Chapter 8: A Chance Encounter

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A few months later, at a café in a European airport.

“At that moment, I was on a small plane flying over a lake in Maasai Mara National Park when the engine failed, and the plane plunged straight into the lake. The pilot swam away unscathed, but there I was, upside down, half-submerged in freezing water.

Then, just as I unbuckled my seatbelt and climbed onto the plane’s frame, a fully grown male crocodile started swimming toward me.”

Richie leaned on his chair, exhaling a half-smoke ring, ensuring his handsome profile cut the coolest silhouette in the haze while his peripheral gaze discreetly admired the long legs under the table.

“Oh my god! What did you do?” The girl gasped, her eyes wide with exaggerated alarm that made her chest heave beneath her tank top, enticing like two restless rabbits stirring the onlookers’ curiosity.

Richie leaned in slightly, his cigarette hand propping up his chin, his half-lidded eyes revealing a mature man’s mischievous charm and depth. “As a professional photographer, I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime shot. So, I pulled out my camera from the waterproof bag without hesitation…”

Richie leaned in slightly, propping his chin on the hand holding his cigarette, his half-closed eyes revealing the mischievous depth of a seasoned man. “As a professional photographer, I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime shot.”

“So, I took out my camera from the waterproof bag and pressed the shutter without hesitation. The crocodile’s jaws were less than half a meter from me, and just as it was about to grab my pant leg, I swung the tripod and wedged it in its mouth, quickly swimming to shore, and then…”

He paused intentionally, just like a fisherman who waits for the bobber to settle before reeling in the line. Patience ensures the fish is fully hooked.

“And then what?” The girl’s slightly parted lips, soft and red, showed her surprise and innocence, swallowing his bait whole.

Richie smirked, took a slow sip of coffee, and finally continued, “Then, that crocodile close-up became the cover of Explorer’s Africa special edition.”

“Wow, that’s amazing! Incredible!” She batted her smoky, slightly dramatic eyes, her admiration spilling over, unhindered by the dark makeup around her eyes.

Richie held her hand gently, looking into her eyes. “No, compared to this, your beauty is far more unbelievable.”

His voice, low and enchanting, was enough to make any woman surrender, and for a young college girl, the allure of a rugged, experienced photographer was as irresistible as Dior’s Poison perfume.

“Richie…” She blushed, her face hinting at words she couldn’t quite say as her white teeth grazed her lower lip in an unintentional tease.

“Love her? Bite her.” A syrupy sweet female voice sounded right on cue, coming from a nearby TV airing a lipstick ad. The glamorous model pouted her glossy lips, sending pink hearts flying across the screen, filling it with sparkling charm.

Tang Mi, sitting behind Richie, suppressed a smirk as she put away her iPad. She checked her watch—less than 40 minutes until boarding time—and glanced at the couple in front of her, already lost in each other’s gaze. She decided to do something thankless: “breaking up the lovebirds.”

“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt,” Tang Mi said, stepping up to the two. She leaned forward, hugging her iPad, and looked cautiously at Richie, like a careful assistant.

“Who’s she?” the girl asked, looking up in surprise.

“Oh, she’s my photography assistant. Tang, can’t you see I’m busy?” Richie replied arrogantly, his gaze sharp but slightly unsure, glancing quickly at Tang Mi and then looking away.

Tang Mi played along, bowing her head slightly and replying in a low voice, “I understand, but the International Wildlife Protection Alliance is still waiting for you. Your photos and report on the African bush meat trade have drawn significant attention from the UN. If you don’t attend this meeting, the Alliance may lose funding for their primate protection project.”

She finished with a delicate wink, a subtle but piercing look.

“Uh, well…,” Richie looked uncomfortably between Tang Mi and the girl.

“Oh no, Richie, you should go! For the sake of those poor little animals—you’re the only one who can save them!” The girl clasped his hand tightly, pressing it against her chest, as if he were a superhero destined to save the world.

“Okay, sweetheart. What’s your phone number?” Richie nodded with tragic resolve.

His dramatic expression reminded Tang Mi of Robert Kincaid’s line to Francesca in The Bridges of Madison County: “Such certainty comes only once in a lifetime.” But Richie wasn’t Kincaid (only a photography assistant), and the girl wasn’t an unfulfilled wife. Their romance wasn’t a lifetime love; it was just a fleeting encounter of heightened hormones during a trip.

Real life and movies are worlds apart. Tang Mi turned away, sighing, unwilling to watch the couple who had known each other for less than an hour but seemed almost inseparable.

As they passed through the security checkpoint, Richie muttered, watching Tang Mi’s shoulders shake as she stifled laughter, “Go ahead and laugh. I know you’ve been holding it in.”

Tang Mi burst out laughing, tossing her head back, letting the sunlight streaming through the glass wash over her face. She felt happy—a kind of simple, genuine happiness, like wearing a floral dress in spring, hot chocolate in winter, or fireworks on a summer night. It was the first time in two months that she’d laughed so freely. Six months of fieldwork had left her exhausted, and a recent “incident” still sometimes jolted her awake from her sleep.

But it was all behind her now. She’d delivered the photos to the magazine, and the selection and editing had gone smoothly. Now, she felt like a small boat returning to port—ready to dive fully into the warm, comforting harbor of her vacation.

