403: Chapter 403 Silence is the heaviest word

Late autumn evenings arrive quickly at the Qingbei School of Literature.

Before half-past five, the sky had mostly darkened, and the wind blowing from the direction of Weiming Lake carried a dry chill that heralded the coming winter.

Lin Que left his rented apartment and walked along the sycamore-lined road on campus toward the male dormitory building.

He had spent the entire day in the studio.

The framework for the second volume of ordinary world was finally complete, but the pacing of several key scenes still needed more refinement.

Having worked for over ten hours, his mind felt heavy; it was the perfect time to head back to the dorm and rest.

Lin Que went up to the third floor and turned toward Room 303.

When he reached the door, he stopped in his tracks.

A slip of white paper was taped right in the center of the door. It was written in semi-cursive script with neat strokes and balanced structure, clearly showing a foundation built from practicing calligraphy since childhood.

"Student Lin has not returned. Please do not knock or disturb."

There was no signature, but in the entire building, the only person who could write semi-cursive to this standard was the one inside that door.

Lin Que stared at the note for two seconds before reaching out to tear it down.

Just as he crumpled the paper into his palm, a flurry of quick footsteps came from the corner of the corridor.

Two people were practically jogging over, their soles scuffing against the terrazzo floor.

He only saw them clearly once they got close.

One was a boy with thick eyebrows and large eyes from Sichuan Province named Zhong Hengyuan.

The other was from Henan Province, wearing wide-rimmed glasses; Lin Que didn't remember his name very well, only that his surname was Han.

The two ran up to him, their breathing uneven and the expressions on their faces almost identical.

It was a state of being both excited and nervous, as if they had been lying in wait in the corridor for a long time and had finally caught their target.

"Lin Que! You're back!"

The width of Zhong Hengyuan's open mouth was directly proportional to the volume of his voice.

Student Han was more reserved, but the anticipation in his eyes was no less intense.

One of his hands tightly gripped a kraft paper folder, its corner already bent from the pressure.

"We've been waiting at your door for over an hour."

Zhong Hengyuan rubbed his hands together.

"Xu Changge said you were out and wasn't sure when you'd be back, so he told us to come back later. We just sat by the stairwell and waited."

Lin Que glanced at the items in their hands and nodded, roughly guessing their intention.

"Let's go inside and talk."

He pushed open the dormitory door and stepped aside to let the two in first.

Room 303 was a standard double room with loft beds over desks; the space wasn't large, but it was kept clean.

On the desk to the right, two open books and a stack of handwritten manuscripts were spread out.

Three sharpened pencils were tucked into a pen holder, tips pointing up and neatly aligned.

Xu Changge sat at the right-hand desk, holding a pencil, editing something on the manuscript paper.

Hearing the door, he looked up, gave Lin Que a nod, then glanced at the two who followed him in.

He said nothing, returning his gaze to the manuscript to continue editing.

Zhong Hengyuan and the boy named Han stood at the door, barely daring to step inside.

Their gazes drifted toward Xu Changge for a moment before quickly snapping back to Lin Que.

"Take a seat on those chairs."

Lin Que took a jacket off the hanger and draped it over the bed ladder, pointing to two folding chairs by the window.

The two quickly sat down.

When Zhong Hengyuan handed over his folder, his fingers were trembling.

"Lin Que, it's like this. After Old Su critiqued your piece, 'the steps', yesterday, I went back and thought about it all night long.

First thing this morning, I scrapped everything I'd written before and started over.

I've written three fragments and wanted to ask you to take a look and see if... uh, if the direction is right."

Student Han also opened his folder.

Inside were several pages of manuscript paper covered in small, dense handwriting, with margins full of annotations.

"Mine too.

Regarding those distinctions Professor Liu made yesterday about restraint and precision...

I think I understand them, but when it hits the paper, I always feel like something is missing."

Lin Que sat down at his own desk and first took Zhong Hengyuan's manuscript.

There were three fragments, each about four or five hundred words, all depicting small-town scenes.

The first was about an old man collecting recyclables, the second was a fishmonger at a wet market, and the third was a shoe repair stall.

Lin Que scanned them from beginning to end twice; his speed was not slow, but he absorbed every line.

