Chapter 8: Exclusive
Below a three-story restaurant housed in a residential building with a distinctly old Shanghai character, near the university town, sat a Bentley that anyone with a discerning eye would recognize as the one-of-a-kind model from the 2001 auto show. Above its parking space, in a private room beside a third-floor window of the restaurant with its half-European, dusty-gray old Shanghai walls, Su Can held a cup of tea and gazed out toward the Nanjing University campus. Shaded by trees, it had a uniquely tranquil beauty in the light.
Across from him sat Lin Guangdong, wearing a pale blue shirt beneath a black vest. Beside him was a young woman. Anyone from Su Can's original era would probably have found this woman, Ning Yao, more or less familiar. Perhaps they had seen her online, in the press, or in some book or magazine. She was a model, though Su Can could no longer remember exactly how she had made her debut.
So when he saw her enter in a rather formal skirt suit, arm in arm with Lin Guangdong, Su Can was visibly surprised.
For Su Can to remember her, she could not have been a complete unknown in the future. Still, she had probably only been a second- or third-tier figure in the industry. Even so, it gave him a jolt.
It was a peculiar feeling. Su Can thought that if he had run into Jay Chou, Zhang Ziyi, or others before their debuts a couple of years earlier, looking at people who might seem slightly timid now but would later move among all kinds of cameras and media outlets, that peculiar feeling might have been even stronger. It was a sense of superiority, as though he controlled time and space. He had become the first butterfly