Reborn in Tokyo: From Heiress to Global Tycoon

Chapter 313 Mirror

The two people started chatting across an octagonal table.

They were talking nonsense.

"These trees in the yard are all Osmanthus fragrans." Chen Zhiyuan turned his head and pointed to the small courtyard outside the half-open wooden window. "There are four common types of Osmanthus fragrans in Shenhai—Golden Osmanthus, Silver Osmanthus, Red Osmanthus, and Four Seasons Osmanthus. Golden Osmanthus has the yellowest petals and the strongest fragrance. When it blooms at the end of September every year, the whole alley is filled with sweetness."

Satsuki turned her gaze to the window. The night breeze carried in a delicate floral fragrance, as gentle as a thin veil. The branches were adorned with tiny golden blossoms, each one the size of a grain of rice, which, in the glow of the old-fashioned wall lamp under the eaves, looked as if someone had painstakingly dotted them one by one with an extremely fine brush.

"Does Tokyo have this kind of tree?" Satsuki tilted her head.

"It's rare to see this in downtown Tokyo. But there's a patch of it in Arashiyama, Kyoto." Chen Zhiyuan poured himself another half cup of tea. "It's at the end of the Sagano Bamboo Grove Path. It's not very big, nothing like the ones that any random family around here grows in their yard."

"I've been to Arashiyama!" Satsuki put down her chopsticks, her tone brimming with excitement. "In autumn, the mountains are ablaze with red leaves. Looking down from Togetsukyo Bridge, the whole mountain looks like it's on fire! It's so beautiful!"

"Hongye, Shenhai really can't compare." Chen Zhiyuan shook his head, his tone carrying a hint of regret and dissatisfaction. "But if Miss had come two weeks later, it would have been better. The plane tree leaves on these streets in the French Concession had all turned yellow. When the wind blew them down, they rustled underfoot, and the ground was covered in gold."

"Really?" Satsuki's chopsticks hovered in mid-air, holding a slice of candied lotus root. "Then I'll come again next autumn."

"You're welcome anytime." Chen Zhiyuan smiled and pointed out the window. "Actually, you don't need to wait for the plane tree leaves to turn yellow. Look, Miss—walk two blocks ahead on Yongfu Road, and on your left there's a three-story gray brick house with its iron gate always closed. Back in the 1930s, that was one of Du Yuesheng's outer residences."

Satsuki's eyes widened slightly. "It's that..." She drew a blurry circle in the air with the tip of her chopsticks, "that very famous Shanghai tycoon?"

"Yes, that's him." Chen Zhiyuan placed a piece of sweet lotus root with osmanthus on her plate. "The leader of the Green Gang, the underground emperor of Shanghai. At his peak, half of the houses in the French Concession belonged to the Du family. However, his most glorious period on this street lasted only a little over ten years. He fled to Hong Kong in 1949 and died far from home three years later."

"What about his house?"

"They've been nationalized." Chen Zhiyuan picked up his teacup. "Some have been converted into government dormitories, some into schools, and a few are still empty, with iron padlocks hanging on the doors, the rust thicker than the padlocks themselves."

Gaoyue put the piece of candied lotus root into her mouth, chewed it twice, swallowed it, and then asked another question.

"What about the Song sisters? I heard they also have an old house in Shanghai?"

"Yes. Soong Ching-ling's former residence is on Huaihai Road. It's the best-preserved one and is still open to the public. It's a 20-minute walk from here." Chen Zhiyuan put down his teacup and drew a route on the table with his finger. "Soong Mei-ling also lived nearby in her early years. However, she later followed Mr. Chiang Kai-shek to Nanjing, Taipei, and New York, and the houses here were gradually forgotten."

"Can we go take a look tomorrow?" Satsuki rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. "The one with Soong Ching-ling."

"Of course. I'll have someone arrange it."

The second hot dish was served.

Sweet and sour pork ribs.

The sauce is a deep, glossy brown, coated with an amber-colored gravy, and its sweet and sour aroma wafts out as soon as the lid is lifted. The ribs are chopped into pieces the size of mahjong tiles and neatly arranged in a deep blue-and-white porcelain dish, each piece with a slightly caramelized hue on its cross-section.

Satsuki's gaze lingered on the plate of spare ribs for a moment.

