Forming a Racing Team

The press conference for the variety show Poetry Across China was held in a second-floor ballroom at Rosewood Beijing.

By the time Su Jin arrived, dozens of media outlets had gathered outside. Cameras with lenses long and short formed a metal jungle, while security guards used their bodies to carve out a narrow passage. She walked through it as flashes erupted behind her in a white, never-ending thunderstorm.

She wore an ivory-white silk blouse from Celine, with a loose bow tied at the collar. Its wings hung against her chest like a white butterfly resting on a flower, its wings still fluttering gently.

Below that were black wide-leg trousers from The Row, their creases straight and their hems reaching her feet. On her feet were black suede Manolo Blahnik heels, their heels as thin as needles, but she walked steadily.

Her hair hung loose, its ends slightly curled. The air-conditioning in the hotel lobby lifted it, then let it fall.

She wore no makeup. A pair of Celine aviator sunglasses rested on her nose, their lenses tinted brown so lightly that her eyes were visible through them.

She walked into the hall, and everyone fell silent.

The press conference was hosted by the middle-aged host. He stood onstage with a microphone, delivered a few opening remarks, then invited the guests up one by one.

Lu Shihan was fourth.

He wore a dark blue denim jacket over a punk-style black T-shirt, dark gray cargo pants, and sneakers that faded from black to white. His shoelaces were tied tight.

His hair was a little longer than it had been in Dali. His bangs hung over his forehead, hiding one eyebrow and making his large, round eyes look deeper.

As he walked onstage, his gaze kept searching for Su Jin. He found her sitting at the far left of the front row, with an empty seat beside her.

And then his gaze never moved.

Shen Rang was next.

He wore a thin black knit top with an open neckline, revealing his collarbones and a small patch of skin tanned a light wheat color.

He wore dark gray suit trousers with straight creases and black leather derby shoes, their toes polished to a shine.

He didn't look at Su Jin as he walked onstage, but his step slowed by a beat, enough for the host beside him to notice. The host followed his gaze and saw Su Jin.

The host smiled and said into the microphone, "It looks like our guest lineup today has plenty worth watching." The audience laughed, and Shen Rang smiled too, very faintly, the corners of his mouth curving.

Su Jin was the last to go onstage.

She stood, took off her sunglasses and placed them on her seat, acknowledged everyone, and walked onstage.

She took her place in the very middle, with Lu Shihan on her left and Shen Rang on her right.

Lu Shihan's ears were red. He didn't look at her, keeping his eyes on the audience, but his body tilted toward her by less than a degree, barely noticeable unless one looked closely.

Shen Rang looked neither at her nor at the audience. He watched the camera straight ahead, that faint curve still at the corners of his mouth, like a long-kept secret he couldn't bear to show anyone.

The host asked Su Jin whether there had been any unforgettable moments during the Dunhuang episode.

Su Jin thought for a moment and said there had.

"At the Mogao Caves, in front of the Great Maitreya Buddha in the Nine-Story Building.

"I stood beneath the great Buddha and looked up at him, and he looked down at me. I looked at him for a long time, then said to him, 'Remember me.'"

The host was taken aback and asked why she had said that.

Su Jin. The press conference moved on to questions from the media.

The first question went to Su Jin: "Teacher Su, when you said 'Remember me' to the great Buddha at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, were you speaking to the great Buddha, or to someone else?"

Su Jin took the microphone and glanced at the reporter.

"I was speaking to myself." She paused. "I've been to many places and met many people. Some remembered me, and some didn't. I don't blame those who didn't. And I don't thank those who did.

"But the Buddha is different. He sits there, doesn't leave, doesn't close his eyes, doesn't forget. I told him, 'Remember me,' not because I was afraid he'd forget, but because I wanted to know whether, once he remembered me, he'd remember the way I stood, the clothes I wore, and what I said, just as he remembered others. He will. He doesn't say so, but he will."

The audience fell silent.

