The McDonald's at One in the Morning

Li Xiao pushed through the glass door of the McDonald's at 1:17 a.m. Only a handful of customers remained — a man who looked homeless slumped asleep across a table, a high school couple squeezed into one chair watching something on a phone, and a food delivery rider in a yellow jacket leaning against the wall scrolling through short videos with the volume all the way up.

He carried a Big Mac meal to a seat by the window. Three hours of quarterly review meetings had left his stomach sloshing with nothing but coffee. He needed something solid. Outside, the occasional car drifted down the Third Ring Road, taillights dragging red streaks. The city had finally slowed down.

He was two bites into the burger when he heard his name.

"Li Xiao?"

The voice came from behind him. He turned. A man in a dark blue windbreaker stood in the aisle, hair cropped shorter than he remembered, face rounder by a good margin, but the eyes hadn't changed — the kind of eyes that always looked like they were frowning, even when they weren't. It took Li Xiao a few seconds to pull a name out of the past and pin it to the face.

"...Sun Guodong?"

"It really is you." Sun Guodong pulled out the chair across from him and sat down, setting a Coke on the table. "I was sitting way over there, five or six tables back, and the more I looked the more I was sure. You eat exactly the same way you did in college — one bite, chew twice, stare at the burger for three seconds, then bite again."

Li Xiao laughed. He had never noticed it himself.

They had shared a dorm room for all four years of university. Bunk beds. Li Xiao on top, Sun Guodong below. After graduation Li Xiao went to Shenzhen, Sun Guodong stayed in Beijing. For the first couple of years they'd chat occasionally on QQ. Then WeChat replaced QQ, and both were still in each other's contact lists, but the message history dead-ended somewhere around a Spring Festival greeting in 2013.

"You live around here?" Li Xiao asked.

"No, just finished a fare." Sun Guodong nodded toward the window. Through the glass, Li Xiao could make out a white Corolla parked at the curb, the ride-hailing sign glowing on its roof. "I drive for Didi. Dropped a passenger from the West Station up to Beiyuan, heading back through, figured I'd grab something to drink."

"One in the morning, and you're still on the road."

"Night rates are better." Sun Guodong smiled. "What about you? Still over in Chaoyang?"

"Wangjing. Just finished work. Starving."

"Still doing that…" Sun Guodong paused, searching. "I remember you went into security systems after graduation, right?"

"Switched a long time ago. Internet company now. Product management." Li Xiao ran through the career changes — security to e-commerce, e-commerce to where he was now. Every jump had come with a pay bump. Every jump had also meant longer hours. Tonight's meeting had run past midnight, and tomorrow morning he had a cross-departmental review at nine.

Sun Guodong listened, nodding here and there. His face was serene in a way that made Li Xiao suddenly self-conscious — no envy, no pity, just listening. Who was he explaining himself to? A man he hadn't seen in fifteen years.

"You?" Li Xiao took a sip of Coke, passing the conversation back. "I remember senior year you were talking about starting a business."

"Did it for three years. Lost everything." Sun Guodong said it flatly, the way you might mention a movie you'd seen. "2012 and 2013. Group-buying site. Went head-to-head with Meituan. Didn't work out. Money ran dry, and we disbanded." He added, "Now I drive. It's all right. Uncomplicated."

Uncomplicated.

Li Xiao noticed the scar on Sun Guodong's hand — running along the web between his thumb and forefinger. Not deep, but long. He remembered this scar. Junior year, the four of them drinking at an outdoor grill near campus, Sun Guodong got drunk, started a fight with the next table, grabbed a beer bottle, but the bottle slipped and he sliced his own hand open.

"You still in touch with Lao Liu?" Sun Guodong asked. The third roommate.

"Saw him last year in Beijing. He's in investment now. Doing well."

"Good. That's good."

A few seconds of silence. The high school couple had left. The delivery rider was still scrolling. The homeless man shifted positions without waking up. Li Xiao looked at the Coke in front of Sun Guodong, the ice half-melted.

"You got married, right?" Sun Guodong asked.

"Yeah. A daughter. She's four."

"That's great." Sun Guodong nodded. Then, after a pause: "I got divorced."

Li Xiao didn't know what to say. Sun Guodong didn't seem about to elaborate. He just fiddled with the lid of his cup. Li Xiao felt he should ask — what happened? — but he also knew Sun Guodong wouldn't really answer.

What did they talk about fifteen years ago? Games. Girls. The great things they were going to do after graduation. Back then Sun Guodong was the one with the most ideas. Everyone thought he'd end up the most successful of the four of them. He said he was going to build the next Meituan, and everyone believed him.

"I remember something you said once," Li Xiao said. "You said you were going to make ten million before you turned thirty, and then travel the world. You weren't joking around. You meant it."

Sun Guodong blinked, then burst out laughing. The sound wasn't loud, but it cut through the empty restaurant.

"I actually said that?"

"On the dorm balcony. Smoking one of those five-yuan Zhongnanhai cigarettes. I remember thinking: this guy is going to pull it off."

Sun Guodong kept laughing. At some point he rubbed the corner of his eye with his hand. Hard to tell if it was the laughter or something else.

"All right," he said, standing up and pushing his chair back in. "I should go. Car's still outside. Let's catch up on WeChat."

That was what he'd said last time too. On QQ. Let's catch up.

Sun Guodong walked out of the McDonald's and got into the Corolla. Li Xiao watched through the window as the headlights flicked on and the taillights merged back into the red stream of the Third Ring Road. He looked down at the half-eaten burger in front of him. Cold now.

He sat there for another ten minutes, finished the burger, carried his tray to the disposal rack, and pushed through the door into the night.

The wind outside was colder than before.

At the same moment, Sun Guodong's Corolla sat at a red light two blocks away. No music in the car. Just the tick of the turn signal. He picked up his phone, opened WeChat, found his ex-wife's profile. The last message in their history was from three months ago — her telling him the kid's school fees had gone up, asking him to transfer an extra five hundred yuan this month.

He typed something. Deleted it. Typed again. Deleted it again.

The light turned green. He flipped the phone facedown on the passenger seat and pressed the accelerator.