At twenty-seven, Tang Mu gets promoted. The deputy general manager takes her to meet the new boss, who has just been parachuted in.
He reaches out to shake her hand. Her eyes flick over the red mole on his wrist, and she gives him a professional smile. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Mu.”
They run into each other in the elevator after work.
A long silence.
“I drove here...”
“I took the subway...”
Like new colleagues making small talk, they part and go their separate ways.
Tang Mu squeezes onto the subway, where the evening rush knocks one of her Bluetooth earbuds loose.
As the carriage sways, she hears a familiar voice announce once again:
“Next stop, Tin Hau.”
She drifts back to those nights when she squeezed onto the subway at Tin Hau station and went to the waterfront hotel by Victoria Harbour.
He would slowly put on his white shirt, the red mole on his wrist eye-catching and alluring.
He'd said a fortune-teller told him that because of that mole, he'd fall into a woman's hands in this lifetime.
“Tang Mu, how ridiculous is that?”
He'd rested his chin on his hand and laughed, as if it had nothing to do with him.
She puts her Bluetooth earbud back in.
It turns out five autumns have passed since she last saw Mu Si'an, after they parted beneath the fireworks over Victoria Harbour.
She leaves the subway station, with a stretch of road still to walk before she gets home.
A car is parked not far from the entrance.
Mu Si'an, who pretended not to know her during the day, sees her and lifts his eyes, stubbing out his cigarette. “Get in.”
She doesn't move.
He sighs inwardly, remembering how coldly she left him five years ago. Helplessly, he says, “Mumu, it's raining.”
A reunion after years apart / winning back his wife / workplace romance
Theme: Pay attention to women in the workplace
