Chapter 2: He didn't Smile

 

It's normal for the audience not to laugh sometimes. It's tough to please everyone. But Gu Yi's frustration felt unreasonable. Even if someone is handsome, it's still a bit harsh to sit in the front row without cracking a smile. Why sit there without laughing? Is it to humiliate the performers? She felt a pang of upset when she saw a photo of the performance on her phone but couldn’t bring herself to delete it. Deleting it would mean losing a chance to remember this strikingly handsome guy. But covering his face? What’s the point of reminiscing over that photo? Is it shameful to look back on yourself when you're not funny?

She texted Yu Dule: "Can you show me the audience survey form for choosing the lucky audience members?"

"Why the sudden interest in helping me organize this?"

"I just wanted to see if anyone had bad feedback about my show."

"Oh, I see. The handsome guy in the first row who didn’t smile, right?"

"Right."

“He didn’t seem to fill it out.”

Gu Yi sighed. "I guess my jokes aren’t that great."

"That's not true. It wasn’t directed at you. He didn’t smile at all. He stood like a statue in the front row all night."

"Oh, the modern Tang Monk, who came to the Spider Cave just to meditate. Has he been here before?"

"It seems he really hasn’t. Let me check. There were 60 people at this show, and we got 58 feedback forms. He probably didn’t fill it out. But you know, when people register for the show, they have to provide a phone number. So if you really want to find his contact info, it's not that hard."

"That sounds too much like stalking. Forget it." Gu Yi stretched, gathering her hair. It seemed she'd lost her hairpin again. She was notorious for loose hairpins. Yu Dule was still sighing on the phone: "This is the first time I’ve heard you show real interest in a guy in the past year."

"You say you’re the Nishijima Hidetoshi of Jianguo West Road, but I think last night’s guy was the Kimura Takuya of Xiangyang North Road."

Yu Dule, indeed handsome, was often mistaken for being gay because of his slender build. Over time, he became a bit of a gossip himself: "People say you’re a kept woman, you know. After all, you never dare to wake your roommate. You need a miserable personality to do stand-up, so you hide your identity and amuse audiences in small bars. But when you get home, you bow down to the big bosses..."

Gu Yi sat up straight. "I actually have such a big reputation?"

"Yeah, because you get drunk and don't go home until midnight, refuse to wake your roommate, and never say a word about your personal life, making it all seem mysterious."

"A life of luxury is painless, my friend! All my 206 bones are on society's pain points. Where’s the money? Is it in my eager eyes?" Thinking of her roommate, Gu Yi shook her head. "Don't say it, but hearing that makes me feel like I have some ability. Women with scandals are exciting. I’m hanging up now. If you get any news about that guy, let me know."

"Are you still thinking about him?"

"I just want to know why he doesn’t smile. Not smiling at all, that's just weird."

Looking out the window, Gu Yi sighed. She lived on Huangxing Road, surrounded by large apartment buildings with elevators. The small three-bedroom apartment she shared with an older person was peculiar. The living room and kitchen formed a right triangle. The two master bedrooms soaked up all the daylight in the 90-square-meter space, while the smallest second bedroom didn't even have room to hang clothes. The formaldehyde smell was strong. Gu Yi had just managed to absorb the smell, only to discover there was a hospital right outside the window. According to Feng Shui, it was a disaster.

After a shower, she was ready to go out, but the narrow living room and kitchen felt suffocatingly hot. As she walked into the large master bedroom, warm air gusted from the door crack beneath her feet. Gu Yi paused. Yep, her roommate was sweating again. The two girls had bought a heated bathtub and placed it on the balcony. Instead of connecting the water pipes, they filled it with a truckload of sand. On holidays, they turned on the air conditioner and soaked in it, claiming it would drive out dampness and cold, and improve their health. The effect wasn’t clear, but they certainly set the mood. The living room often smelled of fine sand and moxibustion. Gu Yi had glimpsed the bathtub through the door crack. It was yellow, seemingly made of wood, resembling... a coffin without a lid. A homemade wreath hung at the head of the bed, with artificial flowers, both white and pink.

Some people are dead but still alive, some people are clearly still alive...

The other roommate was even more peculiar. Two boys lived in the other master bedroom. They worked during the day and returned at night to recite the fifty-sound kana and read The Economist. Before bed, they pulled the mattress to the floor—one slept on the bed, the other on the mat. If you calculated it, their per capita room cost was more economical than hers. Occasionally, when they needed privacy, one of the boys would go to the living room to read foreign languages. It seemed his memory wasn’t great. Gu Yi had already memorized the fifty-sound kana, but he was still reciting it. His "Standard Japanese" was getting thicker. The other boy often sat on a wooden bed without a mattress, swiping left and right on his phone. Occasionally, she could hear the sound of a phone being thrown onto the bed. She knew that without a membership, Tantan only allowed 50 right swipes. Poverty had turned this Sea King's fish pond into a well.

