Chapter 8: “Buzz Lightyear”

Before paying back a hundred hamburgers, Kong Liyuan first returned a steaming bowl of porridge. That kept Fu Tingli from shouting right then and there, “Kong Liyuan, you thief!”

Of course, that was just Kong Liyuan’s guess when she saw Fu Tingli’s gritted-teeth expression.

That evening, after wrapping up the shoot, Kong Liyuan stepped into the car and caught sight of Fu Tingli and Xia Yue walking hand in hand. Both of them wore chunky brown knit ear muffs.

Word was that the girl’s grandmother had knitted them by hand. Along the way, Kong Liyuan saw plenty of people sporting similar ear muffs, their hands tucked into their sleeves as they praised how much warmer the old-fashioned ones were.

But what Assistant Rong Wu brought to her was a gift box of ginseng—exquisite packaging, priced in the high four figures. After a gust of cold wind outside, the outer box was still frosty, too chilled to hold comfortably.

This was Xia Yue’s first film. The eighteen-year-old girl was still green and cautious, like a tender new shoot poking through the soil.

The ear muffs for the crew staff came from the heart, courtesy of the grandmother and the girl. But the gifts for the actors and director had to follow her agency’s instructions.

Of course, they were no different from the full set of endorsed skincare products she’d sent to the entire crew. At least the gesture was genuine.

Kong Liyuan casually set the ginseng gift box in the car. That’s when she noticed something small jiggling around in her tote bag.

She pulled it out, took a look, and put it back.

After a pause, she asked Rong Wu, who was driving up front, “That variety show from Director Wu—is it next week when they’re short on celebrity slots and need a last-minute replacement? Did he ask if I had any newbies to recommend?”

“Yeah,” Rong Wu nodded. “We haven’t replied yet. Does Teacher Kong think Xia Yue would work?”

Kong Liyuan let out a hum. She melted into the shadows of the back seat, putting on her earrings as she spoke.

“The camera time won’t be much—just enough to show her face, or maybe it’ll get cut entirely. Go ahead and pass her agent’s contact to him. Let them sort it out themselves.”

“Got it.” Rong Wu glanced at her cautiously in the rearview mirror.

“We’ve got ten minutes to go. Teacher Kong, want to catch a quick nap?”

Kong Liyuan’s hand paused while fastening her earring, then slowly released it.

The white pearl drop swayed like scattered flecks of light, slicing through the thick silence in the air.

“Sure,” she said. But her gaze stayed fixed out the window, watching the kaleidoscope of lights stream by.

The ten-minute drive flew by faster than expected. They soon pulled up to the photography studio for the magazine shoot. It was nearing nine o’clock, but the studio blazed with lights, just as bright as during the day.

Kong Liyuan changed into a tight, sleeveless tank top and long jeans. The studio had no air conditioning, and it was the dead of winter with biting winds.

Everyone gasped when they saw Kong Liyuan step out in that outfit.

But Kong Liyuan never minded the cold. She’d endured far worse conditions.

In minus-twenty-degree snowfields, bundled in layers of down jackets with her eyelashes frozen into icy crystals, she could stand for four hours in a blizzard for a single shot.

This was just indoors—no gale-force winds, no glaciers.

She stood ramrod straight in front of the reflector board, mentally running lines from the Daytime Blizzard script while the makeup artist worked on her face.

She didn’t blink once the whole time. But a draft of cold air made her think of someone—the complete opposite of her, someone who couldn’t stand even a hint of chill and had fled to California to escape winter.

This year’s Shanghai winter was unusually brutal, yet here she was, back to freeze for no good reason.

Something settled on her shoulder, snapping her out of it. She assumed it was the jacket Rong Wu had fetched for her and looked up.

Instead, she met the reproachful gaze of the man in front of her. His hair was neatly slicked back in a salt-and-pepper style, his demeanor refined. He wore a shirt and vest.

“We haven’t even started shooting yet. Why not bundle up more?”

Kong Liyuan carelessly shrugged off Kong Yan’s coat and pressed it into his hands. “I’ve got my own clothes.”

