The Lamborghini dealership occupied a glass-and-steel showroom on Zhangyang Road, its façade angled toward the intersection like a ship's prow cutting through the Pudong skyline. Lin Fan arrived at ten in the morning, having driven the silver Honda because the Aventador—still parked in its delivery bay, still smelling of factory leather and unburned fuel—felt like a garment he hadn't yet grown into.
The showroom was silent. Not the silence of a closed business—the lights were on, the cars gleamed under the spotlights—but the silence of people who didn't know what to do. A receptionist stood behind the front desk, her hands frozen above a keyboard. Two salesmen in dark suits had stopped mid-conversation near a Huracán. A technician in overalls had emerged from the service bay and was staring at Lin Fan with the particular expression of someone who had been told something unbelievable and was waiting to see if it was true.
The general manager was a woman in her early fifties named Liang Qin. She stepped forward from the small cluster of employees, her posture rigid with the controlled tension of someone who had been running a tight ship for fifteen years and had just learned that her captain had been replaced overnight.
"Mr. Lin." Her voice was level. "We received the ownership transfer documents this morning. We weren't expecting a change in management."
"Neither was I." Lin Fan glanced around the showroom. A Reventón sat on a rotating platform in the centre, its scissor doors raised like wings. An Aventador SVJ—identical to the one the System had given him, except this one was orange—occupied the display window. "The dealership is well-run. I'm not planning to make changes."
Liang Qin's posture didn't relax. "May I ask what your plans are?"
"To learn." He turned to face her directly. "I don't know anything about selling luxury cars. I've never owned one. I drove a rented Honda here. But I'm not going to pretend to know more than I do. You've been running this place for—how long?"
"Fifteen years. I started as a sales associate."
"Then you know how to run it. I want you to keep doing that. The only thing I'll ask is that you treat every customer the way you'd want to be treated if you walked in wearing ordinary clothes and nobody knew who you were."
Something flickered in Liang Qin's eyes. Not trust—that would take time—but a provisional willingness to wait and see. "The staff meeting is at eleven. Would you like to address the team?"
"I would."
The staff meeting took place in the service bay, with the technicians standing beside the sales team in an awkward, unaccustomed proximity. There were twenty-three employees in total. Lin Fan shook hands with each one. He learned their names, or tried to. He asked the service manager how long the oldest mechanic had worked there—twenty-two years, it turned out—and whether the parts inventory was adequate. He asked the newest salesperson, a young man who looked barely out of university, what had drawn him to the job.
"The cars," the young man said, then flushed. "That sounds shallow."
"No. It sounds honest."
He stood before them in the service bay, the smell of motor oil and tyre rubber in the air, and said the only things he knew how to say. He told them he hadn't earned this dealership in the usual way—that it had come to him through circumstances he couldn't explain, and that he was aware of how strange that sounded. He told them their jobs were secure. He told them he would be a mostly absent owner, but that he would show up, and listen, and try to be fair.
"When I drove for Didi last week," he said, "I learned that the best drivers aren't the ones who go fastest. They're the ones who make passengers feel safe. I think selling cars is probably the same. Don't sell the engine. Sell the feeling."
The oldest mechanic, a man with grease permanently embedded in the lines of his hands, nodded once. It was the smallest gesture, but it mattered.
After the meeting, Liang Qin showed him the financials. The dealership was profitable—not wildly so, but steadily. The showroom had been renovated two years ago. The service centre had a waiting list for appointments. Everything was in order, and none of it had anything to do with him.
Before he left, he stopped at the delivery bay where the Nero Pegaso Aventador sat under a dust cover. He pulled the cover back and looked at the car for a long moment. Matte black. Bronze interior. An engine that could produce seven hundred and forty horsepower. It was, objectively, the most beautiful machine he'd ever been close to.
He replaced the cover.
"Keep it here for now," he told Liang Qin. "I'm not ready."
"Most people would drive it home immediately."
