Chapter 55

[Friday evening 8:35 PM, Hyatt on the Bund, 32nd floor Chinese restaurant] Tan Yuze's task tonight is simple: get two of Huace's clients drunk, and the contract can be signed over drinks.

His suit jacket was draped over the back of the chair, and he had unbuttoned his shirt to the second button. He had just finished pouring a round of Moutai when the door to the private room was pushed open—a waiter led in a group of people, the flash of their birthday hats dazzling under the crystal chandelier.

It was Xu Li's birthday party.

She wasn't wearing a formal dress, but a suit jacket, and a paper crown that read "Happy Birthday" askew on her head. She was pushed in front of the cake by her friends.

Inside the private room, two groups were clearly separated: at the innermost table sat the brand representatives, the producer, and the woman's best friend; at the table near the door sat Tan Yuze, the client, and the assistant, with a row of liquor bottles on the table. Nan You wasn't there; she had gone downstairs to pick up a custom-made sugar-free cake.

The clients started clamoring for the birthday girl to sing. Xu Li waved her hand: "Spare me." The assistant shoved the microphone into her hand: "Just one line!" The music intro began—"A Little Happiness."

She had just sung the line "Maybe we were too busy smiling and crying back then" when a clearly deliberate clinking of glasses came from the next table. Tan Yuze finished her third glass, her Adam's apple bobbing, and the client finally made his decision: "The contract will be sent to your email tomorrow morning!"

He nodded politely and excused himself to use the restroom. At the end of the corridor was a public terrace, where the night breeze dispersed the smell of alcohol.

Tan Yuze's dinner party ended close to 1 a.m. After being fed two rounds of spicy sauce by the investors, Tan Yuze came out of the private room, his steps unsteady, but his mind was still on its last vestige.

The bathroom light at the end of the corridor was broken, leaving only the green light from the emergency exit reflected on the wall, like a dark river. He turned on the tap, and the water gushed out.

As I bent down to cup water, a dark patch caught my eye out of the corner of my eye—not a fire hydrant, but hair. Long, straight, black hair that seemed to ignite even in the dark.

Looking up again, there was another person in the mirror: Xu Li, her mask pulled down to her chin, her eyeliner smudged a little, like deliberately left-on makeup residue.

She wore a black suit jacket over a silver camisole, her collarbones gleaming like razor blades.

The two stared at each other briefly through the mirror. Neither spoke first, as if whoever blinked first would reshuffle the entire nine-year cycle.

Tan Yuze made the first move.

He shook the water off his hands, didn't grab a tissue, and wiped his face directly on his T-shirt. Water droplets rolled down his temples to behind his ears from his slightly reddish hair—that lock of hair had been dyed last week, and the hairdresser said it was called "Crimson Orange Glow," but he found it too complicated and just said, "The redder the better."

In the green light, the color was like neon lights leaking into wine at night, both intense and decadent. Xu Li stared at the drop of water behind his ear. Suddenly, she remembered their last meeting, a typhoon night in Shanghai, she was at his dormitory door, the rain soaking their trouser legs.

His hair was chestnut brown then, and the ends of his hair poked her forehead, tickling her like an unspoken plea to stay.

"Tan Yuze, you dyed your hair red, but you haven't changed much."

Her voice was not loud, and it was somewhat diffused by the air conditioning in the corridor.

Before the last word was even finished, Tan Yuze had already taken a step in front of her. His right hand, still damp with sweat, gripped the back of her neck, his palm burning hot.

Xu Li's back slammed against the tiled wall, which was icy cold, instantly clashing with the heat on the side of her neck.

She instinctively uttered a soft "hmm," but before she could finish the second syllable, his lips sealed it off.

It wasn't a kiss. It was a bite.

It was as if they wanted to devour all the unspoken thoughts, resentments, hopes, and regrets of the past seven years. Teeth clashed, the taste of blood spread, and neither of them backed down.

