At 9:00 AM the next morning, the conference room on the third floor of the Shenhai City Foreign Investment Promotion Bureau was ready.
Satsuki sat in the sofa set by the window as usual.
Today's dessert was a cream puff. Its golden crust was dusted with fine granulated sugar.
She cut it into four equal pieces with a silver fork, speared one, and slipped it into her mouth while her other hand flipped through yesterday's travel picture book.
She seemed to like the cream puff. Her eyes narrowed slightly. She tilted her head, rested her cheek in her hand, and turned the picture book to the page on the City God Temple.
Endo took his seat at the head of the table. He removed documents from his briefcase and stacked them into three piles.
"Director Chen, everyone," Endo said, pushing up the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose.
"After returning yesterday, we re-evaluated the comprehensive development costs for Plot B-07. In consideration of your sincerity regarding administrative approvals, and the prospects for long-term cooperation between both sides—"
He opened his notebook. The tip of his pen pointed to a figure.
"We are willing to adjust our offer to twenty-five thousand US dollars per mu."
The translator's voice fell silent.
Deputy Director Liu's hand paused with his teacup halfway to his lips. He shifted his gaze from Endo's face and glanced quickly at Chen Zhiyuan.
Chen Zhiyuan was looking down at the documents in front of him. His expression didn't change.
Division Chief Wang furrowed his brows. He turned slightly toward Deputy Director Liu and moved his lips, but no sound came out.
His meaning was clear enough—yesterday they had been adamant at eighteen thousand and wouldn't budge. Now, after one night, they'd raised it by seven thousand?
Chen Zhiyuan closed the file and looked up.
"We appreciate Mr. Endo's sincerity," he said slowly, choosing each word with care. "But to be frank, there is still a considerable gap between twenty-five thousand and our expectations."
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.
"The location value of Plot B-07 is something I explained yesterday. A national-level development zone, the main shipping channel of the Yangtze River, the core location for a future deep-water port—with these factors combined, thirty-eight thousand US dollars per mu is the maximum concession we can offer."
Thirty-eight thousand.
Seven thousand less than yesterday's forty-five thousand.
Deputy Director Liu's teacup finally reached his lips. He took a sip. When he set the cup back down, his fingertips lingered on its side for an extra second.
They dropped it?
Hadn't they said the bottom line was fifty thousand yesterday?
He glanced at Chen Zhiyuan again. Chen Zhiyuan didn't look back.
Endo turned a page in his notebook. The tip of his fountain pen drew a thin ink line across the paper.
"Thirty-eight thousand," he repeated, his tone steady. "Director Chen, our pile foundation engineering costs—"
"Mr. Endo." Chen Zhiyuan raised his hand, palm down, and pressed gently.
"I understand the foundation issue. But the self-built wharf and supporting infrastructure you promised cannot be directly offset against the land price in our cost accounting model. Those are two separate accounts."
Endo's pen tip stopped.
"Of course." He closed his notebook. "Then, under what conditions does Director Chen think both sides can find a middle ground?"
Chen Zhiyuan picked up his teacup and blew away the tea leaves floating on the surface.
"If Mr. Endo has any thoughts, please say them directly."
Endo placed his fountain pen on the notebook's cover and folded his hands on the table.
"If the land price is increased to a range acceptable to your side—"
"We hope to add a supplementary clause to the contract appendix."
Chen Zhiyuan's teacup hung in midair.
"Regarding future commercial real estate development projects in the Pudong New Area—" Endo's gaze settled on Chen Zhiyuan's face.
"The Saionji Group hopes to obtain the right of first negotiation."
The translator finished relaying the sentence.
The conference room was quiet for four seconds.
Deputy Director Liu put down his teacup. His body leaned forward two centimeters without him noticing. Division Chief Wang's ballpoint pen hovered above his notebook, the tip not touching the paper.
Chen Zhiyuan slowly set his teacup back on the table.
He didn't answer immediately.
He turned his head to look at Deputy Director Liu on his right.
Their eyes met. Chen Zhiyuan's brow furrowed slightly, and the corners of his mouth pressed down in a tiny arc.
[I need to discuss this with you]
Deputy Director Liu leaned in, and the two exchanged a few words in low voices. Their voices were kept very low. Even with the translator across from them straining to listen, they could only catch sporadic whispers.
Fifteen seconds.
Chen Zhiyuan straightened up.
"Mr. Endo," his tone was a half-beat slower than before, as if weighing every word.
"The concept of a 'right of first negotiation' does not have a directly corresponding clause in our current foreign investment management framework."
He paused.
"But—in principle, as one of the first benchmark foreign enterprises in the Pudong New Area, it is reasonable that the Saionji Group would have the opportunity for priority contact in future projects. That is my personal view."
He emphasized "my personal view" slightly.
Endo understood. The other side had not made a final commitment, but they hadn't refused outright either.
