Chapter 4: Lean In Closer

First time.

Yun Li's brief moment of calm evaporated.

She turned the phrase over. He had handled the harness with such practiced efficiency that she'd nearly convinced herself to stop worrying. And now Xu Qingsong had said first time — as if this were a compliment, as if it were remarkable that he'd managed so well for someone who had apparently never done this before.

She asked, carefully: "You haven't tied this for other people before?"

"No."

He said it the same way he said everything. Flat. Matter-of-fact. Completely unbothered by the implications.

Yun Li stared at him.

She took a breath and tried the most direct version of the question available to her: "Did you receive any training before starting? On how to tie the safety rope most securely?"

The man didn't look up from what he was doing. "What training?"

She pointed. "For this. How to do this safely."

"No."

She sat with that for a moment.

The sensation was remarkably similar to being at the top of an actual bungee platform and being told by the staff: the rope might hold, it might not. Your call.

"So if it's not tied correctly," she said, measuring her words, "could I actually be flung out?"

He glanced at her. A pause, as if genuinely considering the physics. "Not sure."

He and Xu Qingsong both looked equally untroubled by this conversation. Yun Li pressed her lips together and told herself not to catastrophize.

Then the man reached out and tapped the buckle lightly. "Do you want to try?"

Yun Li: "..."

Yun Li: "?"

She stared at the buckle. She stared at him. He had already withdrawn his hand and showed no sign of doing anything further — just the one tap, the one question, delivered with the affect of someone suggesting she try the soup.

She was beginning to think he was doing this deliberately. Paying her back for something she'd said, maybe. The weapons conversation. Something.

She bent her head and checked the buckle position herself, making sure nothing had shifted.

A voice called for Xu Qingsong from across the space. Before he left, he turned back with an easy smile: "He's joking with you. Don't take it seriously." Then, to the man: "What are you doing? Be responsible — don't say things that scare people."

The man's expression didn't change by much, but something in it shifted marginally toward what might, in extremely generous lighting, be described as cooperative. He said to Yun Li: "It's all been checked. Don't worry." He gestured to the rope beside her. "If you get scared, hold onto that."

Yun Li nodded. After a moment she moved her hand away from it.

He picked up the VR headset and settled it over her eyes. "Knob at the back — adjust the tightness yourself."

The room disappeared. In its place: text on black, rendered in a slow burn effect, waiting.

"Clear?" he asked.

"A little blurry."

She felt his hand against her glasses — a brief contact, pushing them down slightly. The image sharpened. Yun Li reached up and made a small correction to the angle.

Because the attraction involved significant vertical movement, the glasses couldn't stay on unassisted. Two straps had been added, fastened below the chin the way a helmet fits. Once everything was secured, Yun Li's connection to the actual room was severed entirely.

"It's starting."

A cliff. Vast, high, the bottom swallowed in mist. Mountains barely visible through cloud in the distance. Below, the suggestion of deep water.

The game didn't push her off immediately. There was a buffer — an NPC whose mouth moved in what was presumably speech, a slow build of perspective as she was placed in the body of the protagonist. Someone standing at the edge, wanting to jump, afraid, the hesitation drawn out long enough to feel genuine.

And then the jump happened before she'd made the decision herself.

The chair dropped.

The floor became irrelevant. She fell, and the elastic brought her back, and the sea rushed up and then disappeared as she rose, and the whole cycle repeated in a rhythm that her body didn't know how to interpret except as real. She closed her eyes. Forced them back open. Closed them again.

She was this kind of person: drawn to the high-drop rides at every amusement park, standing at the entrance unable to make herself get on. The interest was always there. The follow-through had never existed.

In VR, she could override that. The knowledge that it wasn't physical was just enough scaffolding to let her jump. Her actual courage — the kind that worked in the real world — reset to zero the moment the headset came off.

The experience didn't last long, but it didn't need to. By the end of it, she was exhilarated in the hollow-limbed way of someone who has just survived something. Her chest felt lighter than it had all day.

She pulled off the headset.

He took it from her and unclipped the buckle. She stepped back onto the floor and found it reassuringly solid.

She noticed a screen nearby displaying what she'd just experienced — a synchronized feed, the same images she'd seen, visible to anyone watching. He Jiameng had mentioned this: the footage would be sent to participants afterward for their own content.

Yun Li thanked him and, after a moment: "This game doesn't have any sound?"

He looked at her.

"There were characters moving their mouths," she said. "I didn't hear anything from them."

He considered this, then put the headset on himself. A brief pause. He took it off and examined the device. "There is sound. The right ear canal seems to be broken."

He looked at her. "You didn't hear anything at all?"

