Chapter 20: The Other Line

At midnight nothing happened.

The clock on the nightstand turned over to 12:00.

The lamp stayed on, and the bed stayed exactly where it was.

Su Yu was lying on his side with his hand on Lu Chen's stomach.

Lu Chen was staring at the ceiling.

"It's today," he said. "It's the three hundred and seventy-seventh."

"Yes."

"The agreement ended a minute ago, and you are still here."

"I live here, Chen."

"So do I," said Lu Chen, in a tone of discovery.

He sat up and found the notebook under his pillow.

He opened it to the page with the long column of numbers and the circled 376.

Under it ran the numbers Su Yu had written in blue.

He looked at them for a while.

Then he picked up the pen and wrote 377 on the next line, in his small, square hand.

His hand stopped over the one after it.

"I don't know what comes next," he said.

"378."

"I don't want to count anymore."

"Then don't."

Lu Chen tore the page out along the fold, slowly, so that it did not rip.

He folded it in four and put it in Su Yu's palm.

"That is the only thing I have ever owned that ended," he said. "Keep it. I don't need it."

On the clean page he wrote a single line.

Day 1.

Under it, where the number should have been, he drew nothing at all.

Su Yu read it over his shoulder, and could not talk.

Someone knocked on the bedroom door.

It was a polite, firm knock.

A pause followed, and then a second knock from lower down.

"We're not decent," Su Yu called.

"I am your father," said the Chairman through the wood. "I have seen worse. Open."

Su Yu pulled the quilt over them both.

The door opened.

The Chairman stood in the corridor in a dark silk dressing gown, with a thick envelope in one hand.

Mrs. Su stood behind him in a pink one, with a small box.