Chapter 9: Don't Look at Me

Shi Yin could feel the atmosphere around Luo Na like something physical—a pressure in the air, a drop in temperature.

She was afraid, partly because Luo Na was her teacher, and partly because the guilt was real. She had thought it was wrong for Duan Yucheng to compete on an injury, but he had been so certain, so firm about being fine, and she hadn't pushed back hard enough.

"Duan Yucheng is injured?" Luo Na asked.

Shi Yin tried to hold out. He hadn't told her to say anything, and she owed him that much at least. "No..." She was not a natural liar, and the word fell apart before it finished leaving her mouth, her voice going unsteady in a way that made the denial worse than silence.

"Where?"

Shi Yin gave in. "Just his ankle. He sprained it."

Luo Na turned and walked toward the high jump area. Her steps were too sharp, the stride of someone on their way somewhere with a clear purpose and no patience for obstacles. Shi Yin startled and jogged after her.

"Teacher—teacher, please—he's been resting for days, please let him compete. He really wants to. And he said he takes off from the left foot anyway, so the right ankle doesn't—"

Luo Na didn't have the time or the inclination to explain the relevant biomechanics to Shi Yin, and even if she had, she wasn't in the mood.

---

The high jump competition was already underway.

As she walked, the pieces slotted together: the canceled events, the unreturned calls, arriving at the very last minute. She thought of the OK sign he'd given her from across the stadium, cheerful and easy, and felt the anger sharpen.

That damned brat.

She arrived at the high jump area just as Duan Yucheng was about to take his first attempt. He had declared 2 meters as his opening height. He went over clean. Shi Yin, arriving a step behind Luo Na, let out a breath. "See? He's fine. Please, he's been working toward this for so long—"

Luo Na's eyes were not on the jump. They were on Duan Yucheng's right ankle, and on what happened after he landed. He had wrapped it himself—skillfully, with a flesh-colored bandage that read as medical support rather than concealment at a glance. But she wasn't glancing. She watched his gait. The right foot came down with a fraction of a second's hesitation, a barely perceptible protection, the kind of adjustment that becomes automatic after enough pain.

Duan Yucheng, meanwhile, was in good spirits. He clapped along with the crowd after the successful jump, then stretched his neck in the direction of the judges' area, looking. When he turned back, she was standing five meters away.

His expression went entirely still.

Luo Na's face, from forehead to jaw, gave away every single thing she was feeling, and not one of those things was positive. Duan Yucheng's gaze shifted slightly, found Shi Yin's expression behind her, and two words surfaced in his mind with complete clarity.

Damn it.

Luo Na walked toward him. Duan Yucheng's neck went stiff.

"Coach—"

"Tell the referee you're forfeiting."

He blinked. "What? No."

"No?"

"I won't forfeit." He frowned. "I've never forfeited in my life."

Luo Na stopped engaging with him and went directly to the referee. "The School of Economics and Management athlete—cancel his score."

Duan Yucheng came after her. "Coach!"

The referee looked between them, confused. "He didn't foul. Why would I cancel his score?"

"He's withdrawing."

"I'm not withdrawing!" Duan Yucheng stepped in front of her and faced the referee. Then he turned to Luo Na, and the urgency in his voice was the first fully unguarded thing she'd seen from him all day. "Believe me. I've handled it. I'm okay. Let me finish."

Luo Na looked at him. Her voice, when it came, was level and each word was its own sentence.

"Duan Yucheng. You can ignore me and continue competing. But hear this: I will not bring an athlete who acts on his own onto the team. Not ever. You clearly don't need a coach anymore. When this is over, go wherever you like."

He had never heard her speak to him in that tone. It was not anger exactly—it was something colder and more final, and it went through him differently. He stood there for several seconds without moving.

The referee waited. "So? Are you competing or not?"

Luo Na said, "Ask him."

The smile Duan Yucheng usually wore was completely gone. He looked like a person trying to locate a response somewhere in himself and coming up empty.

The referee asked again. "Competing or forfeiting?"

