Chapter 10: No Competition Today

After more than two hours of waiting, it was Duan Yucheng's turn.

The doctor spent less than two minutes on the examination before sending him for X-rays and an MRI, which took another hour. Results came back in the afternoon: bones intact, but a minor ligament tear in the right foot with accompanying soft tissue damage. The initial treatment had been appropriate and timely—credit to Duan Yucheng's experience, and no credit whatsoever to the jump he'd taken that morning at the competition.

The doctor prescribed physiotherapy and a topical traditional medicine treatment, and told Duan Yucheng to rest and limit walking during recovery.

"Limit walking? I don't think it's that serious—" Duan Yucheng began.

Luo Na tapped the top of his head. He stopped.

"You can do some light non-weight-bearing joint exercises," the doctor continued, at the unhurried pace of someone who has explained this many times, "with gradual intensity increases. Don't rush it—ligament healing doesn't respond well to pressure. Protein, calcium, fruits, vegetables. Avoid spicy food. Given your condition and fitness, with proper rest you should be looking at about three weeks."

Duan Yucheng's eyes went wide. "Three weeks." He said it again, as though checking that it hadn't changed. "Three—"

"Enough." Luo Na, without looking up from her phone.

He closed his mouth.

---

After the consultation, he wanted to go directly back to school. Luo Na took him by the back of his collar and steered him toward the physiotherapy room.

While waiting, a text came in from Shi Yin with the day's results: Jiang Tian first in the high jump at 2.12 meters, Liu Shan second at 2.03. Then: If you hadn't withdrawn, you would have gotten third with your 2 meters.

Duan Yucheng lay on the hospital bed and looked at this for a moment.

Third. What use was third.

Shi Yin added: Our department did terribly. Almost no one made it to the finals.

He typed back: Sorry. If I hadn't been injured I probably would have placed in the 100m, 400m, and high jump.

What are you apologizing for? It's not your fault.

They texted back and forth about the meet for a while. Then Shi Yin asked where he was, and when he said the hospital, she asked for the address.

Duan Yucheng glanced sideways. Luo Na was standing at the ward entrance, on the phone, and had been for almost twenty minutes. He looked at his screen and typed back: No need, I'll be leaving soon.

A little while later Luo Na came back in, and Duan Yucheng put his phone face-down with the efficiency of someone who has done nothing interesting.

"Are you hungry?" she asked. "I'll go find food. What do you want?"

"Instant noodles are fine."

"Easy to please." She was already moving toward the door, then stopped. "Call home and tell your family what happened."

Duan Yucheng looked pained. "Please don't make me do that. My mom turns everything into a production. I'll never hear the end of it."

Luo Na smiled. "Up to you."

She came back with takeout from a restaurant near the hospital—home-style dishes, three containers of rice for him, one for herself. He ate with the focused dedication of someone who hadn't had anything all day and was making up for it in a single sitting. She sat by the bed and watched him finish.

"I need to head back now. I've called someone to come stay with you and take you back to school after your treatment." She stood. "Don't worry about it."

Duan Yucheng choked on a piece of sweet and sour pork. "Who—"

"Swallow first."

"Are you leaving?"

"The school needs grades organized, and there's another competition tomorrow. The person will be here soon."

"I'm not worried," he said, in the tone of someone who is. He watched her gather her things. When she reached the door, he raised his hand in a half-wave at her back.

---

Twenty minutes later, the replacement arrived.

Wu Ze came in wearing a black shirt and shorts, flip-flops, the overall energy of a mid-level boss making an unexpected inspection. He yawned, looked around the room without much interest, dragged a stool to the bedside, and sat down with a clang.

They stared at each other for three seconds.

Duan Yucheng sank back onto the pillow. "I would have preferred Shi Yin," he said, to the ceiling.

"What was that?" Wu Ze's voice was perpetually hoarse.

"Nothing."

Wu Ze studied him with the unhurried attention of someone with nowhere to be. "You really put Luo Jiao through it today."

Duan Yucheng turned his head, revealing one eye from behind his arm. "I apologized."

"Did you."

A silence. Wu Ze yawned again, rubbed the back of his neck, producing a cracking sound, and said in a tone somewhere between advice and observation: "She has high expectations for you. Don't be so reckless next time. Rushing toward a result before you're ready—if something goes wrong with those legs, that's a permanent ceiling you've just set for yourself."

Duan Yucheng opened his mouth, then let it close. There wasn't anything worth adding to that.

He watched Wu Ze settle into the posture of someone planning to rest for an indefinite period, and asked, with studied casualness, "Coach Wu. How long have you known Coach Luo?"

"Almost ten years." Eyes still closed.

Duan Yucheng did the mental arithmetic. Organized his approach. Attempted subtlety. Abandoned it.

"Are you her boyfriend?"

Wu Ze opened one eye. A slow smile moved across his face.

"That obvious?"

Duan Yucheng felt the floor shift. He heard his own voice go slightly uneven and couldn't immediately stop it. "Really?"

Wu Ze let the pause stretch, then: "No. Not yet." He seemed to register, a half-second later, that he'd said more than he intended. He reached out and kicked the bed frame. "What are you asking for, kid."

Duan Yucheng turned over and looked at the wall.

Not yet.

He lay there thinking about that for a while without deciding anything in particular about it.

At eight o'clock, physiotherapy concluded. He left the hospital. The day ended.

---

The following morning arrived clear and quiet.

Finals day. The atmosphere in the stadium was tighter than it had been during preliminaries—the casual crowd noise compressed into something more focused. Luo Na and Wu Ze were at the judges' table, working through the track and field results, marking athletes for the Provincial Games.

