Between the Gaze of Five Hundred Thousand and One Man's Plea

Su Jin discovered that her Instagram following had surpassed five hundred thousand on a Wednesday morning.

Boston had its first heavy snowfall since the start of winter that day. She stood before the floor-to-ceiling window in the second-floor master bedroom at 217 Commonwealth Avenue, watching the branches of the old oak tree in the back garden droop slightly under the snow. In the distance, the Charles River had vanished into the swirling white, leaving a single color between heaven and earth.

Her phone lay on the windowsill, its screen lighting up every few minutes, the notification bar packed with likes, comments, and new followers.

She had registered the account less than two weeks ago and posted only seven times: a snowy view of the MIT Great Dome, the silhouette of the Stata Center's distorted exterior in the setting sun, a sailboat on the Charles River, a casual snapshot of latte art at the campus café, and three selfies.

None of the selfies had been deliberately posed. One showed her in profile, looking down at a paper in the library; another was a full-body shot she had casually taken while waiting for coffee by a window at the end of a hallway. In the last, taken after class the previous Friday, she was standing on the lawn in front of the Maclaurin Great Dome, her hair flying every which way in the wind. She had squinted and smiled, and a passing classmate had caught the moment and sent her the picture. She thought it looked good, so she posted it.

It was that windblown photo that utterly blew up.

Within twenty-four hours, it had more than four hundred thousand likes. English, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and all kinds of other languages mingled in the comments, but the central question was the same: who on earth was she?

Some people dug up the fact that she was a visiting scholar at MIT. Others found out she was a shareholder in Poly, that she owned a guesthouse in Shuanglang, that she had a boutique in Paris, and that she had appeared in a Vogue photo shoot. Someone even unearthed a video clip of her crushing the competition at the elite university championship. The moment when Professor Harris stood up to applaud had been turned into a GIF, captioned, "When you discover the genius is better-looking than you, too."

The most popular comment read: When God made her, he must have maxed out all her stats. Beauty, intelligence, wealth-she got all three, while ordinary people like us can only sit in front of our screens and hit like.

The second most popular comment read: I looked up her papers and read her code, and then I cried. Not because I was jealous, but because she really writes better than I do.

The third: I looked at that picture of her smiling for a full five minutes, and then I realized I was smiling along with her.

Su Jin watched the numbers keep ticking up on the screen, a smile curving her lips. Then she turned the phone over and set it screen-down on the windowsill.

Outside, the snow was still falling. Great flakes drifted down from the gray sky, silently covering the entire city and blurring every edge and boundary into a soft expanse of white.

The phone vibrated again on the windowsill. She did not look at it.

Two

Anderson Lau's third direct message arrived that afternoon.

The first had been sent on the night of the championship's preliminary round, politely and restrainedly worded, like a formal work email;

The second had arrived three days later, a little more eager in tone, asking whether she had time to talk and ending with, "I'm serious";

The third arrived today. Su Jin had just stepped out of the bath, her hair still wet, droplets falling from the ends onto the collar of her robe and darkening a small patch of the white silk.

She picked up her phone and opened Instagram. When she saw the message, her finger paused on the screen for a second.

Ms. Su, I know you may be hesitating, or you may have no interest in this field. But I still want to try one more time.

I've been preparing this film for five years. The script has gone through seventeen drafts, and we've changed investors three times. I still haven't found the right person to play this role.

It's not that I can't find an actress. It's that I have an image in my mind-a woman standing in a crowd, doing nothing at all, yet drawing everyone's eyes.

That image stayed with me for five years, until I saw you in the championship photos.

At that moment, I knew the person I'd been waiting for had appeared.

If you're willing, I can fly out to meet you. Any time, any place. Please give me a chance, even if it's only to sit down for a cup of coffee and let me tell you the story in person.

Su Jin finished reading, set her phone on the dressing table, and picked up the hair dryer.

The hot air blew her wet hair apart strand by strand, lifting it and letting it fall in the mirror. Her face appeared and disappeared through the mist, her skin as white as freshly fallen snow, her cheekbones faintly pink from the hot water. There was nothing on her lips, yet they were as red as the last berry of winter.

By the time she put down the hair dryer, her hair was dry, loose over her shoulders, its ends curling slightly and gleaming like satin in the light.

She looked at the face in the mirror for a long time, then picked up her phone and sent Anderson Lau a message: Next Tuesday at three in the afternoon, Boston. I'll send you the address.

He replied with two words within three seconds: Thank you.

Three

Anderson Lau was younger than she had imagined, and more nervous, too.

He was in his early forties, with closely cropped hair and a few white strands at his temples. He wore a black Rick Owens jacket over a white T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Rather than a director who had won international awards, he looked like a middle-aged man fresh from the gym.