Xu Li's hand, which had been pressed against his chest, gradually gripped the collar of his T-shirt, deforming the fabric. Their breaths mingled, and it was impossible to tell who was short of oxygen first.

After some time, laughter and chatter came from a private room in the distance.

Someone called out, "Teacher Xu? Xu Li?" The voice was like a pair of scissors, severing the line of fire between the two. Tan Yuze released her first, his forehead touching hers, their noses almost touching.

His voice was so hoarse it was almost a whisper:

"It's stained red... I was afraid you wouldn't be able to find me." Xu Li wiped away the blood droplets from his bite on her lower lip with her thumb and smiled.

"My appearance fee is very high, Tan Yuze."

Her eyes were bright, but she didn't mention the thirty-seven missed calls she had made to him back then. Nor did she mention that at the dinner party just now, when she heard an investor mention "the up-and-coming director Tan Yuze," her heart pounded in her ribs.

The bathroom door was pushed open and then slammed shut—the person who came in witnessed this and wisely withdrew. The air froze again.

Xu Li bent down to straighten her suit jacket when a button popped off and rolled to Tan Yuze's feet. He bent down to pick it up, but she stepped on it with the tip of her high heel first.

The metal buckle made a soft, tinkling sound between the floor and the heel.

"I'm flying to Hengdian tomorrow," she said.

"I know."

"Three months of closed filming."

"I know."

"I finished work very late, and the hotel was up in the mountains with poor signal."

“…I know.” She looked up, emphasizing each word.

"So, are you going to chase her this time?" Tan Yuze didn't answer, but simply reached out and untied the button from under her heel, putting it into his pocket.

Then, palm up, he held it out in front of her. His hand trembled, yet stubbornly remained outstretched, like that summer night nine years ago when he waited for her at the school gate, only to receive nothing in return. Xu Li looked at him for two seconds, then placed her left hand on top.

When their fingers intertwined, she noticed his palms were sweaty. It turned out he wasn't as composed as he seemed. At the end of the corridor, the elevator dinged.

Little K, the assistant, came looking for us.

Xu Li let go of his hand, put her mask back on, revealing only her smiling eyes. Before turning away, she said in a voice only the two of them could hear, "Tan Yuze, grow your hair a little longer. This color is too light. Next time you see me, make it a little darker." Then she left.

The footsteps faded at the end of the corridor, like a play ending prematurely. Tan Yuze leaned against the wall, took the button out of his pocket, and held it in his palm. The metal edge hurt, but he laughed out loud.

As she laughed, her eyes welled up with tears.

It was 3 a.m. on a mountain road outside Hengdian World Studios. In her van, Xu Li was halfway through removing her makeup when her phone vibrated.

An unfamiliar number, registered in Beijing.

She answered the phone without saying a word, only hearing the whooshing sound of the wind on the other end.

After a long while, Tan Yuze's voice, mixed with the sound of the wind, came:

"Xu Li, I've bought a plane ticket for tonight."

"..."

"The color is darker now, I'll show you when we get there." She held her phone, looking out the car window. The night in the mountains was like ink; the car headlights cut through a short stretch of road before quickly closing again.

She suddenly remembered when she was seventeen, he had done the same thing, chasing after her bus in the pouring rain, losing a shoe in the process. He had called from under the window, "Xu Li, wait for me!"

Seven years had passed, and they were still waiting at the same red light. But this time, she decided not to wait. She would turn around and go to meet it.

At four in the morning, in the temporary parking lot at the foot of Hengdian Mountain, Xu Li's nanny car had just turned off when a dark figure pounced over—Tan Yuze was wearing a baseball cap and a mask, and the newly dyed hair under the brim was as dark as a pomegranate that was about to bleed.

He was panting heavily, carrying a supermarket plastic bag containing two cans of beer, a box of cherries, and a packet of red hair dye.

“The latest shade, ‘Midnight Crimson.’” He held the hair dye up to the car window, as if submitting a belated assignment.

Xu Li rolled down the car window, and the scent of makeup remover mingled with the night breeze, hitting his face. "Get in," she said. Only a reading light was on in the car.