These weren’t the worst of it. The most annoying thing was that the Tantan-loving roommate seemed to have an interest in her. In their five-person roommate group, the Tantan guy often suggested they should all use the sand bathtub in the master bedroom, and it would be better if everyone slept with their doors open at night. He even proposed switching roommates so Gu Yi could share the rent in his bedroom, eliminating the need to move the mattress. Gu Yi pretended not to see his messages, but recently it had gotten worse. When she returned late at night, she’d see him sitting in the living room playing games. He’d say, "I really want to go into your room with you."

Gu Yi had some unpleasant memories but was too lazy to clear her name. If her roommate spread the word, it would probably confirm her bad reputation. She packed some spare clothes into her bag, shook the sand out of her shoes, and prepared to endure another three months until her lease expired.

She worked overtime on weekends and hit open mics at night—wherever there was an open mic, she’d tirelessly perform.

Gu Yi's main job was as a writer. In the content department of "One Week" magazine, work was divided into two categories: character interviews and advertisements. But with so few people in the department, they moved wherever needed, sometimes even serving as Queer Eye rescuers during fashion week. Character interviews required a flowery, ungrounded style, highlighting the interviewee's taste and style. Advertisements were crafted into strips or long pieces, with fresh ideas and whimsical concepts promoting brands' new products. In her early years, she interned at a TV station, doing all the work of interviewing citizens on the street, learning to cut videos and edit interviews. Later, she switched to an artist agency, picking up a lot of PR tactics. After a year and a half in high heels, she was exhausted. By her third year, her classmates had moved to short video and gaming companies. But she never left this job, because it gave her material for interviews and dealing with people. Most of the time, she could sit in the office and write jokes. It was comfortable.

She took the subway to Bridge No. 8 and looked at Mr. X's escape room at the intersection. She was surrounded by people her age—while others played escape rooms, she worked overtime. They were all playing for their lives. The article she had to write today was a conversation between a Hong Kong fashion blogger and a local home improvement brand. The audio transcript was disjointed, and solving it was harder than an escape room puzzle. When she arrived at the office, she wasn’t in the zone yet. She flipped through newly arrived magazines and somehow opened "Ideal Home." She found no wealth code and received a call from Yu Dule. He had gone to an open mic alone the previous night, drank until four or five in the morning, rode a shared bike, fell into a ditch after a kilometer, and went to the hospital for an orthopedic appointment.

Gu Yi wasn't surprised at all: "Haven't you finished writing your jokes yet?"

"My jokes have been submitted."

“Oh my god!”

"It's just a performance, why are you cursing at me?"

"No, I saw the man who didn't smile!"

In an interview titled "Online Space vs. Offline Space, Urban People's Self-Destruction," the protagonist is a man who never smiles, named Liang Daiwen. The article describes some of his ideas for furniture design, focusing on the compression of space on people. The photo resembles the man in person, with striking facial features, straight eyebrows, eyes that look at the camera but not very attentively, a delicate mole on the left side of his straight nose, thick and curved lips, short hair with slight bangs, a gray shirt with a silver clavicle chain, and even from the picture, you can almost smell the woody perfume on him. The other interviewees in the entire magazine are dressed and expressed in "Lohas" and "Life Weekly," but he is "NYLON."

Some people's faces are just like clothes—so distinctive and eye-catching that you don't even notice what they are wearing. This time, she deliberately looked carefully again. This man is really handsome. His cheeks are fleshy, and there are no wrinkles caused by smiles. It can be basically concluded that he will not smile when working.

"Where is the person? Where did you see him?" Yu Dule asked on the phone.

"In the magazine..."

"Oh. Then you might as well say you saw it in a dream. I tell you, don't fall in love with the audience. The audience is realistic. They come to have fun, not to find a partner. Comedians are not sexy."

Yu Dule started talking about comedy the same year as her, and they are the same age, so they always get along well. They both interned at a TV station before—Yu Dule was one year ahead, wearing a sweater and a woolen hat, speaking with a bit of a Beijing accent, and teaching her everything in the editing room. In his poor days, he relied on the cakes drawn by his boss to fill his stomach. Now, he is quite happy to be a bar operator at Ounce. He always jokes that if he doesn't want to work hard one day, he'll find a rich sister and live a life without worries about food and drink.

But his pride had been tempered by society, and Yu Dule developed a character that didn't trust others easily.

Gu Yi sniffed and said, "Can I sleep at Ounce for a few days and hide from my roommates?"

"Don't you want to be kept?"

“Isn’t that your great ambition?”

"I finally understand. You really like this Kimura Takuya and even want to abandon the boss."

After hanging up the phone, Gu Yi looked at the photo and snapped the magazine shut: "You'll know why tonight."

