Only I Understand His Gentle Heart novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Small Print
Wen Zhe puts his name first on her work before forty people, Wanning refuses to sign, sells her grandmother's dowry cloth to pay the rent, and the army captain who bought it hangs it over her bed and says he knows whose voice wrote her pages.
At nine that morning, with forty people watching, Wen Zhe put the new credits on the big screen.
The meeting room on the ninth floor smelled of coffee and warm printer paper.
Wanning sat in the third row with her laptop closed on her knees.
The slide read: Written by Wen Zhe.
Her own name was at the bottom, under the words script assistant, in type so small she had to lean forward.
She had written the outline and the first forty episodes of the series alone, over two winters, in a rented flat with a broken radiator.
Wen Zhe had been her boyfriend for three years and her co-writer for six months.
He caught her eye across the room and lifted his tea to her, the way he did when he was glad she had come.
His phone lay on the table beside his tea.
During the slide he opened her shared drive on it twice, and she watched his thumb move without his looking down.
Fang Lijun, the producer, came down the aisle with a paper cup and put it in Wanning's hands before she said a word.
"Ginger tea. You haven't eaten, have you?" Fang said quietly.
"No."
"I thought not."
Fang crouched beside her seat and laid a printed sheet on her knee.
"It's a placeholder for the investor deck," she said. "Nobody reads the small type. Sign the revised sheet tonight, and finance will release your fees by morning."
Wen Zhe came over and squeezed Wanning's shoulder.
"Trust me, Ning. I'll fix it after the screening."
At the back of the room sat a man in a dark green army uniform.
Fang had introduced him earlier as Captain Ji, the army's liaison for the series.
He had said nothing since.
He had no notebook and no phone, and his eyes went from the screen to Wanning and back to the screen.
There was a pale scar through his left eyebrow.
Wanning looked at the pen Fang was holding out.
Ninety thousand yuan of her fees had been sitting in "review" for six weeks.
Her rent was due on Friday.
So she put the pen down.
"Those forty episodes are mine," she said, and she stood up so the whole room could hear her.
"I'll sign a sheet with Qiao Wanning where it belongs. I won't sign this one."
Nobody in the room moved.
Fang's warm face stayed exactly as it was. "Wanning, let's not do this in front of everyone."
"Then take it off the screen."
Nobody did.
Wanning picked up her laptop and walked out.
At four that afternoon, a message came from the finance clerk: payment still under review.
At six, the landlord texted a reminder with three crying faces.
That night she sat on her bed and looked up at the wall behind her pillow.
Her grandmother's dowry cloth hung there, a metre of red silk with two mandarin ducks swimming under a lotus.
Grandmother had stitched it for Wanning's wedding bed over four winters.
She had run out of years before the last lotus petal, and the corner still showed bare red silk.
Wanning took six photographs and wrote the listing in the dark.
Six thousand yuan, hand-embroidered, no haggling.
She had meant to feel something when she pressed the button.
It sold in four minutes.
The buyer's message came right after: Don't ship it. I will collect it myself, seven tomorrow morning. Please send the address.
She sent it, and cried a little, and then slept.
At seven the knock came, two knocks and a pause.
On her doorstep stood Captain Ji from the back of the room, in uniform, with her cloth folded over his arm.
"Wanning," he said, and he did not look at the order slip in his other hand.
She noticed that and decided he must have read it in the courier note.
"You," she said. "You're the buyer."
He walked past her without being asked and stopped in the bedroom doorway.
"Where is your bed?"
"You're standing next to it."
He took four brass tacks from his coat pocket.
He stood on her mattress in his boots, hung the cloth above her headboard, and set the loose corner straight with two fingers.
Then he stepped down and looked at her for the first time properly.
"That is meant for your husband," he said. "It is not meant for sale."
"I needed the rent."
"Then you should have asked me."
"I don't know you."
He took a bank slip from his pocket and laid it on her pillow.
It showed the six thousand yuan, paid in full. He did not ask for it back.
"Wen Zhe's pages reached my desk on Friday," Captain Ji said at her door. "I read them twice."
He turned to go.
"Someone else wrote the first forty episodes, Qiao Wanning. I know whose voice that is."
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