Between the applause in Berlin and the call of a magazine

The awards ceremony was held on the last day of the Berlin Film Festival, again at the Berlinale Palast, but the atmosphere was completely different from the premiere.

The red carpet had less of the tension and anticipation of the premiere, and more of the ease that came after the dust had settled.

The nominated crews came through in twos and threes. Directors no longer clenched their fists, actors had begun joking with one another, and photographers were no longer snapping away frantically. Instead, they picked their shots, focusing on the nominees with the strongest chances.

The moment Su Jin stepped out of the car, the photographers returned to the same state they had been in on premiere day.

Today she wore a white silk satin suit by Saint Laurent.

The jacket's shoulders were sharp as if cut with a knife, the waist was drawn in tight, and the hem flared slightly into a clean bell shape. The substantial silk satin gleamed a cool white under the lights, like moonlight on fresh snow. Her wide-leg trousers were the same color, their creases straight and their hems reaching her feet. She wore them with silver, thin-strapped high-heeled sandals. The heels were as slender as needles, but she walked steadily.

Her hair was swept up and secured with a silver hairpin, its end set with a pearl so tiny it was almost invisible unless one looked closely.

She wore nothing on her earlobes-Geneviève had said she didn't need earrings today.

The suit was her jewelry.

Her makeup was lighter than it had been at the premiere, the only warmth in her face between the cool white suit and the cool white lights.

There was no helping it; her face simply didn't need makeup.

She stood at the start of the red carpet, looked at the golden doors to the theater entrance three hundred meters away, and took her first step.

This time she walked faster than she had at the premiere, not because she was nervous, but because she knew she wasn't the star today.

"Winter Harbor" was nominated for eight awards: best film, best director, best actress, best cinematography, best original score, best editing, best art direction, and best sound. She knew how fierce the competition for best actress was.

Competing against her was a French woman who was a regular at Europe's three major film festivals and had been acting for forty years. When her new film premiered at Cannes, it had already been predicted to be a major favorite for this year's awards season.

Su Jin didn't think she would win, but she didn't mind.

She had come today to stand here, wearing a white Saint Laurent suit and walking in the Berlin sunshine, to let everyone know that Lin's story deserved to be seen.

The awards ceremony officially began at three in the afternoon.

The host was a famous German actor in his fifties, with graying hair and a habit of putting his hands in his pockets when he spoke.

He alternated between German and English, speaking fast and delivering his jokes just as fast. But the simultaneous interpretation in the translation headsets was always half a beat behind, so while the German-speaking audience laughed, the non-German speakers were still waiting for the translation.

Su Jin sat in the middle of the third row, with Anderson on her left and the producer on her right. She hadn't changed; she still wore the white suit, with a gray cashmere blanket over her knees-the theater's air-conditioning was too cold.

She sat very straight, her back about an inch from the back of the chair, her hands folded on her knees, fingers interlaced and thumbs touching lightly.

The awards were presented one by one.

"Winter Harbor" won best sound.

The German sound recordist went up to accept it, a bald man in his forties whose acceptance speech consisted of a single sentence:

"The sound of this film belonged to the wind and sea of Maine."

Then it won best original score.

The composer was a young Icelandic woman in a long black dress, her hair dyed pale pink. She nearly tripped over her hem on the way to the stage, and Su Jin gave a quiet laugh from her seat.

"Winter Harbor" also won best editing, best art direction, and best cinematography.

Four awards, four winners of different nationalities, and every one of them mentioned the same name in their acceptance speech-

"Thank you, Su Jin. Your face was the most beautiful footage I've ever edited." "You stood on the coast of Maine and let my camera see the wind."

Every time her name was mentioned, the director cut to her.

She sat in the audience, smiling and applauding with composure, never once lowering her head or looking away from the camera.

Best director ultimately went to Anderson.

His eyes were red as he went onstage, and he clutched a sheet of paper covered in his acceptance speech, but he didn't look at it.

"I spent five years making this film," he said, his voice somewhat choked.

"For the first four and a half years, I was looking for someone.

"Looking for a face. A face that could make me believe Lin really existed.

"I searched the whole world. I looked at actors, models, ordinary people, people walking down the street.

"I searched for four and a half years and found no one. Then someone sent me a photograph-a girl standing in the MIT library, her head bowed over a paper, sunlight coming through the window and falling on her face.

"I took one look, and then I cried. I knew the person I'd been waiting for had appeared."

He looked out into the audience, toward Su Jin.