Lu Shihan stood to her left, head lowered, looking at the tips of his shoes. His fingers rubbed lightly against the seam of his trousers, once, twice, and again, like a child who had waited a long time for a parent to pick him up and didn't dare look up for fear they still wouldn't be there, with nothing to do but rub his trouser seam.

Shen Rang stood to her right, his head turned, his gaze resting on the outline of her profile-from temple to cheekbone, cheekbone to jaw, jaw to neck.

That faint curve remained at the corners of his mouth. It wasn't a smile; it was as though he held something warm and sweet in his mouth, unable to bear swallowing it or spitting it out.

The second question went to Lu Shihan: "Shihan, when you read poetry by Erhai Lake, a lot of people said you read the best. What were you thinking about at the time?"

Lu Shihan took the microphone, his fingers gripping it so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "I was thinking... the moon fell into the water and broke. I wanted to scoop it up. But I was afraid it would melt."

He paused, his voice growing softer. "The moon I wanted to scoop up wasn't the one in the sky."

When he finished, he didn't look at Su Jin, but his gaze skimmed past her shoulder like a bird that didn't dare land, flying past and then back again, circling, afraid to settle.

Beside him, Shen Rang gave a soft laugh, not aloud but a breath through his nose, like a gentle breeze passing over a thin leaf.

He turned his head and glanced at Lu Shihan. There was something in that glance-not mockery, not sympathy, but one person watching another try to do something he himself couldn't, finding it endearing and funny, and a little pitiable too.

He looked away, toward the audience, his expression returning to that faint curve, as though he held something in his mouth, as if nothing had happened.

The third question went to Shen Rang:

"Shen Rang, most of the roles you've played have been devoted second male leads. Now that you're appearing on a variety show, have you thought about changing direction?"

Shen Rang took the microphone but didn't rush to answer. First he looked at Su Jin, his gaze moving slowly from her eyes to her lips, from her lips to her collarbone, before he drew it back and looked at the audience.

He spoke, his voice a little lower than usual, like someone speaking into your ear, neither too far nor too close, just enough for you to hear clearly. "I don't want to act anymore. Before, I played devoted second male leads for the audience to see. Now I don't want to act anymore. I want to be myself."

He paused, the curve of his mouth widening enough to show the edges of his teeth, white and even.

"Being yourself is harder than playing someone else. But it's worth it."

As he said this, he glanced at Su Jin again, faster this time, too fast to catch unless you had been watching him all along.

Like a cat brushing the tip of its tail against the back of your hand when no one was paying attention. By the time you looked down, it had already gone, leaving only the tip of its tail flicking once around the corner.

The press conference ended.

The guests exited through a side door. The corridor was laid with thick, dark gray carpet that made no sound underfoot.

A staff member led the way. The veteran actor walked at the front, followed by the female singer and the male actor. Su Jin walked in the middle, with Lu Shihan on her left and Shen Rang on her right.

Lu Shihan had his hands in his pockets, his fingers gripping something tightly enough to pull a crease in the fabric.

After a few steps, he stopped. Su Jin stopped too and looked at him.

He opened his mouth, but no words came out. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed a mouthful of air.

He spoke quietly, but enunciated every word clearly. "Teacher Su, may I add you on WeChat?"

Afterward, he didn't dare look at her. He stared instead at the emergency exit sign at the end of the corridor, green and glowing steadily.

Su Jin looked at him. He stood before her, half a head taller and much broader across the shoulders, yet he hunched in on himself like a very large dog curled into a tiny ball, afraid of taking up space, of blocking the way, of being disliked.

"Phone."

He stared at her for a moment.

She raised an eyebrow. "Take out your phone."

He fumbled his phone out of his pocket, swiped at the screen twice before unlocking it, opened his QR code, and held it out to her.

His fingers were trembling, not from fear, but the kind of trembling that couldn't be controlled when a heart beat too fast and blood rushed to the fingertips.

Su Jin scanned the code and gave him back his phone. He looked down at the chat window that appeared on the screen. Her profile picture was the elegant white cat from Tom and Jerry; there were no Moments, no bio, nothing at all.

