Chương 28: Chapter 27.5 — Xu Fang's Date

The restaurant Xu Fang had chosen was not the restaurant he'd immediately planned on. The original restaurant — a Sichuan place on Renmin Road that he'd been to twice before — had a two-hour wait when he arrived, which he discovered ten minutes before she was due to show up. He'd stood outside it for a moment, assessing his options, and walked briskly in the direction of somewhere else.

Somewhere else turned out to be a Japanese place a couple of streets over that he'd never been to, but had a menu posted outside that, upon rapid inspection, contained food which sounded good enough for a first date. He got a table for two. He texted: Change of plan — I've found somewhere better. I'll send the address. She replied with a thumbs up. He put his phone away and looked at the interior of the restaurant he'd never been to, which was fine. It had paper lanterns in red and white and the tables were clean.

Other diners appeared to be having acceptable experiences. The waiter came and asked if he wanted to order drinks.

"Two waters," said Xu Fang.

Fang Ruoyan arrived about fifteen minutes later. He had seen her profile photos approximately forty times over the past two weeks of messaging, which he'd thought would mean he was prepared to meet her. He was not fully prepared. The profile photos had done an accurate job — she looked like herself, which was more than Xu Fang could say about his own profile, but she was significantly more dressed up for the occasion than he was. She was a primary school teacher, which she'd told him early in the conversation.

She was thirty-one and had short hair. There was some dried paint on her wrist which he was not sure she had yet noticed, as it blended decently into her skin. Xu Fang decided not to mention it.

"This place?" she said, looking at the interior.

"Good or bad?"

"I don't know yet," she said, sitting down.

"I like the lanterns, I suppose."

"The original place had a two-hour wait."

"So this is the backup plan."

"This is an improvement. I've decided." She looked at him for a moment and picked up the menu.

He asked her what she was having and she said "The salmon thing" pointing at it, and he decided to order the same thing out of panic. When the waiter asked what they would like, he froze up, said "The salmon thing for me" instead of "for her" and simply had to go with the flow there. The water arrived and she poured her own glass.

"How was school?" he asked. She looked up from the menu, which she was still reading even though they'd already ordered.

"Today?"

"This week, I suppose."

"Exhausting," she said, somehow without complaint despite her complaint.

"We're doing a segment on local animals and one of the kids brought in something he said was a frog. It was not a frog."

"What was it?"

"We're not entirely sure, but he shouldn't have brought it into the classroom!" she laughed. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"He must have been having fun."

"He's been like this all term. Last month it was a feather he said was from a phoenix. The month before that, a rock he was convinced had a face."

"Did the rock have a face?" She considered this honestly and showed a picture from her phone.

"A bit, yes," she admitted.

"A bit? I know this guy!" he laughed back.

"So what have you been up to?"

"Just been running the shop," he said off-hand, as though there was nothing interesting about it.

"You say that, but you haven't told me what kind of shop it is!"

"Antiques, mostly. Furniture and ceramics." He picked up his glass.

"It was my father's, but, once he retired, I took it over. It wasn't the original plan, but it turned out I was better at it than the original plan anyway."

"What was the original plan?"

"Architecture." She turned her head slightly.

"Do those things feel connected to you? Antiques and architecture?" He thought about it for a moment.

"More than you'd expect. Both of them are about understanding why something was built the way it was, or what problem it was solving. Why someone stood in a specific spot and decided the ceiling should be x tall and not y. With antiques, it's just… smaller."

"Do you like it?" she asked.

"Running the shop?"

"Well, what else would I mean?"

"Most days," he said with complete honesty.

"Some days it's inventory and tax documentation or a customer who's convinced a reproduction or fake is an original and refuses to believe otherwise. But most days I like it a lot."

"What's a good day like?" He considered.

"Someone comes in," he said, "not knowing exactly what they want. They just walk around and they're not looking, sort of just being in the space. And then they stop in front of something and something happens in their face, be it excitement or even annoyance. They didn't know they were looking for that specific thing, but it was the right thing, and they know it is. Those are the good days."

"That happens in teaching too," she said.

"Obviously not with furniture or anything else, but the same not-looking and stopping. It's usually with reading. We have independent reading time on Fridays and most of them spend it looking at the pictures or staring out the window, But sometimes one of them picks up something and goes quiet."

"Picks up what?"

"Whatever it is. That's a good day." The food arrived.

The salmon thing was, as it turned out, quite good. Xu Fang noted this without saying so, considering whether he should bookmark this place for a future date if this one didn't pan out so well. His panicked alternative venue provided acceptable food and decent atmosphere for conversation. They talked about her school's planning process, which was more complex than any primary school planning process should reasonably be, and which brought up feelings of frustration within her. He pivoted immediately.

He talked about a dining table he'd acquired the previous month that he was fairly certain was of some local historical significance, which he was trying to verify with the right documentation.

"What do you do when you can't verify it?" she asked"It's a good table regardless. It'll sell eventually."

"Does it bother you? Not knowing where it came from?"

"Less than it used to. The table's still the same table. The not-knowing is a problem I have, not a problem the table has. She smiled at this and continued with her meal. Xu Fang picked up his chopsticks and said nothing.

The dessert menu appeared at some point, which resulted in Ruoyan saying she really shouldn't get something. He agreed, which raised her eyebrows, and he realised exactly what he had been implying. Xu Fang clarified that he meant he shouldn't have dessert either, but that he was going to order something anyway. He got the mango thing because she pointed at it and said it was usually good in Japanese places, and she got herself a lychee sorbet.

After some more minutes of conversation, during which dessert arrived in front of them and was now half-eaten, she suddenly said something.

"This was a good pivot," she said. He looked round at the paper lanterns and the tables around them that were now emptying more. They had stayed for much longer than expected, engrossed in conversation. She paid for her half before he could do anything about it, which he didn't comment on just yet. He simply said that he would be treating her out next time, which she agreed to. She walked in the direction of the train station, and he walked in the other direction, down to where he'd parked.

He spent the first few minutes of the journey thinking about nothing in particular, aiming to clear his mind, and the remaining few minutes thinking about a primary school teacher with paint on her wrist. When he got back home, he texted Lin Che. don't tell me to ask questions. I know how to ask questions. He got a thumbs up back, to which he smiled.