Chapter 2

It’s not about you, he didn’t laugh at all throughout the whole show, just sat like a log in the front row all night.

It’s perfectly normal for the audience not to laugh, it’s impossible to please everyone. But Gu Yi felt an unprovoked sense of frustration. The guy was handsome and sat in the front row, yet didn’t laugh—he was good-looking, but it felt too harsh. Why sit in the front row if you’re not going to laugh? Was he trying to humiliate the performer? Seeing that group photo from the show made her upset. She deleted it but couldn’t bring herself to fully let go. A guy that handsome... if she deleted it, she’d never have the chance to reminisce. But her face had blocked his—what was the point of reminiscing about the photo? Was she reminiscing about how unfunny she was but still had the audacity to post it?

She sent a message to Yu Dule: “The audience survey draws for lucky viewers, can you let me see it?”

“Why are you suddenly interested in helping me organize this?”

“Just want to see if anyone left a bad review about my stand-up.”

“Oh, I see. You mean the handsome guy in the front row who didn’t laugh, right?”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t fill it out, it seems.”

Gu Yi clicked her tongue: “Is my material just not funny?”

“Not exactly. It’s not about you; he didn’t laugh at all, just sat there like a wooden post in the front row all night.”

“Oh, a modern-day Tang Seng, specially coming to the Spider Cave to meditate. Has he been here before?”

“I don’t think so. Let me check. There were 60 people at this show, 58 feedback forms, so he probably didn’t fill it out. But you need to fill in your phone number when registering for the show, so if you really want to get his contact info, it’s not hard.”

“That sounds too creepy, forget it.” Gu Yi stretched, then adjusted her hair, realizing her hairpin was probably lost again. “Scattered card boy.” Yu Dule was still talking on the phone: “This is the first time in a year I’ve heard you show interest in a guy.”

“You always call yourself ‘Xijiao Xi Dao Xioujun’ (a famous line in Chinese slang), but I think he’s more like ‘Xiangyang Beilu Kimura Takuya’ last night.”

Yu Dule was indeed a handsome guy, but because he was so thin, people often misjudged his sexual orientation. Over time, he became quite gossipy: “They all say you’re a kept woman. You never dare wake up your roommate, your stand-up needs that poor persona, so you keep your identity hidden, telling jokes in a little bar for the audience, then go home and grovel before some big shot...”

Gu Yi sat up straight. “I really have—such a sensational reputation?”

“Because you get so drunk you can’t go home until late at night, and you’d rather die than wake up your roommate. Your private life is a complete mystery, so secretive.”

“Living a wealthy and extravagant life doesn’t hurt, my friend! All 206 of my bones are planted at society’s pain points. Where’s the money? In the look of longing in my eyes, maybe?” Gu Yi thought of her roommate and shook her head. “Don’t say that, after hearing it, I kind of think I’m capable. Women with rumors, so intense. I’ll hang up now, but if you get any news about that guy, let me know.”

“You’re still thinking about him?”

“I just want to know why he didn’t laugh. Not a single laugh, that’s unusual.”

Staring out the window, Gu Yi sighed. She lived on Huangxing Road, surrounded by elevator apartments and large units. The old-style three-bedroom units were odd, with a right-angle triangle shape between the living room and the kitchen. The 90-square-meter space had sunlight only in the two master bedrooms, and the smallest secondary bedroom didn’t even have room for a drying rack. The formaldehyde smell was strong, but Gu Yi had finally managed to air it out. Then she realized the window looked out at a hospital, which was considered very bad feng shui.

After taking a shower and preparing to leave, the narrow living room and kitchen were full of heat. Sure enough, as she reached the master bedroom, a warm breeze came from under the door. Gu Yi stood there for a moment—it wasn’t wrong; her roommate was at it again with the sweat steam. The two girls had bought a heated bath barrel for the balcony when they moved in. They didn’t hook it up to water pipes, but instead brought in a truckload of sand and poured it in. On holidays, they’d turn on the air conditioning and steam inside, supposedly to expel dampness and cold, and promote wellness. The results were unclear, but the atmosphere was there. The living room often smelled of fine sand and moxibustion. Gu Yi had once peeked through the door gap and seen the yellow bath barrel—it looked like wood, eerily similar to... a coffin without a lid. There were also artificial flower garlands hanging at the head of the bed, white and pink.

Some people are dead but still live on; some are still alive, yet...

