508: Chapter 508 First Recognize the Person, Then Ask the Wall

Over the next seven days, everyone in Muchuan Town assumed that Lin Que would go and ask about that wall.

But he never knocked on Old Zhao's door once, and he never even mentioned what was hidden behind the red line.

Every morning, he left the guesthouse, and every evening, he returned covered in the dampness of the air.

The people on the town streets soon recognized this young visitor.

With a backpack on his back and an old notebook in hand, he walked at a leisurely pace and spoke very little.

He would sit under the old locust tree for half the morning, and the townspeople's initial curiosity slowly turned into frowns.

A kid from the city, staring at people's shoe soles and listening to their coughs every day—no matter how you looked at it, he seemed a bit slow in the head.

Rainwater pooled in the grid of the chessboard under the tree.

An elderly person grocery shopping walked past him carrying a plastic bag, their shoe soles dragging on the wet ground, making a soft sound.

Lin Que's gaze followed that pair of shoes.

The uppers were coming unstitched, the soles were worn unevenly at the front, and the left foot landed a half-beat slower than the right.

The old man walked to the entrance of the grocery store, stopped, and leaned against the doorframe, coughing three times.

The first cough was short.

The second was stifled.

The third was drawn out, with phlegm caught in his throat; he turned his face away and forced himself to swallow it back down.

Lin Que lowered his head and wrote.

"Only on the third cough did he lean against the wall.

It wasn't because his body could still hold up, but because he didn't want to admit to his old neighbors that he had grown old."

The proprietress of the grocery store poked her head out from behind the counter, saw he was still sitting there, and couldn't help but mutter.

"This city kid is so strange, sitting there all day watching people walk—what kind of sense can he make of that?"

An old man buying salt nearby chimed in.

"Probably another one here to write about the 'hard times.'

Writing a few lines about broken buildings and crumbling walls, publishing it back home, just for outsiders to gawk at."

Lin Que heard them, but didn't look up.

He paused his pen tip for a moment, then added another line below.

"What they fear has never been being seen, but being misunderstood once again."

After noon, he went to the edge of the old pond.

The pond had mostly dried up, the water surface having shrunk to a small patch in the center, revealing hardened mud at the edges. A few broken plastic basins were turned upside down on the bank, with rainwater pooled on their bottoms.

The sound of opera singing drifted from afar.

The lingering operatic notes were scattered by the mountain wind, falling into the water weeds.

Lin Que stood by the pond, his jacket chilled through by the wind.

He didn't write immediately; he just listened.

The person singing opera lived on the second floor of Unit 3, the window kept open a finger's width all year round.

Lin Que had been noting this for six days and discovered that the opera passage was short of breath after the same line every day.

The first day, it was sung high.

The third day, it was a bit lower.

The sixth day, it stopped twice halfway through.

Lin Que wrote in his notebook.

"The pauses in the opera singing are more like life than the sung parts themselves."

In the afternoon, he walked along the perimeter of the factory area.

He didn't step a single foot inside the red line.

The yellow warning sign had been washed by the rain, making the characters shine. Water droplets hung on the barbed wire, and when the wind blew, they slid down the wire, falling into the hard mud at the base of the wall.

Lin Que watched for a long time.

He didn't take photos.

Nor did he ask around.

He just squatted on the muddy ground outside the red line and used the cap of his pen to gently brush away a small patch of loose soil.

The mud was grayish, mixed with fine bits of red rust.

He wrote.

"The rust hasn't been stopped by the wall. It clung to the rainwater, muddy footprints, and the soles of the line guards' shoes, inching its way into the town."

That evening, Old Zhao returned from his patrol route, his flashlight not yet turned on.

From a distance, he saw Lin Que squatting outside the warning post, his toes half a step away from the rope.

Old Zhao stopped.

He had originally intended to shout something.

But Lin Que quickly stood up, retreated to the roadside, and walked slowly along the outer wall toward the town street.

He didn't cast another glance inside the wall.

Old Zhao held the unlit cigarette between his fingers and stood there for quite a while.

"Strange."

He muttered a curse under his breath.

At the entrance of the guard room, Old Sun, who repaired bicycles, heard him and laughed: "Old Zhao, are you watching that kid again? He hasn't provoked you, has he?"

Old Zhao huffed.

"He's too quiet."

"Isn't being quiet a good thing?"

"For someone here to gather material to be this quiet is even more wrong.

The loud ones are just annoying. But those with crooked pens can poke right into someone's heart with a single stroke."

Old Sun put down his wrench.