He gripped the phone tightly in his palm, as though it were a bright stone he had just picked up off the ground and feared someone might snatch away.

His eyes shining, he said, "Thank you, Teacher Su."

Su Jin turned and waved a hand. "Call me Su Jin."

He froze. His ears didn't turn red, but his eyes did-not from crying, but red in that bright, washed-with-water way, like droplets clinging to leaves after a rain.

"Su Jin."

He said it softly, as though afraid it would break if he said it too loudly.

Shen Rang leaned against the corridor wall, both hands in his pockets, the toe of one shoe touching the floor as he swung it gently.

He waited until Lu Shihan had left before straightening away from the wall and walking over to Su Jin.

He didn't take out his phone. He simply stood there, a step closer to her than Lu Shihan had been, close enough to smell her hair-not perfume, but shampoo, gardenia-scented and faint, as though someone had planted a gardenia tree far away and the wind had carried its fragrance over, only for it to disperse by the time it reached his nose.

He looked into her eyes, those amber eyes with golden rings around the pupils. He didn't look away, flinch, or lower his lashes.

He watched and watched, and the curve of his mouth slowly changed, from a faint, holding-something-in kind of curve to a more definite upward curve with a hook in it.

Not a smile, but a hook.

He smiled and said, "I'm not adding you on WeChat."

Su Jin looked at him.

Looking into her eyes, he said, "I'll wait for you to add me." His gaze never left hers as he said it, but his right eye narrowed slightly-not a blink, but a narrowing, like someone taking aim, like the instant an archer drew the bow before shooting, his right eye closing for less than half a second, his left eye open and fixed on the bull's-eye.

Su Jin smiled. "You'll be waiting in vain."

He smiled too. "Then when I've waited in vain, I'll come find you."

Su Jin stood where she was, watching his retreating figure disappear at the end of the corridor. Fang Ying caught up from behind, carrying her coat.

Su Jin said, "Let's go. Ruisi Racing Circuit, Beijing."

Chen Shen was waiting for her in a pit garage at Ruisi Racing Circuit.

He had been waiting since three in the afternoon, for two hours.

First he had wiped down the car, a GT3 RS, green, the green of a Maine holly.

He had wiped it with care, his gaze intent, working from front to back, from roof to wheels. He had gone over every inch of paint twice, once with a wet cloth and once with a dry one.

After the car, he had wiped down the two helmets, his and hers.

His was black with matte paint, no design and no logo, just a tiny national flag sticker at the back.

Hers was white with a glossy finish. Her old one had been silver, and he had said silver didn't look good with green, so she should switch to white.

She hadn't switched it, so he had done it for her.

He had ordered it from the Porsche Center and waited a month. On the day it arrived, he had unpacked it and sat holding it for ten minutes, thinking who knew what.

He placed her helmet on the passenger seat, with gloves beside it. The gloves were new and still sealed, in the size she usually wore. He remembered.

He leaned against the garage wall, holding a cup of Americano, no sugar or milk.

The coffee had gone cold, completely cold, its bitterness stronger, so strong it was like drinking a traditional Chinese medicine.

He didn't pour it out. He drank it slowly, one sip at a time, pausing after each to look at the track outside the window. There was no one on the track, only the wind, lifting the flags beside it, letting them fall, then lifting them again.

He remembered the past. Back in Chengdu, on her first time at a racetrack, she had stood at the entrance to the garage in a black leather jacket, her ponytail tied high, a helmet in her hand.

The first time he saw her, he thought she wasn't there to race but to take photos.

She got into the car, fastened her seat belt, started the engine, shifted gears, released the clutch, and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

She went out, and when she came back, there was a number on his stopwatch.

That number would have ranked in the top three among amateurs.

Surprised, he asked if she had driven before. She said no. He asked how she had done it, and she shrugged and said the car had driven itself.