The other pair of roommates was even scarier. The other master bedroom housed two men who went to work during the day and at night came back to recite the 50 sounds of the Japanese alphabet and read The Economist. Before bed, they’d pull the mattress onto the floor, one sleeping on the bed, the other on the mat. If you calculated, their per-person rent was cheaper than hers. Occasionally, when they needed personal space, one of them would come to the living room to study foreign languages. It seemed his memory wasn’t very good. Gu Yi had already memorized the 50 sounds, but he was still at it, reading Standard Japanese until it got thicker. The other guy would often sit on the wooden bed with no mattress, swiping on his phone. She knew that without a premium membership on Tinder, one could swipe right 50 times—a poverty-stricken “playboy’s pond” turned into a well.

None of this was a big deal, but the worst was that the roommate who loved swiping on Tinder had some intentions towards her. Among the five of them, this guy frequently suggested that Gu Yi join him in the master bedroom’s sand bath or that they could leave the door open and sleep without closing it at night. He also suggested swapping roommates, so Gu Yi could move into his room to share rent, thus avoiding moving the mattress. Gu Yi acted as if she hadn’t noticed, but recently, his behavior had become more brazen. One night when she returned late, she found him sitting in the living room playing games. He said, “I really want to go into your room.”

Gu Yi had some unpleasant memories but had never bothered to clarify them. If this roommate situation were discussed, it would most likely solidify the bad reputation. She shoved some clothes into her bag, shook the sand out of her shoes, and prepared to endure until the lease was up in three months.

She still had to work overtime on the weekend and go to an open mic in the evening—whenever there was an open mic, she never felt tired.

Gu Yi’s main job was as a writer for One Week magazine in the content department. The content was divided into two types: interviews and advertisements. In reality, there weren’t many people in the department, so everyone pitched in wherever needed, even helping out with fashion weeks. The interviews were written with elaborate language and a style that emphasized taste and the interviewee’s status, while the advertisements were done in comics or infographics, using quirky and imaginative ideas to promote brands and new products. She had interned at a TV station earlier, doing street interviews, and had learned video editing and conducting interviews in the editing room. Later, she switched to a talent agency, learning a lot about PR strategies, walking in high heels for a year and a half, until she got tired. By her third year, her classmates had moved on to short video and gaming companies, but to interact with people from different industries, she stayed in the job. Interviews and talking to people gave her material, and most of the time she could just sit in the office and slack off while writing jokes—comfortable.

When she arrived at the subway station at Eight Bridge, she glanced at Mr. X’s escape room near the entrance. Surrounded by people her age—while others played escape room games, she was working overtime, giving it her all. Today, her assignment was an interview with a Hong Kong fashion blogger and a local home décor brand. The audio transcript was confusing, harder than escape room puzzles. When she got to the office, she wasn’t in the right mood. She flipped through the newly arrived magazines, and by chance opened Ideal Home. She didn’t find any financial secrets, but she got a call from Yu Dule—someone was missing from the open mic, and after drinking until four or five in the morning, he crashed his shared bike and fell into a ditch, then went to the hospital for an orthopedic checkup.

Gu Yi wasn’t surprised at all: “Didn’t you finish writing your material?”

“My material’s been submitted.”

“Damn!”

“It’s just a performance, why are you swearing?”

“No, I saw that guy who didn’t laugh!”

In an interview titled Online Space vs. Offline Space: The Self-Destruction of Urbanites, the subject of the interview was the man who didn’t laugh, named Liang Daiwen. The article discussed his ideas on furniture design, with a focus on the compression of space and its impact on people. The photos and his actual appearance were similar, with his salt-and-pepper features, straight brows, eyes that looked at the camera without much effort, a straight nose with a delicate mole on the left side, thick and curved lips, and short hair with a slight fringe. He wore a gray shirt with a silver necklace, and you could almost smell the woody fragrance of his cologne from the picture. While other interviewees in the magazine wore clothes and expressions suited to Lohas and Lifestyle Weekly, he was suited for NYLON.

Some people’s faces are like clothing—so distinctive and eye-catching that you don’t even notice what they’re wearing. Gu Yi made a point of looking carefully this time—this man was indeed handsome. His cheekbones were sharp, and there weren’t any lines from smiling, so it could be concluded that he likely didn’t smile during work either.

“Where is he? Where did you see him?” Yu Dule asked over the phone.

