A month later, Wand Group sent a formal invitation: inviting the Hongtu project team to Wand Tower for a pre-bidding scheme rehearsal.
Wanting led the team to the 68th floor again. This time it was a formal business occasion. The conference room was very large. Five people came from Wand's review committee. Wanting stood in front of the projection screen and began presenting the scheme. She spoke for forty minutes. No reading from a script. No flipping through PPT. All the data was in her head.
When she finished, an elderly man with white hair in the review committee suddenly spoke up.
"Director Su, you mentioned the concept of 'community temperature' in your scheme. Could you elaborate?"
Wanting looked at him. Shen Zhengye. She had looked up Wand's materials and knew who was sitting across from her. But facing him directly for the first time, her heart still skipped a beat. Not because he was the richest man in the province. It was because of his gaze. When those eyes looked at her, the expression was very gentle, carrying something she couldn't quite put into words. It wasn't the look of someone evaluating a bidder's project manager.
"Community temperature is not a hardware metric."
She steadied her mind and continued.
"It is whether the people living here want to stay. Among the talent that has left the east district, sixty percent didn't leave because of salary. They left because they lacked a sense of belonging. We conducted research."
She told several true stories she had recorded while stationed at the talent market. That engineer who returned from Guangzhou. That young woman who graduated with a master's degree. That older sister who had done quality inspection for eight years.
Shen Zhengye nodded after listening and didn't ask anything further.
After the rehearsal, Sister Zhou took them on a tour of the office area. Passing the end of the 68th-floor corridor, a door stood open. Wanting's footsteps paused again. Inside the door was a pink room. Pink gauze curtains. A pink carpet. A small princess bed. A cloth rabbit sat on the headboard. A small desk. A small chair. Traces of crayon drawings on the desktop. Fairy tale picture books on the bookshelf, the book spines all frayed.
A child's room. But not like an ordinary child's room. Every single item in here was very old. The gauze curtains were washed until white. The carpet corners were frayed. The left ear of the cloth rabbit had two stitches on it, the needlework fine and dense. But all the items were arranged neatly, as if someone tidied up every day.
"What is this room?"
Sister Zhou's expression softened.
"Shen's daughter's room when she was little. Hasn't been touched in over twenty years."
Wanting stood at the door, unable to take a single step forward.
That cloth rabbit. Pink. A patch on the left ear. She subconsciously raised her hand and touched her left ear. On her earlobe was a very faint scar. Her adoptive mother said she had fallen while chasing chickens in the yard when she was little. She didn't remember.
"Director Su?"
"Sorry."
Wanting withdrew her hand.
"I just thought this room was... very special."
On the way back, she sat in the car without speaking. Zhang Lei thought she was just tired from the rehearsal and handed her a bottle of water. She accepted it but held it without drinking. She was thinking about that pink room. Thinking about that rabbit with the sewn ear. Thinking about that scar on her left earlobe that she didn't remember getting. Thinking about that dream she had had since childhood. A very large tree. Under the tree, someone was calling out a name. Each time she came within inches of hearing it clearly, then woke up.
That name wasn't Cuiting. Wasn't Wanting. What was it? She didn't know.
She took out her phone and opened the search engine. Typed four characters: Shen Nian'an missing.
The first search result was an old news article from over twenty years ago, published in Nancheng Evening News: Four-year-old girl missing from Cuihu Garden in Nancheng, family offers 200,000 yuan reward for information. The news article had a blurry black-and-white photo. The little girl had two small braids and was smiling with curved eyes.
Su Wanting stared at that photo. Her heart beat very fast. She enlarged the photo and examined it carefully. Round face. Large eyes. The left corner of the mouth had a shallow dimple when smiling. She touched her own face. Left corner of the mouth. A dimle she had had since childhood.