The words came out like something extracted rather than said.

"I forfeit."

A cheer erupted from the field—Liu Shan had cleared 2 meters on his first attempt and was jogging toward the edge of the mat with the uncomplicated happiness of someone having a very good day. He spotted Luo Na and came over, bright-eyed.

"Coach Luo! What brings you over here?"

"Just checking in. You're in good form today."

"I know, right? I feel like something's clicking—I think I might actually break the record today!"

"Good luck."

Duan Yucheng didn't wait for the rest of the exchange. He turned and walked. Luo Na picked up his jacket and bag without looking at him.

"Wait outside."

He passed Shi Yin without stopping. She said, "I'm sorry," quietly. He shook his head, once, and kept going.

---

Outside the stadium the noise from the field seemed to bend around a corner and become something distant. Duan Yucheng sat down on the curb, the warm morning around him suddenly quiet. The cheers filtered through the walls, enthusiastic and unreachable. He put his large hand over the back of his neck and held it there, staring at the ground, his mind not producing anything in particular.

A jacket landed across his shoulders.

"Put your clothes on."

"I'm not cold," he said, under his breath.

"Put them on."

He pulled the jacket on slowly. Beside him, Luo Na was on the phone with Wu Ze, saying she was taking someone to the hospital. When she hung up, she crouched in front of him and reached for his ankle. He pulled back slightly—reflex—and she looked up.

"Does it hurt?"

He didn't answer.

"I asked if it hurts."

The stubbornness was still there, running underneath everything, but it didn't have anywhere to go anymore. He frowned. "No."

Luo Na stood up. "Wait here."

Seven or eight minutes later, he heard a horn. A black Volkswagen pulled up, window rolling down.

"Get in."

---

They didn't speak on the way to the hospital.

Parking near the entrance was the usual chaos—cars and pedestrians pressing from every direction. Luo Na stopped in front of a restaurant nearby and they got out. The moment Duan Yucheng put weight on the ankle on the uneven pavement, the pain cut through all the management and control of the last several days and arrived without warning. He stopped. She was already a step ahead and looked back at the pause.

"What?"

He didn't answer.

"Does it hurt?"

She came back toward him. He started to say no need— and she had already taken his right arm, her grip firm, steering him toward the hospital entrance. He was embarrassed enough to be grateful for the busyness of the street—nobody was paying attention to a nineteen-year-old being walked by his coach like a child—and he stopped resisting.

Inside, it was even more crowded. Luo Na told him to sit and went to register. There were no specialist appointments available. A standard appointment meant a wait of over half an hour. She came back, assessed the building layout, and said: "Building B."

---

Building B was the older outpatient building. No escalators, three elevators, all of them with queues that moved like they'd accepted their situation. Hospital elevators were their own particular ecosystem—sometimes a single wheelchair patient and their companions occupied the entire car, and the rest of the queue just absorbed it.

They waited. They reached the front of the queue. Two middle-aged women stepped in from the side with complete confidence.

"Move it, auntie."

Luo Na moved them. The woman turned with her face arranged for confrontation. "Why are you hitting—"

Luo Na looked at her.

The look was sufficient. Duan Yucheng read the situation with speed born of self-preservation, closed his hand around Luo Na's arm, and said quickly, "It's fine, let's just take the stairs."

"Can your foot handle stairs?"

"I'll hop."

She let herself be steered to the stairwell.

Orthopedics was on the fifth floor. Luo Na walked beside him on the first flight, letting him hop, and then on the second flight she seemed to reach the end of some internal calculation. She stopped and bent forward slightly.

"Get on."

Duan Yucheng stared at her back.

"What?"

"I'll carry you. Get on."

"No—don't—you don't have to—"

"Will you stop wasting my time?" The coach's voice, full register, no patience remaining. He climbed onto her back.

"I'm actually pretty heavy—"

She lifted him in one motion. He stopped talking.

Luo Na was 173 centimeters and had been training for years. The weight registered, but it didn't slow her. She started up the stairs.

