Chapter 4: On Paper

Tang had typed four hundred angry characters into the Treehole's comment box before Fu took the phone out of his hand.

"Give it back," said Tang.

"No," said Fu.

"Lingchen, they're saying you're a fraud. In public. With a photo of my shoulder."

"They are," said Fu, and put the phone in his own pocket.

"And if you answer them in public, the post gets nine thousand views instead of two thousand."

"So I let them say it?" said Tang.

"You let them say it. We answer on paper."

Tang stood in the middle of the kitchen with his hands open.

He was a man who answered everything out loud, at once, in whatever room he happened to be in.

That had made him captain of every team he joined until university, and he had never lost a fight he refused to walk away from.

Fu buttered a slice of bread and put it in his hand.

"Eat that," he said. "Then come to the professor's office, if you want. Don't shout."

"I never shout."

"Zhiyuan."

"I shout a little," Tang admitted.

The professor's office was on the sixth floor of the Sports Medicine building.

It had a view of the football pitch and a bonsai on the filing cabinet.

The professor was fifty-six and bald and wore a white coat over a cardigan.

He sat with the complaint printed out in front of him and read it again, slowly.

Fu stood on the other side of the desk, and Tang stood behind him.

"Anonymous email," said the professor.

"Sent at six this morning to me, to Coach and to the Dean's office," he said.

"Apparently you have been practising without a licence, Mr. Fu."

"I have been practising under your supervision for two years, Professor," said Fu.

"I know. I signed for it."

The professor took off his glasses.

"I am not the one who needs convincing. The Dean's office needs convincing, and the Dean's office likes a hearing."

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