"Su Jin, thank you for letting me find you. Thank you for bringing Lin to life. Thank you for giving this film a soul."

Su Jin sat in the audience, smiling at him.

Her eyes hadn't reddened, but her thumbs pressed lightly together on her knees. Only the producer sitting beside her noticed.

The award for best actress was presented second to last.

As the host read out the nominees, Su Jin felt her heart beat a little faster-not from nerves, but from some instinctive bodily response to anticipation.

Clips of the five nominees played on the big screen. When Su Jin's turn came, it was the scene of her reading the letter in the attic.

She sat on the attic floor with a letter on her knees, gray daylight pouring through the skylight overhead and falling on her face.

She turned the letter over, looked at the blank back, then closed it and smoothed its curled corners. The image froze on her hand, her index finger pressed against the flap of the envelope, her nail cut short and unpainted.

The room fell silent.

The host opened the envelope and read out a name. It wasn't Su Jin.

It was the French woman who had been acting for forty years, Isabelle Huppert.

In her new film, she played a pianist with Alzheimer's, and the shot of her fingers trembling over the keys had been called "the best thirty seconds of acting this century" by every film critic.

Su Jin began to applaud.

She clapped earnestly, neither too hard nor too softly, neither too fast nor too slowly, a sincere smile on her face, happy for the other woman.

The director cut to her. She was applauding, the corners of her mouth curved, her eyes bright, without a trace of disappointment.

That shot was later shared two hundred thousand times on social media.

The caption read, "This is the grace of a best actress."

One comment read: "She lost to Huppert. Huppert has acted for forty years; she's only made her first film. Watching her sit there applauding was more beautiful than any acceptance speech."

Best film was the final award.

When the presenter read out, "'Winter Harbor,' a Germany, France, and China co-production," Anderson sprang from his seat like a suddenly released spring.

He turned and pulled Su Jin into a tight embrace. She could feel him trembling.

The producer patted both of them on the shoulders, shouting something they couldn't hear because the whole room was applauding, cheering, and whistling.

Held in Anderson's arms, Su Jin patted his back and said in his ear, "Go on. They're waiting for you."

Anderson let her go and ran toward the stage, only to double back halfway, take her hand, and pull her along.

He dragged her with him, and she jogged all the way onto the stage in her white suit and silver heels.

Two thousand people watched from the audience, and the applause grew louder.

Anderson stood at the microphone, raised the trophy, then lowered it again.

His lips trembled, and he couldn't speak.

He turned to look at Su Jin, who stood at the edge of the stage. She hadn't gone to the microphone; she simply stood there, her arms at her sides, her white suit glowing under the stage lights like a lit candle that would never go out.

Anderson spoke into the microphone. "This award is hers." He pointed at Su Jin.

Su Jin shook her head, pointed at him, then at the crew in the audience, meaning it belonged to everyone.

Anderson paid her no mind and continued, "Without her, this film wouldn't exist. Without her, I wouldn't be standing here. Without her, Lin would still be living in my script, not in anyone's heart. This award is hers."

He pressed the trophy into Su Jin's hands.

Su Jin looked down at the Silver Bear. The silver bear stood on a black base, its ears pricked up and its mouth slightly open, as though listening to some faraway sound.

She gripped it. Then she walked to the microphone.

The audience fell silent.

"I don't have anything to say,"

she said. "Lin has already said everything for me. Go see her. She's in the bookstore in Winter Harbor, in the attic, by the sea. She stands barefoot in the seawater. The water is cold, but she doesn't pull back.

"Go see her. She's waiting for you."

She stepped back and gave the microphone back to Anderson. Thunderous applause erupted from the audience.

She stood at the center of the stage, her white suit lit up like a sail, the Silver Bear in her hand, the corners of her mouth curved and her eyes bright.

The director pushed the camera in as close as it would go, and her face filled the entire screen.

She stood there and let everyone look at her.

Because she knew this moment was worth remembering.

The reception after the awards ceremony was held in an old hotel next to the Berlinale Palast.

The hotel's ballroom wasn't large. Three enormous crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, the walls were covered in dark red velvet wallpaper, and the old oak floor had been polished bright by countless pairs of shoes.

Su Jin had changed out of her white suit into a long black Khaite slip dress. It was minimalist, with no embellishment at all, just two thin straps and a length of black silk satin falling from her chest to her ankles.

Her hair was down, loose over her shoulders, its ends slightly curled and gleaming deep brown in the chandeliers' warm light.

