In the smoke-laden haze of a dimly lit Shanghai café, Liu Ze found himself entranced by Helena, a woman whose laughter was like the sound of autumn leaves rustling in a gentle breeze. They sat across from each other, two strangers rattling through the awkward first meeting that Tinder so nonchalantly prescribed them. The café, with its peeling wallpaper and the faint hum of forgotten jazz, played host to an evening painted in shades of romantic serendipity.
“So, do you believe in fate?” Helena asked, her eyes twinkling like the city lights filtering through the window.
Liu Ze contemplated the question, picking at the corner of the napkin resting under his coffee cup. “I believe in useful napkins,” he quipped, brandishing the paper with a small flourish etched upon its surface. It read: ‘在错误的时间做正确的事也许是有益的.’ Some pseudo-profound wisdom presumably lost in translation from the server’s philosophical aspirations.
Helena chuckled, a sound both melodious and mocking. “Napkins of destiny, huh? That might be the most poetic nonsense I’ve encountered today.”
“Well,” Liu Ze shrugged, his humor dancing on the edge of melancholy, “in the grand screenplay of life, we’re just extras with our own messy lines, aren’t we?”
The king of black comedy would have admired this exchange. Life’s fickle derision, its absurd inevitabilities that mirrored some of Wang Xiaobo’s sardonic undertones, played out like a scene faded yet vivid in its contradictions.
Helena, playing her role to the hilt, leaned forward conspiratorially. “So, Liu Ze, what’s your destiny according to this café’s divination?”
He smirked, turning the napkin over as though it were an ancient script—his very own oracle of Delphi. “Apparently, the best course of action during a misstep is to pretend it was intentional.”
Her eyes narrowed playfully. “And what misstep have you encountered today?”
“Besides underestimating a coffee date with someone who promises to outwit me with every sentence?” Liu Ze said, words wrapped in mock anguish. “And meeting someone who perhaps makes me question my belief—or lack thereof—in cosmic plans.”
Their conversation, a dance of wit and earnestness, wove through topics as unpredictably as the substances of dreams. In each quip lay a question, behind every smile a hint of longing. As they spoke, the air around them shimmered with the inexorable charm of two parallel lives improbably intertwining.
Closing time approached, the café’s interior growing more shadow than light. Liu Ze glanced at his watch, a gesture he immediately regretted for its cliché implications.
“So, fate, chance, or something daringly pedestrian—how do you see this ending, Helena?”
Her gaze, steady under the soft glow of flickering candles, faltered then softened. “Perhaps it doesn’t matter how it ends. Maybe it’s enough that, in this moment, we’ve made sense of the randomness.”
In the end, it was neither fate nor decisive choice that marked their parting, but rather a mutual understanding—a silent agreement in a universe absurdly vast, absurdly indifferent. They left the café, hands brushing briefly, the useful napkin left discarded, its purpose fulfilled.
As Liu Ze walked down the cobbled streets, his heart resonated with an amused resignation. He could only laugh at this fate’s inexplicable delight—a black humor at its finest, written on the wings of a napkin. Whether a beginning, middle, or ending, it was a story that only made sense if you didn’t try too hard to understand it.
Thus, Liu Ze accepted his role in the script, complete with its fate-filled ironies and romance of profound nonsense. In the grand tapestry, perhaps that’s all that ever mattered.