Inside the stadium, the three most valiant men all simultaneously requested ten minutes of free time.
Together, they headed into the spectator stands.
Lin Yiyang had done the same after the China Open; no one could find him then, but Jiang Yang hadn't needed to guess. He had simply led a group of Dongxincheng juniors to the stands and caught him red-handed.
It was a habit from their youth.
Lin Yiyang found a seat with a good vantage point. Jiang Yang sat beside him, while Meng Xiaodong took the outermost seat.
In the cavernous stadium, the cheers had faded and the applause had dissipated as if they had never existed.
Lin Yiyang finally shed the restrictive dress shirt and vest, changing into sweatpants and a short-sleeved tee. His right arm remained immobile, while his left arm draped over the back of the chair. He stared at the table under the lights. "I envy you two. You never left."
The golden years of one's life only happen once. Regret was useless; they were already gone.
Meng Xiaodong gave a faint smile, his gaze fixed on the same spot as Lin Yiyang’s. "And I envy your talent. I’ve been jealous since we were kids."
Having had a smooth path since childhood, it was only through Lin Yiyang that Meng Xiaodong had ever learned the meaning of "frustration."
Jiang Yang took off his glasses. After wearing contacts for a full day of competition, he had just switched back to frames, and his eyes were deathly dry. Propping his face up with one hand, he also looked toward the table. "What are you two geniuses doing, praising each other?"
In this profession, the truly talented were playing matches and winning championships by age twelve or thirteen. Jiang Yang, however, hadn't joined the club until he was fourteen. This was a lingering regret. He had entered under the same master in the same year as Lin Yiyang, and though he had won a national championship a year earlier than Lin, his hard-fought progress was merely seen as the result of being a "diligent and hardworking" player who didn't truly claim a title until eighteen because he lacked innate talent.
"How have you been trashing your body all these years?" Jiang Yang asked Lin Yiyang. "Do you have old injuries too?"
"Is there any athlete who doesn't carry injuries?" Lin Yiyang replied. "However many you have, I have no fewer."
Hundreds of thousands of repetitive motions, day after day—even a machine would break. Everyone was the same.
Meng Xiaodong glanced at the two of them.
Jiang Yang had been Meng Xiaodong's rival for years and knew him best. "What are you trying to say?"
"At the end of the year before last, I had surgery too," Meng Xiaodong said. No one besides his father knew about this.
"No wonder you suddenly went abroad for a year of 'secluded training,'" Jiang Yang finally solved the mystery of why Meng Xiaodong’s form had fluctuated so much. "The 'Crown Prince' really values his pride more than anything."
Meng Xiaodong stared at Jiang Yang in silence. *As expected, I really can't be brothers with you.*
...
Indeed, Jiang Yang could still shut Meng Xiaodong down completely; some things never changed.
The stadium staff walked onto the floor, turning off the floodlights one by one. The interior grew darker, making the moonlight and streetlights outside appear even more dazzling.
Just before the last light was extinguished, someone finally spotted the three of them. They waved their arms from below, signaling that it was time to leave. The staff member pointed toward the exit of the billiard hall and shouted, "Your fans are still waiting outside!"
Jiang Yang smiled and called back an acknowledgment. He patted Lin Yiyang on the back. "Let's go."
Meng Xiaodong and Jiang Yang headed toward the spectator exit.
Lin Yiyang, however, took the stairs on the other side down to the arena floor. He didn't have the strength to vault over the railing today, so he descended normally, but he kept to his old route, walking through the center of the arena toward the backstage area.
"Why does he always walk through the middle?" This puzzle had bothered Meng Xiaodong for many years.
"He wants to touch the table. He does it after every match." Every athlete had their own victory ritual. Lin Yiyang didn't have one on camera; at most, he’d give a wave and be done with it.
His ritual took place after the match, when no one was around. He would walk through the arena to say goodbye to the table.
...
Lin Yiyang walked out through the darkened arena. As he passed the billiard table, he brushed his hand along its edge and stood still for a moment. He knew that outside there were lights, fans, and all the boys from the old days.
And standing here, he remembered the backstage lounge when he was thirteen.
The younger kids all sat at the very edge, resting in front of a row of lockers right next to the door.
Jiang Yang was the defending champion, surrounded and admired by everyone in the lounge. Meng Xiaodong was the "Crown Prince" of Beicheng, his name repeatedly mentioned even before he arrived. Lin Yiyang was the nameless boy sitting on the corner of a chair, not wearing a dress shirt or trousers, not polishing his cue, and not chatting with anyone.
