Chapter 6: Flapping

As the year drew to a close, every sort of absurd news story came crawling out of the woodwork to hit its quota. Mu Qinglin was so busy she was either heading out to interviews, editing footage in the studio, or hunched over a laptop writing copy. The work rhythm ran on a stopwatch. A single pause meant problems.

By lunch, Mu Qinglin finally caught a breath.

“You can’t even stop for meals. How much do you love news?” Fu Xiao sat down across from Mu Qinglin with her tray, dismayed to find her on the news app again.

Mu Qinglin didn’t look up. “‘The Earth could explode and journalists still wouldn’t get a holiday.’ Staying current at all times is the most basic professional standard for anyone in media.”

“Stop, stop.” Fu Xiao’s temples started throbbing. “On call 24 hours, zero days off a year, and the pay is only two-thirds of what the current affairs desk makes. The new media team is a whole other level we can’t even touch. On top of that, dozens of stories to write every month. Sometimes when the words won’t come, the boss is shouting from behind and the editor is nagging from the side. You could pull your own hair out. As for rest, it all comes from comp days, and you still get docked for attendance. Tell me, how many pounds of water were sloshing around in our brains when we picked this career?”

Mu Qinglin turned off her phone and set it aside. “There’s still time to switch industries.”

Fu Xiao: “Easy to say. Couldn’t bear to.”

“By the way, what was that about almost getting beaten up in Red Gate Alley the other day?” Fu Xiao asked, puzzled. “Didn’t Old Wang train us in mixed martial arts for a while? What, was the other guy that good? Your little skills didn’t hold up?”

Mu Qinglin swallowed the rice in her mouth and sipped her soup. “I said almost. In the end, I didn’t give them a chance, did I?”

“Fine. What exactly happened?” Fu Xiao pressed.

Mu Qinglin thought for a moment and didn’t throw Zhou Yi under the bus. “Respecting the elderly and caring for the young. Everyone’s responsibility.”

“Come again?” Fu Xiao was lost.

Mu Qinglin didn’t elaborate and changed the subject. “Any progress on the matter?”

“No…” Fu Xiao shook her head. “My brother called this morning. Said they staked out Red Gate Alley for a few days and didn’t find anyone causing trouble. The place isn’t like anywhere else. If they treated every petty theft seriously, their station wouldn’t have enough cells even if they laid mats across the rafters.”

Mu Qinglin: “Got it. Thanks. Tell Little Hui I appreciate it.”

“Nothing even happened. What’s there to appreciate?” Fu Xiao grumbled. “Can’t even handle one little Red Gate Alley. One of these days I’ll strip that police uniform right off him.”

“Assaulting an officer is a crime,” Mu Qinglin reminded helpfully. Then she stood up. “I’m off. Take your time eating.”

Fu Xiao looked at Mu Qinglin’s empty plate in surprise, then at her own untouched food, and sighed. “Do you even chew your food?”

“I’m in a rush. Next month is the first joint mock exam for the senior year across eight schools. Got a last-minute assignment to shoot footage at West University Affiliated High School. See how the school is handling the clash between the Double Reduction policy and the college entrance exams. Give parents some reassurance.”

Mu Qinglin tapped her wristwatch. “Meeting the school at two-thirty. I haven’t finished my interview outline yet.”

Fu Xiao’s head hurt just listening. “I guess you’ve really adapted to the 《Safe Jiangping》 grind. Selling your life at every hour.”

“Not quite…” Mu Qinglin smiled. “Two years and I still haven’t fully adjusted.”

Fu Xiao blinked, then waved her hand, telling Mu Qinglin to get lost.

Tang Yuanzhou had recently booked a full-back piece, and every day he’d been working until eleven or midnight. Zhou Yi barely saw him.

Today was different. When Zhou Yi uploaded the new small designs to her portfolio and wandered out of the studio chewing a banana, she was surprised to find Tang Yuanzhou leaning against a pillar smoking.

“Bro…” Zhou Yi greeted him, her voice muffled.

“Mm.” Tang Yuanzhou stubbed out his cigarette and opened the window for ventilation. “Keep your distance. Catch a cold breeze and you’ll be coughing again.”

