The two of them sat across an eight-immortals table and began to talk.
It was all small talk.
"The trees in the courtyard are all Golden Osmanthus," Chen Zhiyuan said, tilting his head toward the small courtyard beyond the half-open wooden window.
"There are four common types of osmanthus in Shenhai—Golden, Silver, Orange, and Four Seasons. Golden Osmanthus has the yellowest petals and the strongest fragrance. When they bloom at the end of every September, the entire lane smells sweet."
Satsuki glanced out the window. The night breeze carried a fine floral scent, as gentle as a thin veil.
The branches were dotted with rice-grain-sized golden flowers. In the halo of the old-fashioned wall lamp under the eaves, they looked as if someone had meticulously painted each one on with a fine brush.
"Are there trees like this in Tokyo?" Satsuki asked, tilting her head.
"They're rare in Tokyo's city center. But there's a grove in Arashiyama, Kyoto," Chen Zhiyuan said, refilling half his teacup.
"Just around the corner at the end of the Sagano Bamboo Forest path. It's not large—nothing compared to what you'll find in the courtyard of any random household here."
"I've been to Arashiyama!" Satsuki set down her chopsticks, her tone carrying a hint of excitement.
"In the autumn. The mountains were covered in red leaves. Looking out from Togetsukyo Bridge, the whole mountain looked like it was on fire. It was so beautiful!"
"Red leaves… Shenhai really can't compete with that," Chen Zhiyuan said, shaking his head with a trace of unconvinced regret.
"But it would have been better if you'd come two weeks later, young miss. The leaves of the London planes on these roads in the French Concession will all have turned yellow. When the wind blows and they fall, they crunch underfoot like gold covering the ground."
"Really?" Satsuki's chopsticks hovered in mid-air with a slice of honey-glazed lotus root. "Then I'll come back next autumn."
"You're welcome anytime." Chen Zhiyuan smiled and pointed out the window.
"Actually, you don't have to wait for the plane tree leaves to turn yellow. Look, young miss—if you go two blocks down Yongfu Road, there's a three-story gray brick Western-style house on the left.
The iron gates are closed year-round. In the 1930s, that was one of Du Yuesheng's private residences."
Satsuki's eyes widened slightly. "You mean that…" She drew a vague circle in the air with the tip of her chopsticks, "that famous Shenhai tycoon?"
"Yes, that's him." Chen Zhiyuan placed a piece of osmanthus honey-glazed lotus root onto her plate.
"The head of the Green Gang. The underground emperor of the Shenhai Bund. At his peak, half the houses in the French Concession were owned by the Du family.
But even his most glorious time on this street only lasted a dozen years or so. He fled in 1949, went to Hong Kong, and died abroad three years later."
"What about his house?"
"It was nationalized," Chen Zhiyuan said, picking up his teacup.
"Some were converted into government dormitories, some became schools, and a few remain empty to this day. The doors have iron locks, and the rust is thicker than the locks themselves."
Satsuki put the piece of lotus root into her mouth, chewed twice, swallowed, and asked again.
"What about the Soong sisters? I heard they also have old residences in Shenhai?"
"They do. Soong Ching-ling's former residence is on Huaihai Road. It's the best-preserved and is currently open to the public. From here, it's a twenty-minute walk," Chen Zhiyuan said, setting down his teacup and tracing an imaginary route on the table with his finger.
"Soong Mei-ling also lived nearby in her early years. But she later followed Mr. Chiang to Nanjing, then Taipei, and finally New York, so the houses here were gradually forgotten."
"Can we go see it tomorrow?" Satsuki wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. "The one that belonged to Soong Ching-ling."
"Of course. I'll have someone arrange it."
The second hot dish was served.
Sweet and sour spare ribs.
The color was a deep, bright soy, coated in a layer of amber glaze. The sweet and sour aroma wafted out the moment the lid was lifted.
The ribs were chopped into mahjong-tile-sized pieces, neatly arranged on a deep blue-and-white porcelain plate, each cross-section shimmering with a slight caramel hue.
Satsuki's gaze lingered on the plate of ribs for a moment.
Chen Zhiyuan noticed that subtle pause. He didn't speak, but simply raised his hand and beckoned toward the kitchen.
