At six on Thursday morning, Zhou took his usual spot in the morning exercise group: back row, far end.
The opening music hadn't even started when the auntie on his left, a woman in a knit hat, took a step away from him. The old man on his right looked at her and took a step away too.
An empty circle opened up around him.
In more than a week of tai chi, he'd never had so much room.
Someone up front glanced back at him and muttered to the person beside them, "That's him."
Auntie Fang stood at the very front, holding up her phone and filming the group from left to right. The camera swept all the way to the back row, reached him, and didn't stop. It skipped right over him.
The box in the lower left corner of his vision was lit.
Games: 0 won, 7 lost | 1 day left
The music started. Twenty or thirty arms rose together. When his two went out, they didn't come near anyone on either side.
At 6:40 they finished the closing moves, and he carried his thermos over to the scholar trees.
"Xiao Zhou! Over here!"
Uncle Ma was sitting on Old Gu's stone stool, one arm stretched across the table, waving him over.
"I saved it for you!"
Before Zhou got to the table, the rattle of a chess box came up from the other direction.
Old Gu stopped beside the table with his cloth bag and looked down at the stool under Uncle Ma's backside.
"That's my seat."
"Got your name on it?" Uncle Ma didn't budge an inch. "First come, first served."
One of the old people watching put in, "Old Ma, Old Gu's been sitting at that table for thirty years."
"So what if it's thirty years? Does that put his name on it?" Uncle Ma slapped the stool. "Go on, find me where his name's carved on this thing. You find it, and I'll get up right now."
One old man actually bent down and peered at the side of the stool.
The whole ring cracked up.
Old Gu didn't argue with him. He set his cloth bag on the table, took out the wooden chess box, flipped the lid off, and dumped it out in Uncle Ma's direction.
Clatter.
Pieces rolled all over the table, and two of them ended up right under Uncle Ma's elbow. Still standing, Old Gu started setting out the black pieces. With every piece he set down, he pushed it an inch closer to Uncle Ma.
Bit by bit, the pieces crowded Uncle Ma's arm to the edge of the table.
"Fine, fine, fine, you win!" He stood up and brushed off his jacket. "Xiao Zhou, you sit across from him. I'll give you tips. You'll win, guaranteed."
Old Gu sat down on his own stool.
Zhou sat down across from him and set his thermos within reach. Uncle Ma clasped his hands behind his back and planted himself behind Zhou.
They were only five or six moves in when a shout went off right behind Zhou's head.
"Horse! Move your horse!"
It was louder than Old Gu setting down a piece. The voice behind him sounded so sure that Zhou reached out, and out went the horse.
Smack.
Old Gu's cannon had been sitting on that line all along. The horse had barely landed when the cannon jumped over and took it.
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"Oh, no!" Uncle Ma slapped his thigh. "Never mind, never mind. Elephant! Move your elephant!"
Zhou moved his elephant.
Smack. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
Old Gu's chariot came straight down the file the elephant had just cleared, all the way to the bottom, took one of Zhou's advisors, and stopped right at the edge of the palace.
Two shouts. One horse and one advisor, gone.
"No problem!" Uncle Ma's voice hadn't dropped one bit. "Move your horse again! That one!"
Zhou glanced at the lower left corner.
1 day left.
He didn't touch the horse. He unscrewed his thermos, blew on it, took a sip, and set it back on the edge of the stone table.
Where the horse would go, and where Old Gu's chariot would end up after that. He counted it out, one step at a time.
"Go on, move it!"
He was still counting.
"I said move your horse. Did you hear me?"
Zhou pulled the cannon on the other side back one step.
"Fine. Don't listen. See if I care." Uncle Ma flung his hands behind his back, turned, and pushed his way off to the other side of the ring.
Zhou didn't turn around.
In the whole park, that was the one person who'd talk to him.
Old Gu glanced at him and reached for a piece. He held this one in the air for a while, and when he set it down, it didn't make a sound.
But down a horse and an advisor, no amount of careful counting was going to make up for it. Old Gu's chariot and cannon came bearing down, one behind the other. Zhou blocked once. He blocked again.
"Check."