Then she spotted Rong Wu, who had just gone to grab a jacket. The assistant stood awkwardly to the side, holding a long down coat.

Clearly, Rong Wu had gotten there first. Kong Liyuan took the down coat and draped it over her shoulders. She turned to Rong Wu.

“Next time something like this happens, just call out to me. Don’t stand there like a statue.”

“Teacher Kong Yan really dotes on his daughter. It’s the dead of winter—you should put on a down jacket yourself, don’t catch a cold,” the nearby makeup artist said, making small talk.

“Girls her age feel the cold more. I’m fine,” Kong Yan waved it off as he slipped on his suit jacket.

This magazine cover shoot featured the two of them together. As Kong Liyuan expected, the moment they hit the set, Kong Yan started putting on a show.

He acted like he cherished his daughter above all else, as if after Jiang Man’s fatal car accident, he’d made Kong Liyuan his one and only solace.

Rong Wu quietly sighed to herself. Every time Kong Yan showed up, Kong Liyuan’s mood tanked.

Out of everyone on set watching them closely, only Rong Wu caught that fleeting glimmer of Kong Liyuan’s true feelings beneath the facade.

Like right now.

Kong Yan casually draped his arm over Kong Liyuan’s shoulder, beaming as he said, “I’ve only got the one daughter. Can’t have her freezing.”

At those words, a faint, mocking smile ghosted across Kong Liyuan’s face—not the heartwarming father-daughter moment everyone else imagined.

~~~

The shoot wrapped up close to midnight.

Rong Wu stepped out for a bathroom break. When she returned, the car was pitch black. She thought Kong Liyuan hadn’t gotten in yet, but there she was, already seated inside.

No interior lights on, no heat either—just a frigid darkness like a sheet of black ice. Passing headlights from the road swept slowly over Kong Liyuan’s shadowy profile, flickering dimly.

“Teacher Kong, you’re in here?” Rong Wu blinked in surprise. “Why no lights?”

“Didn’t I turn them on?” Kong Liyuan glanced up absently. “Must’ve forgotten.”

She said she’d forgotten the lights, but the car’s stereo was playing a song.

It was upbeat and rowdy, bursting with energy and sunshine—not the sort of thing Kong Liyuan would listen to.

Rong Wu slid into the driver’s seat. She recognized the “California” hook after a few bars and found herself humming along.

She turned the key to start the engine—and noticed a new keychain dangling from it. A purple-headed figure with bushy eyebrows and big eyes.

“Where’d this keychain come from all of a sudden?” Rong Wu exclaimed. “Buzz Lightyear?”

From the back seat, Kong Liyuan heard her. As the passing car lights swept by, her eyes sharpened in the darkness.

“It was in the box with the ginseng. Probably Xia Yue sneaking it in behind her agent’s back.”

A second later, the neighboring car pulled away. She faded back into the gloom.

So that was why Kong Liyuan recommended Xia Yue for the variety show? Because of a Buzz Lightyear keychain? Or the ginseng?

A four-figure ginseng gift didn’t exactly pair with a toy keychain.

Rong Wu racked her brain the whole drive but couldn’t figure it out. At a red light, she glanced at a burger joint.

She instinctively looked back and saw Kong Liyuan’s gaze lingering on the street-side burger shop too. It clicked.

“Want me to grab a burger tomorrow to make it up to Tingli?”

“Tingli?” Kong Liyuan seemed sharper than anyone—yet duller too.

“Yeah.” Rong Wu chuckled, remembering something. “She told the crew not to call her Teacher Fu. Said she’s still young, never taught anyone a thing, so just call her Tingli.”

Kong Liyuan hummed, leaning back against the headrest. She didn’t say more.

Just when Rong Wu thought that was it, Kong Liyuan spoke up again.

“Did she eat that porridge?”

~~~

Fu Tingli polished off every last bit of that porridge.

It was red bean lotus seed porridge, packed with fragrant ingredients, soft and glutinous, piping hot.

Even without the universal hamburger combo meal, Fu Tingli easily forgave Kong Liyuan.