"Are you afraid he's harboring bad intentions?"

Old Zhao didn't answer.

He watched Lin Que's back disappear into the mist.

Those who came before would ask about the red line on the very first day.

The second day, they would find old workers to cry with.

The third day, they would start photographing broken windows, rotting iron doors, and empty corridors.

They always wanted to capture the most miserable story, ideally one that would make people tear up the moment they spoke.

Lin Que was different.

This kid looked too slowly.

So slowly that it made Old Zhao feel uncomfortable.

On the morning of the fourth day, Lin Que was eating breakfast at a small diner.

A bowl of hot noodles and half a dish of pickled vegetables.

The owner placed the bowl in front of him, held back for a long time, but finally asked: "Kid, you walk around town every day, have you written anything yet?"

Lin Que used his chopsticks to mix the noodles.

"Not yet."

The owner was stunned.

"It's been several days, and you haven't written anything?"

"Yeah."

"Then what are you noting so much down for?"

Lin Que looked up.

"Just saving it up for now."

The owner laughed.

"Is writing articles the same as gathering firewood?"

Lin Que smiled too.

"If there's not enough firewood, the bottom of the pot gets cold first."

Two old men eating noodles nearby heard this and exchanged a glance.

Someone whispered: "That's actually a decent thing to say."

The other old man pursed his lips.

"There are plenty who can say pretty words. The one who came before even said he wanted to write a biography for Muchuan, but in the end, it read like a tourist brochure."

Lin Que finished his noodles, not even a drop of soup left in the bowl.

He paid, said thank you, and left to continue walking.

That afternoon, he went to a residential building for employees.

The hallway was damp, the paint on the walls was bubbling, and the stair railing was rusted red.

An old lady was sitting at the entrance of the first floor, sorting vegetables.

Lin Que stood at the entrance of the hallway, not rushing in.

The old lady glanced at him.

"Who are you looking for, kid?"

"Just looking around."

"Looking at what? The building is very dilapidated."

Lin Que paused.

"Can I stand at the door for a while? I won't come into your home."

The old lady stared at him for a few seconds.

"Go ahead. Just don't block the way."

Lin Que stood at the doorway.

He saw that when the old lady sorted the vegetables, she even separated the rotten leaves into two piles.

The ones that were completely inedible were thrown into a bucket.

The ones with yellowed edges were kept.

Lin Que asked: "You're keeping that pile?"

The old lady didn't even look up.

"Wash them and they're edible. Why waste them?"

"Was it like this in the factory cafeteria before?"

The old lady's hands stopped.

"The cafeteria was doing great back then. Vegetable leaves were all given to the pigs; it never got to the point where people had to pick through them."

After saying this, she seemed to realize she had said too much and shut her mouth.

Lin Que nodded, not pressing further.

He wrote in his notebook.

"Back then, vegetable leaves were fed to pigs; nowadays, yellowed leaves are washed and put into the pot.

Since the factory left, people have started to pick up the scraps of their lives."

On the night of the fifth day, it rained heavily.

The guesthouse lost power once.

Someone in the hallway cursed a couple of times.

"The circuit breaker tripped again."

"This old transformer, even if you pull the lever straight, you can't pull back the energy of its younger days."

Lin Que sat in his room, organizing his notes by the light of a backup desk lamp.

His phone was face down on the table.

The encrypted line was never opened.

Over the past few days, messages from the outside world had been piling up in that phone, one after another.

The data for "ghost blows out the light."

The sales figures for "ordinary world."

Emails from Wang De'an about the essay contest.

And messages Ye Xi sent every couple of days.

Lin Que didn't open them.

Except for checking in safely every day, he only verified the scheduled background tasks and emergency redirects once; all other messages were left untouched.

Other than that, he had pulled himself out of the clamor of the outside world.

On the sixth day, Old Zhao ran into him again while on patrol.

Lin Que was sitting on the steps outside Workshop No. 1, watching the rainwater fall from a gap in the eaves.

Old Zhao walked over and swept his flashlight across the ground.

Old Zhao deliberately aimed the flashlight toward the gap in the red line.

Lin Que saw it, but didn't follow the light, instead letting his gaze fall back to the water droplets under the eaves.

The two were separated by a distance of three steps, one standing, one sitting.

Raindrops fell into a tin bucket.

Plop.

A pause.

Another sound.

Old Zhao listened for a few moments and suddenly felt annoyed.

He turned and walked away.

After walking a dozen steps, he looked back.

The young man was still sitting there, as if waiting for a long-defunct machine to speak again.

