Chapter 13: Meat Pies and Morning Bus

Duan Yucheng looked back down the track toward Luo Na.

She was standing at the far end, arms at her sides, not moving, not saying anything — just watching, waiting for him to cross the line. A hundred meters of distance between them and somehow it felt like direct contact.

Something shifted in his chest. Two minutes ago he'd been sitting in the rubble of the high jump result, unable to feel much of anything. One glance at her standing there and something in him caught fire again.

Wu Ze pointed him to lane six.

He walked to the starting line. The sprint team was spread across the lanes around him. Lane five was Huang Lin — the school games hundred-meter champion, Wu Ze's best — who was already in his warm-up and gave Duan Yucheng a single expressionless nod as he passed.

Wu Ze finished marking his clipboard and yawned. The assistant coach, interpreting something in the air, clapped his hands. Eight athletes moved to the blocks. The assistant coach raised the starter pistol, craned his neck, and called it.

"On your marks—"

Duan Yucheng took two slow breaths. Squatted down. Hands to the ground. Weight forward.

"Set—"

The shot rang out.

Wu Ze's eyes sharpened. He'd been coaching long enough to read a runner's technique in a single stride, and Duan Yucheng's first thirty meters told him quite a bit. The explosive start was genuine — he came off the line ahead of the field and stayed there, building fast. Then Huang Lin started working his stride, lengthening and quickening, and by the halfway point had come through. In the last twenty meters Duan Yucheng found another gear and pushed hard to the line, finishing a narrow second.

Wu Ze walked to the finish with his hands behind his back, running the whole race back through his head. The assistant coach came up beside him with the times. Huang Lin, 10.93. Duan Yucheng, 11.02.

Wu Ze gave Huang Lin a thorough dressing-down first, then turned.

"What was happening in your mid-race phase?"

Duan Yucheng was still catching his breath, chest working.

"Sorry?"

"Your leg recovery was off. Knee joints too stiff. Did you actually eat this morning?"

"..."

Wu Ze's tone left no room for discussion. Duan Yucheng nodded and said, "Understood. I'll fix it."

"Again." Wu Ze waved his hand in a way that covered both dismissal and instruction.

---

Two cases of water had been stacked by the track for the selection. Duan Yucheng grabbed a bottle and was still getting the cap off when a voice came from above him.

"Really going all out, aren't you."

Jiang Tian was up in the stands, already changed into his tracksuit, looking down with an expression that didn't bother pretending to be neutral.

This wasn't the first time. Duan Yucheng had stopped reacting to it. He picked up his bottle and started to turn away.

"How much longer are you going to make things harder for Coach Luo?"

He stopped.

Of everything Jiang Tian had ever said to him, he had never once answered back. This was the first time.

"Say that again."

"What?" Jiang Tian's tone stayed easy, contemptuous. "You're pleased with yourself for running second in the hundred, I get it. You really think that makes you provincial games material?"

"That's not your call."

"No, it's not mine." Jiang Tian glanced sideways. "But it affects other people."

Duan Yucheng followed his eyeline. Near the stadium entrance, someone was collecting his things with the slow, heavy movements of someone who'd just heard bad news. Zhang Hongwen — Wu Ze's athlete, one year ahead, who'd taken second in the hundred at the school games. A University's sprint depth had never been deep, and Huang Lin and Zhang Hongwen were the core of it. Duan Yucheng understood, without needing it spelled out, that his result had just taken something from Zhang Hongwen's future. He looked away from his back and said quietly, "Competitions come down to times. That's how it works."

Jiang Tian laughed, short and flat.

"A high jump athlete who can't clear the bar tries the hundred. When that doesn't pan out, does he move on to throws? Should we just wait until you've sampled every event before we bother selecting you?"

Duan Yucheng was still warm from the run. The heat in his face had nothing to do with exertion. "This wasn't my idea — the coach set this up."

He knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say. Mentioning the coach landed on Jiang Tian like a switch. His whole face went cold. The pause stretched out. Then, carefully: "I heard your family does well for itself."

"What does that have to do with anything."

"Do you know what the sprint team is saying about Coach Luo right now?"

Duan Yucheng went still.

Jiang Tian looked at him. "People are taking guesses at the number."

