I have to accept this, it is my fate … The journey to Shanghai and back took a month. The reason it took so long was that I wanted to avoid having to see Huang Yiyi again. I was afraid to see her, afraid to see her great big eyes watching me, whether in love or in hate. It made me very unhappy to see her like that, so I kept delaying my return, thinking that she would have left and gone back to Beijing. We were like two stars whose paths had crossed by chance, brought together from far across the universe only to separate again, and all the heartache and pain would be lost as we continued our trajectories. However, when I got back, I discovered that contrary to every expectation, Huang Yiyi was still there. She had been terribly ill but was better now, and the Party had already appointed her as a section head in the cryptography division, replacing Comrade Chen. Chen had refused the promotion he was offered to become acting Deputy Director: he just wanted to be a cryptographer and not have to bother with what was going on outside his own four walls. It was what he really enjoyed, and he was happy. Eventually Chen became a very successful cryptog-rapher, and I think that this had a lot to do with the way that Huang Yiyi had needled him. Of course that happened much later.

When I heard that Huang Yiyi hadn’t left, I was pleased but surprised, and that evening I couldn’t stop myself from going to see her. She wasn’t particularly friendly. I gave her some specialities that I had brought back from Shanghai. Just a few snacks, but she wouldn’t accept them. She said, ‘Give them to someone else instead.’

I was amazed and asked her, ‘Yiyi, what’s the matter?’

‘Deputy Director An, please don’t call me that. You can call me Huang Yiyi or Bureau Chief Huang, either will do, just don’t call me Yiyi again.’

I was stunned.

She said very calmly, ‘In future I want us just to keep to normal relations between a boss and an employee, nothing else.’

I was silent for a long time, and then I said, ‘You hate me.’

She shook her head. ‘No, but I think that this is better.’

I looked her in the eyes and said, ‘I heard that you have been really ill.’

She avoided my gaze, and said lightly, ‘Yes, I was in hospital for a couple of weeks.’

I asked her what was wrong with her, and she said that she hadn’t really been ill, just overtired to the point where she hadn’t felt like getting out of bed, and if she did she felt dizzy. I said she had been overworking. She smiled bitterly. ‘Yes, I was tired, really, really tired. If there is nothing else … ?’ She was trying to get rid of me.