Xu Li reclined the passenger seat, half-lying down, and used disposable gloves to apply hair dye to the ends of his hair, touching up the color little by little.

"Did you dye it yourself?" Xu Li asked him.

"Yes, the barbershop is closed."

"Your technique is still so bad." She laughed, her fingertips running through his hair, deliberately rubbing some dye behind his ear. The cool touch reminded him of the cherry blossom she had drawn on the convenience store window seven years ago in Taipei.

"Does it hurt?" she suddenly asked.

"What?"

"I bit you that day."

Xu Li licked the wound on the inside of her lower lip that hadn't fully healed and whispered, "It hurts. You want revenge."

The dyeing was finished just before dawn.

Xu Li used a wet wipe to clean the remaining ointment from the side of his neck, her movements as slow as if she were cleaning a fragile piece of porcelain.

"There are a lot of paparazzi in Hengdian lately," he warned.

"I know."

"The hotel for film crews is even stricter."

"I know."

"So—" he looked up, his voice trailing off suggestively, "how does the female celebrity plan to sneak into Director Tan's room?"

Xu Li didn't say anything, but took out a temporary work permit from her pocket.

An intern working on the production team of "Qing Huan" said: "The red hair in the ID photo is pressed down by the baseball cap, making him look like a tamed beast."

Xu Li raised an eyebrow: "Going through the back door?"

“I’ll go through your back door,” he answered quickly.

She froze for half a second, then punched him in the chest, laughing so hard she was shaking. The film crew started work at seven in the morning. Xu Li's nanny van was parked directly in the hotel's underground garage. In the elevator, Tan Yuze pulled his hat brim down as low as possible and his mask up as high as possible.

The moment the elevator doors closed, Xu Li suddenly reached out and pulled off his mask, then stood on tiptoe and kissed him. A blind spot in the surveillance footage, thirty-seven seconds. The number was exactly the total number of phone calls they had missed back then.

The hotel corridor was carpeted, so all footsteps were swallowed up. Xu Li swiped her room card to open room 1206, and as soon as the door closed, he pinned her behind the peephole.

This time there were no bites, only a long, breathless, cherry-scented kiss. He tasted the shimmering sugar granules in her lip gloss, the bitterness of her coffee after staying up all night, and all the unspoken feelings of the past nine years.

"I miss you."

I hate you.

"Thank you for not changing your number."

"Thank you for dyeing your hair red."

The curtains weren't fully drawn, letting in a sliver of sunlight. Xu Li's suit jacket lay on the carpet, its silver halter strap slipping down. Tan Yuze's fingertips paused on her wrist—there was a new tattoo there, a small paper airplane with the word "Tan" engraved on its wing.

When did you get the tattoo?

"Last year, on the day I received the award." She was referring to the Golden Deer Award for Best Newcomer. On the stage, she wore a red dress, and her last words were:

"Thank you to the person who chased the bus in the downpour. He taught me that the radius drawn by a compass does not necessarily mean separation."

At the time, Tan Yuze was working all night in an underground editing room in Beijing with his phone on silent. Afterwards, he saw the video and cried like a fool in the server room.

At one o'clock in the afternoon, Xu Li's alarm clock rang. She had a fight scene that required wire work that afternoon. Tan Yuze lay on the bed, watching her apply pain relief patches in front of the mirror; her movements were so practiced it was heartbreaking.

"I'll go to the scene later."

"Interns don't need to work this hard."

"I want to see you fly." Xu Li fastened her back brace, turned around and winked at him: "Then don't blink."

On the film set.

The wirework technician was giving Xu Li a final check. Tan Yuze stood behind the director's monitor, his red hair like a flame in the sun. The assistant director handed him an iced Americano, whispering gossip:

"Our leading lady never uses a stunt double. You'll see later, it'll be even more exciting than the behind-the-scenes footage."

Action!