Something went white in Duan Yucheng's head. He had no memory of crossing the distance between them. One moment Jiang Tian was above him in the stands, the next Duan Yucheng had his collar in both fists and had dragged the 195-centimeter athlete down to eye level.

"Say one more word."

Duan Yucheng almost never swore. When he did, it meant something had passed the last line. This was the last line.

Jiang Tian knocked his hands away.

"What are you doing that for? If you're so good, let your times prove it! Stop riding on special treatment and calling it merit!"

The noise attracted the assistant coach from across the field. "Hey — enough. What is this?" Hot-blooded confrontations weren't unusual on a track and field team. The coaches had long since stopped treating them as emergencies. "Settle down, both of you."

Jiang Tian snorted and walked off. Duan Yucheng dropped into the stands with nowhere to put the heat still running through him. He sat there breathing hard, not calming down.

"Don't let him get in your head."

He startled. He'd been too far inside his own skull to notice there was anyone nearby. Four or five rows up, a figure was sitting in the sun with the stillness of someone who had been there a while.

Dai Yuxia, broad-shouldered, utterly unhurried, sat with her back to the light like a statue that had opinions.

"Senior Sister." Duan Yucheng lowered his voice automatically. The memory of that encouraging shove was still in his shoulder.

"Jiang Tian is small-minded about certain things," she said. "He's not actually a bad person. Ignore the noise."

Duan Yucheng said nothing. Dai Yuxia continued anyway.

"Also — Coach Luo is practically Jiang Tian's family. His household doesn't have money. She's the one who pushed through a scholarship for him when he technically didn't qualify. When his grades slipped she went to the department head herself and kept his competition eligibility. So when he hears people talking that way about her, he goes ugly about it. Can't really blame him."

Duan Yucheng absorbed this. "Are people actually saying it? For real?"

Dai Yuxia smiled, a slow and unbothered thing. "Whether it's true or false stops mattering once it's being said. Gossip feeds on itself." She stood up, filling the space considerably. She came down the rows toward him one step at a time. "And you — do you know how many people on this team are envious of you?"

He shook his head.

Dai Yuxia reached out, hooked two thick fingers against his cheek, and gave it a firm pinch. "Such an innocent creature."

Cold sweat materialized on Duan Yucheng's neck.

She released him, draping her tracksuit over one shoulder. "Did you eat the chocolate?"

"Every piece."

She gave a satisfied nod and strolled away with the unhurried ease of someone who had arranged the universe to her liking. Over her shoulder: "Get results. That's the only thing that shuts people up."

---

On the other side of the stadium, Luo Na and Wu Ze talked through most of the afternoon.

She showed him the training records. His reaction matched Wang Qilin's almost exactly — a pause, then: "These are thorough." They went through the data together, then pulled up the hundred-meter footage from the high-speed camera and watched it several times.

"His build is genuinely made for this." Wu Ze pointed at the screen and went through it methodically. Well-developed muscle, low subcutaneous fat, narrow ankles, a long flat Achilles tendon, short femur, long tibia. The kind of proportions that shifted the center of gravity forward efficiently, reduced the load on the folding and swing phase, and gave strong ground contact. "You don't often see all of these in one person."

Luo Na leaned against the wall beside him. "I told you. He runs well and he thinks. And the main thing—" She tapped her temple. "He processes fast. Corrections stick."

Wu Ze lit a cigarette.

"Will he switch events?"

"Probably not." She smiled, a little rueful. "He loves high jump too much. First thing every morning he basically lights incense in front of a photo of Holm."

Wu Ze had no response to that.

"Put that aside for now," Luo Na said. "Let him run the hundred at the provincials. I think he can go under eleven seconds."

Wu Ze exhaled slowly, looked at her expression, and relented with something approaching a real smile. "If you're saying it that seriously, I suppose I have to find out."

---

The weeks before the provincial games were dense. Duan Yucheng increased his training load, but academic classes weren't moving for anyone, which meant the only solution was to start earlier. This meant Luo Na dragooning Wu Ze into 5:30 mornings, which Wu Ze accepted with the resigned suffering of a man who understood he had no real choice.

"I'm not as young as I used to be." He arrived each morning looking like something that had been found rather than fetched, yawning through drills while Luo Na stood beside him in perfect readiness.