When she walked through the ballroom doors, everyone turned to look at her-not because she was best actress, not because she held the Silver Bear, but because she stood beneath the crystal chandeliers in that long black dress like a Renaissance portrait hung on a dark red wall.

With a glass of champagne in hand, she moved through the crowd.

She shook hands with one director, embraced another producer, clinked glasses with a photographer, and exchanged cards with a film critic.

The thing she said most often was "Thank you"; the second most common was "I'm not an actress."

Everyone who spoke to her fell silent for a few seconds after she left, then said something similar to the person beside them: "She's more beautiful than she was on the red carpet." "She's more beautiful than she is on screen." "How can she be even more beautiful than she is on screen?"

The editor in chief of France's Cahiers du Cinéma stood in a corner with a whiskey, watching her weave through the crowd. "It's such a shame she doesn't act," he said to the person beside him. "But perhaps not acting is the right choice. She doesn't need to play someone else. She only needs to be herself. Just being herself, she's already more beautiful than everyone else."

Su Jin walked over to Anderson, who was leaning against the bar with a cup of coffee that had gone cold. His eyes were still red.

"Did you cry?" she asked. Anderson shook his head, then nodded.

"I didn't cry. My eyes were sweating."

Su Jin laughed.

Anderson looked at her and fell silent for a few seconds. "You know, when you said those words onstage just now, the Italian producer behind me cried.

"He said he'd been making films for thirty years, and it was the first time he'd heard an actor say 'Go see her' at an awards podium-not 'Look at me,' but 'Go see her.' She was talking about Lin, not herself."

Su Jin looked down at the champagne flute in her hand. Bubbles rose from the bottom and burst at the surface, making a faint, delicate sound only she could hear.

"Because Lin needs to be seen more than I do. I'm just standing here, wearing a pretty dress and saying nice things. Lin is standing barefoot on the shore in Winter Harbor, waiting for someone to go see her. I won't compete with her."

Anderson looked at her, his eyes reddening again.

He set his coffee cup on the bar, reached out, and took her hand. "You won't make a second film?" he asked.

Su Jin shook her head. "No. Lin's story has already been told. Anything more would be unnecessary."

She drew her hand away and patted his shoulder. "But your story isn't over. You still have so many films to make. You'll find lots of people better than me. You'll make films better than 'Winter Harbor.'"

Anderson looked at her, his lips moving, but no words came out. Su Jin raised her champagne glass and clinked it against his cup.

"Go to Cannes. Take 'Winter Harbor' to Cannes. Let more people see Lin."

The next morning, Su Jin left Berlin and flew to Paris.

When the private plane landed at Paris–Le Bourget Airport, the weather in Paris was a little warmer than in Berlin. The clouds were thin, and sunlight filtered through the gaps, breaking into countless golden flecks on the surface of the Seine.

Su Jin came down the stairs wearing a linen-colored knitted Chloé camisole, white Mother wide-leg trousers, and black The Row sandals.

Her hair was half tied back, and she wore no makeup. In the gray-white Paris daylight, her skin was a soft white with a pearly sheen.

Fang Ying followed behind, carrying two suitcases and a Chanel hobo bag.

The two got into the black Mercedes-Benz van waiting beside the apron and headed into central Paris.

Su Jin leaned back in her seat and took out her phone.

Little Golden Egg squeezed out of the air and floated in front of her, its wings fluttering faster than usual, like a bee that had just eaten a whole jar of honey.

[Host! In your four days in Berlin, your Instagram followers rose from forty million to forty-six million! Six million! In four days!

Your follower growth rate has exceeded this system's prediction model! This system needs to retrain its data!]

Su Jin ignored it.

[And did you know? The video of you applauding after losing to Huppert has eighty million views on YouTube! Eighty million! More than the clip of you winning the award! The comments are all saying, "This is the real winner"-]

"Can you be quiet for a while?" Su Jin didn't even look up.

Little Golden Egg's wings stopped for a moment, then began fluttering again, but much more slowly, and its voice grew a little softer.

[All right, Host. This system was just too excited. You know, this system has been with you for more than a hundred and thirty days, and it has never seen you standing on such a huge stage, seen, heard, and remembered by so many people.

This system is happy for you.]

Su Jin turned her phone over and laid it screen-down on her knees, looking out the window.

The car was traveling along the road beside the Seine. Several sightseeing boats were on the river, their passengers holding up phones to take pictures.