Xu Li plummeted from the eaves of a three-story building, her skirt billowing into a crimson cloud. Upon landing, the wire stunt slowed slightly, and her knees slammed against the stone slab with a dull thud. The entire audience gasped. Tan Yuze was faster than anyone else, rushing over to catch her.

Blood seeped from the edge of her knee pads, a glaring red. But she smiled and said in a voice only he could hear, "Don't cry, Director Tan, I did it on purpose."

"What?"

"If you didn't fall like that, how would you have a reason to hug me?"

That night, an X-ray was taken at the hospital emergency room, revealing a minor fracture. A cast was applied. Xu Li's agent went to handle the formalities, leaving only the two of them in the ward. Tan Yuze used a cotton swab dipped in water to wipe away the dried blood from the edge of her knee.

“Xu Li,” he suddenly said, “my next film is in Xiamen, by the sea.”

"Um?"

"We're missing a female lead."

"Is the pay high?"

"It's not high, but you can watch the sunrise every day."

Are there any kissing scenes?

Yes, there are many.

“Then you have to pass the audition first.” She pointed to her leg in a cast. “I’ll take care of the patient for a month, and I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”

Tan Yuze bent down and kissed her knee cast, like stamping a seal.

A month later, on the day the cast was removed, Xu Li posted a Weibo message: [New drama, Xiamen, sunrise, and someone owes me thirty-seven seconds. Photo: A leg in a cast covered in red cherry blossom patterns.]

Fans screamed in the comments section:

"Is my sister in love?"

"Who is depicted on the plaster cast?!"

Xu Li did not reply.

Three hours later, Tan Yuze reposted on his main account: [The 37 seconds have been made up, and a lifetime bonus is included—intern director, now a full-time employee.] The accompanying picture shows two hands clasped together, with the sunrise over a Xiamen beach in the background. Red hair is whipped about by the sea breeze, like a belated flag.

Later, Xu Li mentioned her tattoo in an interview. When pressed about the meaning of the paper airplane, she laughed and said, "It represents my pi with someone else's. No matter how long the radius is, it will eventually return to the starting point after going around once."

Tan Yuze's directorial debut is titled "C=2πr".

At the premiere, some moviegoers noticed that the post-credits scene was a still image: on a rainy night, the taillights of a bus disappeared around a street corner, and a boy with one bare foot was clutching a red-stained shoelace in his hand.

The subtitles slowly appeared: "This film is dedicated to all the addresses we dared not ask aloud, and to the red light we finally caught."

"C=2πr" grossed over 800 million yuan in its first week of release.

The top-rated comment on Douban's short review section reads: "After watching this, I just want to tattoo my ex's name in the shape of pi, and then run around the world to meet them again."

The accompanying image was of Xu Li turning her head in the movie, and the comments section was flooded with "That's killer!" Tan Yuze saw this backstage and laughed so hard he choked on his water. He turned to Xu Li, who was removing her makeup, and said, "Netizens all say you're the epitome of 'turn-around killer'."

Xu Li pressed a cotton pad to the corner of his mouth: "Do you want to try what it feels like when the ceiling falls down?"

The next second, she threw herself into his arms, like a ceiling falling down—smelling like jasmine cleansing oil.

But the world of fame and fortune is never short of cracks.

Paparazzi photographed Tan Yuze picking up Xu Li from the hospital late at night, and the headline was sensational:

#Popular celebrity suspected of being pregnant#

#RisingDirectorForcesMarriage#

Xu Li's agent was in a panic, and the brand removed the endorsement posters overnight.

"Xu Li!!! Look at this for yourself, pregnant? Are you planning to quit the entertainment industry? All the endorsements you just got have fallen through. Can't you pay attention to the news?" Nan You stormed into the dressing room in anger.

"It's nothing. What celebrity doesn't get criticized and ridiculed? It's nothing. I'll just retire from the industry." Xu Li didn't seem to care.

"Hurry up, we're at the press conference this afternoon, it's being broadcast live, you know? We need to clarify something." Nan You was really furious.

"There's no need!"

"..." Nan You remained silent.

