At seven sharp on Saturday morning, a message popped up in the product team's work chat.
Wen Yining: [File] Chengshan Golden Years Redesign Review Schedule_v3
Nobody replied.
Zhou read it, put his phone back in his pocket, and went on setting up pieces on the stone table.
The six o'clock tai chi session had just ended, and most of the morning exercise group had gone. Three of the four stone tables under the scholar trees were empty. Old Gu's was one of them.
He'd sat down at that one and pulled a chess set out of a plastic bag.
He'd bought it at the supermarket downstairs last night. Fifteen yuan, plastic, the pieces so light a breath could blow them away. He'd been worried Old Gu would show up and say young people, so busy again, so he'd decided to get the board set up first.
He'd finished the red side and was halfway through the black when he heard the cloth bag clattering up behind him.
Old Gu was in that old jacket again. He stopped at the table but didn't sit. First he looked down and ran his eyes over the setup.
"Your elephant's in the wrong place."
He picked up the elephant and swapped it with the horse beside it.
"Elephant goes inside the horse."
Then he picked up a plastic chariot and hefted it. He frowned, like it was a chunk of foam.
"These things have no feel to them."
He swept the plastic pieces back into the plastic bag, handful by handful. Then he set the cloth bag on the table, took out a wooden box of chess pieces, flipped the lid off, and dumped them out on the table.
They clattered across the stone.
"We'll use mine."
Zhou had no choice but to set up again. The pieces were wood, heavier than the plastic ones. They sat solid in his hand.
He came to the General. Red characters, its edges worn smooth and round.
He set it in the center of its palace.
"Young people first." Old Gu sat down across from him.
Zhou made the first move.
On move fourteen, Old Gu's chariot charged all the way down from his back rank and stopped directly facing Zhou's General.
"Check."
Zhou studied it for a long time. One step left put the General in reach of a horse. One step right, a cannon.
There was nowhere to go.
He took his hand off the board.
Old Gu leaned back, slapped both hands on his knees, and out it came.
"I am but a carefree man of Sleeping Dragon Ridge…"
Carefree was still on key. By man, the tune had wandered off to who knew where.
It was an aria from the old Peking opera The Empty City Stratagem: the great strategist Zhuge Liang, singing that he was nothing more than a carefree man from the hills.
Four or five old men had gathered to watch by now, and one of them laughed out loud.
"Old Gu, your tune's wandered clean out of Sleeping Dragon Ridge."
"What do you know?" Old Gu didn't even look up. "That's called flavor."
The box in the lower left corner of his vision ticked over.
Games: 0 won, 1 lost | 6 days left
Zhou played the second game slower.
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He thought a long time before every move, and whenever he couldn't work something out, he unscrewed his thermos and took a sip. He'd made the goji tea fresh that morning, and it was still hot enough to burn.
Old Gu picked it up, unscrewed the lid, and held it under his nose for a sniff. He blew across the top before he drank.
Zhou watched his own thermos in someone else's hand and couldn't come up with a single word.
"Young people drink this?"
"My grandma taught me."
"Sweet." Old Gu smacked his lips, took another sip, and only then set the thermos back by Zhou's hand.
Zhou had just jumped his horse out when the phone in Old Gu's jacket pocket rang.
Old Gu pulled it out, glanced at it, and pressed his thumb on the screen. The ringing stopped.
The phone hadn't even warmed up in his pocket before it rang again.
He pressed it again.
The third time it rang, he pressed down extra hard, stuffed the phone back in his pocket, and zipped the pocket shut.
"Retired, and they still won't leave me in peace."
Zhou guessed it was someone from his old workplace. Old Gu had only retired on Monday. He probably hadn't finished handing everything off.
Zhou didn't ask. He looked down and went back to thinking about his horse.
For all that thinking, the horse still got taken by Old Gu's cannon.
He lost the second game on move thirty-one.
Old Gu leaned back, and out came the same line. "I am but a carefree man of Sleeping Dragon Ridge…"
It went off key in exactly the same spot.
Games: 0 won, 2 lost | 6 days left
Once the third game was set up, Old Gu was in no hurry to let him start.