The chef was invited out. She was a Shenhai auntie in her fifties, slightly plump, wearing a white apron.
She wiped her hands on the towel at her waist before walking to the table. Her Mandarin had a heavy local accent, with all the retroflex sounds flattened.
"For these sweet and sour ribs, the key lies in three things—vinegar, sugar, and heat control," the auntie said, holding up three fingers and counting them off one by one. Her eyes kept sizing up the beautiful foreign girl.
"The ratio of Zhenjiang aromatic vinegar to fine white sugar is three to two. Not a bit more, not a bit less. After removing the gaminess with cooking wine, fry them once until the outer shell is hard and crispy. Then add the sweet and sour sauce and reduce it over high heat."
She paused, her fingers making a stir-frying motion in the air.
"When you reduce the sauce at the end, you must keep stirring with chopsticks. When you pull the chopsticks out and see a thin thread of syrup—that's when it's right. Turn off the heat, plate it, and don't wait even a second longer."
Satsuki listened intently. She used a silver spoon to scoop a bit of the sauce from the bottom of the plate and tasted it.
Sweetness came first, followed by acidity. In between, a very thin layer of caramel shell shattered on the tip of her tongue, followed by the lingering fragrance of the vinegar, which made a soft turn in her mouth.
"Delicious."
Satsuki set down the silver spoon, her tone certain.
"Much better than the one at the Peace Hotel yesterday."
The chef's eyes crinkled into slits as she smiled, saying "Thank you" three times. She rubbed her hands on her towel again before Chen Zhiyuan laughingly shooed her back to the kitchen.
After three dishes, the atmosphere had relaxed into that of a typical dinner where an elder hosts a junior.
Chen Zhiyuan picked up a piece of braised pork and placed it on Satsuki's plate.
"By the way, young miss."
His tone was casual, as if he had just remembered a minor matter.
"Yesterday on that embankment at B-07, you pointed at the freighter on the river and asked, 'Can a big ship like that sail here?'"
He smiled.
"I thought it was quite interesting at the time. Usually, tourists who see a big ship just take a photo as a souvenir. But you, young miss, were concerned about whether it 'could sail here.' That way of asking sounded like you were confirming whether the channel was deep enough."
Satsuki bit the tip of her chopsticks and blinked.
"That ship was so big," she said, her eyes sparkling. "I just thought it would be great if my yacht could also sail there. Endo said the new yacht has a very deep draft, and I was afraid of how embarrassing it would be if it ran aground."
Chen Zhiyuan nodded and didn't press further. He unhurriedly picked up the serving chopsticks and placed another serving of sizzling eel shreds on the edge of her plate.
"If you like sweet flavors, young miss, there's a Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant near the Old City God Temple that specializes in crab roe soup dumplings.
The skin is so thin it's translucent. You bite a small opening, suck the soup clean first, and then dip it in ginger vinegar. One bite, and the whole autumn is worth it."
"Crab roe?" Satsuki's chopsticks paused for a beat.
"Yes, the roe and fat of hairy crabs, picked out and mixed into the meat filling. It's just in season now.
There's also a place nearby that sells fermented rice balls—small glutinous rice balls cooked in osmanthus fermented rice, sweet but not cloying."
Satsuki tilted her head, seemingly seriously considering whether to add this to tomorrow's itinerary.
"Right next to the City God Temple is Yu Garden," Chen Zhiyuan nudged the conversation forward.
"There's a Nine-Turn Bridge in the garden. If you go, young miss, you must walk across it. Nine turns, and every turn has a different angle. It's said to have over four hundred years of history.
It was built by a merchant surnamed Pan during the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty. Back then, it took over twenty years just to complete the construction of this garden."
"Over twenty years?" Satsuki lightly tapped the edge of her plate with her silver spoon. "That's even slower than when our family renovated that building in Ginza."
Chen Zhiyuan was amused by the remark. He shook his head and tilted the teapot to refill half her cup.
"There was no reinforced concrete back then. Transporting a single Taihu stone from Suzhou to Shenhai took half a month just by water."
"Speaking of which," Chen Zhiyuan said, placing the teacup back on the table. His movements were very light.
"This morning in the meeting room, you were flipping through that picture album, young miss. I saw it later when I was tidying up."
