C2 Part7

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P – Chapter 2.6

P – Chapter 2.7

In the dark, Liang Sizhe pulled off his two earphones and sat up in irritation.

Passionate songs had been booming downstairs for almost an hour, and there seemed to be no intention in stopping. The room’s sound insulation was too terrible; even earphones couldn’t hold back the beats from entering his ears. The music didn’t even seem like they were entering through his ears — it seemed more like it was seeping in from all directions before they invaded the cracks of his bones. He couldn’t avoid it.

When were they going to close for the night? They wouldn’t sing until dawn, right…

At the end of his patience, he threw his earphones to the side, changed his clothes and pulled open the door, walking outside after putting on his shoes.

As he walked past that row of pitch-dark wooden doors, he once again couldn’t help but wonder: were there really people living here? If people really did live here, how did they manage to endure the noise from downstairs?

The other shops in the alley had already shut for the night. The night’s signs of life, vibrant and bustling with noise, seemed to have dissolved away without a trace like the receding tide.

Once Liang Sizhe appeared at the doorway, several smoking drunkards turned their heads around to appraise him.

The white lights from the second floor were flickering, and they shone on the road downstairs, enhancing the thick, thick layer of reflective oil covering the ground.

He headed towards the corner of the road; he arrived at that bar without realising.

The bar seemed to be closing as well, the music inside already gone. Someone walked out, one hand holding a big bag of rubbish while his other hand was carrying a worn-out wooden guitar.

That person had come out to throw away trash. When he walked past Liang Sizhe, seeing him paused by the side of the road and looking in the direction of the bar, he specifically threw a look at him. He lazily said, “We’re closed. Come back again tomorrow.”

That person spoke with somewhat of a Beijing accent and had a husky voice. Liang Sizhe had studied music since he was young and was very sensitive to all kinds of sounds. He immediately could tell — this man should be the person who’d sang A Piece of Red Cloth just a few hours earlier.

That person opened the trash bin cover and threw in the bag of rubbish in his hands, filling the bin to the top. He then bent over and placed that shabby wooden guitar next to the bin; he walked back with his hands empty.

Seeing Liang Sizhe still standing there, he glanced at him again. This time, he opened his mouth to talk to him. “Hey, why are you standing here?”

Liang Sizhe didn’t answer the question. He only looked at him and asked, “Are you throwing away that guitar?”

“Yeah.”

“Then can I take it?” Liang Sizhe then asked — since it was trash.

“Take it if you want it.” Shrugging indifferently, that person said, “But it’s too old to be played. And the strings are broken.”

“That’s fine,” Liang Sizhe said, walking over to lift up the guitar. He studied the body under the bleak lighting. That person was right: this guitar was truly too old. The varnish on the body was already mottling off, making it so people couldn’t tell what its original colour was. That broken string was also weakly curled up in midair.

The guy had also followed along, and he stopped next to Liang Sizhe and asked, “You know how to play? Or do you want to learn?”

Liang Sizhe replied very vaguely. He said, “I want to try.”

“Oh. I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before? Is this your first time here?”

Liang Sizhe answered with a ‘mn’.

“No wonder… What are you here for?”

Liang Sizhe didn’t look like he belonged in this alley. If someone forcefully tried to connect with him with this place, then at the most, he could only be here for the bar. But the answer Liang Sizhe gave was a complete surprise; he said, “I’m here to work.” He even turned his head to motion back at Lan Yan’s flashy and exaggerated lights not too far away and said, “Over there.”

The guy was stunned for a moment, and then he smiled, saying, “What kind of joke is that…”

“Seriously.” Liang Sizhe spoke naturally, making it hard for others to determine if he was lying or not.

“All right… Whatever you say.” That person didn’t take him seriously. “Let me help you find someone to fix that guitar, or else you really won’t be able to use it. I only cleared it out from backstage today; I don’t know when it was thrown there.” Taking the guitar from Liang Sizhe’s hands, he casually strummed the strings. The off-key sounds coming from the guitar were like the sounds coming from an old tape recorder about to run out of battery.

After thinking a moment, Liang Sizhe asked, “Is that going to be a bother?”

“Hah, not at all. My friend repairs guitars professionally — it’ll be easy. I’ll give it to you in a few days after it’s been fixed. Leave your number?”

Liang Sizhe gave the guy his cellphone number, and then that guy dialled over. Since there was no sound of ringing, Liang Sizhe explained, “I didn’t bring my phone. It’s turned off.” Two hours ago, after getting into bed, he’d only just started to feel some drowsiness after being annoyed at the music coming from downstairs when Lin Yan’s call had come through. After Liang Sizhe had hung up, that sleepiness that’d come by with such a struggle had disappeared completely. Taking its place had been an edgy impatience: to taunt him as a joke — were he and Cao Ye that familiar with each other?

“Oh, understood.” The guy slid his phone back into his pocket. “Done. I’ll contact you later.”

Around 2am, Liang Sizhe wandered back from the next street over, his hands shoved into his pockets as he walked slowly back to Yinsi Street.

The row of shops the next street over had already closed and turned their lights off for the night, a lonesome street lamp standing there by itself. It was a tranquil night, and the irritation in his heart was gradually smoothed away by the night wind.

