Chapter 1: Huge Fan

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Wen Shu read it in the back of the production van with half a pork bun in her mouth, and the first thing she said was, "Number five is rude."

"Number five is trending." Tang Qiqi held the phone up between the seats like a doctor holding up an X-ray. Qiqi was twenty-five and had been her assistant for three years, and in all three of them she had never once looked this happy before seven in the morning. "Shu-jie. Do you understand what I'm showing you? Your name is on the list twice. That didn't happen when you fell in the lake on Run Laugh Run. It didn't happen when you did the fish song."

"The fish song was art."

"The fish song was eleven seconds of you screaming at a carp."

"Art," Wen Shu said, "is often misunderstood in its own time."

She turned to the window. The coast road was grey and wet and empty, and below it the sea was the flat colour of a pot lid. Somewhere ahead was a ferry, and an island she'd never heard of until two weeks ago, and twenty-one days of her life on camera.

She had known since eleven o'clock last night. The production had sent the full cast list by email, with a little gold star next to the last name, as if anyone needed help noticing it.

She had not slept. She had lain on her back in the hotel bed and looked at the ceiling and thought, very clearly and many times, I don't care.

The bun in her hand had gone flat. She looked down. She had squeezed it hard enough that the filling had come out the side and onto her thumb.

She ate the evidence.

"Why would she even do this?" Qiqi was scrolling now, fast, the way she did when a comment section was on fire. "She doesn't do variety. She doesn't do interviews. She did one last year for a film magazine and the transcript was nine lines, and two of the lines were No."

"Maybe she's broke."

"She's Song Jinyi."

"Maybe she lost a bet."

"Who would bet Song Jinyi anything? She'd just look at them."

She would, Wen Shu thought. She'd look at them and not blink, and after a while they'd hand her their wallet to make it stop.

Other things she knew about Song Jinyi that weren't on any list: she slept on her left side with one hand under the pillow. She read her scripts aloud in the bathroom because she liked the echo. She could cook exactly one dish, tomato and egg, and cooked it badly, too much salt, every single time, and got offended if you mentioned it.

Wen Shu folded these up very small and put them somewhere at the back.

"Good for her," she said. "Great for her. I hope she has a wonderful time. I hope the island has excellent Wi-Fi."

Qiqi lowered the phone and looked at her for a long moment.

"Shu-jie."

"What."

"You've said great for her four times since we got in the van."

"Because it's great," Wen Shu said. "For her."

· · ·

The facts, as her agent had laid them out in a hotpot restaurant in Chengdu two weeks ago, were these.

Wen Shu was twenty-eight. She had spent five years on variety shows: twelve of them, two seasons each on average, falling into things and losing at things and being the funny one so reliably that people sometimes stopped her in airports to ask her to fall over. She had not been in a drama since a costume serial where she'd played a maid who died in episode four. Her contract with the agency was up for renewal in ninety-three days.

Slow Tide Inn was a good slot. Six celebrities ran a small guesthouse on Quehai Island for three weeks. The edited episodes went out on weekends, but every evening from eight to eleven there was an unedited livestream, and the livestream was the part people actually watched.

"And Director Fan will be watching it," her agent had said, poking at a slice of lotus root. "He told me himself. He's casting the sister in his new film. He wants to know if you can sit still on camera for ten minutes without doing a bit."

"I can sit still."

"Shu. You're doing a bit right now with the chopsticks."

She'd put the chopsticks down. The sister in Fan Ke's film was a real part. Nobody in it screamed at a fish.

So: twenty-one days. Sit still. Don't do a bit.

Nobody had said anything at the hotpot restaurant about a gold star.

· · ·

The cameras started at the pier.

Wen Shu felt it happen the way you feel a light switch on behind you. She was out of the van and onto the wet concrete with her sunglasses on and her arms up before the cameraman had finished focusing, and she was on: waving at the lens, pretending to be seasick on dry land, telling the ferry captain he was far too handsome for this job.