The door was one-third open.
"Then regarding the land price—" Endo steered the conversation back.
"If the appendix clause can be implemented," Chen Zhiyuan spread his hands, palms up, in a gesture of laying his cards on the table, "we can make certain adjustments based on thirty-eight thousand."
Endo's pen tip landed on the paper again.
"Thirty-two thousand."
Endo said the number slowly.
Chen Zhiyuan tapped his fingers on the tabletop twice.
He looked at Endo. Endo looked at him.
The air between them tightened for about three seconds.
Then Chen Zhiyuan shifted his gaze to Deputy Director Liu. Deputy Director Liu's lips were pressed into a line, and the ballpoint pen in his hand spun between his fingers. He looked down at his notebook—it was filled with today's numbers and summaries of the clauses.
"Thirty-two thousand..." Deputy Director Liu's voice was very low, as if talking to himself.
He quickly ran the numbers in the margin: thirty-two thousand times five hundred twenty mu equals sixteen million six hundred forty thousand US dollars.
It was quite a bit lower than the fifty-thousand bottom line. But the Japanese side had promised to build its own deep-water wharf.
By Endo's description yesterday, that wharf would cost at least thirty million US dollars to construct.
Add in the park's internal roads, electricity, water supply, and sewage—that was another twenty million at minimum.
The total investment would exceed seventy million US dollars.
And once that infrastructure was completed, the land value of the entire Waigaoqiao area—
Deputy Director Liu put down his pen and gave Chen Zhiyuan a slight nod.
"Thirty-two thousand," Chen Zhiyuan repeated, his tone carrying the weight of a hard-won concession. "Lease term of fifty years. The right of first negotiation clause goes into the appendix."
He extended his right hand.
"Mr. Endo, deal?"
Endo stood and reached across the table.
The two hands clasped.
"Deal."
Division Chief Wang's ballpoint pen finally touched paper. He wrote a line at the very bottom of his notebook and circled it.
Then he flipped back a page and tallied all the infrastructure commitments the Japanese side had made, one by one.
The more he calculated, the more his brow relaxed.
...
Parking lot.
The late September sunlight filtered through the clouds, casting irregular bright spots on the concrete. The plane tree leaves were still green, but their edges had started to yellow.
Chen Zhiyuan saw the Japanese delegation off downstairs.
Endo shook hands with him to say goodbye, and the legal and financial staff filed into the cars. Satsuki was the last to exit the building, with Fujita Tsuyoshi holding an umbrella—though it wasn't raining, the young miss didn't like direct sunlight.
The back door of the Toyota Crown was already open. Satsuki walked to the car. As one foot stepped onto the doorsill, she paused.
She turned back.
Chen Zhiyuan stood on the steps with his hands behind his back. Five or six meters and a shedding plane tree stood between them.
Chen Zhiyuan bowed slightly. Then he spoke in Japanese.
"By the time you come again, Eldest Miss, the osmanthus flowers will likely have faded," he said, his tone carrying a hint of regretful humor.
"But the plane tree leaves should be turning yellow."
Satsuki's eyes curved.
"Then I'll bring a camera to take pictures."
She bent down and got into the car. Fujita Tsuyoshi closed the door and walked around to the passenger seat.
The Crown's engine gave a low rumble and the car pulled away slowly.
Chen Zhiyuan stood on the steps, watching the black sedan drive out of the parking lot, turn left onto the road, and disappear at the end of the plane tree shade.
Deputy Director Liu walked up from behind and stood beside him.
"Old Chen," Deputy Director Liu's voice was very low.
"This result today... why did the Japanese side suddenly relent? Yesterday they clung to eighteen thousand, and today they jumped straight to twenty-five thousand to open."
Chen Zhiyuan withdrew his gaze from the end of the road.
"They figured it out, that's all," he said, turning to pat Deputy Director Liu on the shoulder.
"When Japanese people do business, they test the bottom line on the first day and only show their real hand on the second. That eighteen thousand yesterday was never real to begin with."
Deputy Director Liu made a sound of acknowledgment, seemingly accepting the explanation. But the shallow furrow between his brows remained.
"That 'right of first negotiation'—"
"We'll talk about it later." Chen Zhiyuan had already turned and was walking into the building. "I have to write a report for the city this afternoon."
His leather shoes clicked crisply and evenly on the terrazzo steps.
Deputy Director Liu stood in place, watching his back disappear around the stairwell corner.
Right of first negotiation.
When those four words were written into the contract appendix, Deputy Director Liu couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
But he couldn't put his finger on it.
...
2:00 PM.
Satsuki did not return to the hotel.
The Toyota Crown drove north along Zhongshan East 1st Road.
On the left stood a row of European-style buildings left from the colonial period—granite facades, Baroque domes, Corinthian capitals—silent and solemn under the gray-white daylight.
On the right was the Huangpu River flood wall, its gray concrete surface marked with water stains.
