FO | Chapter 9

Zhou Suiming had been drinking water. At that, he paused.

Zheng Huaiyou continued, “When you endure too much for too long, you become numb. You stop noticing where the problem is, and you make it impossible for other people to judge you.”

That successfully made Zhou Suiming frown, but he quickly relaxed his expression and did his best to keep smiling. Looking around, he said, “When did this turn into a therapy session?”

“Just speaking from experience.”

Oh, is that so? Zhou Suiming stopped playing along and let his smile fade. “I told you before. It’s a bad habit of mine.”

“Can’t you change it?”

“Can you stop yourself from smoking?”

It was a clash of spear points. The two of them fell silent at the same time. Only the player in the neighboring batting cage continued swinging with all his might, the wind from each swing coming in waves, though unfortunately every ball went wide.

They could have avoided a confrontation simply by changing the subject. In the past, whenever a hint of gunpowder crept into their conversations, they either tacitly avoided it or one of them offered the other a step down.

Both of them were experts at creating such steps. If they kept laying them down, they would eventually form a Penrose staircase, trapping themselves in an endless exchange of floating courtesies with no way out.

But no one was laying down steps now. Instead, both sides raised a heavy barrier of their own, waiting to see who would give in first.

In the end, it took someone else to knock down the Berlin Wall. An employee from Nest came over to remind them that the batting cages needed maintenance today and would be closing two hours early, so they should make the most of their remaining time.

The customers in the other lanes finished one after another. In the end, only the two of them remained.

“Sorry.”

The one on the east spoke first. Zhou Suiming took a deep breath and waved his phone at Zheng Huaiyou.

“There was a little problem with work just now. My tone wasn’t great.”

The one on the west replied, “I shouldn’t have said that, either.”

He sat down beside Zhou Suiming. “I’m sorry.”

Both sides extended an olive branch and stepped onto the other’s newly constructed path. The Penrose staircase was restored to its original form.

Zhou Suiming quickly adjusted his mood and gave Zheng Huaiyou a simple explanation of what had happened. After describing the client’s unreasonable pile of revision requests, he seemed to think of something and raised his voice with an “Ah.”

“If this client traded futures, that would be great.”

Hmm? Zheng Huaiyou turned his head, puzzled.

It was rare to see him look so confused. Zhou Suiming’s mood improved a little. “Then I could persuade them not to make the color grading all green and gloomy. It’s bad luck, you know.”

What was he talking about? Zheng Huaiyou thought for half a second, then laughed along, a dimple appearing in his left cheek. “You’re far too optimistic.”

“Can’t be helped. A producer has to learn to make the best of a bad situation.”

Zhou Suiming sighed. “Every department is different, and every person has a different personality. Put them all together and friction is inevitable. I’m the coordinator, so I have to absorb everyone’s temper. If I can’t absorb it, we’ll all be waiting to fall apart.”

“That’s a lot of pressure,” Zheng Huaiyou said. “And it’s not fair, either.”

Zhou Suiming said it was certainly not fair, but managing to placate everyone did give him some sense of accomplishment. And if he received a thank-you or a word of appreciation afterward, at least it meant his efforts had not been wasted.

“Although it’s exhausting,” Zhou Suiming said, leaning his head back against the net. After thinking for a moment, he lowered his voice. “I don’t like seeing everyone unhappy, so I’m willing to be accommodating. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, either. Sometimes someone has to make a sacrifice. I only hope…”

He stopped to consider his wording, not wanting to sound too calculating. Kindness was supposed to be selfless. Any additional demand would taint that selflessness. He also hated anything that had to be begged for.

“You’re doing very well,” Zheng Huaiyou said suddenly.

“?”

“I’m praising you.”

Zhou Suiming’s heart began beating faster. “What, like a coach praising a student?”

“Not just with baseball. If you do anything well, you deserve to be praised.”

Zheng Huaiyou spoke with such seriousness that his words sounded like a universal truth. After a moment of silence, Zhou Suiming put on his joking tone again. “Teacher Zheng, do you think I’m a kindergartener?”

“Whether you’re a child or an adult, there’s nothing wrong with wanting affirmation. You don’t have to be embarrassed about it.”

Zhou Suiming fell silent. He lowered his head and picked at the fastening cord on his glove. After a long while, he said, “You can be pretty direct sometimes.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Not again. Zhou Suiming laughed. “Seeking approval through a rhetorical question is also a sign that you want to be praised, isn’t it?”

This time, Zheng Huaiyou went quiet.

“That’s true.” He stopped denying it. “It seems we both place a lot of importance on other people’s approval.”

“Haha.” Zhou Suiming laughed. “Living off other people’s positive feedback. We’re both doing a pretty terrible job of living.”

Zheng Huaiyou murmured his agreement twice without correcting him. Zhou Suiming immediately felt the ache in his head disappear, and his good mood, disrupted by the client, came back online. How strange, he thought. He had never said these things to anyone else.

People in their thirties could complain to others, but they could not expose their weaknesses. Everyone hid things away, afraid that someone might catch hold of a loose thread and tug lightly, exposing the ugliness or emptiness at their core.

Yet with Zheng Huaiyou, showing his tail seemed completely natural. He believed that even if the other man saw it, he would not tug it recklessly. Instead, he would wait until Zhou Suiming was distracted and tuck it back in for him.

Was that some kind of sign of safety? Zhou Suiming stood up and stepped into the lane. Under Zheng Huaiyou’s watchful gaze, he finished the final round.

*

The client’s feedback was finally extinguished by Zhou Suiming’s maneuvering.

He had not used any particularly special method. First, he had pretended to praise the client’s taste, then pointed out that reaching such a high standard would require at least three days of rerendering and production.

