Chapter 23: How Wonderful This Is

Wan Kun walked fast down the gravel road, his pace climbing with the irritation.

His phone kept going — a few seconds of vibrating, then silence, then it started again. He walked through two cycles of this and then lost patience, swung his foot, and sent a concrete roadblock skidding two or three meters across the ground.

He pulled out the phone and answered without looking at the screen.

"Hello."

"Why did it take you so long?" Wang Kai. His foreman at Rust Season.

"Didn't hear it."

"Fine. What did you decide about what I said? Have you thought about it?"

Wan Kun didn't answer.

"I don't have time to play around with you. Do it or don't. If you can, fine; if not, go." Wang Kai's voice was flat and final.

Wan Kun's teeth came together. He fixed his eyes on a utility pole at the side of the road as if he was trying to make it bleed.

Wang Kai's tone shifted, slightly. The reasonable-employer register. "Look, I get that it's your first time. I understand. Don't carry guilt around about this. They called me a few days back, they're not asking for anything outrageous. One night, that's all. With your build, at your age — you can't manage one night?"

The quarry environment had left dust in the air. The wind pushed it into his eyes.

"Let me be honest with you. Being selected is its own kind of skill, you shouldn't take it lightly. You know how many people in this area are looking for this kind of opportunity. These three women average around forty-five. What are you worried about?" Wang Kai dropped his voice. "Regular customers of ours. Long-term money. One night, you're looking at seven thousand minimum."

Wan Kun was quiet for a long time. Then, quietly: "I don't want to go."

"Still a little nervous?"

Wan Kun pulled a cigarette out, lit it, and said, "It's not about that."

"Then don't come back to work," Wang Kai said, the patience fully gone now, replaced with something sharper. "You know this came through Uncle Wu's recommendation. We don't take on new people just like that. You were sharp in the interview, quick, said you could handle everything. And now when it actually matters you're backing up. I didn't see that coming." A pause. "If you were some model student with something to protect, fine. But what exactly are you protecting? A street kid acting precious. You know what the job is. It means selling yourself. That's what the work has always meant. If you're not short on money, then sure, keep your dignity. But you are short on money, and you're still doing this song and dance. You're not a virgin, are you."

Wang Kai hung up.

Wan Kun stood with the dial tone for a long moment before lowering the phone.

A shop nearby was being renovated. Metal on metal, intermittent, with a chemical smell coming through the open doorway — paint or solvents or something else. He had been standing in front of it long enough that his temples had started to ache.

He stood there for twenty minutes.

Then he reached behind him, under his jacket, and pulled out something crumpled.

A notebook. He held it in his hand and stared at it until his breathing became something he was actively managing. Then he crumpled it the rest of the way and dropped it on the side of the road.

He walked.

---

He Lizhen got home exhausted, put the egg pancakes from the thermal container back in the refrigerator, sat down at the table, and stayed there. Not sad exactly. Just without energy. The kind of tired that isn't physical.

After a while she put down the pen she hadn't used and looked at the fish tank on the shelf — the two goldfish moving slowly through the water, round and unhurried.

She lay her head on the table and let her thoughts wander without trying to direct them.

She went back through everything, from the beginning. The convenience store. The classroom. The stairwell. She felt something that was close to sadness, but she wasn't angry at him, not even close to it. She tried to understand why and found it wasn't the kind of thing that resolved itself into a sentence.

She kept coming back to the same image: him crouching outside the convenience store with a cigarette, in the dark. It had planted itself somewhere she couldn't locate and reach, like ink on fabric. Once it was there, it was there.

Oh well.

Her eyes drifted to the bag she'd dropped on the floor. Then past it, to the sofa in the corner. Her eyes went red before she could do anything about it. She turned her face down quickly and pressed it against the table.

The sofa was pale blue. It came with the apartment, part of the original renovation. She had almost never sat on it. But he had. Every time he came, he ended up on that sofa — settled into it like he'd always been there, like a wolf who had learned exactly which piece of furniture he preferred.

Don't get upset with young people. Peng Qian's voice somewhere in her memory: you're heartbroken, they cry for one night and sleep it off, and then they just owe more.

He Lizhen decided she wanted to talk to someone. She thought about it and called Shang Jie.

Shang Jie was asleep.

"Lizhen?"

"Yeah."

"Why are you calling now? It's early."

He Lizhen looked at the clock and said, "It's past midnight."

"Oh. I only fell asleep at three. What's wrong?"

"Nothing." She heard the tiredness in Shang Jie's voice and didn't want to add to it. "Go back to sleep."

Shang Jie made a sound of agreement, already drifting.

"Shang Jie."

