Setting the Internet Ablaze

The game trailer was released at ten on a Tuesday morning. There was no launch event, no advance notice, and no publicity beforehand.

The trailer was only one minute and forty-seven seconds long.

The first frame was black. There was no image, only sound. Wind, slow and distant, like someone whistling in an empty valley.

Then came the sound of someone walking, footsteps treading on dry leaves: rustle, rustle, rustle. Then someone spoke, her voice soft, as if she were talking to herself, or to someone who wasn't there.

"You're here." The black screen lit up.

The image showed a meadow. The grass was long, bending in the wind. A figure stood in the middle with her back to the camera, wearing a long white robe. Its hem lifted and fluttered in the wind.

She stood there a long time, so long that the wind stopped, so long that the grass ceased to bend, so long that the image began to wash white.

Then she turned her head. The image cut off abruptly.

The screen went black.

A small white line of text appeared at the very center of the black screen: "You're here. Pu Songling is waiting for you."

Su Jin saw the trailer in her study in Boston.

She was sitting at her desk with the paper on the reduction atmosphere for copper-red glaze spread open before her. She had reached page thirty-two.

Her phone buzzed. "Ten million. The servers are about to crash."

Su Jin simply put down her phone and went back to the paper.

She turned to page thirty-three, read a derivation concerning the kiln-temperature curve, picked up a pen, and drew a circle in the margin.

On the third day after the trailer's release, its view count surpassed two hundred million.

There were so many languages in the comments that even Instagram's automatic translation couldn't handle them all.

Chinese, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Thai and Vietnamese, which she couldn't read.

The top comment was in English: "I stayed on that last frame for an hour. The moment she turned her head, I thought she was looking at me."

The second was in Chinese: "Pu Songling waited four hundred years, and finally got someone who could make games."

The third was in Japanese: "The grass bends, the wind stops, and she turns her head. There are no ghosts, no blood, no screams in this trailer. But I was scared. What scares me is that I've watched it twenty times, and every time, it feels like she's looking at a different person."

When Su Jin saw that comment, she was waiting for her luggage at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

She wore a black Prada nylon jacket, light enough to fold into a small bundle and stuff into a bag. The fabric was an exceptionally fine nylon, thin as paper, reflecting no light, only absorbing it. Wearing it was like being draped in a layer of black mist that kept out the cold.

The jacket's collar was high enough to cover half her face when zipped up, but she left it open, revealing a white Alaia cotton shirt underneath. The shirt's stiff collar stood against her jaw.

She wore dark gray Bottega Veneta wool wide-leg trousers, their creases straight and their hems reaching the tops of her feet, and a pair of black Church's Chelsea boots.

Her hair was tied in a low ponytail with a black elastic, revealing a pair of silver Jil Sander earrings. Round and thin, they looked like two flattened coins, gleaming coldly under the airport's fluorescent lights.

She wore no makeup. A pair of Celine aviator sunglasses sat on her nose, their brown tint so pale that her eyes were visible through them.

Her luggage came out, a dark blue Rimowa suitcase, and Fang Ying reached over and lifted it off. Su Jin took the handle and walked out of the arrivals hall.

The opening ceremony for the suspense drama She Comes from the East was held in Boston.

Not in a studio, but on location.

It was an old apartment building on the bank of the Charles River, not far from MIT, a ten-minute walk away. The drama's heroine lived in the building. The photo in her last Weibo post before she disappeared showed the Charles River outside her window, with the caption "It's so cold today."

By the time Su Jin arrived, the crew had cordoned off the street in front of the apartment building.

Several black vans were parked by the roadside. Cables ran from them along the gaps in the sidewalk all the way to the building's entrance.

Several crew members in fluorescent vests were carrying equipment. Some were setting up lights, some were adjusting the lighting, and some were testing the sound.

Zhao Mingyuan stood at the entrance in a dark blue Ralph Lauren down jacket, holding a sheaf of A4 papers: the day's shooting schedule.

He saw Su Jin get out of the car and went to meet her. "President Su, everything's ready. The director is upstairs, and the actors are in makeup."

Su Jin nodded. Today she wore a light camel-colored Lemaire cashmere coat that reached her calves. It had a roomy silhouette and hung open without a belt, like a warm blanket that had spent the whole day in the sun.

Underneath was a black The Row turtleneck sweater. She wore light blue Acne Studios straight-leg jeans and a pair of black Ganni platform loafers. A gold horsebit on each shoe flashed in the sunlight. Her hair hung loose, the ends slightly curled, mussed a little by Boston's December wind.

She climbed the steps and pushed open the apartment building's door.

The opening ceremony was simple, conducted entirely according to Chinese custom.

A table was covered in red velvet, with a roast suckling pig on it. The pig held an orange in its mouth, a gold one-not real gold, but painted.

Several plates of fruit sat in front of the pig: apples, oranges, and bananas piled into little mountains.

Several incense sticks stood in the burner. The smoke rose in thin, straight threads until the central air conditioning scattered it halfway up.

The director stood in front of the table, a man in his forties with messy hair, round glasses, and a black padded jacket.