Chen Zhiyuan noticed the subtle pause. He didn't speak, but simply raised his hand and waved towards the kitchen.

The cook was brought out. She was a slightly plump woman in her fifties from Shenhai, wearing a white apron. She wiped her hands on a towel at her waist before walking to the table. Her Mandarin had a heavy local accent, with all the retroflex consonants on her tongue flattened out.

"The key to this sweet and sour pork ribs lies in three things—vinegar, sugar, and the cooking time," the auntie said, holding up three fingers and counting them off one by one, her eyes constantly glancing at the pretty foreign girl. "The ratio of Zhenjiang vinegar to granulated sugar is three to two, not more and not less. After removing the fishy smell with cooking wine, fry it first until the outer shell is hard and crispy. Then add the sweet and sour sauce and reduce it over high heat."

She paused for a moment, then made a stirring motion with her fingers in the air.

"When reducing the sauce at the end, keep stirring with chopsticks. When you insert the chopsticks in and pull them out, and they can be pulled into a thin thread, that's right. Turn off the heat, plate it, and don't wait even a second longer."

Satsuki listened attentively. She used a silver spoon to scoop some sauce from the bottom of the plate and put it in her mouth.

It starts with sweetness and finishes with sourness. A very thin layer of caramel crust breaks on the tip of the tongue, followed by the lingering aroma of vinegar, which makes a soft curve in the mouth.

"tasty."

Gaoyue put down the silver spoon, her tone resolute.

"It tastes much better than the one at the Peace Hotel yesterday."

The chef smiled so hard his eyes narrowed into slits, and said "Thank you" three times in a row. He rubbed his hands on the towel twice, then Chen Zhiyuan jokingly shooed him back to the kitchen.

After three dishes, the atmosphere had relaxed to the point where it resembled a typical meal hosted by an elder for a younger person.

Chen Zhiyuan picked up a piece of braised pork and placed it on Gaoyue's plate.

"By the way, Miss."

His tone was casual, as if he had just remembered something trivial.

"Yesterday, on that earthen embankment at B-07, you pointed to that cargo ship on the river and asked, 'Can a ship that big sail here?'"

He smiled.

"I found it quite amusing at the time. Usually, tourists who see a big ship will at most take a picture as a souvenir. But this young lady was different; she was concerned about whether it could 'sail this far.' The way she asked it was as if she was confirming whether the waterway was deep enough."

Satsuki bit the tip of her chopsticks and blinked.

"That boat is so big!" Her eyes sparkled. "I was thinking, I wish my yacht could go that far. Endo said the new yacht has a deep draft, and I'm worried about how embarrassing it would be if it ran aground."

Chen Zhiyuan nodded without asking any further questions. He slowly picked up the serving chopsticks and placed a dish of stir-fried eel in hot oil on her plate.

"If Miss likes sweet things, there's a Nanxiang Steamed Bun Shop near the Old City God Temple that specializes in crab roe xiaolongbao. The skin is so thin it's translucent. Take a small bite, suck out the soup first, then dip it in ginger and vinegar—one bite and the whole autumn is worth it."

"Crab roe?" Satsuki paused for a moment with her chopsticks.

"Yes, the roe and crab fat from hairy crabs are extracted and mixed into the minced meat. It's in season right now. There's also a stall next door selling sweet rice balls in fermented osmanthus wine; the small rice balls are cooked in the osmanthus-scented fermented osmanthus wine, sweet but not greasy."

Satsuki tilted her head, seemingly seriously considering whether to add this place to tomorrow's itinerary.

"Yu Garden is right next to the City God Temple." Chen Zhiyuan took a step forward in the conversation. "There's a Nine-Turn Bridge in the garden. If Miss goes there, she must walk across it. It has nine bends, and the angle of each bend is different. It's said to be over four hundred years old, built during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty by a merchant surnamed Pan. It took more than twenty years to complete the construction of this garden."

"Twenty-odd years?" Satsuki tapped the rim of the dish lightly with a silver spoon. "It's slower than the construction of our building in Ginza."

Chen Zhiyuan chuckled at that remark. He shook his head and tilted the teapot over to refill her cup by half.

"Back then, there was no reinforced concrete. Transporting a Taihu stone from Suzhou to Shanghai would take half a month just by water."