Old Zhao put the cigarette back in his mouth but didn't light it.

"He's sick in the head."

He said it very quietly.

On the morning of the seventh day, the liaison from the town government came to the guesthouse.

The young cadre surnamed Li was holding a stack of forms for routine registration.

"Student Lin, do you need any coordination for these past few days? Lodging, meals, internet lines, safety—you can bring anything up."

Lin Que handed back the signed forms.

"None for now."

Cadre Li glanced at his notebook.

"I heard you've been walking around the town the whole time? Don't get close to the red line; the higher-ups have given orders."

"I know."

"Also, it's best to report ahead of time if you're interviewing old employees. Some of the old folks are emotionally unstable, and asking too much can easily cause trouble."

"I haven't been interviewing anyone."

Cadre Li was stunned.

"Then what have you been doing these past few days?"

Lin Que thought for a moment.

"Learning the roads."

Cadre Li was taken aback, his pen tip pausing on the form.

"Seven days just to learn the roads? Student Lin, I heard you have a writing assignment for this field trip. If you go on like this without starting to write, I'm afraid you won't have enough time, right?"

Lin Que nodded.

"The old person in Building 7 takes a detour every day, avoiding the factory entrance, because you can see the windows of the old cafeteria from there.

Only after I recognize the road clearly will the people not be written as mere shadows by me."

Cadre Li only half-understood, but he lowered his head and put the forms away, his expression more serious than before.

On the night of the eighth day, the mountain rain returned.

Raindrops hit the tin eaves of the guesthouse, the sound so dense it blurred into one continuous noise.

A corridor light on the second floor was broken, leaving only the yellowish bulb at the end lit.

The light didn't reach far, and the stairwell was half-submerged in darkness.

Lin Que sat at his desk.

A week's worth of notes were spread out, the pages filling the desktop.

No flowery sentences.

Only raw, gritty records.

Lin Que re-categorized these records.

People.

Roads.

Sounds.

Rust.

Silence.

Finally, he wrote six characters at the top of a blank page.

"Recognize the people first, then ask about the wall."

The moment his pen tip lifted, footsteps came from outside the door.

Very heavy.

When they reached the door, they stopped.

After a few seconds, the room door was knocked on.

Knock.

Knock.

Two times.

Lin Que closed the notebook, stood up, and opened the door.

Old Zhao was standing outside.

An old raincoat was draped over his body, and rainwater dripped from the hem onto the floor.

The cuffs of his trousers were soaked, and the uppers of his Liberation shoes were stained with mud.

He wasn't holding a flashlight.

That half-cigarette was still tucked behind his ear.

When Old Zhao saw Lin Que, he coughed first.

"Not asleep yet?"

"No."

"Is the room damp? If it's too humid to sleep, go downstairs and ask for a dry quilt."

This question was asked stiffly.

It sounded like politeness learned from someone else on the spot.

Lin Que pulled the door open a bit more.

"It's fine. There's a dehumidifier in the room, and there's enough hot water."

Old Zhao nodded.

"That's good."

After saying this, he didn't leave.

Water droplets from his raincoat fell onto the floor, one after another.

Lin Que didn't urge him.

Old Zhao stood for a moment, then finally looked up.

"You've been here for eight days, and you haven't asked about what's inside the wall even once.

Those people before, they'd want to pry that wall open before they'd even finished their tea."

Lin Que looked at him.

Old Zhao's tone hardened a bit.

"If there's anything you don't understand, just ask boldly. Don't hold it in. We don't have that many formalities here."

Lin Que was quiet for a few seconds.

"Master Zhao, I really do have a lot I don't understand."

Old Zhao huffed.

"Then why don't you ask? Afraid I won't tell you?"

"I'm afraid of asking the wrong thing."

Old Zhao frowned.

"Can asking a question make a wall collapse?"

Lin Que picked up the notebook on the table, his fingertips pressing against the cover.

"Yes."

He looked toward the rain outside the door.

"If I haven't truly recognized the people yet and I ask about the secrets first, what I write won't be Muchuan Town; it will only be a pile of decorations meant to make outsiders shed tears."

Old Zhao's hand, holding the cigarette, froze in mid-air.

Lin Que's voice was not loud, but every word landed firmly.

"For the past few days, I've been learning the roads, the sounds, how people pause, and how heavy a single screw once was here."

He looked back at Old Zhao.

Lin Que looked at the half-cigarette behind his ear and said softly:

"Every time you walk to the east wall, you take the cigarette down, but you never light it.

There must be someone there who doesn't like the smell of smoke."