“Come on, she was quite the beauty, wasn’t she? That energetic figure, those long legs… Heaven knows, it’s been six months since I last touched a woman for the sake of work!” Richie gestured, tracing the outline of the girl’s curves with his boarding pass.

“There are plenty of bikini-clad beauties waiting for you on the beaches of Hawaii, so don’t rush it. Just now, you looked nothing like the ladies’ man you think you are—more like a rookie on his first date.” Tang Mi snatched the boarding pass from his hand and handed it to the flight attendant. After the scanner beeped, she began to consider what gift to bring her adoptive father. A rosewood carving from Kenya? Sherry from Spain or silverware from Indonesia? Maybe she’d just bring them all.

They hadn’t seen each other in over six months, and she missed his gentle gray eyes, his specially brewed Sumatran coffee, and the soft oak scent that filled his study—a warm and peaceful scent that reminded her of home.

“Laugh all you want! But it’s good to see you smiling like this. When you went missing for two days and a night, the police couldn’t find anything but spent shells and a memory card wedged under a rock. When I finally got you out of that police station in Z Country, you looked like hell. Thank God things are back to normal now.” Richie fastened his seatbelt, his gaze drifting over Tang Mi’s arm under her T-shirt. The skin had a faint scar from a healed wound, a small mark that couldn’t be fully erased—a subtle reminder of that unpleasant ordeal.

To this day, he still couldn’t forget the way he had found Tang Mi at the police station in Z Country. She was soaked, wrapped in a blanket, quietly leaning on a bench. Her pale face lifted from her mud-streaked hair, and she gave him a reassuring smile.

Other than that, she seemed just as usual, but he sensed something was off. Her eyes were dark and heavy, like black glass—what was once whole was now shattered. It seemed like something sharp had burst from inside, flashing with a harsh gleam that destroyed her usual calm.

“She was alone in the jungle for a day, then swam along the riverbank for most of the night before reaching here. Unbelievable—it’s the area with the most crocodiles,” the police officer said as soon as he saw Richie.

Encounters with danger were nothing new to them. In Papua New Guinea, they were chased by hornets and fell into a swamp; in the Arctic, they almost froze to death in a snowstorm while trying to photograph the rare Eskimo curlew; and once, in Mexico, Richie was kidnapped by drug dealers and held captive for four days before being released. Every time, they managed to escape by the skin of their teeth, as if disaster never truly arrived. Tang Mi always smiled and said, “Richie, you’re my good luck charm.”

But he knew, in reality, she was his good luck charm.

In the swamp, she taught him not to struggle but to lean back and swim toward solid ground in an upright position. She eventually grabbed a tree root on the shore and pulled him up. In the snowstorm, he was frozen to the point of nearly losing consciousness, unable to move, ready to die. It was she who cut her wrist, letting her blood drip into his throat, and together they stumbled back to camp.

In Mexico, she drove alone into the desert, a place even the police feared to go, and used her family’s heirloom cat’s eye necklace to exchange for his freedom from the drug dealers. That necklace was the only memento her mother had left her.

Richie understood Tang Mi better than anyone. Tears and comfort were never what she needed; faith and perseverance were what she sought. What he could do was stand by her, walk with her, letting their footsteps and joy spread to every corner of the world, all captured in frames of 35mm film. He knew he still loved her, and with time, that love had shifted from youthful romance to familial affection. They didn’t need to possess each other, didn’t need to be together forever. The memories of surviving life-and-death situations together were enough to cherish for a lifetime.

The world is vast, life is short. Rather than chasing after distant falling stars, it’s better to hold tightly to the glow stick in your hand—they both shine in their own way.

With that thought, Richie reached out and ruffled Tang Mi’s hair, teasing her in a nonchalant tone, “If you meet any men who try to hit on you while you’re on vacation, whatever you do, don’t talk about your work.”

“Why? Are you afraid I’ll bore him and scare him off?” Tang Mi looked at him, amused.

“No, I’m afraid he really will fall in love with you and steal my meal ticket.” Richie curled his lips into his usual playboy grin, his eyes half-closed behind his sunglasses, making it impossible to discern his true expression.

“Don’t worry, if that really happens, I’ll tell my future husband that he must marry you along with me. That way, you won’t have to worry about losing your meal ticket,” Tang Mi said, patting Richie’s hand, signaling that he didn’t need to worry. The possibility of her getting married was probably smaller than meeting an alien. Which man could tolerate his wife spending more time with animals than with him? And which man could stand his wife touching camera equipment more often than touching the baby bottle?

Romantic love, if not nourished by real life, is like a flower without roots—bright, but short-lived. Tang Mi understood this very well.

“Gross! I don’t like being… taken advantage of by men!” Richie took off his sunglasses, looking at her with a face full of disgust.

Tang Mi shrugged, a mischievous smile spreading across her face.

The sweet voice of the flight attendant echoed over the intercom, and the passengers in the cabin gradually quieted down. When the last window shade was pulled up, the plane began to taxi.

“Thank you, Richie,” Tang Mi suddenly said, looking down.

“Thank you for what?” Richie looked up, surprised.

She moved her lips but before her words could be heard, the sound was drowned out by the roar of the airplane engines, taking her question and his confusion toward the deep blue sky.