7. Chapter Seven

It was past ten in the morning by the time Yao Lingling finished all her hospital checkups. After dropping her off at home, Tu Qin asked again, feeling deeply uneasy, "Are you sure you don't want to stay at my place?"

"Forget it. It's not like I don't know about your little quirks," Yao Lingling said, patting Tu Qin’s cheek. "I’ve asked my mom to come over. She’ll be here this afternoon. It’ll be much more comfortable than staying with you."

Tu Qin made a scoffing sound, waved her hand, and left.

As a child, Tu Qin had lived in school dormitories year-round. During holidays, she had to stay with her grandmother or uncle, never having a room of her own—not even a single drawer. So, once she finally bought her own place, she turned that eighty-square-meter space into a fortress.

Even for a best friend as close as Yao Lingling, staying at Tu Qin’s place would eventually make her uncomfortable. The specific manifestation of this was Tu Qin’s tendency to hoard items—a compensatory psychological reaction where she felt the need to occupy every inch of space with her own belongings to feel secure against "outside intrusion."

That space could only contain her. She didn't even keep pets—no animals, no plants. If she saw a mosquito in the house during the summer, she couldn't help but open a shopping app and passionately place orders for supplies.

It was quite twisted.

But just like her habit of running away whenever she started dating someone, she couldn't change it.

In fact, she didn't want to.

She detoured to a supermarket to buy some frozen dumplings and yogurt for Yao Lingling. After carrying them upstairs and tidying up the items Yao Lingling had piled in the hallway—things she was prone to bumping into—she finally drove to the film studio.

The web drama they were filming this time was an urban fantasy, a character-driven piece about ancient deities being demoted and cast down to the mortal world. The schedule was tight, and the production was split into several filming units. She was with the children's unit, where a few little brats dressed in deity costumes were performing scenes about childhood sweethearts amidst the "Heavenly Palace" set. This set was a popular spot recently, requiring a strictly scheduled booking, so the production team had to condense all the Heavenly Palace scenes into a single afternoon, leaving everyone exhausted.

During dinner, a severely sleep-deprived Tu Qin was so out of it that she started stuffing her chopsticks into her nostril, which made the little actors sitting next to her giggle uncontrollably.

There was a night shoot ahead, so Tu Qin had no choice but to guzzle Red Bull while scrolling through gossip on her phone, hoping to wake up.

It didn't help.

Before becoming a screenwriter, she had some interest in celebrity gossip. She and Yao Lingling would pass the time by guessing the identities behind mysterious pinyin abbreviations. But once she became a screenwriter—before even fully entering the industry—she already felt that reading such things was just like working overtime.

Whenever she encountered a celebrity she used to like, she felt as if she might bow at any second and say, "I'm so sorry, Teacher So-and-so, but this line in the script needs to be changed."

It was exhausting.

Tu Qin yawned and switched to the local news.

After scrolling past the national policy news, she reached the local community section. One of the top stories, accompanied by photos, caught her eye: "Pottery Studio in East City Catches Fire in the Early Hours; Micro-Fire Station Helps Extinguish Blaze Quickly."

Tu Qin’s fingertip paused, and she clicked on it.

The body of the article didn't actually mention much about the fire, focusing mainly on the role of the micro-fire station in the incident. The studio itself was mentioned only in a passing sentence: "A certain pottery studio in East City caught fire in the early hours."

Given the tone, it was likely that the police had been involved, which was why no details regarding the cause of the fire were mentioned.

Tu Qin recalled how that man in the emergency room had solemnly pulled out a mercury thermometer to report his body temperature the night before.

It was bizarre.

He looked more like a street boss who would call his brothers to beat someone up at the slightest provocation. She hadn't expected him to be so sharp-tongued and professional at throwing shade.

Quite the contrast.

The way he held his instant noodle bowl with a sausage hanging from his mouth was also quite a contrast.

Oh, and that first meeting, when he suddenly crashed to the ground in that desolate atmosphere—it was unexpected.