Duan Yucheng, on her back, did not know exactly where to look. He tried several options. His eyes eventually settled on her face in profile—the line of her nose, which was cleaner than he'd noticed before, and a small mole on the right side of it that he had definitely not noticed before. Her hair was near his face. It had a faint, pleasant smell. He moved his nose slightly closer, which tickled, which was uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time.

At the landing where the stairwell turned, light came through a window, and he saw that the hair at her temples had gone a warm reddish color—just those few strands, lit by the light, darkened with sweat from the heat of the stairwell and the effort of carrying him.

His lips touched her shoulder. Her shirt was faintly damp.

"Coach—are you tired—"

"Yes."

"Put me down."

"Shut up."

He tried to shift his weight toward getting down on his own. She felt it.

"Don't move."

"I'm too heavy, put me—"

"What, you feel sorry for me now?" Her voice was sharp, rising over the quiet of the stairwell. "If you felt sorry for me, why didn't you earlier? If you hadn't made a scene, would we be climbing hospital stairs right now? Very brave when you're competing on a broken ankle—and now you want to be considerate?"

He went quiet. The stubbornness had fully dissolved somewhere in the last half hour, and without it there was only how tired she sounded and how much of this was his fault.

"I'm sorry."

She didn't answer. He could feel her breathing had changed—heavier, her heartbeat more present against his chest.

He tried again. "Sister. I was wrong."

"Don't."

He pressed his face into her shoulder.

"I'm sorry." His voice had gone low and strange. "I'm really sorry. Please don't be angry."

Luo Na stopped on the stair landing.

She could feel him trying to control it—the small, involuntary shaking, the held breath. He wasn't making any sound. He was doing everything he could to contain it, and he was not quite succeeding.

She stood there for a moment, then carried him up the last flight and the rest of the fifth floor all at once, and set him down outside the orthopedics department.

She had not expected to make him cry. The moment sat between them, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable enough to name.

"Stay here. I'll check our number."

She came back with two water bottles. She drank half of hers standing up, then tossed the other to him. He caught it. He had steadied himself—composure mostly restored, if you didn't look too closely. He was staring at the floor and working his fingers through his hair, which had gotten disheveled somewhere along the way.

She walked toward him and he said immediately, quietly, "Don't look at me."

She crouched down in front of him anyway. He turned his face away. She reached up and touched his chin lightly—just enough to redirect—turning his face to the side so his profile was toward her.

"Don't look at me," he said again, voice still rough.

She straightened up and leaned against the wall beside him instead.

"I'm not trying to be cruel to you," she said. "And I want you to do well—I do. But you have to be safe first. Having the heart of a competitor is good. Knowing when to protect yourself is also good. You need both."

A muffled sound of agreement.

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

"Nineteen and still crying."

He turned red up to his ears. She lowered her voice slightly. "Don't think you can be reckless just because you're young. For athletes, injuries set the ceiling. You're nineteen. You have so many chances still ahead of you. Do you understand that?"

He picked at the edge of his water bottle label. "I understand."

After a silence: "Are you still angry?"

"I don't have energy to stay angry."

"Okay." He exhaled slowly. "That's good."

She pushed off from the wall and came to stand over him. She tilted his chin up again and looked down at him—the angle made the distance between them smaller than it usually was, the overhead light making his still-damp eyes catch.

"Promise me. From now on, you tell me when things happen. No acting alone. Promise."

He stared up at her, red-eyed, expression unreadable.

Luo Na pinched both his cheeks gently between her fingers. His face compressed into something rounder than his usual angles.

"You heard me?"

He raised three fingers of his right hand, slowly, and said, in English with a pronunciation so natural it caught her off-guard: "I'll be good. I swear."

His voice was still rough from crying. His eyes were clear.

Something moved, briefly, in Luo Na's chest.

"Just be obedient," she said, and stepped back.

She leaned against the wall behind her. Her fingers found the cool surface, and she curled them against it—the tips of them still holding, in some way she couldn't name, the faint impression of his face.