He picked up one of his own chariots and set it off to the side of the board.
"I'll spot you a chariot."
One of the old men watching said, "Whoa. Old Gu's feeling generous today."
Zhou looked at the chariot.
It was wood, worn shiny like the General, just sitting there at the edge of the stone table.
With a chariot spotted, he might actually win this one. Whether the System would count it, he didn't know, and he didn't plan to ask.
He wouldn't count it.
He reached over, picked up the chariot, and put it back on Old Gu's back rank.
"Winning with a handicap doesn't count."
Old Gu lifted his eyes and looked at him for two or three seconds before he spoke.
"Stubborn."
Just that one word. He nudged the chariot until it sat dead center and squared it up.
"Go on."
This game, Zhou stopped trying to keep up with Old Gu.
Old Gu always put his pieces down with a smack, and the moment one piece landed, his hand was already reaching for the next. For the first two games, that sound had been driving Zhou along. Every smack hurried him, and every time he hurried, he missed something.
This time, when Old Gu's piece smacked down, Zhou unscrewed his thermos, blew on it, took a sip, set it back down, and then looked at the board.
Where his horse could jump, and where Old Gu's cannon would hit once it did. He counted it out, one step at a time. If the count didn't come out clear, he didn't move.
"Well? Move already."
"No rush. Take it slow."
Old Gu snorted and drummed his fingers on the stone table.
"Watchers don't talk." Old Gu didn't even look up.
The flat cap pulled back. Zhou didn't push the pawn, either. He hadn't counted out yet what would happen if he did.
What he had counted out was something else. Once Old Gu's cannon came across, there'd be nothing behind it. Nobody was guarding it.
He counted it from the top, then counted it again, before he jumped his horse over.
Smack.
This time it was his piece making the sound.
Somebody in the crowd said, "Oho."
Old Gu stared at the cannon he'd lost and said nothing.
After a while, he reached over and took Zhou's thermos. He unscrewed it, blew on it, took a sip, set it back down, and then looked at the board.
Zhou looked at the thermos.
That move looked familiar.
"How many years has it been since Old Gu last had to think this hard over one game?" someone muttered from the back.
Further into the game, Old Gu's smacks came less and less often.
At one point he held a horse above the board for a long time before he set it down. It didn't make a sound when it landed.
More and more people gathered to watch, but the heckling stopped. All that was left was the sound of someone cracking sunflower seeds.
Sunlight came down through the gaps in the scholar tree branches and inched its way to the middle of the board.
In the end, Zhou couldn't save his chariot.
The moment it was gone, Old Gu's horse and cannon bore down on him. He blocked once, then again, until his General was jammed into a corner of the palace with nowhere to move.
"Check."
Zhou looked at it for a good while, then drew his hand back from the board.
The game had taken almost fifty minutes.
Old Gu didn't lean back right away. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, glanced down at it, and only then cleared his throat.
"I am but a carefree man of Sleeping Dragon Ridge…"
This time the tune didn't wander as far, and he sang it quieter than the first two times.
A ding sounded in his ear.
[Games: 0 won, 3 lost | 6 days left]
[Win some, lose some! Elder Zhou, look after your health!]
Zhou unscrewed his thermos. There was only a little left at the bottom.
Half of what was missing, Old Gu had drunk.
Old Gu started packing up. He scooped the pieces into the box by the handful, and they clattered as they went in.
The box was wooden, its four corners worn round. The lacquer on the lid had flaked away to a thin ring around the edge, and the top was worn glossy from handling. The lid never quite closed all the way. He pressed down on it twice with his palm before it caught.
The box went into the cloth bag, the bag went over his arm, and Old Gu stood up.
"Back here tomorrow."
With that, he clasped his hands behind his back and walked off, without waiting for Zhou to answer.
The old men who'd been watching drifted off too. On his way out, the flat cap shook his head at Zhou. Zhou couldn't tell if it was over the pawn he hadn't pushed or the chariot he hadn't taken.
He picked up the plastic bag with his fifteen-yuan chess set and stayed where he was on the stone stool.
The box in the lower left corner was still lit.
Games: 0 won, 3 lost | 6 days left