Two of the other five cast members were already aboard. Zhou Mingde, fifty-six, a television dad so beloved that grandmothers sent him homemade pickles, shook her hand with both of his. Lin Youyou, twenty-two, from a girl group Wen Shu could never remember the name of, did a small hop when she saw her and said, "Shu-jie, I have your fish song as my ringtone," with complete sincerity.

"See?" Wen Shu told the camera. "Art."

"Teacher Song is on the afternoon boat," the assistant director said to no one in particular, checking a clipboard. "Her schedule ran over."

Wen Shu laughed at something Zhou Mingde said. She didn't hear what it was. She laughed anyway, because the camera was on her, and because her body had gone light and strange all at once, like when you miss a step in the dark.

Afternoon. Fine. Great.

She had a whole morning.

· · ·

Quehai Island was one road, one harbour, one small white temple to the sea goddess, and a great many stone steps. The inn sat at the top of them: a whitewashed two-storey house with blue shutters and a courtyard full of drying nets, and a hand-painted sign over the gate that said SLOW TIDE INN in letters that had clearly been touched up for television.

There were one hundred and forty-seven steps. Wen Shu knew this because the left wheel of her suitcase broke off on step sixty, and after that she counted every one.

By step one hundred and thirty she had dropped back from the others. The cameraman had gone ahead to film Zhou Mingde opening the gate. The suitcase bumped and dragged behind her like an animal that didn't want to go to the vet. She was sweating through her linen shirt and swearing under her breath in the dialect of her home county, which was the only language that had words strong enough.

"You're holding it wrong."

The voice came from behind her and slightly below.

She knew it before she knew she knew it. It went into her the way cold water goes into a shoe: all at once and everywhere. She had not heard it in five years, except in trailers on shopping-centre screens, and in the four or five interviews she had never once watched to the end.

She did not turn around.

"I'm holding it fine," she said to step one hundred and thirty-one.

A hand came past her and closed on the suitcase handle. It closed over hers. For a moment both of their hands were on the same strip of black plastic, the other woman's fingers cool and dry across the backs of Wen Shu's knuckles, and neither of them moved.

Then Wen Shu let go.

Song Jinyi lifted the suitcase by the handle and the broken corner together, so it hung level, and stood there holding it.

She was twenty-nine. She had won the Golden Crane for Best Actress twice, the first time at twenty-six, the youngest anyone had. She was wearing black linen trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, no makeup, sunglasses pushed up into her hair, and she had come up a hundred and thirty-one stone steps behind a broken suitcase without, apparently, breathing hard. Her face was the face from the posters. That was the worst part. Wen Shu had thought there'd be some difference, some small change that would make her a stranger. There was none. The same still mouth. The same eyes that looked at you as if you were a page she was reading slowly and hadn't decided about yet.

The afternoon boat. Her schedule had not, it turned out, run over.

"Ms Wen," Song Jinyi said.

Wen Shu felt her own face do the thing. The big smile. The camera smile. It came up on its own, like a reflex, like a hand going out when you fall.

"Teacher Song!" she said. "Wow! Wow. Huge fan. Huge. I've seen all your films. You don't have to do that, I can—"

A cameraman came jogging back down the steps towards them, red light on.

Song Jinyi looked at the camera. Then she looked back at Wen Shu, and something happened very briefly at the corner of her mouth. Not a smile. The ghost of the place where a smile would go if one were ever permitted.

She carried the suitcase up the last sixteen steps without a word, and set it down inside the gate, and walked into the courtyard to be introduced to everyone.

Wen Shu stood on step one hundred and thirty-one, with her hands empty.

Huge fan, she thought. Huge fan. Wow. Great. Excellent work.

· · ·

Song Jinyi put her right hand in her trouser pocket and kept it there through the introductions, through Zhou Mingde's double handshake and Lin Youyou's hop and the tour of the kitchen, as if there were something in her palm she didn't want to drop.

There were one hundred and forty-seven steps. She had counted too.

"Teacher Song." Director Bai caught her by the well, away from the others. He was a round, anxious man in a fishing vest with too many pockets, and he lowered his voice as if the drying nets might be listening. "I just want to say again, we're very honoured. Very. And the terms are, of course, we've told everyone, no questions about your personal life, nothing on the livestream, it's in the contract."

