"You tell them: bigger letters!"
Uncle Ma's bellow went off beside the chess tables, and at the next stone table, the hands holding pieces stopped in midair.
"The x on that prize is the size of a sesame seed!"
The ring of old men watching the game joined in.
"Yeah, bigger letters!"
"To check the weather on my phone, I've got to take my glasses off and hold it right under my nose."
Zhou sat at his end of the stone table, the pieces in front of him not yet cleared.
It had been a speed game, and Old Gu had won it back.
Old Gu leaned back, hands resting on his knees, and started humming The Empty City Stratagem.
"I am up on the city tower, admiring the mountain view…"
Zhou looked down and went over the board again. He could see exactly where he'd lost it.
Around move ten, he'd gotten tired of how slow it was going and sent his chariot to take one of Old Gu's pawns that had crossed the river. The moment the chariot left, the horse back home had nobody watching it.
He could see it. He'd lost anyway.
Uncle Ma hadn't pushed his way in until the game was over. His first words had been: "That thing of yours. When do the people at your company get to see it?"
Zhou had said tomorrow.
That was when Uncle Ma's voice had gone up. It still hadn't come down.
"And that x! Tap a little off and it opens up, and once it's open, it wants your card number! You tell them Old Ma tried three times and never hit it!"
Zhou took the large-print notebook out of his jacket pocket.
A few more names had gone into it these past days. It was up to page seven now, fourteen people in all. Most of the last page was still empty.
"Uncle Ma, can I say it just the way you said it?"
Uncle Ma brought his palm down on the stone table, and the pieces jumped.
"Say it exactly like that! Just say Old Ma said so!"
He stuck out his chest, the zipper of his jacket straining, like he was the one going on stage tomorrow.
Someone beside him laughed. "Old Ma, who at that company even knows who you are?"
"Then they can get to know me!"
Zhou turned to the last page and wrote a line in the empty space: Just say Old Ma said so.
The lines were wide, and those words filled a whole line by themselves.
Old Gu said nothing to any of it. He gathered the pieces back one at a time and set up the next game.
His phone said 7:03. There wasn't time for another one. Zhou screwed the lid onto his thermos and stood up.
"Tomorrow morning."
Old Gu said "Mm" through his nose and pressed the piece in his hand down onto the board.
NovelPhoenix publishes this author's chapter, though the version here was copied without consent; reading the source helps support them.
At 9:58, thermos and notebook in hand, Zhou walked to the end of the seventeenth-floor hall.
Through the narrow strip of glass in the door of the small conference room, he could see Wen Yining already sitting there.
His draft lay spread on the table, printed and stapled together, a thin stack. At the top of the first page was a line he'd typed himself: Older people interviewed: 14.
There was a red circle around the 14.
Wen Yining tapped the circle with the tip of her pen.
"Fourteen people."
She turned the pages. One paragraph per person. She went fast, and in a few flips she was at the end.
"Lu Heng has five hundred twelve responses. Cross-analysis down to age group and district. The reviewers' first question will be the sample."
She flipped back to the first page.
"The park, I said suit yourself. The reviewers won't."
Zhou set the notebook on his knees.
He'd seen Lu Heng's dashboard, the age groups in five colors. Just one slice of one color bar probably held more than fourteen people.
Wen Yining pushed the cap onto the end of her pen.
"Pick three to five of their lines for a quote box. The body becomes numbers. Of the fourteen, how many say the text is too small, how many are scared of losing money. Work out the percentages. Make a chart."
Her pen touched the paper in two places.
"'Can't see it' becomes 'insufficient readability.' 'Scared of tapping wrong and losing money' becomes 'payment security anxiety.' The reviewers like that."
She drew the pen back.
"I'll get Design to do the chart. Revised draft to me by three this afternoon. Sample size goes under the chart. If it's fourteen, write fourteen. Not one more."
Revised like that, it would be ready by this afternoon. The number would still be the number. Not a word of it made up.
Fourteen people, down to one line of small print under a chart.
Zhou put his thermos on the table.
"What they said was 'can't see it.' Not 'insufficient readability.'"
Wen Yining looked up at him.
"However they said it, that's how I wrote it down."
Then he unscrewed his thermos and took a sip.
Wen Yining said nothing.
The red pen came down on the 14 on the first page and traced the circle that was already there.
Again.
The tip pressed harder and harder, until the paper sank into a groove under it. She'd done the same thing last time, circling the m in buttom on his report and then tracing it again.
By the third circle, her eyes flicked to the wall.
A printed review agenda was taped up there, four lines. She was looking at the second one.
2. Senior User Research
It was just that one glance, and her eyes were back on the draft.
Zhou saw it.
After she'd read that line, the pen came down, and this circle went in harder than the first two.
Item one was only background. A few minutes and it would be over. If the reviewers really meant to bring out the knife, the first cut would land on item two.
That agenda belonged to the whole team. If a question stumped them, the one standing under the projector with no answer would be her.
Zhou screwed the lid back on.
"If the sample comes up, I'll answer it myself."
"Answer with what?"
"However many I asked. That's the number I'll give."
The red pen stopped.
Wen Yining set the pen down on the table.
"If it bombs, it's on you."
She pushed the stack back toward him with two fingers, stood, and walked out.
The door closed behind her. In the strip of glass, she went off down the hall and didn't look back.
He was alone in the room.
He gathered the pages one at a time, stood the stack on its edge, and tapped it twice on the table.
The back of the first page bulged with a raised line, and the line was a circle.
A little after two that afternoon, a message popped up in the work chat.
Wen Yining: Tonight at 7, full-team rehearsal in the small conference room. Follow the agenda order. Everyone presents in full, once through.
Under it came another string of Noted.
At five to three, he sent this morning's draft to her inbox exactly as it was.
She didn't reply.
Sometime after 5:20, Lu Heng closed his laptop, held it against his chest, and headed for the small conference room at the end of the hall.
At 5:30, Zhou put the stack of pages in his bag, stood up, and headed for the elevators.
Wen Yining was right there, diagonally ahead. She was staring at her screen, typing, and didn't look up.
At a quarter past nine that night, he'd finished washing his feet and was leaning against the headboard when the box in the lower left corner of his vision lit up.
[Elder Zhou, you're still one opera short this week, and tomorrow's the deadline!]
[You've got to get that foot-soak water nice and hot! And lie down before 9:30!]
He'd just washed his feet.
A little after 9:20, his phone lit up.
Song Xiaobei: Bro Zhou, at rehearsal Lu Heng went start to finish and never put up that line chart page
The little typing… at the top of the chat window came on for a few seconds, went off, and came on again.
Song Xiaobei: he didn't leave a single page out. except that one
Zhou looked at the two lines for a while.
Zhou Yinian: Understood.
The large-print notebook sat on the nightstand. He reached over and turned it to the last page.
Just say Old Ma said so.
At 9:30, he put his phone face down on the nightstand, next to the open notebook.