"Stop for a moment."
Satsuki's voice came from the back seat.
Fujita Tsuyoshi pulled over. Satsuki pushed open the car door and stepped onto the sidewalk in her brown ballet flats.
The afternoon river breeze was stronger than in the morning, carrying the muddy, diesel-like scent of the Huangpu River.
The top of the flood wall was a walkway about two meters wide. The green paint on the cement railing was mostly peeled, revealing rusted steel bars underneath.
Satsuki walked to the railing and placed her hands on the cement.
The river was wide. The gray-green water had an oily sheen in the afternoon light, and several barges trailing black smoke were sailing slowly from downstream.
Her gaze crossed the river and landed on the opposite bank.
Pudong.
At this moment, Lujiazui in Pudong was a low, gray silhouette. Several rows of two- or three-story brick houses were squeezed together, their asbestos tiles reflecting a dull white light in the sun.
Two factory chimneys stood on the skyline. One was emitting smoke—the gray-white plume was torn apart by the wind and merged into the equally gray-white sky, the boundary indistinguishable.
A tower crane with a rusted boom stood alone by the river, like an iron bird with broken wings.
The Oriental Pearl Tower had not yet driven a single foundation pile into this mudflat.
The sleek, tiered form of the Jin Mao Tower was still ten years away in blueprints.
As for the Shanghai World Financial Center, which would one day pierce the clouds like a bottle opener, not even a shadow of it existed.
In the autumn wind of 1990, it was all a desolate void.
Satsuki's fingers tightened on the cement railing.
She looked at that hazy skyline on the opposite bank, something churning in the depths of her eyes.
In her past life. The red-eye flight from New York to Pudong. Landing at 5:00 AM, the taxi driving along Century Avenue toward Lujiazui.
Outside the window, the glass curtain walls of skyscrapers lit up one after another in the morning light, like a row of giant matches being struck in sequence.
The trapezoidal wind tunnel at the top of the 492-meter World Financial Center framed that patch of sky turning blue.
That was 2008. Eighteen years from now.
But at this moment, there were only shanties, chimneys, and a rusted tower crane on that land.
Endo stood half a step behind her, his gaze following hers.
"Endo."
"Yes."
"What do you think that land on the opposite side will look like in ten years?"
Endo pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses. He studied the opposite bank seriously—low roofs, sparse tree crowns, the occasional exposed brick wall. Then he withdrew his gaze and looked down at the cement surface of the flood wall at his feet.
"Based on the current development speed and scale of capital investment..." His pace was slow, his wording cautious.
"In ten years, it should be possible to build a medium-sized business district. Perhaps a few ten-story office buildings. Of course, that assumes the Pudong Development Office's investment promotion goes smoothly."
Satsuki shook her head.
The movement was slight. But certain.
"No."
Her voice was thinned by the river breeze, as if coming from very far away.
"Ten years from now, standing on the opposite side will be the densest cluster of skyscrapers in all of China. No, in all of Asia."
Endo's hand froze at the edge of his glasses.
"The tallest one among them will exceed four hundred meters."
"It will be the embodiment of this country's ambition. Endo, you cannot stop a will that longs to grow taller."
"That is the common will of more than one billion people."
Endo's hand slowly lowered from his glasses. He turned to look at Satsuki's profile.
The river breeze lifted the stray hair by her ear, and the pearl hair clip shone with a soft luster in the gray-white light.
Her expression was calm. The gray skyline of the opposite bank was reflected in her pupils, but her focus seemed to pierce through those low roofs and land on a point in time further away—or rather, further behind.
She wasn't joking.
Endo had followed Satsuki long enough to know that every judgment this young miss made had never been wrong. From the Plaza Accord to Black Monday, from the consumption tax to the bubble's burst—each time, her predictions were like letters sent back from the future.
But four hundred meters.
Ten years.
Endo swallowed those two numbers without asking further.
Satsuki withdrew her hands from the railing and brushed the cement dust from her palms. She turned and walked back, her ballet flats tapping lightly on the walkway.
When passing a Bund building, she stopped.
It was a four-story neoclassical building. Granite base, Ionic columns, and an eagle with outstretched wings carved into the triangular pediment above the lintel—the edges of the wings had been weathered to a blur, but the outline was still majestic.
Satsuki looked up and watched the stone eagle for two seconds.
"In the thirties, this building was the Shanghai branch of HSBC," she said softly, as if to herself.
She dropped her gaze from the lintel to the tightly closed iron gate. Beyond it, the outlines of the marble floor and bronze chandeliers were faintly visible, but the lights were off, and the whole building was shrouded in sleeping darkness.
"In a few more years, foreign banks will return to this street."
She stepped forward and continued walking.
"By then, the rent for every building here will be astronomical."
Endo memorized the sentence.
He did not take out his notebook.
Some words weren't meant to leave a paper trail.