Zhou Yi was self-aware enough to hug the wall and circle around, settling next to the radiator with a listless slump. “What are you doing here? What about the girl getting her full back done?”

Tang Yuanzhou: “She came at six this morning. The pain got too much. Paused for now.”

Zhou Yi: “Oh…”

Seeing Tang Yuanzhou’s eyes glued to the TV with no attention to spare for her, Zhou Yi sneaked her chair up on two legs.

Before she could start rocking, she heard Tang Yuanzhou say in a leisurely tone: “The average person’s peripheral vision spans about ninety degrees on each side.”

“…?”

So he’d seen her little trick out of the corner of his eye. Could’ve just said so instead of making a whole production of it.

Zhou Yi set the chair back down the same way she’d lifted it and asked out of boredom. “What are you watching?”

Tang Yuanzhou: “《Safe Jiangping》 rerun.”

Safe. Jiang. Ping.

Zhou Yi broke the words apart and read them again.

Never heard of it…

“The community affairs show Mu Qinglin works on,” Tang Yuanzhou added.

Zhou Yi: “Ah…”

After sitting idle for a moment, Zhou Yi tucked her hands in her sleeves and shuffled over. “Since when do you care about community affairs?”

“It was already on when I turned on the TV. Just watching.” Tang Yuanzhou saw Zhou Yi shivering in the cold draft and cursed, “Lazybones.” He reached over and tugged her hood up. “The on-camera reporter for this story is Mu Qinglin.”

Zhou Yi glanced at the TV without feeling. “Helping people find their dogs again.” Then she tilted her head and flopped bonelessly onto the table.

The story was about city inspectors carrying out a large-scale cull of stray cats and dogs, ostensibly to solve the problem once and for all.

As the on-camera reporter, Mu Qinglin stated the facts faithfully without injecting any personal feelings or opinions. Her language was precise and concise, her reasoning clear. Only…

“Whenever Mu Qinglin reports on this kind of story, something always feels a little off,” Tang Yuanzhou mused.

Zhou Yi was quiet for a few seconds. Then her shoulders lifted her head upright and she looked at the woman on screen with her cool, composed expression. “Community news language is mostly colloquial. Everyday vocabulary. That’s how you close the distance with the audience. Mu Qinglin’s word choices are too polished and elite. Accurate, sure, but the style doesn’t fit.”

Tang Yuanzhou had known Zhou Yi for over a year. This was the first time he’d heard her speak so seriously, and what she said seemed to make perfect sense. It took him a moment to absorb. “Never been to school and yet you know this much.”

Zhou Yi yawned without a shred of dignity, her body sliding down into the couch. “Educational level has nothing to do with intelligence. Even a normal person like me can figure that out.”

“Fair point…” Tang Yuanzhou agreed. Then something felt off. Before he could think it through, his phone rang.

Tang Yuanzhou answered instantly, his voice turning gentle enough to be a different person. “Lingling…”

Lingling’s full name was Yang Ling. Tang Yuanzhou’s wife. A teacher at West University Affiliated Kindergarten. Straightforward and warm, she was the one who’d dragged Tang Yuanzhou to the junkyard to pick up Zhou Yi.

According to her, if they’d been a few hours later, Zhou Yi would have been carried off in a funeral home van.

…

“Little Jiu.” Tang Yuanzhou came back after the call, a laptop bag in hand. “Lingling left in a hurry this morning and forgot her computer. Run an errand for Bro and drop it off. The full-back girl needs more rest. I can’t step away here.”

Zhou Yi shed her lazy demeanor and took the laptop without hesitation. “I’ll go right now.”

Tang Yuanzhou hurried into the workshop.

Zhou Yi didn’t dawdle either. She stood to change clothes.

She happened to catch Mu Qinglin’s face back on the TV screen. Zhou Yi stopped, studied it for a few seconds, and said with a blank expression: “She’s at risk of getting fired, isn’t she?”

