Derailed - Chapter 1

Yu Huan wasn’t particularly excited about this blind date.

According to her friend Cen Si, the man earned good money, had a nice personality, and would be a good match for her. Yu Huan didn’t have a date lined up for the weekend anyway, Cen Si argued. Why not give him a chance? They could at least have dinner.

The Chinese restaurant they chose was close to Yu Huan’s apartment. The short journey was one of the reasons she agreed.

*Make sure you look pretty,* her friend reminded her before she left.

Out of basic respect for the man she was meeting, Yu Huan washed her hair, put on a full face of makeup, and dressed appropriately. She reached the restaurant at exactly seven fifty-five.

Five minutes before the agreed time.

“My friend made a reservation.” She gave the hostess Cen Si’s phone number.

“One moment.” The hostess entered it into the computer, then looked up. “Table fifteen.”

Yu Huan followed her gesture to a nearby table by the window. A man sat beside it, partly hidden in the shadow of a wooden ceiling beam.

He still had a reasonably full head of hair, a clean-cut profile, and looked at least ten centimeters taller than average. Physically, he was quite presentable—far better than the assorted duds her relatives had introduced her to.

Still, she wasn’t expecting much.

For busy people who tended to stay home, blind dates were a perfectly valid way to start a new relationship. But Yu Huan didn’t expect to find someone through a system built around pairing people off.

It wasn’t a question of romance. The older she got, the more her already scant expectations faded. Falling in love was hard. Finding someone compatible was hard. Staying together was harder still. People who spent a lifetime with the person they loved were always the minority.

For a woman like her—experienced in relationships, still single, and approaching thirty—love and marriage offered far less reassurance than the balance in her bank account.

She kept those thoughts to herself.

“Mr. Zhang?” She stopped across from him with a smile.

“Miss… Yu?” He looked up. Admiration flickered in his eyes as he rose politely. “You already looked beautiful in your photograph. I didn’t expect you to be even prettier in person.”

Half flattery, half sincerity.

“Thank you.” Yu Huan wasn’t surprised, but simply smiled. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

They sat down and ordered.

Ordinarily, when a man and woman met for the first time, they talked about harmless subjects: the weather, celebrities, the news. They picked up on each other’s interests, felt out their personalities and values, and decided whether a second date was possible—or worthwhile.

Blind dates, however, came with a much more explicit agenda.

“I hear you’re a lawyer, Miss Yu. Do you get both days off at the weekend?” the man asked almost as soon as they sat down.

It was a common misconception. Most people’s idea of lawyers came from television: glamorous, highly paid people who set their own hours.

Reality was a long way from that.

“Not really,” Yu Huan explained. “When we’re busy, it’s more or less nine to nine, six days a week. We travel quite often, too.”

“That busy? Do you handle civil litigation, or…?”

“Um… I don’t do litigation.”

He looked puzzled.

“I work on non-litigation matters. Mainly legal advice for companies, reviewing their day-to-day affairs, and commercial negotiations.”

“Oh… Corporate work. Your income must be pretty high, then?”

“…It’s all right.”

An hour later, they left the restaurant. Her date walked her to the entrance of her residential complex, waved, and said goodbye.

He must have calculated the timing: she had barely reached her apartment when his text arrived.

*Home yet?*

*Yes,* she replied.

A little later, another message came.

*Get an early night.*

There was more beneath it. He had enjoyed meeting her, he said, before tactfully explaining that they probably weren’t right for each other and that he hoped they could be friends.

Yu Huan wasn’t surprised.

This wasn’t the first time.

Men looking for a wife through blind dates generally wanted someone they could feel in control of. A woman in Yu Huan’s profession dealt with wealthy and influential people every day. Add her looks, and most ordinary men struggled to imagine bringing her home as their wife.

But even as they turned her down, they offered friendship. Part of that was politeness, a way to save her face; part of it was sincere. Everyone ran into problems sooner or later. A lawyer friend who could offer advice in a crisis was always useful.

She replied in kind: *Thank you for tonight. Dinner’s on me next time we get a chance.*

Then she tossed her phone aside and headed straight into the bathroom.

After her shower, she picked it up again. His final reply read, *Don’t mention it,* accompanied by a cheerful emoji. WeChat also showed two unread messages. One was from Cen Si.

*How was the date?*

Yu Huan took a sheet mask from the fridge and called Cen Si while smoothing it over her face.

The moment the voice call connected, her friend asked eagerly how it had gone. Yu Huan gave her a brief account. After a silence, Cen Si said, “He has no taste.”

“Mm,” Yu Huan answered absently.

She didn’t mean to sound arrogant, so she left something unsaid: he might look reasonably good and earn a decent salary, but the bluntly transactional way he opened the conversation, and his somewhat muddled, unfocused attempts to talk to her, suggested that neither his intelligence nor his emotional awareness was particularly impressive.

She hadn’t been interested in him either.

“By the way, did that guy add you on WeChat?” Cen Si asked when she fell quiet.

“Who?”

“Lu… Lu something. I’ve forgotten his name too. Lu Lin’s colleague—the one you met at our wedding last time…”

Yu Huan remembered him then. She couldn’t recall his name either, but he had asked Cen Si to let her know he liked her.

“You mean that young guy? If I remember correctly, you said he was born in ’98. Isn’t that a little too much like an older woman going after a boy?”

“He’s only three years younger! That’s hardly anything. Maybe he’s the one. And even if it doesn’t lead to marriage, there’s nothing wrong with dating. Being on your own all the time isn’t good for you.”

“What’s wrong with being on my own?”

“…I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it,” Cen Si said. “Don’t you want a boyfriend?”

Yu Huan said nothing.

Her friend’s voice suddenly dropped. “Going too long without sex can mess with your hormones, you know.”

For a moment, Yu Huan didn’t know how to answer.

She didn’t have a boyfriend. That didn’t mean she wasn’t having sex.

Right now, for instance, another unread message lay on her lit phone screen. It had arrived twenty minutes earlier.

*I’ve landed. I’ll be at your place around eleven.*