Zhong Hengyuan's Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

"These three fragments share a common flaw."

Lin Que tossed the manuscript back onto the desk, his finger pointing to a circled sentence in the second fragment.

['He did not pick up the fish; instead, he bent down to first retrieve the scale weight that had fallen on the ground, which had a single fish scale stuck to it.']

Lin Que looked up at Zhong Hengyuan.

"When you wrote this sentence, were you showing off your technique?"

Zhong Hengyuan froze for a moment.

"This was to recreate the most authentic state of survival..."

"You certainly recreated a wet market, but I don't see the person."

Lin Que's tone was flat.

"Weights, plastic sheets, bloody water—you're smashing all these details into the reader. Aside from proving you observe life closely, it does nothing to build the character.

You're supposed to be writing about a person being crushed by life, not writing a field report on a wet market."

Zhong Hengyuan was stunned.

His mouth opened and closed, and his hands crumpled the edges of the manuscript paper.

He looked down and re-read the sentence, his brow furrowing tighter and tighter.

After a long while, he suddenly looked up, his voice a bit raspy.

"I see... it's that these things are all stealing the scene, so the person becomes invisible instead."

Lin Que looked at him, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly.

"See? You already knew."

Zhong Hengyuan nodded, a faint smile appearing on his face as well.

Lin Que set aside his manuscript and turned to Student Han.

His fragment depicted a conversation between a mother and daughter in a hospital corridor.

The daughter had just received a test report diagnosing some chronic illness, and the mother was comforting her.

Lin Que read it through once, flipped back to the first page, and pointed to the dialogue in the middle.

"This line your mother says: 'Don't be afraid, Mom is here, everything will be fine.'

If you were that daughter, how would you feel hearing that?"

Student Han hesitated.

"I'd feel... like I have someone to lean on?"

"I'd feel like you're reciting a script."

Lin Que was merciless.

"A rural mother in her fifties with a low level of education, holding a medical report she can't even understand...

At a time like this, her mind wouldn't be filled with such pretty words of comfort."

Student Han stared intently at the manuscript, his lips moving as if he were repeatedly piecing together that mother's face in his mind.

After a full thirty seconds, he picked up a pen and drew a heavy line through that sentence.

The pen tip moved to the margin, paused for an instant, and then wrote a line of text:

"Keep the report safe. Go back and air out the quilts. We'll come back tomorrow."

After writing, he looked up at Lin Que.

The confusion in his eyes had vanished, replaced by an excited sharpness.

When the two rose to take their leave, Zhong Hengyuan looked back at Lin Que once.

He opened his mouth, his expression so complex it seemed he wanted to say ten sentences, yet even one felt redundant.

Finally, he turned and pulled his companion quickly out into the corridor.

The door closed.

The footsteps gradually faded away.

Xu Changge put down the pencil that had been sharpened down to a third of its original length.

He leaned back against his chair and let out a long breath.

"That makes the fourth wave today."

Lin Que took his jacket off the bed ladder and hung it on the rack, then looked back at him.

There was a sense of helplessness in Xu Changge's voice that had been bottled up all day.

"It started at nine this morning.

Yuan Ningning brought two people from her province, saying they wanted you to explain that bit about 'sense of placement' Old Su talked about; they stood at the door for forty minutes.

Chen Jiahao came by at ten-thirty, though he just wanted to borrow a charging cable—he did leave a pack of wafers on your desk, though.

Then Tang He came in the afternoon with a new draft, asking how to make urban themes feel grounded..."

Xu Changge gestured toward the note Lin Que had placed on his desk.

"I couldn't take it anymore at two o'clock, so I taped that note to the door.

But at three-thirty, two more showed up and squatted by the stairwell waiting for you to return."

After saying this, Xu Changge tilted his head to look at Lin Que, his eyes containing both teasing and a hint of genuine sentiment.

"After yesterday's class, the way everyone in this building looks at you has changed. The threshold of Room 303 is about to be worn down."

Lin Que chuckled and sat at his desk, gathering the scattered draft papers together.

He looked up at the stack of manuscript papers covered in pencil writing on Xu Changge's desk.