For the sake of a perfect result, we’re of course willing to cooperate and spend a little more time refining it, if you’re not in a hurry.

With the end of the year approaching, how could the client not be in a hurry? After checking their internal schedule, they decided that going back and forth would interfere with their upcoming holiday. They immediately changed their approach, made only a few minor revisions, and confirmed the whole mess before the New Year.

Everyone was happy with the outcome. Zhou Suiming breathed a sigh of relief and relayed the news to everyone at the studio. “Everyone, relax. We’ll be able to enjoy a peaceful Spring Festival this year.”

After receiving the news, Song Ying went completely offline starting on the Little New Year. No one could find her, so she had probably gone somewhere to enjoy herself. Only Xiao Zhang stayed behind, diligently doing the deep cleaning. He said that no one had been in the office for days and he was afraid they would come back to find spiderwebs everywhere.

Zhou Suiming cleaned alongside him and asked about his plans for the Spring Festival. The young man said he had taken on several freelance jobs, then immediately assured him that they had all been scheduled during the holiday and would absolutely not interfere with work after the New Year.

“Short on money?” Zhou Suiming asked.

Xiao Zhang nodded and said he wanted to save up for a new lens.

“Photography keeps three generations poor.” Xiao Zhang had studied the same major as he had, so Zhou Suiming understood. “There’s no need to rush back to work after the New Year. Take two extra days off. If Song Ying asks, tell her to come to me.”

Deeply moved, Xiao Zhang pushed the mop across the floor with even more vigor.

On New Year’s Eve, everyone at the studio disappeared. Zhou Suiming no longer had an excuse to stay there, so he drove off alone.

His parents lived in a satellite city near the outskirts of the same municipality, several hours away by car. When he arrived, the sight of Zhou Suiming alone told the elderly couple that their son’s love life was not going well.

He had already broken up with Li Youhe by last year’s Spring Festival. Counting this year, he had returned home alone for two years in a row.

During the four days he stayed at home, Zhou Suiming visited relatives and friends, but whenever he had nothing else to do, he continued watching the television series. The plot remained just as compelling in the second and third seasons. The protagonist and the reporter still did not end up together as the fans had hoped. Instead, they each found new partners and maintained a relationship that was both adversarial and friendly.

Ming: Ugh, this show keeps throwing me up and down.

Zheng Huaiyou: You can’t take even this? What are you going to do about the later plot?

Ming: Huh? There’s still more to wait through? Fine. I’ll hold out until the day they get together.

You: I told you, being able to endure things isn’t a virtue.

Zhou Suiming laughed, imagining the expression on Zheng Huaiyou’s face when he sent that message. Was he amused or exasperated? Either way, Zhou Suiming found it interesting.

And so, several days passed in a rush. His filial visit came to an end. His parents saw Zhou Suiming to his car and did not say much on the surface. Only just before he left did they hint, “You’ll be thirty-two once the New Year is over.”

Zhou Suiming gave an “Oh.” He was already more fortunate than many people. His parents were open-minded, and they did not particularly care about their son’s orientation. What mattered more to them was whether Zhou Suiming had achieved the ideal of a happy little family.

To them, being gay was not a defiance of convention, but refusing to start a family was simply intolerable.

Back in the city, the roads that were usually bustling seemed a little desolate. Even the elevated expressway was free of traffic, and Zhou Suiming arrived home without a hitch.

He checked the calendar. Zheng Huaiyou was due back the day after tomorrow, and Nest would reopen the following day. Bored, Zhou Suiming had intended to continue watching the series, but he suddenly found himself unable to concentrate on it and had to set it aside for the time being.

He tidied the entire house from top to bottom. When there was truly nothing left to organize, he opened the closet in the corner and pulled out a camera cabinet half as tall as the wall. Sitting on the floor, he began cleaning off the dust.

Maintenance twice a year was both a habit and a punishment. Those old comrades from the past now faced him as nothing more than a collection of black lenses, a row of lifeless eyes.

Zhou Suiming repeated the cleaning mechanically until he took out the Hasselblad at the very back. He set down the cleaning cloth and lifted the camera, running his fingertips over the body. A burning sensation still lingered there.

This was the blackest, deepest eye of them all. He silently finished cleaning it, then placed his silent comrades back in the humidity-controlled cabinet. Afterward, he opened Instagram, found the account he had looked at countless times, and kept scrolling until he reached the bottom.

That photograph lay quietly beneath all the others. The composition was divided in two, with a cliff forming the horizon. In the lower half, seawater crashed against the precipice, foaming waves washing over the rocks. In the upper half stood a sparse fir tree, its trunk thin and spindly, unmoved by the wind.

Severe yet plain, tragic yet expansive.

The caption read: My junior @Ming’s masterpiece.

It had been posted ten years ago, with only a handful of likes. Zhou Suiming stared at it for a long time. In his memory, the cold wind had howled across the Scottish Highlands and mist had hung in the air. His backpack had been soaked through by the rain, and nearly ten hours of hiking had drained almost all his strength. He could only rely on his trekking pole, trudging forward with uneven steps through the rotting vegetation.

When would they reach the end? He did not know. Then a shout came from his senior ahead of him. “Suiming, the fog’s clearing!”

The mountaintop revealed itself in its entirety. Beneath the gray-brown sky, the tide surged. In the middle of that nearly barren wilderness stood a single fir tree, as though it were the final offering of heaven and earth.

He stood gazing at it in silence, forgetting to breathe, feeling that all the hardship he had endured before this moment no longer mattered.

His phone suddenly lit up with a notification.

You: My flight was rescheduled. I’m coming back tonight.