After returning to Fog City, Xie Zhitan moved back into the apartment he had lived in as a student.
His landlady was a woman from Y Country in her sixties.
She was delighted to see Xie Zhitan again and told him that the tenant in that apartment had moved out not long ago.
After spending half a day cleaning, Xie Zhitan walked to a nearby Chinese supermarket to buy groceries and necessities.
In China, a city could change beyond recognition in just a few months, let alone a few years.
But Fog City seemed exactly as it had been when he graduated and left, without the slightest change.
It was already winter here. He wore a thick overcoat and a gray scarf around his neck.
Yet neither could hide his striking figure or his refined, handsome face.
It was past eight in the evening, and most of the people in the Chinese supermarket were international students picking out discounted vegetables.
Before long, photos of the gorgeous man spotted at the Chinese supermarket in the Sixth District began appearing in all the international student group chats.
It wasn't the season for new students to arrive, and when he checked out, he spoke the language of Y Country fluently, without an accent.
Everyone in the chats speculated that he was a local, Asian on the outside but Western on the inside.
Just a handful of photos, some showing only a few blurry glimpses of his profile, were enough to leave the men and women in the chats swooning.
Xie Zhitan knew nothing about any of this. Carrying two large bags of groceries, he went up to the seventeenth floor.
As he passed 1701, he wasn't sure whether he was imagining it, but the doormat seemed to have shifted.
Beep.
The fingerprint lock