When he reentered Yinsi Street, Lan Yan’s neon lights were still continuously flashing — but as he listened from far away, the clamorous shrieks and howls seemed to have gotten fatigued. The guests who’d vented all night had finally tired themselves out.

Liang Sizhe’s footsteps stopped, and from dozens of metres away, he lifted his head to survey that short, five-story dilapidated building Lan Yan was in. It was an old building, designed with extremely poor security; each floor was separated by very little, and the windowsills, made from cement, looked thick and bulky. An off-white and crude-looking drainage pipe ran down the edge of the building walls. It looked like it had been installed more recently — the building must not have been erected with much knowledge initially and must’ve kept accumulating pools of water during the rain.

Perhaps he could step onto those cement window sills, grab onto the pipe exposed outside the walls next to the sills and climb up to the top floor. It didn’t look hard… As he looked at that short five-story building, that idea appeared in his mind.

——The ceiling looked very flat. Maybe it would be a bit quieter if he went up there. He needed someplace quiet.

—

The next day, Liang Sizhe slept in until past 9am.

After cleaning up, he stood at the window and looked down; the breakfast stalls in the alley had already started packing up, the smell of deep-frying wafting up and flooding the higher layers of the alley’s air.

He headed downstairs, and compared to the noisy atmosphere a few hours ago, the first and second floor of the current Lan Yan was as peaceful as though no one lived inside. The wooden furnishings even gave off a slightly old and decayed scent.

The Lan Yan of day and the Lan Yan of night were completely of two different worlds. At night, Lan Yan was like an old brothel owner who did her best to dress up yet couldn’t hide away her revolting self. But in the morning, Lan Yan was like a hidden-away daughter of a prominent and cultured family, who’d lived in the slums for so long she no longer wore makeup.

The first floor’s door curtain was drawn tightly shut, and the space inside was the same as yesterday afternoon. Only one dim yellow ceiling light was on while the waiter in charge of cleaning up was engrossed in tidying the remnants of the early morning hours. Seeing someone come downstairs at this time, the waiter glanced up in surprise; he numbly lowered his head again to continue cleaning after seeing it was the newly arrived youth from yesterday.

The shop entrance door was locked by a heavy chain. Liang Sizhe asked the waiter to open the door for him and then walked out, choosing at random a breakfast stall that’d yet to close. He had a basket of xiaolongbao, a bowl of pumpkin congee and then asked the stall owner about the bus route to the film academy. After he finished, he paid and went on his way.

If he was going to start over, then he needed to actually look like he was starting again.

He knew nothing about films. At the very most, he’d watched a few old films on CCTV-61 in the past and had occasionally gone to the cinema with friends — he hadn’t gone often, only two, three times a year. Practicing the violin had consumed all of his remaining time.

Honestly, before yesterday, he wouldn’t have thought he would ever have any kind of relationship with films — even if he’d been given eight brains.

The film academy was nearing graduation season. Students with nothing to film and bleak futures sat lifelessly under tree shade, playing cards as they laid out their belongings of the last four years to sell.

Seeing an attractive youth come over to patronise her business, a senior sister swept away her the utterly bored look on her face and got up, enthusiastically greeting Liang Sizhe. “Where are you from? You’re not from Beijing Film, are you? I haven’t seen you before, are you from Central Academy?” When Liang Sizhe shook his head, she then said, “Then you’re someone who wants to get into our academy later, right?” She didn’t need him to speak before she crouched down and stacked a few books together. “This one, this one and this one… These are the reference books our professors normally suggest…”

Across from her, a senior brother looked in their direction and called out for business. “Hey, junior brother, come over here for a look. It’s useless to read so many books — you need to watch more films!”

This trip of Liang Sizhe’s was richly rewarding. Carrying a pile of books and DVDs, as well as a DVD player the senior brother had sold for cheap, he took the bus back to Lan Yan.

Lan Yan was still within its daytime sleeping state, and it stood out from the other shops in the small alley. Liang Sizhe didn’t have a spare hand, so he turned sideways and pushed open the glass door, walking in backwards.

Once he got back to his room, he fiddled with the DVD player; it actually could connect to the television on the wall. He casually grabbed and pushed in the DVD sitting at the very top of the pile. The dragon stamp appeared on the screen, and a black and white film, Roman Holiday, started playing. He sat down on the edge of his bed, and just as he was getting absorbed, he heard knocking on the door.

Getting up, he opened the door. That young waiter from downstairs was carrying a Kraft paper bag, and in slightly accented and clumsy Standard Mandarin2, he asked, “Is Cao Ye here?”

“No.”

“What about Liang Sizhe?”

“That’s me.”

“Oh. This is food for you guys.” The boy pointed downstairs. “Someone delivered it just then.” He couldn’t help but peep curiously into the room as he spoke, as though sensing this room was different from the other rooms.

Liang Sizhe thanked him, and then shut that boy and that pair of curious eyes outside the door.

The food had been ordered by Zheng Yin.