Secondhand bookstalls lined the Left Bank embankment, their green metal boxes glinting in the sunlight with an aged sheen burnished by time.

Her gaze lingered on the bookstalls for a while, then withdrew.

"I'm happy too," she said softly, as though speaking to herself.

Little Golden Egg didn't reply.

It simply floated quietly beside her, its golden glow growing faint in the gray-white Paris daylight, but it was still there.

Chanel's haute couture atelier was at 31 Rue Cambon. Su Jin had been there once before, but this time was different.

Last time, she had come for a Berlin red-carpet gown: four hundred hours of bead embroidery, a design by Virginie Viard, and Madame Lefèvre's scissors.

This time, she had come for a cover shoot for the France edition of Harper's Bazaar.

The magazine's chosen theme was "The ten faces of Su Jin"-ten looks, ten completely different styles, ten appearances she had never tried before.

Not the silver-white beadwork on the red carpet, not the black velvet at the premiere, not the white suit at the awards ceremony.

These were clothes she would never wear to any public occasion, clothes that belonged only to the camera and the play of light and shadow.

Madame Lefèvre stood in the middle of the atelier, her arms folded across her chest as she looked at the ten outfits hanging on the row of rolling racks before her.

She wore the same things she had last time-a black suit, a camellia hairpin, reading glasses hanging at her chest. But her expression was different.

Last time, she had been appraising her. This time, she was expectant.

"Ms. Su," she said,

"These clothes aren't haute couture. Haute couture is made to your measurements; these aren't.

"These are ready-to-wear, concepts, dreams in designers' minds.

"Your task is to put them on and make those dreams look real."

Su Jin stood in front of the clothing rack, looking through the outfits one by one.

The first was a metallic Balmain minidress, silver sequins covering it from neckline to hem, like a folded-up spacesuit. She had never worn anything in that style.

The second was a pink Chanel tweed suit, with a cropped jacket and a short skirt, white camellias edging the collar and cuffs. Sweet and girlish, it was a style she had never gone near.

The third was a black Comme des Garçons sculptural coat, huge and asymmetrical, like a folded-up building.

She didn't know who would wear something like that. She didn't know whether she would wear something like that.

She looked through them one by one and stopped when she reached the eighth outfit.

It was a nude-colored Alaïa openwork knit gown, running from chest to ankles, its openwork patterns winding around the body like vines. Under the lights, skin showed through the gaps in the pattern, like a white sculpture entwined with vines.

She reached out and touched the knitted fabric with her fingertips. It was soft and springy, like something alive.

"This one," she said. "I'll try this one first."

The fitting went much faster than last time.

There were no four hundred hours of bead embroidery, no shoulder straps adjusted dozens of times, just putting clothes on, looking in the mirror, and taking them off.

For each look, she stood before the mirror and gazed at the stranger she saw there-some she liked, some she didn't, but every one of them made her feel, So I could look like this too.

The photographer was the head photographer for France's Harper's Bazaar, a bald man in his forties with a goatee who liked to gesture with his hands when he spoke.

He stood behind the camera and watched Su Jin walk out of the dressing room in the Alaïa openwork knit gown. He pressed the shutter once, then stopped.

He didn't take another shot. He just looked at her through the viewfinder for a long time.

"Do you know what you look like right now?" he said.

Su Jin stood beneath the lights, the nude-colored gown clinging to her body, its openwork pattern spreading from her shoulders to her ankles, her skin flickering in and out of sight through the gaps.

"What do I look like?" He lowered the camera and looked at her.

"Like a sculpture wrapped in vines, waking up. You're moving, but it isn't your body that's moving. It's the light beneath your skin.

"I've been shooting for thirty years, and I've never felt this before." He raised the camera again and began pressing the shutter.

This time, he shot quickly, one frame after another, like a machine running at full speed.

The shoot lasted four hours, with ten changes of look. In front of the camera, Su Jin did something she had never done before-she wasn't playing Lin, and she wasn't being Su Jin. She was being someone else. With every change of look, she became a different person. With every person she became, the photographer changed his rhythm.

For those four hours, she was neither Su Jin nor Lin, neither an investor nor an MIT student.

She was ten faces, ten stories, ten ways of being illuminated by light.

After the shoot, she stood before the dressing-room mirror in her own clothes-she smiled at her reflection, then turned and walked out of the dressing room.

After leaving the Chanel atelier, Su Jin didn't return to the hotel. Instead, she went to Shen Nian's studio in Paris.