Though she shouldn't, she couldn't help but feel a strange urge to laugh.

Tu Qin’s lips curled. She zoomed in on the news photo. It was very cautious, stating only "a certain pottery studio in East City," and the photo was heavily pixelated; even zoomed in, one could only see colored mosaic squares.

There was a video link below the news, an excerpt from this morning’s Mo City news. It featured about two minutes of content, showing no exterior shots of the studio, only the chaotic electric kiln inside and the emergency room in the early hours. All faces were pixelated.

As the director's assistant on set was adjusting the lights, a bored Tu Qin opened her map app and began searching for pottery studios in East City.

Pottery had become very popular in recent years. A few years ago, Mo City supported traditional culture, leading to new developments in many traditional crafts, with pottery being one of the most prominent. Consequently, in the small district of East City, there were actually over twenty pottery studios.

The names were all similar, and their business models were much the same. Tu Qin clicked through photos of the studios, which were mostly shots of the shop interiors and pottery works. After a few minutes of browsing, she closed the map app.

Sometimes, when people get bored, they can be truly terrifying.

Tu Qin began searching on social media for the pottery studio that had caught fire the previous night, thinking that since TV reporters had been there, someone must have taken photos online.

But there was nothing.

"The world is so indifferent," Tu Qin sighed, then started searching for pottery classes, only to find that more than half of the studios in East City offered them.

Tu Qin stared at the phone screen, her competitive spirit sparked, and she pursed her lips, persisting.

Even though she didn't know what she wanted to do once she found the studio.

After half an hour of searching from every angle, Tu Qin looked at the line of text she had typed into the search bar and fell silent.

She was searching for: "Pottery studio owner who frequently gets fevers."

...

She was losing it.

Amused by herself, she laughed for quite a while.

***

"What are you laughing at! What's so funny about this!" Jin Kui shouted at the top of his lungs. "You're almost thirty years old, can you stop being so childish?"

His burn had mostly stopped hurting after about two weeks, but it had left a scar on his calf. The longer time passed, the more distinct the shape became—and it wasn't the shape of a metal chain, but rather the impression of every raised link of the chain seared into his skin. The shape looked remarkably like a row of little hearts.

Little, twisted hearts.

It was highly unsightly.

Xie Zhailin couldn't help but laugh every time he saw it. After finishing with his first—and last—batch of pottery students that afternoon, he had been bored out of his mind. He had fired a mug for Jin Kui and painted the little hearts from his calf onto it. The cup turned out quite something: flesh-toned, with deep red little hearts, and he had even thoughtfully added leg hair.

It was three-dimensional leg hair, with a tactile, textured feel.

The capacity was decent, though; two cups a day would meet one's daily water intake.

It was impressive that he’d managed to fire such a large "leg-hair cup."

He was basically a lunatic.

What’s more, he had made two of these insane cups. The other one he gave to Old Five, who had just returned. Old Five was a bit darker-skinned than him, so his cup was dark brown, complete with pink little hearts and lifelike leg hair.

Old Five’s name was Jin Wu; he was Jin Kui’s twin brother. They looked very similar. Jin Kui had never understood how his parents could be so haphazard in naming twins, and the origin of the "Wu" (Five) remained an unsolved mystery to this day.

Old Five had a quieter personality than Jin Kui, but he was just as mischievous, smacking his lips as he drank water from his leg-hair cup.

Jin Kui indignantly picked up his own cup and took a sip of tea; Xie Zhailin had added cassia seeds to it to clear his liver fire.

He needed to vent his anger.

The final outcome of the kid starting the fire was about what they had expected. Jin Kui's injury didn't count as a "minor injury," and the financial loss to the studio wasn't significant. The kid's parents paid up while grumbling, the police made the kid write a handwritten apology and a letter of guarantee, and with a signature and a fingerprint, the matter was considered closed.

Of course, it wasn't entirely useless; at least that family now took a detour whenever they saw the studio.