Zheng Yin had truly been very attentive and thought of everything. Worried that Cao Ye wouldn’t be used to eating the food in this place, he’d specifically ordered food from a private kitchen and had them send it here every day from ten kilometres away. There were two meals per day, and there were two portions of each set — and the meals never repeated.

He’d just never expected Cao Ye to not live here. Liang Sizhe benefitted from the food for no reason at all.

Liang Sizhe ate one portion and left behind the other. It would be too much of a waste if he fed the dogs with the remaining portion, so every time the waiter came by, he took only one portion. He gave the other one to the waiter who brought the food up.

That young waiter was a boy roughly around the same age as him, and he looked timid and fearful. At receiving the food, he would happily nod and bow towards Liang Sizhe.

Liang Sizhe adjusted well to this place — his biological clock rapidly changed to match Lan Yan’s times.

In the morning, he would read his books for a while. After taking a nap in the afternoon, he would watch a film, and once he had dinner, he would run two laps along the small roads nearby. His days passed with much more routine than they had in Yan City.

On a certain day towards evening, he’d finished watching a film and was doing his two laps downstairs. Just as he was about to push open the door to Lan Yan, someone behind him yelled out to him, “Hey!”

He turned around. That singer from that night in the bar was standing underneath the steps, eyes squinted as he looked up at Lan Yan’s shopfront. His eyes then returned back to Liang Sizhe. “You’re really living here?”

Liang Sizhe smiled. “Yeah.”

“Here. The guitar’s fixed.” That guy lifted the wooden guitar in his hands towards him and said, “The strings have all been replaced, and it’s also been retuned. I already gave it a try; the timbre’s not bad.”

Walking down the steps, Liang Sizhe took the guitar from him and lowered his head to have a look. He said to that person, “Okay. Thank you. How much was it?”

“None. It’s a gift.” He jerked his chin at Liang Sizhe. “You’re not going to try it?”

Liang Sizhe didn’t intend on playing it now, so he shook his head, saying, “No. I’m not a good player — I won’t embarrass myself.”

“All right, then.” That guy accepted it pretty easily. He lifted his head again to look at the upper levels of Lan Yan. “Third floor’s a hostel? How much a night?”

“Don’t know,” Liang Sizhe said.

“Don’t you live here?” That guy looked at him with his eyebrows raised.

“I’m a worker,” Liang Sizhe said, smiling. He spoke quite convincingly. “Comes with food and shelter.”

The other person surveyed him from head to toe. “Now that’s rare. Save my number. If you later want to change workplaces, remember to contact me.”

“Sure,” Liang Sizhe said, pulling out his phone from his pocket.

“Phone’s not turned off today?” that guy asked with a laugh, looking at his phone.

“No,” Liang Sizhe said. He actually hadn’t turned off his phone for a good few days now. The call from Cao Ye that night had been an exception; no one usually called him, so it didn’t matter if his phone was turned off or not.

As soon as he tapped open his phone’s address book, Cao Ye’s name popped out. His surname made it easy3 — it made it so Cao Ye’s name was coincidentally the first one in his contact list.

“What’s your number?” Liang Sizhe asked. When he raised his head, he saw a taxi drive in, stopping in front of Lan Yan.

The taxi had only just stopped when a door was immediately pushed open. A youth jumped out, shut the car door and hurriedly, anxiously ran up the stairs. His legs were pretty long — one leap crossed over three steps.

The taxi driver was more anxious than him, rolling down his driver window and frantically shouting out to his back. “Money! You haven’t paid yet!”

Cao Ye had just finished climbing up the steps; when he heard the driver, his legs abruptly came to a halt, and he wildly turned around, heading back down with quick jumps. One hand groped around in his front and back pockets, and he only then realised he hadn’t actually brought any money. Lifting his head, he saw Liang Sizhe, and his eyes instantly brightened as though he saw reinforcements. “Hey, bro. Do you have money on you?”

“Yes.” Liang Sizhe didn’t wait for him to ask him for it. He walked over and helped him pay the taxi fee. He’d eaten so many meals these past days due to Cao Ye, and he’d even given the waiter so many ‘gifts’ — he should definitely pay off this taxi ride.

“Thanks, I’ll pay you back later.” Once they were finished with the taxi, Cao Ye gripped onto his arm and pulled him towards the staircase together. “My dad’s about to come. We need to hurry upstairs.”

There was so much urgency in his voice, to the point Liang Sizhe didn’t even realise what was happening — what did Cao Xiuyuan coming over have to do with going upstairs? He hastily said goodbye to that singer; in the next second, Cao Ye dragged him upstairs by the arm.

The author has something to say:

Now that Xiao Cao’s been captured back, scenes with the two of them will increase

Translator has something to say:

CCTV-6 is the channel run by the Chinese government’s broadcasting agency dedicated to showing films. ↩Standard Mandarin refers to China’s main ‘official’ dialect. Most commonly known as putonghua (‘common language’), and it’s what you would hear on TV. Most people in China speak it unless you’re from a rural area, for example — because then you would mainly speak just your county dialect. And some dialects can be a completely different language from Standard Mandarin. ↩Chinese address books go in ABC order too, since characters are typed in through pinyin! ↩

P – Chapter 2.8

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