Maybe it had been ages since she’d had a hot meal like that. Or maybe Shanghai’s winter was just too damn cold.

Back home, she kept thinking about that trash can that had made Kong Liyuan pause.

After Kong Liyuan left, Fu Tingli had checked it out. It looked like any trash can should—overflowing with wrappers, milk tea cups, burger boxes. Packaging bags plastered with Kong Liyuan’s face stickers were everywhere.

Yet Kong Liyuan had stared it down for a moment, and Fu Tingli had noticed. She couldn’t help but wonder:

What was going through Kong Liyuan’s head back then?

But no time for pondering—”one hundred hamburgers” came knocking.

Kong Liyuan’s assistant Rong Wu added her on WeChat from the crew group chat. The verification message read:

【Tingli, you asleep? Your hundred hamburgers have arrived】

Fu Tingli was huddled under the covers, wide awake, staring at the transparent glass window. Upstairs, some kid kept wailing and screaming.

She was getting irritated, debating whether to go yell at them. Curious, she approved the request: 【What’s this about a hundred hamburgers? Didn’t I already get the porridge?】

Rong Wu replied instantly: 【Our Teacher Kong said a hundred, so it’s a hundred. She doesn’t go back on her word】

That sounded just like Kong Liyuan. Fu Tingli’s frostbitten hands started itching again: 【So how’s she paying them back?】

Rong Wu: 【If you’re still up, she can pay now】

Rong Wu: 【Delivery guy’s already downstairs】

A hundred hamburgers? Right downstairs?

Fu Tingli sprang out of bed.

She peered out the window at the street hijacked by cold air—power lines dangling lonely in the sky, rusty motorcycles crammed into the alley.

The street looked as if its owner hadn’t visited in months, left to the mercy of wind and rain, never once driven away.

It stood utterly empty. Where had the delivery person come from? Fu Tingli was still pondering this when her phone buzzed with two new replies:

【But a hundred is too many to carry, so I drove over. The car couldn’t get through, though—it’s parked at that corner. You might have to come down and grab them.】

【Kitten sucking finger.JPG】

Winters in Shanghai were always chilly and rainy.

By the time Fu Tingli made it downstairs, she saw fine threads of rain drifting in the air outside. A hundred burgers would be no easy load, so she kept things simple.

She slipped into a pair of cotton house slippers and threw on a jacket at random. Spotting her cashmere gloves, she hesitated for a second but left them behind. She couldn’t seriously show up to collect a hundred burgers wearing cashmere gloves, could she?

The only thing she bothered with was the ear muffs Xia Yue had given her.

In that hurried state, she dashed through the swirling rain and the biting chill of the winter night toward the mouth of the alley.

It was nearly midnight by then. The narrow lane was deserted, with no one passing through. Beneath the streetlights, the rain formed halos of hazy yellow mist, tinged greenish from the age-worn bulbs and the shadows of the crumbling walls.

It resembled the surreal yellow-green shots in an old film, or perhaps a desolate, bedraggled oil painting.

Fu Tingli shielded her head with one hand and barreled toward the alley’s end. In the blur, she caught sight of a figure waiting across the street, leaning against a car amid the misty drizzle.

Before her eyes could focus through the downpour, a truck barreled past her, its massive roar serving as the dramatic backdrop to the scene.

The sticky rain lashed about on the wind, tossing her hair into the air. Breathing hard, she looked up across the way, her vision sharpening bit by bit.

The truck’s passage left a howling gust in its wake, and the tall silhouette opposite resolved from a vague shape into sharp clarity.

The woman leaned against her car, lighting a cigarette that was nearly burned to ash.

The expression on her face as she gazed over was shrouded in the fading glow of the truck’s taillights— a perfect freeze-frame ending for this faded old movie.

Fu Tingli tugged her haphazardly grabbed jacket tighter around herself and twisted her foot in the slippers, now splattered with mud from the rain.

She turned on her heel, decisively.

But a sigh from behind stopped her cold. When she whipped her head around, there was Kong Liyuan, standing amid the drifting smoke, her expression cool as she said,

“I’m not even worth a hundred burgers?”