Zhou Yi arrived at Yang Ling’s kindergarten after one-thirty to deliver the laptop. Yang Ling had to get back to work, so Zhou Yi didn’t stay long. After leaving the kindergarten, she wandered along the road, visibly transforming from an upright walker into a hunched, shivering mess.

When winter wind blew, even the soul trembled.

She had to find shelter.

Spotting a taxi stand nearby, Zhou Yi scuttled sideways through the wind like a crab.

Not bad. It helped a little.

The moment she felt comfortable, she reverted to her lazy self. She leaned one shoulder against the stand’s post, hands stuffed in her pockets, balancing on one leg, and watched everyone else in the distance looking as cold as dogs with satisfaction.

She was so absorbed in the spectacle that when the clear school bell suddenly rang, Zhou Yi didn’t quite trust her own ears. She froze for a long beat before turning to look to the right.

West University Affiliated High School. The best high school in Jiangping. For thirteen consecutive years, the top scorers in both humanities and sciences on the college entrance exams had come from here.

Tang Yuanzhou said that to maintain its university acceptance rate, West University Affiliated High School’s admission cutoff scores were absurdly high.

Zhou Yi had checked out of boredom once. High, yes. But far from absurd. Pretty average, actually.

“Zhou Yi?” Mu Qinglin spotted her leaning there the moment she stepped out of the car.

At first she wasn’t quite sure it was her.

Zhou Yi was wearing a black baseball cap today, a same-colored backpack hooked over one shoulder. Her posture was loose and easy, both hands in her pockets as she leaned there. Nothing like the hunched, miserably bundled-up look from before. She looked kind of cool.

The voice sounded familiar. Zhou Yi blinked and pulled her gaze back from the school to look over, not moving, waiting for Mu Qinglin to come to her.

“What are you doing here?” Mu Qinglin asked.

Zhou Yi looked at her with a solemn expression. “Zoning out.”

“There isn’t enough space at the shop for you to zone out?”

“Occasionally you need a change of scenery.”

“Thorough…”

“Sister Mu, let’s go!” Cameraman Little Liu stood at the school entrance, urging her along.

Mu Qinglin turned to answer, then said to Zhou Yi, “More zoning out?”

Zhou Yi: “Probably…”

Mu Qinglin laughed. “Careful you don’t freeze into an ice sculpture. Forecast says heavy snow later.”

“Achoo!” Zhou Yi sneezed right on cue. Suddenly she didn’t feel like being tough anymore.

“Are you going into the school?” Zhou Yi asked.

Mu Qinglin: “Yeah. Got an interview.”

“Indoors or outdoors?”

“Indoors…”

“Can you take me with you?”

“…” She could. But they weren’t close enough for that, were they?

Zhou Yi wasn’t stupid. The moment Mu Qinglin fell silent, she understood.

Her request had been unreasonable.

“Forget it. I…”

“I never said no,” Mu Qinglin cut in with a smile. “But I’m on the clock today. You can’t keep taking jabs at me like before.”

Zhou Yi nodded immediately. “Mm!”

The excessive obedience in her expression and vocabulary made Mu Qinglin’s skin crawl, but the words were already out. She couldn’t take them back. She had no choice but to grit her teeth and bring Zhou Yi into the affiliated school.

And so, Cool Girl transformed into a wide-eyed country mutt who’d never seen the world. Wherever she went, she looked. Wherever she looked, she got excited. Even the cracked floor tiles in the office building earned a gravely delivered, “I can smell the scent of knowledge.”

Little Liu followed Zhou Yi the whole way and nearly laughed himself in half.

As they approached the office building to meet the head of year, Mu Qinglin’s steps faltered.

With Zhou Yi’s excessive vitality on full display, anyone who saw them might think the station had recruited something strange this year.

But if she sent Zhou Yi back, who knew what kind of bloodbath she’d face.

On one side, the provincial station’s reputation. On the other, her own life.

Mu Qinglin was in a bind.

She happened to overhear Zhou Yi say to Little Liu with envious melancholy, “This is my first time here.” Mu Qinglin’s steps hitched.

Forget it. If anyone’s embarrassed, it’s her own face. Let the little mutt flounder around a bit longer.