"Mm? What?"

"I want to ask you something."

"Go on."

"Am I old-fashioned?"

Silence. Then Shang Jie came back slightly more awake. "Why are you asking that all of a sudden? Did something happen?"

"No. I just wanted to ask."

There was no real need to ask. He Lizhen already knew the answer. She'd known Shang Jie for over ten years and had heard that word from her more than once.

This time, though, Shang Jie didn't give it to her directly.

"Lizhen. Did someone give you a hard time at school?"

A student, she thought. Could she really say that? She couldn't quite get there.

"No."

"Don't give me that. What did someone say to you?"

He Lizhen stayed quiet.

"He Lizhen." The sound of a lighter on the other end, probably. "I've said it before: you're unsophisticated, yes. But your version of it is different from everyone else's. It's a particular kind. Hard to explain."

He Lizhen, having experienced Shang Jie's approach to comfort before, said: "Okay. Go to sleep."

"You're not going to tell me?"

"Good night."

After she hung up, something had shifted, just slightly. She got up and went to the window and opened the curtains. The afternoon light was strong and warm, coming down on the loofah flowers along the railing outside, making them look vivid and simple, like egg yolks barely touched by oil.

---

Hu Fei texted her early Sunday morning to confirm.

"I'll be at the school gate at eleven. All right?"

"Yes."

Nine people total at the dinner, he said. As many as their whole office. Because teachers from other schools would be there, and because she had been embarrassed the day before without going into detail about it, He Lizhen got up earlier than usual that morning and stood in front of her closet trying to find something that would do.

All her clothes were variations on the same basic idea. She worked through them and eventually pulled out a light blue dress that was, by her standards, something you could call pretty.

She brushed her hair, pinned it at the back of her head, put on wedge heels, looked at herself in the mirror for longer than she usually did, and left.

Hu Fei was already at the gate. She came toward him at a half-run. "Have you been waiting long?"

"Just got here. Let's go."

He waved down a taxi. In the back seat on the way over, he told her the tutoring center location had been finalized — a residential district behind Minghua Road, did she know it? She said she wasn't sure but she'd find it. He nodded and said there were some construction sites nearby, still going, so it might be noisy. They'd have to see. He leaned back. "Everything's almost in order. We've been running around for over a month. Now we just need students."

She asked if it was open city-wide. He said yes, though early on the students would mostly come from the teachers' own networks. She asked carefully about No. 2 Middle School. He said he had connections there — plenty of parents looking for tutoring, especially with one year left. Even the ones who weren't expecting miracles wanted to try something.

At the restaurant entrance, He Lizhen found herself unexpectedly nervous. Jinhua was a place you could tell from the outside: good environment, careful presentation. Not somewhere she went.

Hu Fei said, getting out of the taxi, for reasons she wasn't sure about: "Teacher Li is treating us today. His family is quite comfortable."

"Oh," she said.

They were the last ones in. Li Changjia had booked a large private room and the table was already full when they entered.

"Teacher Hu, Teacher He — please, come in."

Li Changjia stood and waved them to seats. He gave the waiter a look, and things started arriving.

He Lizhen looked around the table. She appeared to be the youngest. A man in his fifties, the kind of face you'd call scholarly, leaned toward her and said: "Hello. Nice to meet you."

She inclined her head. "He Lizhen. Chinese language, at No. 2 Middle School."

"Zhang Jing," he said, at an unhurried pace. "Mathematics, No. 6 Middle School."

"Hello."

"You're very young."

"I finished my postgraduate work this year. Just started teaching."

While she was still working through the introduction, the dishes had arrived. He Lizhen kept her face steady, but the plates being set down were not what she'd expected — lobsters, several of them, each easily the length of her forearm.

Li Changjia, who had the look of someone comfortable in these rooms, apparently hadn't assumed the quiet Chinese language teacher across from him would have had any experience with this kind of thing. He glanced at her as he turned, and smiled. "Teacher He, you look wonderful today."

She knew the compliment for what it was — politeness, the kind offered to a woman as a matter of course. Even knowing that, she was glad to hear it. She smiled back, and then they both turned to their respective neighbors.

She talked through the meal with the old mathematics teacher about students, about curriculum changes, about the difference between what the exam required and what teaching actually felt like. It was easy conversation. He was a thoughtful man who listened properly.

How nice this is, He Lizhen thought, somewhere in the middle of it.

Just that. An ordinary kind sentence, said between two people who both know it costs nothing and both accept it that way, and they smile, and they move on. No sharp edges. No aftermath.

Why be anything else — why be so exposed, so certain of things, so fast to act. All it did was hurt both people, and solve nothing.