A few sessions in, Wu Ze had to admit the kid was something. Corrections landed the first time. Adjustments transferred from explanation to muscle in a single practice. "No wonder finance took him," he said, in a tone that was simultaneously a compliment and an insult. Duan Yucheng received it as both and said nothing.

---

Twenty-odd days later, on a sharp clear autumn morning, the provincial track and field competition arrived.

Duan Yucheng was up before the sky had finished deciding what color it was going to be. He moved through the dormitory room the way he always did on early mornings — bathroom door eased shut, tap turned to its lowest setting, everything done in a register just above silence so his roommates stayed under their blankets. He'd packed his bag the night before. He picked it up, went out, and pulled the door closed behind him without a sound.

The campus was empty. Dark blue sky, soft wind, and nothing moving anywhere.

Even someone like Duan Yucheng — someone who genuinely loved mornings, who had never once resented an early alarm — occasionally felt the particular loneliness of being on a different schedule from everyone around him. Today was one of those mornings. He stood for a moment and looked at the empty path ahead.

"What are you staring at?"

Luo Na was standing by the side of the road eating corn.

He hadn't seen this tracksuit before — dark purple, fitted trousers, a looser top, the kind of outfit that made her look like she belonged on the track rather than beside it. Hair up in a high ponytail, forehead clear, posture easy. She had a large black sports bag on her shoulder and waved her corn at him.

"Come here."

Duan Yucheng jogged over. Luo Na opened the bag with the corn still between her teeth. He leaned in to look, and she pushed his head back without looking up.

"Out of the way."

The bag was full of hot food — the smell came up warm and immediate in the cold morning air. Corn, steamed buns, eggs, meat patties. His stomach made a decision before he did.

"What do you want?"

"Meat patty."

She handed one over. It was nearly fifteen centimeters long. Duan Yucheng held it for a moment, looked at Luo Na, and said, "Watch this." He rolled it lengthwise, tipped his head back, and fed it down his throat in one long motion like a man with no fear of consequences.

Then he looked at her.

Luo Na's expression was a complicated landscape. "Are you actually awake right now?"

He was about to answer when something went wrong. He coughed — once, unsuccessfully — then covered his mouth and went down to his knees on the pavement, one hand at his throat.

Luo Na's brow snapped together. "What's happening?" She crouched beside him and started patting his back. "Did it go wrong? Get it out—" Her patting produced no improvement. Duan Yucheng dropped fully to his hands and knees. Her heart jumped and she was already reaching around for the water bottle—

She caught the angle of his eyes. He was looking directly up at her.

The silence stretched for exactly one second.

Duan Yucheng grinned.

Luo Na's expression went through several stages and arrived at something that had teeth in it. She dropped onto him like a falling tree, got one hand around his collar, and informed him at close range: "You absolute—"

"Coach — the neck—"

"You deserve it!"

"It's actually ticklish — I can't—"

He was fighting both laughter and her grip, neck straining, voice coming out in broken pieces. The struggle pushed them far enough that a balcony door on the floor above banged open and a shirtless figure appeared in it, looking like a man who had been wronged by the universe.

"What is going on down there?! Do you know what time it is?! Some people are trying to sleep!"

Teacher and student went immediately quiet. Luo Na, very conscious of being a member of the faculty, removed herself from the situation at speed. Duan Yucheng scrambled after her. They walked fast and said nothing until they were well clear of the building.

At the school gate, Luo Na opened the bag to check on the food.

"You've flattened every single meat patty."

"You were the one who—"

She looked at him.

"—I did it," he finished. "Completely my fault."

The team bus was waiting across the road. The light at the intersection was red. They stood side by side on the pavement, Luo Na silent, Duan Yucheng with his hands in his pockets, drifting gradually sideways until he was leaning against her shoulder at a gentle angle. She ignored him. He leaned a bit more. A bit more. She finally turned.

"What are you doing."

He tilted his head slightly. "Don't be angry. I'll eat every flattened one. All of them."

He was clearly the one who needed forgiving, but the way he said it came out like he was the one doing her a favor.

Luo Na looked at him for a moment. Then she rolled her eyes, flipped her ponytail, and walked straight toward the bus.

"Eat yourself into the ground, then."