After My Rebirth, My Husband Pampers Me Everyday!

Chapter 168: IN THERE YOU’LL FIND SOME USEFUL INFORMATION

"Tell him I’m coming," Guiying said, then stopped with his hand on the banister. "Uncle Wang. Come and look at something first."

Uncle Wang followed him back into the art room.

He stood in front of the canvas, hands folded behind his back.

His eyes moved across it once, then again, slower the second time.

They stopped at the place where the two hands reached toward each other and did not quite meet, and stayed there.

His thumb pressed against the knuckle of his other hand.

The corridor clock ticked twice. He still had not spoken.

"Master Xue," he said at last, his eyes not leaving the canvas. "May I ask who taught you to paint?"

"A woman on the internet," Guiying said. "Forty minutes."

Uncle Wang nodded slowly, the way a man nods when he has received an answer that has only deepened the question.

"And how long did this take you?"

"An afternoon."

He looked at the painting a moment longer, then turned and walked toward the door with the unhurried dignity of a man retreating from a conversation he had decided not to finish.

"I have polished silver in this house for twenty two years, Master Xue," he said. "I believe I will go and polish some more. It is good to be reminded of one’s place."

He paused in the doorway.

"Old Li’s food is cold. He will pretend he does not mind. He minds a great deal." He inclined his head. "Come down."

He was gone before Guiying could answer, his footsteps even and unhurried down the corridor.

Guiying looked at the painting once more, turned the light off, and followed him down.

Old Li was at the stove when Guiying came into the kitchen, and he turned the moment he heard him.

"There you are," Old Li said. "I was about to send someone up. Your food has been ready for an hour, do you know that? An hour. I kept it warm but warm is not fresh, a meal is best the moment it leaves the pot." He lifted the lid off the pot on the back burner and waved the steam toward himself, inspecting it. "Sit, sit. It’s still good. I made sure of it."

Guiying sat at the counter.

Old Li ladled rice into a bowl, laid the braised fish over it and set it down in front of Guiying along with a dish of greens.

"You didn’t eat lunch," Old Li said, settling his hands on his hips. "Chengli told me. A young man your age cannot skip meals and then live on tea." He nudged the dish of greens an inch closer. "Eat the vegetables too. All of them."

"I’ll eat them," Guiying said.

"That’s what you always say." Old Li turned back to the stove, but the lines around his eyes were soft. "Is the fish good? I changed the sauce a little, more ginger. Tell me honestly."

Guiying tried it. The ginger was warmer, brighter, cutting clean through the richness of the sauce.

"Better than last time," he said.

Old Li made a pleased sound and busied himself with a cloth he didn’t need. "Last time was already good." He glanced over his shoulder. "Master Liuxian hasn’t eaten today either. He left before I was even up. That man works himself into the ground and then wonders why his stomach gives him trouble." He shook his head, turning back to the stove. "I’ll keep something warm for him."

Guiying looked up from his bowl.

He reached for his phone and pressed call.

It rang twice, then went to voicemail.

He tried again. Voicemail.

He lowered the phone and scrolled up through his messages and saw it, sent three hours ago while he was in the art room with his phone face down on the counter.

Busy with work. Will be home late. Don’t wait up.

Three hours ago.

Guiying looked at the timestamp, then at the kitchen window where the evening had settled fully into night, the city lights bleeding through the glass, and set the phone down on the counter.

Old Li was still at the stove, stirring something in the smaller pot, humming to himself.

Guiying picked up his chopsticks and finished eating, and outside the kitchen window the city lights bled through the glass and he wondered, quietly, what kind of day Liuxian was having on the other side of it.

---

The port in the evening looked nothing like it had at seven in the morning.

The cranes stood idle against the darkening sky, their arms locked in place, the water below them black and still.

Shipping containers stacked three high along the dock cast long shadows across the concrete, and the floodlights had come on an hour ago, washing everything in a flat white that made the tired look worse on every face.

Liuxian stood at the window of the port’s meeting room with his hands in his pockets and looked at none of it.

The table behind him still had the water glasses the directors had left, three of them barely touched, one with a lipstick mark on the rim from the Baorun representative who had smiled the entire meeting and said absolutely nothing useful.

The folders were still spread across the table.

The projector was still on, throwing the last slide against the wall, recovery projections, contract terms, a compromise structure that Zhang Wei had spent forty minutes building and that all three parties had looked at and walked away from anyway.

103 million yuan.

Liuxian pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose.

He was not a man who lost money easily. He had not built what he had built by absorbing losses with grace and moving on.

Every yuan that left his accounts without his consent was a personal insult, and 103 million of them in a single afternoon was the kind of insult that required a very specific, very measured response, and right now he did not have the energy for that.

He heard the door open behind him.

"Still alive." Zhang Wei said, setting a glass of water on the table near him. He was smiling, which Liuxian found irritating.

"You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?" Liuxian said, without turning around.

"I would never," Zhang Wei said, in the tone of someone who absolutely was.

He opened the folder under his arm and placed it on the table. "I had a feeling they wouldn’t come to a consensus today, so I did a little digging of my own. This way we aren’t on the short end of the stick."

Liuxian turned and looked at him.

Zhang Wei’s smile had shifted into the specific expression he wore when he had done something he was proud of and was choosing not to announce it too loudly. He tapped the folder.

"In there you’ll find some useful information. Most of the cargo was recovered — at least fifty percent. The rest is gone for good, I’m afraid." He paused. "There’s also some material on each of these companies. The kind of material that, if it became public, would fold their operations very quickly."