There were massive amounts of corrections; some paragraphs were crossed out entirely, with new versions written beside them.

"That piece of yours, 'the tailor'..."

The smile left Xu Changge's face, and his back unconsciously straightened half an inch.

He picked up the stack of papers, straightened the edges, and handed it over.

"I overhauled it twice. After the first revision, I felt the framework was still the same old thing, so I threw the whole thing away.

The second time, I re-entered through the character. I just finished the third draft."

Lin Que took it.

He had seen the first draft; the structure was exquisite and the writing style was steady.

Xu Changge's foundation was evident; the prose was airtight, and every transition was perfectly placed.

But it was too "perfectly placed."

Precisely because not a single flaw could be found, nothing would remain in the reader's mind after finishing it.

Holding the third draft, Lin Que flipped through a few pages.

His flipping speed slowed down.

In the opening description of the old tailor taking measurements, the original version had a whole paragraph of exposition about the inheritance of the tailor's craft.

It was written with great care, citing classics and reading like a piece of craft-focused prose.

Now, it was cut.

The first sentence of the new version threw the reader right into the tailor shop.

['As soon as the draft blew through the deep alley of the old city, the old man leaned over the ash wood workbench, his reading glasses sliding to the tip of his nose.

With one hand, he held the tailor's chalk to trace lines on the navy blue wool; his other hand, wearing a brass thimble, was locked rigidly at an unnatural angle.']

Lin Que's finger paused for a beat on that "unnatural angle."

He knew what it meant. Deformed joints—after decades of cutting, his fingers could no longer return to a normal human shape.

This detail was not in the first draft.

He flipped further.

The middle section where the tailor measures his own dimensions.

The original version used the imagery of a mirror, with the old tailor measuring his physique in front of it to reflect a kind of self-examination.

Exquisite, clever, but separated by a layer of glass.

The new version deleted the mirror.

The old tailor stood in the middle of the empty room, holding the measuring tape with both hands, reaching around his back to grab the other end.

He couldn't reach it.

His shoulder hurt when he raised his arm, and his back couldn't support him when he bent over.

He struggled for a long time before finally biting one end of the tape with his teeth and wrapping the other end around, barely managing to take a measurement.

Lin Que's flipping motion stopped.

He stared at this passage for a long time.

The old tailor on the page was no longer a meticulously designed literary symbol.

He was breathing. His shoulder was hurting.

His teeth must have been aching when he bit the measuring tape.

He had come to life.

Lin Que continued flipping through.

In the final third, the clothes were finished.

The old tailor folded the clothes, put them in the cabinet, and closed the cabinet door.

Lin Que's finger hovered at the edge of the page for two seconds.

Then he closed the manuscript.

The dormitory remained quiet for a while.

Lin Que placed the manuscript back on Xu Changge's desk.

The movement was very light.

No assessment, no suggestions, not a single word.

Xu Changge looked at Lin Que's expression and was silent for three seconds.

Then the corner of his mouth moved slightly.

The movement was so small it was almost invisible, but there was something in it...

It had nothing to do with pride, and nothing to do with modesty.

It was confirmation.

Lin Que's silence was the weightiest word.

Xu Changge pulled the manuscript back, flipped to the final third, picked up his pencil, and wrote a few words next to a certain paragraph.

He didn't ask what Lin Que's few seconds of pause meant.

Nor did he ask if that silence was an affirmation or a negation.

He didn't need to ask.

The moment Lin Que's flipping speed slowed down was the answer.

Outside the window was the night view of the Tsinghua-Peking University campus.

Streetlights formed a line of arcs, and in the distance, toward Weiming Lake, there was a small, blurry cluster of light.

The leaves of the sycamore trees cast dense shadows under the streetlights; when the wind blew, the whole ground seemed to sway.

After a few seconds of silence, Lin Que turned his head.

"Changge."

Xu Changge's pencil stopped, and he looked up.

"Yesterday when class ended, Professor Liu was walking out and stopped for a moment as he passed the first row.

Chen Jiahao and the others all thought that look was for me."

Lin Que leaned against the window frame, hands in his pockets, his gaze falling on Xu Changge's face.

"But I know that look."

He paused for a beat.

"It was for you."

...