He looked at her. She said the car knew how to run; a person just sat in it and stayed out of its way.

He remembered those words. He remembered them for a long time. He remembered them still.

The garage door was pushed open.

His head snapped up, the coffee cup pausing in his hand.

Su Jin stood in the doorway, wearing a white crew-neck T-shirt under a lightweight black shell jacket, its zipper undone and the front open. She wore dark blue jeans and white skate shoes with loosely tied laces.

Her hair was in a high ponytail, revealing her whole face, and she wore sunglasses.

She stood in the doorway as the setting sun shone through the window behind her, gilding her outline.

She took off her sunglasses and looked at him.

"You're here."

As she walked forward, she said, "You've been waiting a long time."

He pressed his lips together and said, "No."

He set the completely cold coffee on the table, took the white helmet down from a nearby shelf, and handed it to her.

She took it and looked down at it intently.

Su Jin said nothing. She tucked the helmet under her arm and walked over to the car.

She touched the hood. The paint was cool and smooth, like a stone that had been washed by water for a long time.

"You wiped down the car."

Chen Shen nodded. "I did." She said, "You didn't use to wipe down your car."

Chen Shen kept looking at her. "That was before."

Su Jin opened the car door, got in, and fastened her seat belt. Chen Shen got in on the other side and settled into the passenger seat without fastening his.

She started the engine. Its sound came from behind them, low and muffled, like a beast long shut away rolling an unvoiced roar in its throat.

She shifted into gear, released the clutch, and pressed lightly on the accelerator. The car rolled slowly out of the garage and onto the track.

She drove slowly. Not because she didn't dare go fast, but because she didn't want to. She wanted to take one lap first and have a look at the track.

The track was old, its asphalt worn by tires over many years. Its surface was gray rather than black, gray tinged with white, white tinged with light. The tire barriers at the side were black, stacked neatly in rows like a soft wall that would never fall.

In the distance was Beijing's autumn. The sky was high and blue, so blue it turned white, so white it dazzled.

She put on her sunglasses and rolled the window down a crack. Wind poured through, lifting the loose strands at her temples. They drifted in front of her sunglasses, but she didn't brush them aside.

Chen Shen sat in the passenger seat, looking ahead-not at the road, but at its end.

At the end of the road was a bend, and beyond the bend was more road, and beyond the road another bend.

He looked for a long time before speaking.

"You've lost weight."

Su Jin said nothing.

"I could tell at a glance. You've lost weight. Your wrists are thinner, your cheekbones higher. That bangle you used to wear would slide back and forth on your wrist. Now it slides even faster."

Su Jin remained silent. The steering wheel turned a fraction in her hands, and the car passed close to the curb at the apex. The curb was red, worn white, and when the tires ran over it, they made a low hum, like a bee trapped in a glass.

She said, "You still drive."

Chen Shen said, "I do. Alone. No navigator, no opponent, no stopwatch. I drive until it gets dark, then go back."

Su Jin kept her eyes ahead. "Don't you get bored driving alone?"

"Bored. But when I drive, I think of you."

His tone was level as he said it, as though remarking on the nice weather.

But his hand clenched on his knee, so tightly that his knuckles whitened, then loosened again.

Su Jin didn't look at him. She watched the road ahead.

"You didn't use to be like this."

Chen Shen lowered his head and gave a self-mocking smile.

"I didn't know it would be like this before. Back then, you were in Chengdu and I was in Chengdu. When you wanted to drive, I drove with you. When you didn't, I left you alone. You left, and I stayed in Chengdu. The track was still there, the car was still there, the stopwatch was still there. But you weren't."

He paused.

"Only then did I realize it wasn't driving I used to like. It was having you in the passenger seat."

Su Jin said nothing. The steering wheel turned sharply in her hands as the car entered an S-bend, left, right, left.

Her body swayed slightly as the car leaned, her ponytail whipping one way behind her head, then swinging back.

"Sit tight," she said. "I'm going to go faster." "Okay," Chen Shen said. He tightened his seat belt again.

