The Restoration Rival novel · Chapter 3 of 21

Chapter 3: Second Place

Wen drags Ken to the economics building to meet her study partner, who is Lu Chen. Lu Ming appears and congratulates Wen on second place in front of a crowd.

Three stitches. He did them himself and didn't say one word.

When it was done he left a card on the tray.

No sports for ten days.

Then he pulled the mask down and walked out.

The sign at the reception desk still said GU CHEN.

Wen called me that afternoon.

"Where are you? I've been texting you since last night."

"Clinic."

A pause.

"Are you hurt?"

"Football. It's fine."

"Come to the economics building at four."

"I'm not meeting your study partner."

"Ken."

"Wen."

"You've been on this campus four months and you've met nobody."

"I eat in the studio."

"You sleep in a room with a man you won't even talk about."

"I talk about him."

"You call him my rival and change the subject."

I was standing in the corridor with the phone against my ear.

My door was shut in front of me.

"Four o'clock," she said. "Building C, second floor, the reading room. Table by the window."

"If you're not there I'll come and get you."

She hung up.

Building C had just been redone.

New glass, new stone floors, a brass plate by the door.

I read the plate while I waited.

LU MING. Three lines down from the top.

Wen came down the stairs in her camel coat and grabbed my sleeve.

"You came. Good. He's in the reading room."

"One hour."

"Twenty minutes. Then you can go back to your clay."

The reading room had high windows and long tables.

About thirty students sat in it, and every one of them looked up when we walked in.

Wen was known here.

Second in the province. Everybody knew that.

She led me to a table by the window.

Two chairs were already taken.

One by a girl I didn't know.

The other by Lu Chen.

He wore a cream sweater and his coat hung on the back of his chair.

A book lay open in front of him. He held a pen.

He looked up at me.

Then he looked at Wen.

"Ken," Wen said. "This is Lu Chen. My study partner."

"We've met," I said.

Lu Chen set his pen down.

"We share a room."

Wen's mouth opened.

She looked from him to me and back.

"You're joking."

"I'm not," Lu Chen said.

"Four months," Wen said. "Four months and neither of you said."

"You didn't ask who my roommate was. You asked if I had one."

She sat down in the third chair.

She put her hands flat on the table like she was holding something in.

"Fine. Good. This is better."

She pulled a folder out of her bag.

"Then you already know he's not a monster."

"I never said he was a monster."

"You said, and I quote, keep away from that one."

Lu Chen's pen stopped.

He didn't look up.

I felt the floor tilt a little.

"Wen."

"No, this is perfect. Say it in front of him."

She opened the folder.

"Ken, he's the only reason I'm not failing statistics."

"He sat with me for six hours on Sunday."

"Nobody's failing statistics," Lu Chen said.

"You don't know that."

"You got a ninety-four on the last paper."

"I know. I'm being dramatic."

She turned to me.

"Sit down."

I sat.

For twenty minutes they went through problem sets.

I sat with my hands on the table and my leg aching under the bandage.

He explained a formula twice because she'd missed a sign.

He was patient in a way I hadn't heard from him before.

At home he barely spoke.

He read at his desk until midnight with the lamp turned down.

Here he drew a small graph in the margin.

Wen nodded and wrote it down.

The reading room started to fill up.

Four o'clock was when the second-years came in.

Then the door by the stairs opened and the room got quieter.

A man came in with two others behind him.

He was broad across the shoulders.

His camel overcoat cost more than my whole term's fees.

His black hair was going grey at the front and worn back.

He had a moustache, neatly cut.

He walked down the middle of the room like it was his hallway.

Because it was. His name was on the plate outside.

He stopped at our table.

"Well," he said. "The famous study partners."

Wen stood up.

She did it fast, before I could.

"Mr. Lu."

"Su Wen." He said her name warmly, like he was glad to see her. "I heard about the provincial results. Second place."

"Thank you."

"Second place in the province."

He turned so the room could hear him.

Half the tables had stopped writing.

"Do you know how many students sit that exam? Over three hundred thousand."

"I know."

"And you came second."

He smiled at her.

Then he looked at me.

"And this is your brother."

"My brother Su Ken. Arts division."

"Arts." He said it the way you'd say a shoe size. "Well. The arts need people too."

Lu Chen had not stood up.

He was still sitting with his pen in his hand.

"Cousin," he said.

"Lu Chen." The man put a hand on the back of Wen's chair. "I hear you two have been studying together."

"Very good. Very good for the department."

He looked around the room at the faces turned toward us.

He raised his voice to the whole of it.

"This is what we want at this university. Hard work. Anybody. Any background."

He nodded down at Wen.

"Second place is very good for a girl from that side of the river."

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