That day, Fan Wencong was there, and Wu Wei was there too. Chen An'an was still small, not yet old enough to compete.
Wu Wei, wearing his little glasses, sat back-to-back with Lin Yiyang, a workbook on his lap as he solved problems. When Fan Wencong burst into the lounge, he was clutching a spare cue he’d borrowed from a referee, shouting at the top of his lungs, "My Golden Cudgel has arrived! Where is the Buddha? Where are the Heavenly Soldiers?"
A dozen or so boys all looked over at once.
*Don't you find that embarrassing?* Jiang Yang thought.
*This is the kind of person Dongxincheng produces?* Meng Xiaodong thought.
...Lin Yiyang didn't want to think about anything.
The voices of those boys—whether laughing or rowdy—were still there.
In that lounge, some had left, some had stayed, and some had returned...
In that great tournament, he was the one who swept through the ranks, the one who stood tall between heaven and earth, the one who was suppressed under the Five-Finger Mountain for a single mistake, and the one who had returned here after enduring the eighty-one tribulations.
All the glory in this world must pass through a thousand refinements, without exception.
***
Back in the staging area, the Chinese team hadn't left, and many teams from other countries were still there. The fans outside were too enthusiastic; the organizers wouldn't let them out yet, fearing a stampede. They had to wait for the crowd to be dispersed.
In a city that rarely hosted open tournaments, this was perhaps the only chance to see so many Asian star players, and no one wanted to leave. Since their matches were over and there was Wi-Fi, everyone was watching movies, playing games, or scrolling through social media.
When the team doctor saw Lin Yiyang appear, he gave him a quiet scolding and pulled him to a sofa in the lounge, making him sit still and forbidding him from running around.
Lin Yiyang scanned the room but didn't see the person he wanted to see.
His phone vibrated, as if in response.
Yin Guo had sent him a contact recommendation—*Fruit in the Woods*.
Lin Yiyang smiled.
The girl really had a lot of tricks...
He guessed this was Yin Guo's alt account and added it.
Once accepted:
*Fruit in the Woods: Check my Moments.*
Sitting on the sofa, Lin Yiyang scrolled through the Moments posted by this alt account.
His thumb slid across the screen. He wanted to reach the end, yet he also wanted to stop. Every word that flickered past his eyes was like a hook, pulling him in, enticing him to stop and look closer.
It was a chronological account of their long-distance relationship. Fortunately, he managed to scroll back to the very first post.
*Day 1. A photo of a plane ticket back to China.*
"Zheng Yi is trying to prepare me for the worst, saying none of the long-distance couples she knows ever make it. Will we be the exception?"
Zheng Yi? Oh, her best friend.
*Day 2.*
"What is he doing right now?"
Lin Yiyang checked the posting time. What else could he be doing... sleeping.
*Day 3.*
"I want to go see him. Zheng Yi says I might be crazy."
*I really need to meet this best friend. Does she ever say anything positive?*
...
He thought these little diary entries would be enough for him to read over and over countless times.
So, he started skipping ahead.
*Day 60.*
"He called me. There was a woman talking near him, babbling in a heavy accent, I couldn't understand. Asked him who it was, he said he didn't know, just someone who wanted a one-night stand with him?????"
Lin Yiyang remembered that. The woman had directly asked if he wanted to go to her place for a drink and spend the night. When Yin Guo asked, he told her the truth because he was holding the phone and assumed she had heard it anyway; he hadn't thought to hide it.
*Day 61.*
"Tested the waters with a few questions today, and he completely didn't want to talk about it... A sign of an impending breakup..."
This was a genuine misunderstanding. That day had been a party; the girl had given up once she saw he wasn't interested. Later, she was partying hard with others, and someone had slipped something into her glass. Lin Yiyang had given a classmate a nod, and the classmate had spent ages haggling with the group of guys trying to drug her, eventually forcing the girl to stay safe. He didn't think it was worth mentioning, so how did it become a sign of a breakup?
Lin Yiyang stared at the date for a long time, eventually concluding it was just the "three-month period of instability."
*Day 62.*
"Video called today. He was shirtless and showed me his tattoo. Crisis averted."
...*That was an easy fix.*
Lin Yiyang’s finger slid randomly across the screen, looking for the days around her birthday.
A very important meeting. This time, it was a screenshot of text from a notepad. It seemed the character limit on Moments wasn't enough for her to describe her feelings that day.