"Most people aren't still learning to drive a rented Honda well."
---
The lambo dealership occupied his thoughts for the rest of the afternoon, but Friday morning brought a different kind of responsibility. Professor Huang had returned from his trip, and the scroll—still in its drawer, still waiting to be understood—could finally be authenticated.
The professor's office was in the old French Concession, above an art supply shop that had been there since the 1930s. The elevator was ancient and temperamental, and Lin Fan took the stairs. Professor Huang was a thin man in his seventies, with ink stains on his fingers and a magnifying loupe hung around his neck. His desk was covered in scrolls, books, and cups of cold tea, and he cleared a space with the unhurried movements of someone who had been doing this work for longer than Lin Fan had been alive.
"Tang Jing called me," he said, motioning Lin Fan to a chair. "She said you brought her a Chenghua vase wrapped in a sweatshirt. She called you 'respectful.' From her, that's high praise. She once called the director of the Shanghai Museum 'barely adequate.'"
Lin Fan unwrapped the scroll. Professor Huang took it with the slow, reverent care of someone handling a newborn, unrolling it inch by inch across the cleared desk.
"Old silk," he murmured. "The yellowing is natural. Not chemical. The mounting is Qing dynasty—probably eighteenth century—but the scroll itself is older." He peered at the calligraphy through his loupe, moving down the characters one by one. "The brushwork. This is—ah."
He didn't finish the sentence for a long time.
"This is Wen Zhengming," he said finally.
The name meant nothing to Lin Fan. Professor Huang saw his blank expression and sighed with the weary patience of a teacher who had explained the same thing too many times to people who should have known better.
"Wen Zhengming. 1470 to 1559. Ming dynasty. One of the Four Masters of the Wu School. His painting and calligraphy are among the finest of the period. If this is genuine—and I believe it is—you are holding a work of art that belongs in a national museum."
The authentication took another hour. Professor Huang examined the seals, the paper, the brushwork under magnification, comparing it to known examples in digitised catalogues. When he was finished, he rolled the scroll back up with the same careful reverence and rested his hands on it.
"It's genuine. And it shouldn't be in private hands. It should be somewhere people can see it—scholars, students, the public. This is a cultural artefact, not a commodity."
"I know," Lin Fan said. "The old man who owned it—Mr. Zhang—he's been carrying this for decades without knowing what it was. I want to make sure he's compensated fairly. And I want the scroll to go where it belongs. Can you help with both?"
Professor Huang studied him for a long moment. Then he nodded. "The Shanghai Museum has an acquisition fund for pieces like this. I can negotiate on Mr. Zhang's behalf. Twenty percent of the acquisition price to him, as finder's compensation, which is standard practice for undocumented works. The museum gets the scroll. Mr. Zhang gets enough to live on for the rest of his life. And you…"
"I don't need anything."
"You found it."
"I found it. That's enough."
Professor Huang poured two cups of cold tea and handed one to Lin Fan. "Tang Jing was right about you. You're unusual."
"I've been told."
They talked for another hour about the scroll, about Wen Zhengming, about the strange journeys objects made through time. When Lin Fan finally left, the scroll stayed with Professor Huang for safekeeping and museum negotiation, and the afternoon sun was slanting through the plane trees of the French Concession.
Back at the villa, the heron was still at its post. Xu Yang's car was in his driveway—he was home, probably editing. The compound was quiet, peaceful in the way that had become familiar. Lin Fan made tea and sat by the lake, watching the koi trace their slow circles. The golden phone hummed softly on the bench beside him.
Tomorrow, he would finish the last five trips of his Didi occupation. Tomorrow, he would earn the Pagani. Tomorrow, the week's driving would end, and a new card would fall at midnight. But tonight, he had a scroll that was going to a museum, a dealership he didn't deserve, and the quiet, unshakeable sense that he was becoming someone his father might have been proud of.
The heron stood motionless. The moon rose. And the golden phone, patient as always, continued its steady count toward the next thing.