Today the Author Has Run Out of Titles
Fu Ting remembered very clearly the last place he had encountered Fu Zhen. The honest truth was that for any number of reasons, he had no desire to see Fu Zhen again. But Tang Wanwan had asked him directly, and after turning it over for most of the night, Fu Ting decided to hand the matter off to his assistant.
When his assistant learned that Fu Ting wanted to locate Fu Zhen, he was briefly puzzled. If Fu Ting hadn't brought it up, the assistant had practically forgotten the Fu family even had a younger son. He couldn't imagine what his boss wanted with him—perhaps he'd had a change of heart about how things had been handled.
The assistant hired a private detective and handed the task over. Within two days, the detective had reported back. Looking at the photographs the detective had sent, the assistant let out a silent sigh. He genuinely hadn't imagined that the young master who had once carried himself with such confidence could have been reduced to hauling bricks on a construction site.
The assistant passed the photographs and the address to Fu Ting. Fu Ting received them in the middle of a meeting. The various department heads watched their boss glance down briefly at his phone—and in the space of a single moment, every trace of colour drained from his face. Then, as though nothing had happened, he set the phone down, looked up, and said in a measured voice to the manager who had been mid-presentation: 'Why have you stopped?'
The manager's voice caught. It took him a moment to remember where he'd been.
Fu Ting held his pen and listened to the rest of the report with apparent full concentration, as though that single unguarded moment had been a collective hallucination.
After the meeting was dismissed, Fu Ting took out his phone and went through the assistant's photographs again. In them, Fu Zhen was wearing an oversized work uniform, pushing a small cart loaded with sand. The harsh wind had inflated the uniform into a balloon. His hair—the mid-length style he'd always taken such care of—was now an unkempt mess.
Fu Ting felt as though something had seized his heart in a tight grip. Not pain, exactly—but a kind of oppressiveness that was difficult to breathe through. He turned his phone face-down on the desk.
He delegated the acquisition of the Shazhou Chronicles screen adaptation rights to his assistant as well. He would not be going himself. He had no wish to see Fu Zhen.
If he could have been fully honest with himself, he would have known this wasn't quite true. It wasn't that he didn't want to see Fu Zhen. He was afraid to.
Fu Zhen's colour illustration was finished—a little faster than expected. It had taken only four evenings. The illustration commissioned from the other, more established artist came in one day before his.
Custard Bun received the other artist's piece and found herself not entirely happy with it. The work was technically polished—probably worth the twelve hundred yuan she'd paid—but it lacked something. Looking at it, she couldn't feel the artist's love for Shazhou Chronicles or for the Custard Yellow pairing. This was the chronic failing she'd encountered with most of the artists she'd commissioned before. She had hoped that this artist—who had built her following through Shazhou Chronicles fan work—would be different. She was disappointed.
Fu Zhen's illustration arrived the following evening. She'd just come out of the shower, hair still unwashed, and picked up her phone to check her messages. She opened the small image he'd sent her.
In that instant, Custard Bun's eyes filled with tears.
In Fu Zhen's illustration: a full moon hung high in the dark sky. Along the banks of the Zhuwang River, fireflies drifted through the reeds, and the evening wind moved across the water, sending slow ripples outward in rings.
A small wooden boat floated on the river.
Zhu Naiyou's face carried the faint flush of someone who had been drinking. His left hand trailed over the side of the boat; his right arm cradled a jug of wine. His robe hung open at the chest. Huang Lie sat across his lap, head bowed, looking down at Zhu Naiyou with faint puzzlement in his eyes. Dark hair cascaded down and lay scattered across Zhu Naiyou's bare skin.
Looking at it, the only line of poetry that came to Custard Bun's mind was: Drunk, he no longer knows that the sky is in the water—a boat full of pure dreams pressing down on the river of stars.
The broad composition had been Custard Bun's idea. The details and the setting were Fu Zhen's own additions.
The illustration was, in all honesty, considerably less explicit than what she'd originally requested—what it had instead was sensuality rather than lewdness. But Fu Zhen had shown her the rough sketch and she hadn't asked for revisions, which meant she'd agreed to dial back the heat level.
Custard Bun loved Fu Zhen's illustration so much it was almost irrational. In style and in characterisation it was a near-perfect match for the source material—if it were put out as an official screenshot, there were probably people who would believe it.
The Custard Yellow pairing was real. It had always been real.
Not long after, the same scene repeated itself: Fu Zhen's screen was overtaken by exclamation marks, followed by paragraph after paragraph of breathless praise. His ageing phone, unable to sustain this level of enthusiasm, simply gave up and froze.
Once Custard Bun's emotions had settled enough for coherent communication, Fu Zhen sent her a message.