His speaking pace didn't change, and he even carried a hint of a smile.
"You stopped on the Lujiazui page for a long time. Are you interested in that area, young miss? It's still mostly empty land right now, though the planning maps are drawn quite impressively."
Satsuki stirred the almond milk in front of her with her silver spoon.
"The skyline rendering in the photo looks very nice," she said, tilting her head. "The glass curtain walls of those skyscrapers were drawn so shiny, like building blocks."
The corners of her mouth were turned up, her tone light.
Chen Zhiyuan was smiling as he poured tea.
Satsuki was also smiling as she drank tea.
The meaning behind their smiles was completely different.
Dessert was served. French crème brûlée, sprinkled with a layer of crushed osmanthus.
Satsuki cracked the caramel surface with her small silver spoon and took a bite.
"It's a little bit worse than the ones in Paris," she commented, tapping the surface of the pudding again with her silver spoon and flipping over a piece of caramel shell that hadn't quite shattered to examine it.
"The caramel isn't baked crispy enough. The temperature should be twenty degrees higher, and the time ten seconds shorter. The surface should be like glass, and it should make a crisp crack when the spoon hits it."
She put the piece of caramel into her mouth, chewed twice, and added another comment.
"But the osmanthus is a plus. Paris doesn't have that."
Chen Zhiyuan smiled and said he would "have the chef improve it next time."
He took the napkin from his lap, folded it, and placed it beside his plate.
Then his hand stopped.
The smile receded from his face. Like a tide, it quietly and imperceptibly withdrew until it vanished below the corners of his mouth.
The private room suddenly became very quiet.
The fine chirping of autumn insects came from the garden. The fragrance of osmanthus was pushed in by the night breeze, floating between the two of them.
"Young miss."
Chen Zhiyuan's voice wasn't loud.
"This morning, you walked up to Mr. Endo and said something to him."
His gaze fell calmly on Satsuki's face.
"His expression changed the moment you finished. And then you left the room."
A one-second pause.
"I've been thinking about it all afternoon. You didn't leave because you found the meeting room stuffy."
He pushed his teacup aside and placed his hands, folded, on the table.
"You felt that if Mr. Endo continued to pressure them according to the 18,000 route, he wouldn't be able to get what you truly wanted."
"What is it… that you truly want?"
An osmanthus petal fell onto the windowsill.
The silver spoon in Satsuki's hand, stirring the crème brûlée, stopped.
The surface of the spoon was submerged in the semi-solidified caramel fragments, reflecting the warm yellow light.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Only the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner and the low chirping of unknown autumn insects in the garden remained in the room.
Then she smiled.
But this time, a certain nerve in Chen Zhiyuan's back tightened slightly.
Because this smile was different from all the smiles he had seen in the past two days.
The difference was small. The curve of her mouth was even shallower than any time before.
There were no eyes curved into crescents like when she was taking photos, no pouting lips like when she acted spoiled with Endo, and no glimmer in the depths of her eyes like when she was amused by 'the big ship is so big.'
Those smiles, looking back now, were all the same kind of thing.
A mirror.
An exquisitely polished mirror used to project the image of an 'innocent young heiress.' Facing different people, she adjusted it to different angles, reflecting different pictures—coquettishness for Endo, trust for Fujita, and curiosity and harmlessness for Chen Zhiyuan.
And now.
The mirror had been put away.
Satsuki pulled the silver spoon out of the pudding and gently set it on the edge of the plate.
Her posture shifted from leaning against the back of the chair to leaning slightly forward. The movement was tiny, only about two or three centimeters.
But those two or three centimeters made Chen Zhiyuan, across the table, feel that this person's center of gravity had changed.
Her eyes were still the same eyes, with black pupils and softly curved corners.
But that layer of something rising from the depths of her pupils…
Chen Zhiyuan couldn't say what it was.
But his right hand, hidden under the table, unconsciously tightened.
At the same moment, a thought that had been stuck in his mind for a full day and a half finally clicked into place.
As expected.
He looked at that fifteen- or sixteen-year-old face across from him.
Chen Zhiyuan straightened his body from the back of the chair, withdrew his hands from the table, and placed them formally on his knees.
#Note, This China arc has way too much pointless talking. Argh...