He sat in a corner of the café Su Jin had chosen, a cup of Americano gone cold in front of him and a thick stack of paper clutched in his hands. It was the script, its edges frayed from handling, with notes of various colors tucked between the pages, densely covered in annotations.

When he saw Su Jin walk in, his whole body went still, and the coffee cup in his hand nearly slipped through his fingers.

She was dressed simply today: a cream-white cashmere turtleneck from The Row, so thin and soft it clung to her like a second skin;

Light blue straight-leg Mother jeans with frayed hems, and a pair of white Common Projects sneakers. Her hair hung loose, slightly tousled by the wind at the café entrance;

She wore no makeup, or at least none that could be seen. In the afternoon sunlight slanting through the window, her skin had an almost translucent quality, with a natural flush on her cheekbones and lips a natural rose pink.

It was about ten meters from the entrance to the table. The gazes of the café's other customers followed her as though drawn by an invisible thread, reluctantly turning away only when she sat down across from Anderson.

Anderson looked at her in silence for three seconds, then spoke.

His voice was a little hoarse, as though something had lodged in his throat.

"You're the one."

Su Jin looked at him without speaking.

He took a deep breath and pushed the script to the middle of the table. "I know you might not act, and you might not want to. But please look at this first." His fingers pressed against the script's cover, his knuckles turning slightly white with the force.

"I've spent five years writing this story. The female lead is called Lin. She's a mathematical genius doing research at a top university, and everyone thinks she'll become the youngest tenured professor-but then one day she suddenly disappears. No one knows where she's gone.

"Three years later, a journalist finds her in a remote seaside town. She's opened a little bookstore there, and she spends her days reading, arranging the shelves, and recommending books to the occasional customer who passes through. The journalist asks why she left, and she says only one thing:

"'I discovered I was clever enough to see through everything, but not clever enough not to care.'"

He stopped and looked into Su Jin's eyes.

In the afternoon sunlight, those amber eyes were a deep gold, still as a lake that never rippled.

"This role needs someone who looks like she has everything-beauty, intelligence, a future-but there has to be something in her eyes that makes people believe she would give it all up." His voice dropped.

"I looked for five years and never saw anyone with that something. Until I saw your photo. You beat everyone at the championship, but when you stood up to hand in your paper, you weren't smiling. You just stood there, waiting for the next challenge.

"At that moment, I knew you were Lin."

After hearing him out, Su Jin was silent for a long time.

The sunlight had shifted through the window, falling across the tabletop beside her hand and bringing the grain of the wood into sharp relief.

She reached for the stack of pages, opened to the first, and read a few lines. Then she turned to the second and read a few more.

The café was quiet, with only the hum of the coffee machine and the sound of traffic on the distant street.

Anderson sat opposite her, both hands around his cold coffee, watching her turn the pages without moving, as though afraid the slightest sound would interrupt something.

When she reached the third page, she paused, her gaze settling on a line that she studied for a long time.

Then she closed the script, raised her head, and looked at Anderson.

"How long would I need?" she asked.

Anderson stared, then realized what she meant. She had not said, "I'll consider it," or "I'm not sure," or "Let me think about it."

She had asked, "How long would I need?" That meant she had already agreed and was only checking the timing.

"Three months." His voice trembled a little. "The shoot will take three months. We start filming next spring, on the coast of Maine."

Su Jin nodded. "The schedule works," she said. "But I have one condition."

"What condition?"

"I need to read the complete script. Not an outline, not sample chapters-the complete seventeenth draft, all of it. After I read it, if I like it, I'll take the role. If I don't-"

"You won't dislike it." Anderson cut her off, his tone as certain as if he were stating a law of physics.

Su Jin looked at him, a smile curving her lips. "You're very confident."

Anderson shook his head. "It's not confidence," he said. "It's that this role was written for you. It took me five years to find you, which means you're the only person in the world who can play her."

Four

That evening, Su Jin sat before the floor-to-ceiling window in her study and read Anderson Lau's script from beginning to end.

Snow fell over Boston outside. Great flakes spun down through the halos of the streetlights, like countless white moths throwing themselves at a flame.

She leaned back in her chair with a Begg & Co cashmere blanket over her knees, holding the stack of frayed pages and turning them one by one. Sometimes she stopped to think, sometimes she went back to reread a passage, and sometimes she lingered over a sentence for a long time.

The story was better than she had imagined. Lin was not the subject of a traditional genius narrative-not out to save the world, prove something, or defeat anyone.

She was simply someone too clever, clever enough to see all the absurdity and helplessness in the world, too clever to pretend she could not see it, clever enough to choose to leave.