After this incident, everyone had been quite idle lately.

Their daily work was routine. Recently, besides eating and sleeping, Xie Zhailin had been researching that new vase. The vase had more color blocks than ever before, with sharp, aggressive lines. A lot of effort had gone into the color blending. Xie Zhailin, seeking trouble for himself, decided to use different compositions of clay for each color block, and thus began conducting endless permutation and combination experiments day and night.

Jin Kui was in charge of finances. He wasn't actually good at it and had hired a professional accountant and cashier, but he insisted on learning it himself and was very meticulous. Several accountants had been driven off by his temper.

Old Five still wandered outside. Even when not looking for someone, he couldn't stay in one place for long. He couldn't stop; if he stayed in one spot for too long, he would break out in rashes all over his body—a form of anxiety disorder.

Like Xie Zhailin, it was a problem left over from their childhood. It was hard to treat, but they had both found ways to survive.

They just lived a little more exhaustingly than ordinary people.

Jin Kui felt that he was a bit messed up himself. Sometimes, he felt as if his daily life was like carrying two time bombs that could explode at any moment. Especially during these relatively smooth days, the longer they lasted, the more panicked he became.

He was afraid that one day, some inexplicable clue would suddenly surface, and Xie Zhailin would throw away all his work and pour all his savings into it again. He was even more afraid that one day those clues would lead to a final answer, and he wondered what would happen to Xie Zhailin, who had spent his whole life searching. Xie Zhailin no longer touched black pottery; if the ending really appeared, what would become of him?

While Jin Kui was biting his pen and trying to reconcile his monthly accounts that never seemed to balance, all while his mind wandered to these unsettling thoughts, Xie Zhailin—who was playing with clay nearby—made a "tsk" sound and threw the clay he had been kneading all afternoon into the trash bin.

Another failure.

Irritated, Xie Zhailin stood up, washed his hands, took off his apron, and walked out of the studio.

Their studio wasn't in a great location; it was next to a somewhat dilapidated old complex, a small two-story detached building. The first floor was for business, and the second was used as a warehouse and a place for them to sleep. It wasn't very big, and after Old Five came back, Xie Zhailin had given the entire second floor to the two brothers.

However, this place wasn't their true base. Their base was in a clay mine village near the mountains in the suburbs of Mo City. Whenever they had a large batch to fire, they would go back there. Xie Zhailin spent more than half of each year there.

This studio was considered temporary. They had rented it because, at the time, there was an unreliable lead suggesting that *that person* was doing pottery in the vicinity.

Many potters in Mo City had storefronts in East City.

So, Xie Zhailin had moved there.

Of course, the result was a false alarm.

But the studio remained. They used it to entertain guests or exhibit new products.

Xie Zhailin stepped outside and squatted by the door, staring blankly at the road.

He looked exactly like a shop owner whose business was so bad he’d be out of business by tomorrow and whose wife had run off with his younger brother.

"Brother!" Jin Kui yelled from behind him.

Xie Zhailin, whose mind was completely empty, was so startled he nearly face-planted into a flower pot. He tightened his core to steady his squat, then turned around and roared back at the exact same volume, "I’m not deaf!"

Jin Kui, who was holding Xie Zhailin’s phone, was stunned for half a second by the volume, hesitating whether to retort or continue announcing the good news.

In the end, he chose to announce the good news: "We can buy it! We can finally buy, buy, buy that house!"

Xie Zhailin looked at him.

His posture was strange—squatting while twisting his head, his hands resting properly on his knees, his face still holding the afterglow of his shout, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Jin Kui.

"We can buy that house," Jin Kui waved the phone. "The second floor finally agreed! They’ve asked us to come for a face-to-face meeting tomorrow afternoon!"

Xie Zhailin’s hand slowly, slowly curled into a fist on his knee, then slowly, slowly relaxed.

"Jin Kui-er," he said.

"Come give me a hand, my legs are numb."