“I wasn’t actually meant to sit next to you on the plane ride to Shanghai,” he says. “My original seat was four rows away, and I had to bribe this extremely disgruntled college student into swapping with me. Also … I was hoping you would be at your cousin’s wedding. I did plan to find Dr. Linda Shen, of course—that letter of recommendation is really important to me. But when I said there was someone I needed to see, I was talking about you.”