There was nowhere left in the palace for his General to go. Zhou took his hand back from the board.
A ding sounded in his ear.
[Games: 0 won, 8 lost | 1 day left]
Old Gu leaned back and slapped both hands down on his knees.
"I am but a carefree man of Sleeping Dragon Ridge…"
The tune wandered off on man, as usual. Same spot as last time.
Old Gu started clearing the pieces, sweeping them into the box a handful at a time, clattering away. Halfway through, he spoke without looking up.
"Listen to him, and you're playing Old Ma's game."
He swept up another handful.
"He's been playing for decades. Same two moves."
Zhou looked at the black cannon still sitting on the board.
It had been on that line before Uncle Ma ever shouted horse.
Same with the chariot. Before elephant was out of his mouth, it had already been waiting on that file.
He thought back to the first two games last Saturday. Back then, every smack had hurried him, and every time he hurried, he missed something.
Old Gu had probably counted on that, too.
Old Gu was playing the man.
"So what if it's the same two moves for decades?"
Uncle Ma had squeezed his way back from the other side of the ring.
"If a thing works, you keep using it!" He dug into the other pocket of his jacket, pulled out a push-button phone made for old folks, and slapped it down on the stone table. "I've had this one ten years. I can dial it with my eyes shut!" The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
A black plastic shell, with keys the size of fingernails.
"The big one's from my son. For calls, I still use this." He pressed 1 with his thumb. Son popped up on the screen, and he quickly hung up. "See that? Press 1, and that's my son. Big keys, big letters. No hunting around."
Old Gu swept the last handful into the box. "Ten years and never changed it. Same as your two moves."
"That box of yours won't even close right. Why haven't you changed it?"
The ring laughed again.
One of the old men watching pulled a phone out of each pocket and held one up in each hand. "I carry two as well."
The one next to him, holding up a flip phone, chimed in. "It's only the button ones I can actually see. The big one, I swipe once and the whole thing's gone."
Someone at the back put in, "On mine, press 1, that's my daughter. Press 2, that's her mom."
Everybody had something to say, and several more phones turned up on the stone table.
Zhou's hand brushed the notebook in his pocket. He didn't take it out.
Yesterday evening, the moment this notebook came out, the whole dance group had turned their backs on him.
Uncle Ma whipped his head around. "Young fella, where's your notebook? Write it down!"
Only then did Zhou take out the large-print notebook. He turned to the second page and started from I carry two as well. The bits about Uncle Ma's phone, he'd have to fill in later from memory.
An auntie in a knit hat stood outside the ring with a tai chi fan in her hand. She'd been watching for a while.
She was the one who'd stepped away from him that morning.
She edged half a step closer and smiled before she said anything.
"My phone, all I know how to do is watch my grandson's videos. I don't dare touch anything else. I'm scared one day I'll tap…"
Zhou wrote it down word for word.
"Old Ma, what are you telling him now?"
Auntie Fang was coming over from the east gate with the red speaker in her arms.
Uncle Ma's voice was even louder than hers. "He hasn't asked me for one cent!"
"Give it time."
Auntie Fang shot Zhou a glare and beckoned to someone outside the ring. The auntie in the knit hat swallowed the rest of her sentence and went off with her.
At 7:05, Zhou closed the notebook and stood up.
Old Gu was already setting up the next game. Most of the red and black pieces were in place.
"Tomorrow morning?"
"Tomorrow morning. I'll play my own game."
Old Gu looked up at him for a while and grunted through his nose. It was shorter than yesterday's, and it tilted up a little at the end.
At lunch, he typed both pages of the notebook into a document. One paragraph per person, nothing but their own words.
Song Xiaobei leaned over for a look at the notebook and lowered his voice. "Bro Zhou, I can read your writing from two desks away."
Zhou didn't look at the number on the wall of monitors across the way.
At 9:30 that night, Zhou lay down.
[Games: 0 won, 8 lost | 1 day left]
[Elder Zhou, tomorrow's the last day of the week! Get to bed early and rest up!]
He felt for the notebook beside his pillow and turned to the second page.
It was full.
The last line read: I'm scared one day I'll tap…