"Speaking of which," Chen Zhiyuan gently placed the teacup back on the table, "Miss was flipping through that picture book in the conference room this morning, and I saw it when I was tidying up later."

His speaking speed remained unchanged, and he even had a hint of a smile in his voice.

"I turned to the page about Lujiazui and paused for a long time. Is Miss interested in that area? It's still mostly empty land there, but the planning map looks quite impressive."

Satsuki stirred the almond milk in front of her with a silver spoon.

"The skyline rendering in the photo is really nice." She tilted her head. "The glass curtain walls of those tall buildings are painted so shiny, like building blocks."

Her lips curled up, and her tone was light and cheerful.

Chen Zhiyuan was pouring tea with a smile.

Satsuki was also smiling as she drank her tea.

The two people were laughing for completely different reasons.

The dessert was served. French crème brûlée, topped with a layer of osmanthus fragrans.

Satsuki used a small silver spoon to break up the caramel powder and scooped up a spoonful.

"It's a little bit inferior to the ones in Paris," she commented, tapping the pudding surface with her silver spoon again, turning over a piece of caramel crust that hadn't completely crumbled to examine it. "The caramel isn't crisp enough. The temperature should be twenty degrees higher, and the baking time ten seconds shorter. The surface should be like glass; it should make a 'click' sound when you tap it with the spoon."

She put the caramel crumb in her mouth, chewed it a couple of times, and then added a comment.

"However, the osmanthus is a plus. Paris doesn't have it."

Chen Zhiyuan said with a smile, "Next time, we'll have the chef make improvements."

He took the napkin off his knees, folded it, and placed it next to the plate.

Then his hand stopped.

The smile faded from her face. Like the tide, it receded quietly and imperceptibly into a place below the corners of her mouth.

The private room suddenly became very quiet.

The delicate chirping of autumn insects drifted from the direction of the garden. The fragrance of osmanthus blossoms was carried in by the night breeze, lingering between the two.

"Young Miss".

Chen Zhiyuan's voice was not loud.

"This morning, you went up to Mr. Endo and said something to him."

His gaze calmly fell on Satsuki's face.

"His expression changed after he finished speaking. Then you left."

It paused for a second.

"I've been thinking about this all afternoon. You didn't leave because you thought the meeting room was stuffy."

He pushed the teacup aside and placed his hands, folded, on the table.

"You feel that if Mr. Endo continues to press on with the 18,000 route, he won't get what you really want."

"What...is what you really want?"

A single osmanthus petal fell onto the windowsill.

Satsuki stopped stirring the crème brûlée with the silver spoon in her hand.

The spoon was dipped in semi-solidified caramel crumbs, reflecting a warm yellow light.

two seconds.

three seconds.

The only sounds in the private room were the ticking of the clock in the corner and the low chirping of unknown autumn insects in the garden.

Then she laughed.

But this time, a nerve in Chen Zhiyuan's spine twitched slightly.

Because this smile was unlike any other smile he had seen in the past two days.

The difference was minimal. The curve of her lips was even shallower than ever before—her eyes weren't crescent-shaped like in the photos, her lips weren't slightly pouting when she was being affectionate with Endo, and there wasn't the gleam in her eyes when she was amused by "Wow, the ship is so big!"

Looking back now, those smiles all seem to be of the same kind.

a mirror.

A mirror, exquisitely polished, used to reflect the image of the "naive young lady." Adjusted at different angles to different people, it reflects different images—a coquettishness to Endo, trust to Fujita, and curiosity and harmlessness to Chen Zhiyuan.

And now.

The mirror has been put away.

Satsuki gently removed the silver spoon from the pudding and placed it lightly on the edge of the plate. Her posture changed from leaning back in the chair to leaning slightly forward. The movement was extremely small, only about two or three centimeters.

But those two or three centimeters made Chen Zhiyuan, sitting across the table, feel that the person in front of him had shifted his center of gravity.

Her eyes were still the same, with black pupils and softly curved corners.

But that layer that surfaced deep within my pupils...

Chen Zhiyuan couldn't say what it was.

But his right hand, which was gripping the table, tightened unconsciously.

At the same moment, a thought that had been lingering in his mind for a whole day and a half finally clicked into place.

really.

He looked at the fifteen or sixteen-year-old face opposite him.

Chen Zhiyuan straightened up from the back of his chair, took his hands off the table, and placed them neatly on his knees.