The actors stood beside him in a row.

Lin Xiaozhou stood at the far left in a gray cotton shirt, its sleeves rolled to her forearms, exposing her slender wrists and a thin silver bracelet. She wore dark blue jeans and black canvas shoes. Her hair had been cut even shorter, exposing her ears and a bit of the back of her neck.

She stood clean and neat among the actors, like a plant growing in a garden, not especially conspicuous, but one that made people want to look twice.

Zhou Di stood beside her in a black linen shirt. Her hair fell to her shoulders, its ends dry and a little split. Her eyes faced the camera, but her gaze was unfocused, as though she were looking somewhere far away.

Shen Du stood at the far right in a dark blue linen suit jacket over a white T-shirt, light gray flannel trousers, and dark brown Derby shoes. His hair was cut very short, exposing his ears and a little of the back of his neck. His expression was subdued, the corners of his mouth turned slightly down, as though he habitually pressed his lips together when thinking.

The director picked up three incense sticks, bowed three times toward the table, and placed them in the burner.

Then the actors bowed one by one. Su Jin stood to the side and did not bow.

She simply stood there, arms at her sides, back straight and feet together, looking at the roast suckling pig with the golden orange, at the smoke rising straight up, at the actors' eyes, narrowed slightly by the incense smoke.

She said nothing. The director picked up a microphone and said, "She Comes from the East, filming begins."

Applause rang out, not loud, but beneath Boston's gray-white sky, in the foyer of the old apartment building by the Charles River, amid the cables, light stands, cameras, reflectors, tracks, sandbags, and apple boxes, that applause was warm.

She turned and walked out of the apartment building.

Fang Ying followed and asked where she was going. She said, "Disney."

The planning meeting for Disney's live-action film was held at its headquarters in Burbank.

Bob Iger was waiting for her in the conference room, a thick stack of concept art spread out before him.

When Su Jin arrived, more than a dozen people were seated in the room: screenwriters, a director, producers, and concept designers.

Today she wore a white Courrèges wool suit jacket, cropped and without a fitted waist. Its shoulders were square, like a box with its corners shaved smooth, one that wouldn't topple over.

Underneath was a black Ami Paris turtleneck knit, exceptionally thin and soft, clinging to her like a layer of black, breathing skin.

She wore dark gray Maison Margiela wool wide-leg trousers, their creases straight and their hems reaching the tops of her feet. On her feet were black leather The Row mules, with only a single, exceptionally fine strap tracing the most graceful curve of each instep.

Her hair was combed back and tied into a low bun with a white elastic.

A pair of metal Marni earrings hung from her earlobes, large and thin, like two pieces of birch bark blown loose by the wind. They swayed gently when she turned her head.

Bob Iger spread the concept art across the table one sheet at a time.

The first showed Nüwa, with a human head and a serpent's body, her long hair falling to the ground. She held a five-colored stone that glowed, lighting half her face while the other half lay hidden in shadow. Her eyes were amber, exactly the same shade as Su Jin's.

The second showed Nüwa standing on the ruins of the pillar of heaven. The sky had collapsed, the earth had caved in, fire had burned, and water had flooded everything. She stood there alone, unarmed, but she had not left.

The third showed Nüwa refining the stones. The furnace fire lit her face red, and her hair was damp with sweat, plastered to her forehead. Her eyes were fixed on the flames, and her silhouette was in them.

The fourth showed Nüwa mending the heavens. She was flying, her skirt billowing in the wind like a sail, the five-colored stone held above her head. Its light illuminated the entire sky. The sky was black, the light was white, and she was the one in the middle, connecting black and white.

Su Jin looked through them one by one. When she was finished, she put the last one back on the table.

"The image is good, but the story has to hold up. I need a core with more of the character of Chinese mythology."

Everyone looked at one another, and then came an unending stream of discussion and writing.

Su Jin said nothing. She simply put on her sunglasses, turned, and walked out.

She didn't have that much time to spare waiting for them.

She returned to the hotel, took a shower, and changed clothes.

She wore a white Tory Burch linen shirt, with a loose bow tied at the collar. The bow's loops hung over her chest like a white butterfly resting on a flower, its wings still fluttering gently.

Below was a Missoni knit skirt with colorful stripes: red, yellow, blue, and green. The stripes weren't straight but wavy, one after another, like a rainbow rippled by the wind.

On her feet were brown Tod's leather driving shoes, with no decoration on the uppers, only the leather's own grain.

Her hair hung loose, not yet completely dry. The ends were wet, and droplets fell onto the shoulders of her shirt, spreading into a small dark patch.

She picked up her phone and took a photo in the mirror. No retouching, no filter, no lighting adjustments.

She posted it with a line: "Boston rain."

Then she stood up, walked to the window, and pushed it open a crack.

Boston after the rain was cold, a clean cold, as though it had been washed.

She took a deep breath and closed the window. Her phone lit up.

She picked it up. It was a message from Gu Yan: "The trailer's passed three hundred million views. The grass is still bending. The wind is still blowing."

Su Jin looked at the words, and the corners of her mouth curved slightly into a lovely arc.