Tan Yuze spent the whole night smoking in the studio and changed the line on the script's title page from "Dedicated to Xu Li" to "Dedicated to those who dare to love."

At four in the morning, he posted a Weibo message: "No pregnancy, no forced marriage, just a relapse of an old illness. And—she is my eternal muse, and the only female lead in my next film."

Xu Li's "old ailment" is her knee. She fractured her knee in a fall in Hengdian that year, and it would hurt every time the rainy season came around. Tan Yuze took her to New Zealand for surgery.

During her post-operative rehabilitation, she bit his shoulder in pain, leaving a crescent-shaped scar. He comforted her, "It's okay, I'll tattoo every scar into a cherry blossom." She smiled through her tears, "Then I'll bite a hundred of them."

The surgery was a success.

On the day their rehabilitation ended, they drove to the South Island to see the aurora borealis. It was minus five degrees Celsius at night, and the car windows fogged up. Xu Li drew a circle on the glass, then drew a radius, and finally pulled the endpoint back to the center of the circle.

"Look," she breathed out white puffs of air, "we've come full circle, and it's still you." Tan Yuze turned the heater up to the maximum and leaned down to kiss her frozen, red fingertips. "Next time, don't go around in circles, just jump right in, and I'll catch you."

On the day of his return to China, the airport was packed with fans.

Xu Li sat in a wheelchair, with Tan Yuze pushing a luggage cart beside her. Nan You pushed Xu Li forward, and in the intermittent bursts of camera flashes, he suddenly knelt on one knee.

It wasn't a marriage proposal, it was tying shoelaces.

Her shoelaces were untied, and he was afraid she would trip. But the angle from which the fans took the photo made it look like a marriage proposal.

Trending topics that night:

#Tan Yuze kneels at the airport#

Xu Li posted on her main Weibo account, "My shoelaces came undone, it's someone's occupational hazard." The accompanying picture showed Tan Yuze squatting on the ground, clutching her untied shoelaces, looking as serious as if he were defusing a bomb.

The following year, Tan Yuze won the Hong Kong Film Award for Best New Director.

At the awards ceremony, he thanked a bunch of people, and then paused for two seconds at the end: "I also want to thank my Miss Pi. She taught me that the radius can be very long, but the center is only one centimeter. That one centimeter is her heart."

The camera panned to the audience, where Xu Li's eyes were red-rimmed, yet her smile shone brighter than the spotlight. But there are always undercurrents in the story.

When Xu Li was 25, she was exposed for "working on multiple projects at once" and "acting like a diva".

The negative headlines stayed on the trending topics list for a whole week, with brands terminating contracts and the production company replacing the actor. Tan Yuze was scouting locations in Yunnan and flew back to Beijing overnight.

When she landed, she was huddled on the sofa with ice packs on her knees and a pile of termination notices in front of her.

He didn't ask what happened, he just squatted down and replaced the ice pack with a hot water bottle.

Does it hurt?

"pain."

"Then we won't film anymore."

"But I love acting."

"Then film mine, only film mine."

Tan Yuze turned down all offers for commercial films and wrote a low-budget art film called "Radius." The female lead is based on Xu Li, and the film tells the story of a dancer who breaks her knee and gets back on her feet.

Before the machine was put into operation, the investors withdrew their funds.

He mortgaged the house, and Xu Li took out all her savings. The filming location was in the snowy plains of Hokkaido, where the temperature was minus twenty degrees Celsius. Wearing only thin training clothes, she fell into the snow again and again, her knees turning purple.

The last time, she fell so hard she couldn't get up, lying in the snow laughing, her tears freezing into ice. Tan Yuze rushed over and picked her up; snow fell on their hair, instantly turning it white.

She hooked her arm around his neck: "Look, we'll grow old together." The year "Radius" was released, Xu Li won the Best Actress award.

In her award speech, she said only one sentence: "Thank you to the person who lifted me out of the snow. He made me believe that the center of a circle can move—as long as he is there, everywhere is the center."