She opened a little bookstore and rearranged the books on the shelves every day in different ways: by color, by thickness, by year of publication, by the number of words in the first sentence.

She remembered every book every customer had bought, and the next time they came in, she would recommend one that perfectly suited their mood at that moment.

She never started conversations, but everyone who spoke to her felt seen.

At the end of the story, the journalist asked whether she regretted it.

Lin stood in the doorway of the bookstore, looking at the sea in the distance, and said, "I already have more than enough. A bookstore, a cat, a sea. And all the worlds in those books."

By the time Su Jin closed the script, the snow outside had stopped.

The moon showed half its face from behind the clouds, spilling silvery light over the snow-covered back garden. The old oak tree's shadow stretched long in the moonlight, reaching all the way to the foot of the floor-to-ceiling window.

She leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, her fingers absently rubbing the script's cover.

Her phone vibrated. It was a message from Anderson: Have you finished it?

She replied: I have.

He replied instantly: What did you think?

She thought for a moment and typed: I'll do it.

After sending it, she added: But I've never acted before.

Anderson replied: I don't need you to act. I need you to be yourself. Lin is you, and you are Lin.

You don't need to act. You only need to stand there and let the camera see you.

Su Jin looked at the message, a smile curving her lips, but did not reply.

She put the script on the desk, got up, and walked to the window. Moonlight cast her shadow across the floor, long and slender, as still as a charcoal drawing.

Five

Two days later, Su Jin sat in her study with a video conference open on the computer screen before her.

The meeting concerned the annual selection of new talent at Huace Starlight Entertainment Media Co., Ltd.

It was the first time she had taken part in a decision as the controlling shareholder since signing in to acquire the entertainment company. Shen Mingwei had arranged for her to attend by video: she was in Boston, thirteen hours behind, but the meeting was scheduled for ten in the morning Beijing time, which was nine in the evening in Boston-just right.

Seven video feeds appeared on the screen. Besides her own, there were six others: Huace Starlight's CEO Zhao Mingyuan, a middle-aged man in his forties with meticulously combed hair and a habit of frowning when he spoke;

Vice president Li Wei, in her early thirties, with short hair and immaculate makeup, who looked like the sort of formidable woman who had fought a bloody path through a crowd of men;

Talent director Sun Yao, who had a round face, spoke quickly, and smiled with her eyes narrowed to slits;

And three people recommending newcomers, each with files on one or two candidates.

Zhao Mingyuan spoke first, a note of cautious inquiry in his voice. "President Su, today we're going over the final shortlist for this year's new talent selection. We narrowed more than eight hundred résumés from across the country down to ten people, and today we need to settle on the final five to sign. Would you like to go through the files first, or-"

"The people first," Su Jin said.

Her voice traveled from late night in Boston to a weekday morning in Beijing, as clear as if she were speaking through an open window.

Zhao Mingyuan nodded and gestured to someone beside him.

A file popped up on the screen, showing a young man's photo and résumé. He was twenty-two, a graduate of the Central Academy of Drama's acting department. He had performed in three stage plays at school and won a university acting award. With his bright, clean-cut looks, his recommender called him "the next nation's campus heartthrob."

"This one's good," Su Jin said. "Sign him."

Zhao Mingyuan stared. He had expected Su Jin to examine each candidate carefully, but she had made a decision on the very first one, so quickly he could barely react.

The second was a nineteen-year-old girl who had graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy Affiliated Secondary School. She had never acted, but videos of her dancing had millions of views online.

She had a cool, aloof kind of beauty, with slender eyes and brows and thin lips, and looked like someone who did not much like to talk.

"She's good too," Su Jin said. "But she needs systematic acting training. Don't rush to promote her after signing her. Put her through three months of acting classes first."

Li Wei nodded on the screen and wrote it down in her notebook.

The third, fourth, fifth-Su Jin went through them quickly, spending no more than three minutes on each.

She looked at their photos, résumés, and recommendation videos, then said "sign" or "don't sign" in a tone as matter-of-fact as if she were picking fruit at a supermarket.

Zhao Mingyuan's expression changed from surprise to awe. In twenty years in the entertainment industry, he had met countless investors, but this was the first time he had seen anyone make decisions both so quickly and so accurately.

When the sixth file appeared, Su Jin's finger paused on the mouse.

The photo showed a girl of about twenty with short hair. Her features were not strikingly beautiful, but there was something arresting about her: her eyes were large, her irises dark, and when she looked at the camera, it was as though she were looking at you and at somewhere far away at the same time. There was a stillness in her gaze that did not match her age.

The résumé read: Lin Xiaozhou, twenty, currently studying in the directing department at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. No acting experience, no management agency, no social media accounts.