Shen Nian had flown in from Boston the day before, bringing the final prototype of ME's first chair—a chair handcrafted from United States black walnut. Its curves had a warm, mellow sheen under the lights. Shen Nian had spent three months repeatedly adjusting the curve of the backrest before settling on it. It wasn't an arc of a circle, but a section of an ellipse, running from waist to shoulders, with the gentlest curvature in the middle and the sharpest at both ends.

When you leaned back, your lower back was supported, not pressed against. The seat depth had been revised countless times before finally being set at forty-eight centimeters. Sitting down in it was like coming home.

Shen Nian looked at her, the corners of her mouth curving up. "Then that's right."

She picked up a sheet of paper from the workbench and handed it to Su Jin. On it was the product plan for ME's first collection-three chairs, a table, and a lamp.

There were three kinds of chairs: a reading chair, a dining chair, and a work chair. The table's design was minimalist, consisting of nothing but a walnut slab two meters by one meter and four extremely slender metal legs. The tabletop was two centimeters thick, its edges sanded into a very gentle curve, like a stone that had been washed by a river for too long.

The lamp was the only thing in the collection that wasn't made of wood-the shade was handblown milky-white glass, the base was brass, and the switch was a thin leather cord hanging from the top of the shade, with a tiny walnut bead tied to the end.

Su Jin looked through the sheets one by one, studying them carefully.

Each sheet bore Shen Nian's handwritten notes, the writing messy but orderly, like someone's personal notes-the curves of the lines, the thickness of the wood, the sheen of the finish. Every number was followed by a unit: millimeters, centimeters, degrees. She traced her fingertips lightly over the paper, as if touching the wood and metal that had yet to take physical form.

"What about the prices?" she asked.

Shen Nian picked up another sheet from the workbench and handed it to her. "The reading chair, twenty-eight thousand euros. The dining chair, twelve thousand euros. The work chair, twenty-two thousand euros. The table, thirty-five thousand euros. The lamp, sixty-five hundred euros."

Su Jin looked at the numbers without nodding or shaking her head.

"Are they expensive?" Shen Nian asked. "No," Su Jin said,

"but they aren't cheap, either. At these prices, they aren't for everyone. They're for people who sit down and know why they're worth that much."

Shen Nian nodded. "Then where will we sell them?"

Su Jin put the paper back on the workbench and leaned against the chair's back, tapping her fingers twice on the armrest.

"Paris, New York, Beijing. Three stores. Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, Madison Avenue in New York, and in Beijing-my courtyard house."

Shen Nian looked at her, startled. "Your courtyard house?"

The corners of Su Jin's mouth curved up. "There's an empty west wing in my courtyard house, facing the old pomegranate tree in the courtyard. In summer, sunlight filters through the leaves of the pomegranate tree and falls on the walnut armrests. It would be beautiful."

Shen Nian was silent for a long time, then smiled.

"You're not building a brand. You're creating a way of life. You want everyone to live the way you do."

Su Jin said nothing.

"Not everyone," she said. "One person. Someone very far away who may never know about me. He sits in a very ordinary chair, and his lower back hurts, his wrists hurt, and sitting for too long is uncomfortable too. But he doesn't know why.

"He thinks that's just what sitting is like. I want him to know it isn't. Sitting doesn't have to hurt. You don't have to think. It can be like coming home."

Shen Nian looked at her without speaking.

Outside, the Paris sky darkened, and the streetlights came on, casting the swaying shadows of plane trees on the studio curtains.

The two of them sat at the chair that had no name yet, one in the chair and one beside it, neither speaking.

After a long time, Shen Nian spoke. "Then what should we call this chair?" Su Jin thought for a moment. "'Nian,'" she said. "Let's call it 'Nian.' When you sit in it, whatever you think of, that's what you hold in mind."

Shen Nian lowered her head and looked at the armrest, her fingers tracing the grain of the walnut. "Nian," she said, her voice so soft it was like someone striking a match in the dark: a hiss, a flare of light, then darkness again.

"All right. 'Nian' it is."

Su Jin rose from the chair, picked up her bag, and walked to the door, then looked back.

Shen Nian was still sitting in the chair, her head lowered, her fingers still tracing the armrest. "The Milan workshop starts work next month. The first batch will be twelve reading chairs, six tables, and twelve lamps."

Shen Nian looked up at her.

Su Jin stood in the doorway. The Paris night wind slipped through the crack in the door, lifting a few stray strands of hair at her temples.

She stood in the doorway and took a deep breath, then walked out into the night.