She was going to talk about her roommate today. She had a lot to say about renting a house. The only hope was that these funny jokes would not be known by acquaintances today. That would be too bad. The manuscript for the official account was 2,000 words. Every time she typed a line, she would send two joke inspirations to the file transfer assistant. When the manuscript was finished, the jokes were also finished. After sorting the fragmented jokes into a document and copying them back to the file transfer assistant, Gu Yi even clicked on the avatar to take a look—afraid that a colleague had changed the avatar and name to steal the jokes.

"Today we are talking about shared housing. Is there anyone here who rents a house? Look, so many people raised their hands. After all, everyone is here to see this." Gu Yi pointed at the audience, and the laughter began. It was very offensive at the beginning, but the audience was used to it.

"It's normal to share a house or live alone in a big city, but it's abnormal to buy a house at our age. My family's financial situation has always been poor. When I was in college, my mother didn't pay social security so that I could graduate smoothly. After graduation, I rented a house with a classmate and slept on a bed. I saved money for two years to make up for my mother's social security. When I just graduated and looked for a house, I was very naive. I aimed at a large three-bedroom apartment with an elevator on Nanjing West Road. When I saw the price of 4,000, I thought that the luxurious life like *Tiny Times* was about to begin. I dreamed every day. Later, I found out that it was a scam by the real estate agency, specifically deceiving fresh graduates, who had to downgrade their consumption to live in partitioned rooms. With my budget for sharing a house, I couldn't even afford a one-bedroom apartment with three bedrooms and two living rooms. I could only rent the smallest one in the 'seven partitions and one corridor'."

She continued with a laugh: "Yes, later I rented an old house in Daning with my classmates. The property certificate area was 37 square meters with a public area. There was a small corridor where you would hit the wall when you opened the door. It's no big deal to hit a wall in society, and you can hit it again when you get home. My roommate at the time cooperated very well. She worked the night shift and I worked the day shift, so we basically had no chance to live together except on weekends. The only painful thing was that she liked to write fan fiction. Occasionally, when she got excited and typed on the keyboard on the bed, I would lie down and start to feel like I hadn't gotten off work yet. We worked the day and night shifts together... After two years of living beyond our means, I had more time and more money, so I was immediately liberated from the cohabitation life, thinking that I could finally have my own room. It's Ziru, you know, because you don't have to worry about renting a room, while roommates are all worried about by the housekeeper, and what happens next is out of your control."

"All my roommates have some strange habits. My first roommate liked to cook at home, and every dish was burnt. One day, through the crack of the door, I felt like I was being cremated. Later, the second roommate didn't like to take out the trash, and I could smell the smell of rotting fruit and moldy things through the crack of the door. I once watched a sky burial in the Ganges River. The more I thought about it, the more scared I became. I thought I should knock on the door to confirm—oh, alive. I reflected on it and thought it might be because I didn't pay much rent, so I increased the rent by a few hundred and changed to a larger north bedroom. My roommate pulled a truck of sand on the balcony, which was said to be a sand bath plus hot yoga. Once, she invited me to watch it. The hot air conditioner was dry, and she was buried in it with only her face showing... Occasionally I wonder if I am dreaming. I can feel cremation, sky burial, and burial at home. Now I feel like I am ready to die because of the palpitations caused by staying up late. Don't believe me, every time I press the combination lock, it is particularly tragic. That voice reminds me, come on—die together."

The audience laughed so hard that they fell backward, and some even clapped their thighs. Thinking of the previous roommates, Gu Yi sighed, and the audience laughed even more happily: "I rented a house from Ziroom for two or three years. Because it was facing north and cheap, I was reluctant to give it up. I thought if I met a good roommate, maybe we could develop something. Later, I saw that the roommates in Ziroom had changed. There were two men and two women. I thought to myself, here comes the opportunity! I was very excited on the day I moved in. There were five people living in a three-bedroom and one-living-room house. Isn't this the *Love Apartment*? As a result, a couple of gays and a couple of lesbians appeared, and I suddenly felt very safe. I even began to wonder whether I should try to break my bottom line, so that I would have the opportunity to poach people from both rooms..."

The last part was just a random one. Yu Dule once said that it is hard for people in the Northeast not to be funny because of their genes. Plus, they are really poor, so their jokes are all funny and tearful. Gu Yi didn't want to accept the second half of the sentence. Why, can only the poor be funny? That's right, I haven't seen rich people cry. But at this moment, seeing everyone applauding because of the jokes about the weird roommate, she couldn't refute it, and the curtain call was even more sad.

When she looked up, the lights were on, and the audience in the back row, who had been unable to see clearly, suddenly had expressions. She waved and prepared to leave the stage, and found that the person sitting farthest away was the handsome guy who didn't smile in the first row last time. This time he had a name, Liang Daiwen—his hair covered his eyebrows, and while drinking, his eyes were still on her.

He didn't laugh!

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