Her recommender had attached a sentence: She is the most gifted young person I've ever met. It's not a gift for acting, but a gift as a person-when she stands there, you want to watch her.

Su Jin looked at the photo for a long time.

The other six people on the screen said nothing, waiting quietly for her to speak.

"This one," she finally said, "I want to meet in person."

Zhao Mingyuan nodded at once. "I'll arrange for her to come to Boston."

"No need," Su Jin said. "I'm going back to Beijing next month. Have her meet me there."

She paused and glanced again at the photo on the screen.

The girl's eyes were as still as a pool of water in front of the camera, but something seemed to lie beneath them, like a stone sunk at the bottom. You could not make out its shape, but you knew it was there.

"Lin Xiaozhou," Su Jin said, repeating the name. "She doesn't need to take part in the selection. Sign her directly, on the best terms."

Sun Yao was taken aback. She asked cautiously, "President Su, by the best terms, do you mean-"

"A five-million signing bonus, the company's top contract rate for her share of revenue, and priority allocation of resources." Su Jin's tone was as casual as if she were discussing the weather. "She's worth it."

The conference room fell silent for three seconds.

Zhao Mingyuan recovered first. He nodded and drew a heavy circle in his notebook. Li Wei and Sun Yao exchanged a look containing surprise, curiosity, and the certainty that "President Su never misjudges people."

Six

After the video conference ended, Su Jin did not immediately turn off the computer.

She leaned back in her chair and looked at Lin Xiaozhou's résumé on the screen for a long time.

Outside, the Boston night had grown deep. The moon had emerged completely from behind the clouds, lighting the snow in the back garden until it gleamed. In the moonlight, the branches of the old oak looked like a painting outlined in ink.

[Host,] Little Golden Egg squeezed out of the air and floated beside her, its voice soft. [Why are you treating that Lin Xiaozhou so differently?]

Su Jin thought for a moment. "There's something in her eyes."

[What is it?]

"The same thing that's in mine," she said. Then she turned off the computer without explaining further.

Her phone vibrated with a message from Ethan: The semifinal problems are out. Have you seen them?

She replied: I have.

He replied instantly: How are you planning to solve the third one? I've spent two days thinking about it and have two approaches, but neither is good enough.

Su Jin thought for a moment, then put her phone on the desk without replying. She got up, walked to the bookshelf, and pulled out a textbook on optimization theory. She turned to a page, read a few lines, then closed it and put it back.

She picked up her phone and typed: Three tomorrow afternoon, at the Stata Center.

Ethan replied: Okay.

She put down her phone and walked to the window.

Moonlight cast her shadow across the floor, long and slender, as still as a painting.

She stood there, looking at the distant lights across the Charles River. They flickered in the darkness like countless tiny diamonds scattered carelessly over velvet.

In the moonlight, her face took on a faint silvery hue. The light sharpened the contours of her features, and her eyelashes cast dense shadows beneath her eyes. Her lips were pressed together slightly, as though she were lost in thought, or perhaps not thinking of anything at all.

She suddenly remembered Lin's line from Anderson Lau's script: I already have more than enough. A bookstore, a cat, a sea. And all the worlds in those books.

The corners of her lips curved slightly.

She already had more than enough.

A courtyard house where she could watch the snow, seven inns facing Erhai Lake, a boutique in Wangfujing, an entertainment company worth over a billion yuan, a black-and-gold Pagani, a private jet that could fly anywhere, a villa in Boston's Back Bay, and an estate in Beverly Hills. The gaze of five hundred thousand people, and a director's plea.

But none of those things made her happiest.

It was the applause that had filled the auditorium when she finished the last problem at the competition that day.

It was what Professor Harris had said when he stood up.

It was the clear, unclouded light in Ethan's eyes when he said, "I'll be faster next time."

It was standing under the moonlight in Boston right now, knowing what she would do tomorrow, next month, and next year.

Knowing where she was going and who she would become.

Her phone vibrated again.

This time it was Anderson Lau: I sent a paper copy of the script to your address in Boston. It should arrive tomorrow. Also, I want to change the final scene-Lin shouldn't just stand at the bookstore door and look at the sea. She should go out, walk to the shore, and step onto the beach. What do you think?

Su Jin looked at the message, thought for a moment, and sent back: She should take off her shoes. Step barefoot into the water. The seawater is cold, but she won't pull back.

Anderson replied in a second: That's it. That's it. You don't need to act. You are her.

Su Jin smiled and set her phone on the windowsill.

Outside, the snow had begun to fall again, fine and thick, like a silent white rain in the moonlight.

She stood there, watching the snowflakes settle one by one on the snow in the back garden, soundlessly covering a world that was already quiet enough.

The winter night in Boston was long, but she was in no hurry. There was plenty of time to take things slowly.