Around noon, her phone rang.

"Can you let me watch from the judges' box?"

The voice was so close it took her a second to understand it wasn't coming through the phone. She turned. In the stands directly above the judges' area, Duan Yucheng was leaning over the railing, phone to his ear, looking down at her.

"I'm right here," he said.

---

He had changed into street clothes—clean, casual, nothing athletic about it. Luo Na couldn't immediately identify what was different, only that the effect was notable. She saw him with the track and field team constantly, watched him in motion, in competition gear; the ordinary student version of him, standing still among other ordinary students, was somehow more conspicuous than any of that. If she had to put it into words—the brightest puppy in the pack.

"What do you want?" she asked, and smiled despite herself.

"A seat," he said, and grinned.

The autumn air was exactly right—cool enough for clarity, warm enough to sit in. "Come down, watch your step."

He hopped over to the table thirty seconds later, positioned a stool directly behind Luo Na, and sat. Wu Ze, in the middle of a cigarette, gave him a sideways look. Luo Na handed him a water bottle, and the three of them settled into watching the competition.

The 400-meter final was up. All eight athletes were from sports programs—track and field, basketball, volleyball. Duan Yucheng leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes on the track.

The winner crossed the line at 51.13 seconds—the 400-meter specialist, no surprise. The moment he finished, Duan Yucheng turned to Wu Ze.

"What was the time?"

"51.13."

Duan Yucheng sat back. "If I'd competed, I would have won that."

Wu Ze snorted. "Big words from someone who's never run it for us."

Duan Yucheng didn't argue. He turned back to the track.

Luo Na said nothing. She ran the calculation in her head: 53.8 at his high school meet last year, 51.28 a month ago after intensive training, consistently improving. She looked at him—the focused set of his jaw, the stillness he had when he was watching something he cared about—and thought he probably wasn't lying.

The 100-meter final brought Wu Ze to his feet. His two athletes, Huang Lin and Zhang Hongwen, had taken first and second in the preliminaries and were now on the track warming up. Wu Ze stopped talking and went still, which was its own kind of intensity—the hands on his hips, the jawline set, eyes locked on his two boys. The stadium quieted. The gun fired.

When Huang Lin was seventy meters out, Wu Ze's restraint broke entirely. "What the hell—that start!"

Huang Lin won at 11.2 seconds. Zhang Hongwen took second at 11.35. Wu Ze stared at the finish line for a moment, then walked off toward his athletes, dissatisfied, muttering.

Luo Na watched him go.

A voice appeared at her ear, close and quiet.

"I can beat him."

She turned. Duan Yucheng was near enough that she hadn't expected it—his expression a particular mixture of slyness and certainty.

"I can outrun Huang Lin." He held eye contact. "Believe it or not."

Luo Na made a small sound of skepticism and shook out a piece of chewing gum from the pack on the table. Duan Yucheng opened his mouth. She put it in, then lifted his chin with two fingers.

"Rest first. Results don't live in words."

He chewed twice. A faint jasmine fragrance reached her. He said, "I know. I want to compete, not talk about it." A brief pause. "Are you coming to morning training tomorrow?"

She glanced at his ankle. "You're on medical rest and you're planning to train tomorrow morning?"

"I'll stay still."

"Then what are you training for?"

He considered this for a genuine moment. "Shot put?"

Luo Na looked at him.

"My upper body only. I promise." He leaned slightly toward her, expression shifting into something between earnest and plaintive. "It's genuinely painful to lie there doing nothing. I'll lose my mind. Can't you just come watch?"

"Do you actually love training that much?"

"It's not about love," he said, in the matter-of-fact tone he used for things he'd already decided. "I can't improve if I'm not training."

Luo Na felt something move in her chest—the uncomplicated ambition of it, the lack of performance in how he said it. She found him, in that moment, unreasonably likable. She crooked a finger at him. He leaned in.

"What?"

"Lower your head."

He did. She smacked the top of it with her palm.

"Train till you collapse, then."

"Hey!" He ducked away. "Be careful—you've destroyed my hair."

He ran his hand over it, assessed the damage. Luo Na looked at him. His hair was sitting differently than it usually did during practice—deliberate, shaped, like someone had put time into it.

She leaned in slightly and sniffed her own fingertips.

"Did you use wax?"

"Styling spray. There's a difference."

"Why is a guy your age using styling spray?"

"Who uses styling spray normally!" He looked genuinely affronted. "I don't do this for school."

"Then why today?"

"Today—" He stopped. His voice dropped a register. "There's no competition today." He straightened the hair as best he could and flicked a glance at her sideways. "Does it look okay?"

How could it not.

Luo Na had seen hundreds of athletes. Duan Yucheng was not like the others in ways she had stopped pretending not to notice. She crossed her legs, settled her arm on the back of his chair, and arranged her face into something appropriately dismissive.

"Incredibly vain. For a guy."

She leaned toward his arm and made a show of sniffing.

"Is that perfume? You are a complete flirt."

Duan Yucheng took a slow breath. Opened his mouth. Closed it. He seemed to have several responses available and chose none of them.

"Fine," he said instead, with the exhausted acceptance of someone who has learned that arguing this particular point will not go well. "Say whatever you want."

The helpless look was considerably more entertaining than the protests. Luo Na allowed herself to enjoy it for a moment, then sat back.

"Morning training. Tomorrow. Don't be late."

He made a soft sound of acknowledgment, facing forward, watching the next event begin.