Yun Li's breath caught, very quietly, somewhere in her chest.

The right ear canal was broken.

Her left ear was congenitally deaf.

Which meant, for the entirety of the experience, she had heard exactly nothing.

"Ah," she said, keeping her voice even. "Maybe I was just too nervous to notice."

"Mm." He accepted this and returned to testing the equipment. The conversation closed.

Later, passing through the area again on her way to another project, she found the spot empty. He had gone somewhere else.

---

By the time the afternoon wound down, Yun Li had worked through most of the attractions she'd marked. She found a quiet corner on the upper level, pulled out her footage, and began reviewing it while mentally roughing out an edit.

He Jiameng found her shortly after with news: Xu Qingsong wanted to take everyone to dinner. A proper send-off. Others had already said yes.

Yun Li swallowed her inclination to find an excuse and agreed.

---

The restaurant was well-known in Nanwu, the kind of place that had clearly been chosen with care. EAW had reserved a large private room, two round tables set up side by side. Yun Li found a seat toward the inner wall with He Jiameng on one side and Zhi Bule on the other, and immediately occupied herself with her phone.

The table filled up. The energy was good — people who had spent the day sharing an unusual experience and had grown comfortable with each other faster than usual. The conversation ran over the attractions, the footage, the moments that had been unexpectedly terrifying or unexpectedly boring.

Yun Li contributed minimally and smiled at the right moments.

The last to arrive were Xu Qingsong and the man. The two remaining seats were at the inner table. They walked over. He Jiameng noticed the man and tilted toward Yun Li with undisguised appreciation: "Teacher Xian Yun, did you get a look at him without the mask today?"

"Not today," Yun Li said honestly.

She considered adding: but I have before. She didn't get the chance.

Xu Qingsong addressed He Jiameng: "Would you mind swapping seats? There's an air conditioning vent directly above this spot, and he's had a cold." He patted the man's shoulder. "Better for him to sit on the inside."

He Jiameng was already standing. "Of course, absolutely."

The rearrangement happened quickly, and Yun Li found herself without a buffer.

She didn't look over. She drank her water.

Xu Qingsong made no move to introduce the man formally. When someone at the table tried to draw him into conversation, there was always a brief pause before he responded, as though he was confirming that yes, the question had in fact been addressed to him. His answers were short. The conversation bounced back to Xu Qingsong on its own.

Another conversation killer, Yun Li noted. She found this oddly reassuring.

She wanted to see whether he looked as unbothered by the social noise as she suspected. She didn't quite dare look.

The mask came off partway through dinner.

She had seen him before, but always in poor light or at an angle. Now, close, she actually looked.

His hair was lighter than most — possibly dyed, possibly natural, she couldn't tell. His features had the particular geometry that came with mixed heritage: everything calibrated differently than she expected, more striking for the surprise of it. He had barely touched his food. The porridge he'd ordered separately was still mostly full.

He looked familiar.

The feeling was vague, like trying to remember a song from a single bar of it. Before she could locate the source, the dishes arrived and the moment passed.

---

After dinner, someone proposed KTV. Xu Qingsong agreed. The question of who paid was resolved by a table game: two teams, winning team gets paid for.

After some negotiation, they landed on Whisper Down the Lane. Each team would give the other side a sentence — under thirty characters, as tongue-twisting as possible — and pass it down the line. Lowest voice, no repeating. The team whose final person got the most correct won.

Yun Li's mood sank.

Then: "Let's pass counterclockwise."

Counterclockwise. Left to right. Which meant the man beside her would whisper to her, and she would have to lean her left ear toward him.

Her left ear, which had never worked.

The teams settled on their sentences. Xu Qingsong started their chain, four people between him and Yun Li. She watched the message travel — the small leaning-in, the cupped hands, the nods — and felt her anxiety tighten with each person it passed.

She turned to the man. "Um—"

He turned to look at her.

She had been going to say: can I use my right ear later? But it felt too pointed, too much explanation, and she deflated. "Never mind. Nothing."

The message reached him. She watched the person beside him lean in close, watched him listen with his head slightly bowed, and tried, instinctively, to eavesdrop from where she sat. She heard nothing. Of course.

He straightened and looked at her.

Yun Li held his gaze and reluctantly leaned left.

They stayed like that for a few seconds, neither moving.

Then he said: "Come closer."

Several people at the table made sounds of amusement. Someone made a comment. Yun Li felt her face do something she couldn't control.

The man seemed entirely unconcerned with any of this. He rested his elbow on the table, chin in hand, the picture of patience. His gaze moved — briefly, deliberately — to her right ear.

Then he said, flat and unhurried: "Lean in closer."