She pressed the accelerator.

The engine's roar erupted behind them, like a beast that had finally burst out of the cage where it had been shut away for so long.

The tachometer needle jumped from three thousand to five thousand, from five thousand to seven thousand, from seven thousand to nine thousand.

The car shot forward as if launched from a slingshot. Down the straight, full throttle: one hundred and thirty, one hundred and fifty, one hundred and seventy kilometers per hour.

She shifted gears, her movements so fast he couldn't see her hands move. He only heard the clutch go down, the gear slide into place, and the accelerator hit the floor. Three sounds, strung together like a very, very short tune with only three notes.

Entering the bend, she tapped the brake, not too hard and not too lightly. The car settled steadily, its weight shifting to the front wheels. The rear wheels slipped slightly, and she countersteered a little. The car straightened, came out of the bend, and she floored the accelerator. The car shot forward again.

Chen Shen sat in the passenger seat, centrifugal force pressing him against the seat. He didn't look at the dashboard, the road, or the tachometer.

He just watched her hands. Her hands on the steering wheel.

He had seen those hands type on a keyboard, hold a golf club, lift a coffee cup, and try on jewelry.

But they looked their best holding a steering wheel.

It wasn't that they looked good. They belonged there.

Those hands were born to hold a steering wheel.

On the second lap, she went faster.

At the end of the straight, she hit one hundred and ninety, then braked hard before the bend. The brake pads let out a piercing shriek, like a bird whose tail had been stepped on.

She didn't let up. She kept her foot down, kept it down, kept it down. At the apex, she released the brake, pointed the nose toward the exit, and pressed the accelerator. The car charged out like a horse released from its reins.

She laughed.

It wasn't the polite, social kind of laugh meant for other people to see. It was the kind that welled up irresistibly from deep in the throat when someone was driving at high speed, body and car one, taking every bend just right and pressing the accelerator with perfect precision: a short, breathy laugh.

She started the third lap.

This lap was faster still. So fast that Chen Shen lifted his hand from his knee and grabbed the door handle.

It wasn't fear. It was instinct.

His body told him it was fast, that he needed something to steady himself. But his eyes never left her hands.

Chen Shen finally let go of the door handle, leaned back in his seat, and watched her.

The side of her face was golden in the setting sun. It wasn't the color of the light. Her skin had swallowed the light and breathed it back out as a warmer, softer gold, like honey.

Her eyelashes were long. When they lowered, they cast a fan-shaped shadow over her lower eyelids. The shadow trembled gently with the car's vibrations, like a butterfly resting on a flower, its wings still fluttering softly.

Her lips weren't pressed together. They were slightly parted, not to speak, but to breathe.

Her breathing matched the rhythm of the car. When the car sped up, she breathed faster; when it slowed down, she breathed more slowly. She wasn't driving the car. She was breathing with it.

Chen Shen watched, like a man standing in a desert who saw a moon so bright that the desert became a silver sea. He stood in the sea, water covering his ankles, neither cold nor hot, but just right.

He didn't dare move. He was afraid that if he did, the moon would shatter.

She drove the car back to the pit garage, switched off the engine, and took off her helmet.

The helmet had flattened her hair, her ponytail had gone crooked, and a few stray strands clung to her forehead, damp with sweat. Yet her vitality seemed ready to burst forth.

She pushed her sunglasses up onto her head and turned to look at Chen Shen.

"I want to start a racing team."

Chen Shen looked at her.

She said that Chinese racing had no team of its own.

The teams racing in the Dakar Rally, WRC, and Le Mans all belonged to others. The cars belonged to others, and so did the engines.

Chinese drivers sat in other people's cars, flew other people's flags, and sang other people's national anthems.

She paused.

"I want to start a racing team, a Chinese team. Chinese cars, Chinese engines, Chinese drivers. We'll race out there, race to places others can't reach. We'll have others fly our flag and sing our song."

Chen Shen looked at her for a long time.

"You race. I'll race with you."