"Good."

"I do have to ask." He laughed nervously. "The fee. Your studio wrote one yuan. Our finance people think it's a typo. They keep calling me."

"It isn't a typo."

"But why—"

Song Jinyi looked across the courtyard. Wen Shu was by the gate, telling Lin Youyou a story with both hands, and Lin Youyou was laughing so hard she'd had to sit down on an upturned bucket.

"You don't need to know why," Song Jinyi said.

· · ·

The livestream went up at eight.

[LIVE] Slow Tide Inn · Night One · 2,184,903 watching
TEACHER SONG IS WEARING AN APRON I AM DECEASED
wen shu why are you so loud lol
3 MILLION PEOPLE WATCHING A FISH GET GUTTED
song jinyi chopping spring onions like it's a murder scene
is wen shu ok she hasn't looked at teacher song once

The kitchen was too small for six people and two cameras. Wen Shu had been put in charge of the fish, a yellow croaker the length of her forearm, because she had told the camera she knew how to scale one, which was true in the sense that she had seen it done. Zhou Mingde was making the rice. Lin Youyou was making a mess. The two men from the cast whose names Wen Shu kept forgetting were setting the courtyard table.

Song Jinyi was cutting spring onions.

She was doing it perfectly. Even little rings, all the same width, the knife moving in a steady tick against the board. Wen Shu watched it from the corner of her eye while scales flew off the croaker and stuck to her wrists, her apron, the window behind her.

When did you learn to do that.

Five years ago Song Jinyi had held a knife like it was going to bite her. Five years ago she had once tried to cut a spring onion and somehow ended up needing a plaster on her thumb, and Wen Shu had laughed at her for an entire evening, and Song Jinyi had sat on the kitchen counter with her thumb in the air like a hitchhiker and said nothing at all, very pointedly, until Wen Shu had climbed up beside her and kissed the plaster to make her stop sulking.

A scale hit Wen Shu in the eye.

"Ow. Okay! Okay. The fish is fighting back. The fish has a lawyer." She blinked at the camera. "I'd like it noted that I'm being attacked."

Lin Youyou laughed. The chat laughed. Song Jinyi did not look up from the spring onions.

"Viewer questions!" Zhou Mingde announced, wiping his hands on a towel and picking up the tablet the production had left on the counter. "Our audience has sent in ten thousand questions already. Ten thousand! I'll pick some. Let's see. For Brother Zhou, what's your pickle secret? Vinegar and patience. For Youyou, can you sing the fish song? Absolutely not, that belongs to its creator. For Teacher Song—"

Wen Shu saw Director Bai behind the camera. He'd gone pale. He was crossing his arms over his chest in a big frantic X.

Zhou Mingde didn't see him. "For Teacher Song: do you know Wen Shu? What's your relationship?"

The knife stopped.

It was the first time it had stopped in nine minutes. Wen Shu heard the silence where it had been, and she heard her own voice come rushing into it, fast and bright and much too loud, the way water rushes into a hole.

"None! Strangers! We're total strangers. I mean, I'm a fan, obviously, everyone's a fan, I've seen all her films. I cried at the lighthouse one. Not a lot. A normal amount. But no, we've never—we don't—I think we met once at an awards thing? Maybe? I was at the back. I was eating the bread rolls. Teacher Song wouldn't remember. Teacher Song meets a lot of people, she can't be expected to—"

She ran out of breath.

The kitchen was quiet. Even Lin Youyou was quiet. On the tablet in Zhou Mingde's hands, the chat was scrolling so fast it had become a grey blur.

Song Jinyi put the knife down on the board.

She hadn't spoken more than four words in a row all evening. She hadn't volunteered a single sentence to anyone. Now she wiped her hands slowly on her apron, and turned around, and looked straight at Wen Shu across the little kitchen, with the camera on her and the fish between them and two million people watching. She didn't look at the lens at all.

"Wen Shu," she said, "used to be my roommate."