[Is this alright?]
More than alright. More than perfectly alright. With a trembling hand and a racing heart, Custard Bun transferred the remaining five hundred yuan to him.
[You sent too much—let me transfer back the extra.]
[You don't have to, Artist. I love this illustration that much.]
Fu Zhen didn't reply on Weibo. He went into Alipay and sent the extra money straight back.
But not long after, Custard Bun transferred it back to him again. She must have known he wouldn't keep it, because she sent a message along with it.
[Then consider it a deposit for your next commission, Artist.] [Alright.]
Shortly after receiving the illustration, Custard Bun posted it on her Weibo, tagging the Shazhou Chronicles topic and the Custard Yellow topic, and tagging Fu Zhen as well.
The Shazhou Chronicles fan community hadn't seen a fan illustration this faithful to the source in a very long time. Most of them didn't even ship Custard Yellow—but faced with art of this calibre, they couldn't help themselves.
Oh my GOD—what divine artist is this? Charging only 150 yuan? I would have paid 1500 for this quality. All my love, always.
I'm about to cry. Why isn't this MY ship?!
I want to commission this artist too—I want to see my character in a bunny costume [drooling emoji][drooling emoji]
Fu Zhen's Weibo follower count went from double digits to four digits overnight.
The wave of commission requests that arrived in his inbox dealt yet another heavy blow to his phone.
That same evening, Fu Zhen received a phone call from Fu Ting's assistant. The caller wanted to purchase the screen adaptation rights to Shazhou Chronicles.
If this had come two years ago—when he'd just been thrown out of the Fu family with nothing and desperately needed money—Fu Zhen would have agreed without a
second thought. But now, he didn't need the money. Or perhaps more accurately: extra money would not help him. The best treatment window for his leg had long since passed. That couldn't be bought back.
Fu Zhen declined politely and closed the call. Then he opened his messages, accepted a five-hundred-yuan colour illustration commission and a two-hundred-yuan character illustration, and added them to the work he was already doing for Custard Bun. He was going to be busy for the next two weeks at least.
The assistant notified Fu Ting that his approach had been refused. Fu Ting said he understood, and they ended the call.
Tang Wanwan was out again that evening with Qin Zhao. The house was quiet. Fu Jianzhen and Fu Ting sat in the living room. Time moved through the room without them.
Fu Ting set down his documents and went upstairs to rest.
Fu Jianzhen suddenly called after him. '…Where is Fu Zhen now?'
Fu Ting turned back. Fu Jianzhen's face held no particular expression—the question sounded like any other casual inquiry.
'On the construction site behind the New World Shopping Centre in the Xiling district.'
Fu Jianzhen made a low sound and nodded slowly.
Fu Ting turned to continue up the stairs. From below, Fu Jianzhen asked: 'What does he do there?'
Fu Ting paused. Then, after a moment: 'He hauls bricks, I think.'
Fu Jianzhen said nothing more. He held an entertainment newspaper in his hands—on the cover, Tang Wanwan in her latest drama stills. Fu Jianzhen turned up the corners of his mouth. But there was no warmth at all in his eyes.
did.
The next afternoon, Fu Jianzhen left the office an hour early—something he never
'Don't go home yet,' he said to his driver, from the back seat, without warning.
'Where would you like to go, sir?'
'Go…' Fu Jianzhen paused for a long moment. 'Go have a look at the Xiling district.'
The driver took him across nearly half the city. Fu Jianzhen arrived at the edge of the construction site behind the New World Shopping Centre and sat in the car.
Through the window, over the high iron fencing, he searched for the figure that had been appearing in his dreams these past weeks.
He didn't find him.
Time in the car moved with strange slowness. After a long while—he didn't know how long—Fu Jianzhen said quietly: 'We can go.'
The driver was completely baffled. What had brought the chairman to a construction site? But that wasn't a driver's business to wonder about.
A faint sound rose inside the car—a sigh, perhaps. Before the driver could determine whether it had been his own, Fu Jianzhen asked: 'Lao Wu—how long have you been with me?'
'Twelve, thirteen years by now,' the driver said.
Twelve or thirteen years. Long enough for a child to grow into a young man.
Twelve or thirteen years ago, how old would Fu Zhen have been? Fu Jianzhen tried to locate that small figure somewhere in his memory and found, again, that he could not.
Only in dreams could he see him.
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed that Fu Jianzhen's face was pale. 'Are you all right, sir?'
'Fine,' Fu Jianzhen said, with a flat calm.
The car fell quiet again. Fu Jianzhen pressed his fingers to his temple.
What had driven him to throw Fu Zhen out, that time? It seemed it was because—because he had hurt Wanwan. He deserved to be punished.