"His dark circles were so heavy. When I got to the hotel room, he opened the door barefoot; you could tell he’d fallen asleep from exhaustion. The room was quite big, and the bed was big too. When he took my hand, it felt like we were strangers. Later, he sat at the desk and I sat on the sofa, facing each other. I really wanted to hug him, but he didn't initiate, and I felt too shy... Luckily, he eventually pulled me over and held me. But he smelled like the stench of a long-haul flight; if he didn't wash up, we couldn't really do anything..."
The subsequent description was from a girl's perspective, narrating their shared bath that day. Because it was inconvenient, Yin Guo had been a bit inhibited at first. Lin Yiyang had held her in his arms and kissed her for over ten minutes until she was dazed, which managed to overcome her psychological barrier. It was mostly because they hadn't seen each other in so long that the sense of unfamiliarity was too strong.
He had been afraid too—afraid that the strangeness would dilute her feelings for him. He had no other way but intimacy.
That day had been the most anxious day since they’d been together, even more so than the days after they parted in New York when they couldn't see each other. Being face-to-face and yet feeling like strangers was truly terrifying.
He feared that meeting would be their last... that their feelings would eventually fizzle out.
No one is confident enough to believe they will definitely have a love that never changes. The more one cares, the more one fears loss; in this regard, there is no distinction between genders.
After the bath, she had kicked him out—still possessing that early-relationship mindset of not wanting him to see her getting dressed, especially since she had to deal with her period.
In the short time it took her to dress, Lin Yiyang had fallen asleep again.
He had rushed back from the Open, never stopping for a moment. He had lost his match and was in a mediocre mood, sustained only by the breath of wanting to see her. Once the bath relaxed his nerves and he let his guard down, he couldn't keep his eyes open the moment he hit the pillow.
After a while, he heard the door. She seemed to have gone out with her key card. When she returned, she had a bag of things... When he regained consciousness, the bed shifted. Wearing a wool dress, her cool calves brushed against his fingers.
His shoulder felt warm. He could feel her sliding her fingers along the edge of a medicated patch, pressing it down firmly.
When he’d showered, he had taken off his clothes and peeled off the old one. She had seen it and asked if it was an old injury.
Lin Yiyang glanced at the box; it was the kind he always kept in his medicine cabinet in New York. Yin Guo had seen it, remembered it, and gone out specifically to find it. "I have better ones," she said, rubbing the patch with her palm to warm it. "I'll mail you a few boxes next time."
His hand moved up from her calf. "Won again? The Open?"
Her eyes were full of smiles as she nodded.
But he had lost his match.
Yin Guo stuffed the remaining transparent plastic film from the patch back into the bag, took her phone, and leaned into the crook of his left shoulder. She showed him her little "gold vault" of prize money. "Guess how much I have in savings now?" Like showing off a treasure, she displayed her online banking app and tapped a few lines. "These are all wealth management products; they can be withdrawn the same day."
"The ones you can withdraw the same day have low interest rates. You should buy long-term ones." She really was a young girl; she didn't think much about her situation—living at home, not spending much, not buying a house or a car. She might as well buy long-term products.
"What if you run out of cash? Wouldn't that be a problem?"
Her voice was right by his face, so close, carrying a warm breath.
Similar words had been spoken a year ago in a hotel in Washington—
"If you run out of cash, tell me."
Lin Yiyang didn't say a word. Exhausted, he leaned against the white pillow, his hand resting on her waist. Her soft sweater held her body heat. He thought the clothes were quite pretty, but he hadn't bought them. Since meeting her, all the clothes, shoes, and bags he’d seen her wear were beautiful, and he hadn't bought a single one. Not a single piece of jewelry on her body was from him. So, how exactly had he managed to trick her into his hands? Sweet talk? No. A face that was barely passable, though far worse than in his youth.
A seafood meal? A drink? The cost was truly low.
He was reflecting on himself.
The girl in his arms had been admiring the prize money she’d saved up bit by bit, but she suddenly noticed the time; it was time to go. She looked up at him, and Lin Yiyang leaned down to kiss her. They kissed without much lust, just holding each other. After a while, they looked at each other and both smiled.
He had never seen her so sad—smiling through the sadness.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Will you really come back to China?"
One sentence easily exposed the greatest dark cloud hanging over both their hearts that night—the uncertainty of the future.
He nodded and stroked her long hair.
That was the entirety of that night.
Lin Yiyang couldn't bear to look anymore, though he knew he would read it countless times in the days to come.
He closed the image.
He discovered that on the same day, after she got home, she had posted another Moment. It was a single line of English:
"you know you know I love you so."
***
