaving her face—steady, deliberate, the kind of look that left her no room to refuse. She gave in and read out the digits in a low voice. Her phone buzzed on the table almost immediately. Kaiwen picked it up without hesitation, his fingers moving with the ease of someone who knew exactly what he was doing. A few seconds later, a new contact had appeared in her address book.
What she couldn't work out was how he knew her passcode was 123456, though she'd never bothered to change it—laziness, mostly.
The whole thing had happened so smoothly she hadn't even thought to object. By the time she caught up, his expression settled into something more serious.
"How have you been?"
The question came too quickly. She wasn't quite ready for it.
"Fine… I've been abroad a lot these past two years."
"Wasn't your dream to see the world without spending a dime?"
"The dream was perfect. The jet lag, absolutely brutal."
Kaiwen laughed—a real one, caught off guard. Same sharp wit, same quick tongue. If anything, time had only refined her looks, adding a quiet maturity to her features. The loose curls, the bright eyes, a new kind of ease in the way she carried herself. And she hadn't changed where it counted: if there was something she didn't want to talk about, she could talk circles around you until you forgot you'd ever asked.
This time, he wasn't going to let it slide. He hadn't come here for pleasantries. There was a wall of unspoken things between them, and today he was going to break through it.
"Are you actually doing well?"
Five words. They landed squarely on her chest, heavy as stone.
She met his eyes for a moment, then looked away. She lifted her tea, cooled by now, and took a small, careful sip, but couldn't quite bring herself to look back up.
"Mum, I'm back!"
Yuan came bounding in, flushed and grinning, a brand-new DSLR camera tucked under his arm. To Si Chen, he was nothing short of a lifesaver. Then her eyes landed on the camera, and her relief curdled instantly—there went this month's credit card bill.
Across the table, the change in Kaiwen was immediate. He went rigid, the colour shifting in his face. He was on his feet in an instant, stare locked on Si Yuan, jaw tight.
"Chen?"
No time to think. Just act.
"This… this is my son. Si Yuan."
She smoothed her hair back and willed herself into some semblance of calm.
"Yuan, this is an old classmate of mine, Su Kaiwen."
"Hi, Uncle Kaiwen!"
Kaiwen didn't stay much longer. He made some vague excuse and left.
He'd got what he came for. Pushing further would only close a door he'd spent years trying to reopen—he understood that clearly enough.
But the questions gnawed at him. Sunny had passed along her number ages ago; every WeChat request he'd sent had disappeared without a trace. It was only this morning, when Sunny had forwarded a photo from her social feed, that he'd been able to track her down. If he'd missed today, she might have vanished completely. Just like she had at that trade fair in Guangzhou five years ago, when she'd given him a work number, exchanged a few polite words, and then quietly disappeared from the company not long after.
Ten years ago, how could he have been so foolish? Letting her drift away, handing her over to someone else without a fight. If he could go back, he would never have let his family pack him off abroad. He would never have lost his grip on things.
The hesitation and quiet sadness he'd caught in her eyes—however well she'd tried to hide it—had told him everything he needed to know: she wasn't as fine as she was letting on.
And that boy—that roguish-looking teenager—who on earth was he?
Her son. Please. She wasn't even thirty. Where would a teenager have come from? He wasn't buying it for a second.
Meanwhile—
"What took you so long?"
"What, did I ruin the mood?"
"…Seems like it."
Yuan watched his mother brush him off, her attention already zeroing in on the still-steaming basket of har gow that had just landed on the table. He could only shake his head, half amused and half exasperated.
The truth was, he'd been back for a while. He'd spotted that "uncle" hovering nearby, watching her from a distance with the look of someone working up the nerve—standing there, quietly, for longer than was strictly dignified, before finally making his move.
A shot like that? No way he was missing it. He'd raised the brand-new camera, found the shot, and pressed the shutter. That telephoto lens had just paid for itself.
And as for today's performance as the perfectly timed, scene-stealing third wheel—
He'd absolutely nailed it.
Surely that earned him something.