Only I Understand His Gentle Heart novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Lines a Soldier Would Say
The captain strikes Wen Zhe's scene forty and asks what the sergeant does next; Wen Zhe stalls, Wanning answers, and that night Wen Zhe emails her own scene back to the whole team.
On Monday, the army wanted the whole writing team in a small room on the sixth floor at ten.
Wanning arrived early and took the chair nearest the door.
She had not signed anything, and nobody had mentioned it.
Wen Zhe came in with two coffees, set one in front of her, and sat down beside her as if Friday had not happened.
"Peace offering," he said. "Oat milk, no sugar."
She did not touch it.
Captain Ji came in at exactly ten with a young sergeant behind him carrying a box of files.
The sergeant had a round face and a buzz cut, and he looked at Wanning with a great deal of interest.
"Sergeant Luo Qiang," the captain said, nodding at him. "He holds the files. Don't talk to him about the files."
"Sir, I wasn't going to," said Luo.
Fang Lijun slipped in last, warm and quick, and took the seat at the end of the table.
"Captain, thank you for making time. We're so lucky to have the army's eye on this."
Captain Ji did not answer her.
He opened a folder, laid out six pages in a row, and uncapped a red pen.
Wanning knew the pages. They were Wen Zhe's scene forty, the death of the sergeant's recruit.
The captain read the first page in silence and drew a line through half of it.
"Your sergeant makes a speech," he said to Wen Zhe. "Three paragraphs, at a man who is bleeding."
"It's about honour, Captain. The audience will cry."
"No sergeant I have served with has ever said the word honour to a bleeding recruit."
He tapped the page with the pen.
"He says, don't sleep, and he asks about the recruit's mother's cooking. That is all."
Wen Zhe laughed, easy and polite. "I'll fix it."
"Before you fix it, tell me what happens to the sergeant in this scene. After the recruit is carried out."
The room was quiet.
Wen Zhe looked at the page. He looked at Fang. His thumb moved on the table.
"He's grieving," he said finally. "He, ah, he sits in the snow."
"For how long?"
"Until the medics come back."
Captain Ji turned his head, and his eyes landed on Wanning.
"Miss Qiao."
She did not look at Wen Zhe.
"He doesn't sit in the snow," she said. "He takes the boy's night watch that night and the next one, so the boy can sleep when he comes back. In the morning he says he overslept and nobody argues with him."
Luo Qiang lowered his eyes.
Captain Ji put the red pen down very gently.
"That is correct," he said.
It was only two words, but he said them to her face.
Fang laughed brightly. "Well! We're all on the same page, then. Captain, the colonel would like to attend a table read on Friday, to see the finished scene forty. Wen Zhe, you'll bring the new draft."
"Of course," Wen Zhe said, and his smile did not move.
When the meeting ended Wanning gathered her things fast.
Wen Zhe caught up with her in the stairwell and stepped in front of her.
"You made me look like a fool in there."
"You said the sergeant sits in the snow."
"Because you won't give me your notes any more." He dropped his voice and took her hand. "Ning. I forgive you for Friday. Sign the sheet, we'll have dinner, and I'll make sure you're paid this week."
She took her hand back.
"Pay me first. Then I'll talk about the sheet."
His smile finally slipped.
"Fang is waiting for it," he said. "Don't be difficult. You know how this ends when you're difficult."
She went down the stairs without answering.
On the street outside, Captain Ji was standing by a plain green car with Luo Qiang holding the door.
He did not speak to her.
He only watched her cross the pavement, and when she reached the bus stop he got in and the car pulled away.
She told herself he was only checking the road.
That evening Wanning sat at her desk with a bowl of instant noodles and tried to rewrite scene forty from memory, in case.
At eleven her phone buzzed.
It was an email from Wen Zhe, sent to the whole team, with the subject line: Scene forty, rewritten.
The body said: You'll love it.
She opened the attachment.
The sergeant did not sit in the snow.
He took the recruit's night watch two nights in a row and said he had overslept.
It was her scene, line for line, from a draft she had written on Wednesday and never sent to anyone.
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