“In the magazine…”

“Oh. You might as well say you saw him in your dreams. I’m telling you, don’t fall for the audience. Audiences are real, they come to have fun, not to look for a partner. Comedians aren’t sexy.”

Yu Dule, who started doing stand-up comedy the same year as her, was the same age as Gu Yi, and they had always gotten along well. They both interned at a TV station, with Yu Dule starting a year earlier, wearing a sweatshirt and knit hat with a bit of a Beijing accent. He generously taught her everything in the editing room, and the tough, lean times were survived on the boss’s empty promises. Now, he worked as a bar manager at Ounce and was quite happy. He often joked that if he ever got tired of working hard, he’d find a rich older sister and live a life without worrying about food or drink.

However, his pride had been tempered by society, and Yu Dule had developed a character that didn’t easily trust others.

Gu Yi sniffed. “Can I crash at Ounce for a few days, to get away from my roommates?”

“Don’t want to be kept?” Yu Dule asked teasingly.

“Isn’t that your grand ambition?”

“I’ve figured you out—you really like this Kimura Takuya, you’re even thinking of ditching the big shot.”

After hanging up the phone, Gu Yi looked at the photo and snapped the magazine shut. “Tonight, you’ll find out why.”

She was planning to talk about her roommates tonight—she had so much to say about renting. Her only hope was that no one familiar would hear these funny anecdotes; it would be too embarrassing. She wrote a two-thousand-word article for her public account, sending a couple of joke ideas to her file transfer assistant every time she wrote a new line. By the time the article was done, the jokes were finished too. She compiled the random jokes into a document and transferred it back to her file assistant, nervously checking the profile picture, worried that a fellow comedian might have changed their avatar and name to steal her material.

“Today, let’s talk about renting. How many of you here are renting? Look, so many hands up—of course, you’re all here to watch this.” Gu Yi pointed to the audience, and laughter immediately followed. The opening line was very offensive, but the audience was used to it.

“Renting or living alone in a big city is normal; it’s not normal to buy a house at our age. My family has never been well-off. When I was in college, my mom didn’t pay her social insurance to help me graduate. After I graduated, I rented a place with a classmate, sharing a bed. After saving for two years, I paid for my mom’s social insurance. When I was first looking for a place, I was really naive—I aimed for an elevator apartment with three bedrooms on Nanjing West Road. When I saw the rent listed as 4000, I thought I was about to start living a luxurious life like in ‘The Little Times,’ dreaming about it every day. Later, I found out it was a scam by the agency, specially targeting fresh graduates, so I had to downgrade to a partitioned room. My budget for renting was so low that I couldn’t even afford a room in a three-bedroom, two-living room place. I ended up in the smallest room in a ‘seven-partition corridor.’“

She continued with the laughter, “Yeah, later, I found an old apartment in Daining with a 37-square-meter deeded area, but when you open the door, you hit a wall. It’s not much different from getting hit in society, and I could always hit a wall at home too. At that time, my roommate was pretty cooperative—she worked the night shift while I worked the day shift, so we barely lived together except on weekends. The only pain was that she liked writing fanfiction. Sometimes, when she got really into it, I’d hear her typing away on the keyboard in bed. I’d lie down, and it felt like I hadn’t finished my workday yet—like I was still on the clock, day shift and night shift together… After two financially strained years, when I finally had more time and money, I immediately freed myself from living with a roommate. I thought, finally, I could have my own room. Zhiyou, you know? Because renting one room means you don’t have to worry, and the landlord deals with everything. After that, things weren’t under my control anymore.”

She went on, “Every roommate had some weird habits. My first roommate loved cooking, but every dish was burnt. One day, through the door crack, I thought I was being cremated. Later, I changed roommates again, and the new one didn’t like to take out the trash. The smell of rotting fruit and moldy stuff would leak through the door crack. One time, I watched a video about the Ganges cremation rituals, and the more I thought about it, the more scared I became. I thought, ‘I better knock on the door and make sure she’s alive.’ Well, alive, of course. I reflected and realized that maybe I wasn’t paying much rent, so I upgraded by just a few hundred to a bigger north-facing room. My new roommate filled the balcony with sand, supposedly for a sand bath and high-temperature yoga. Once, she invited me to watch it—turns out, the heated air conditioning was dry, and she was buried in the sand, only her face sticking out. Sometimes, I felt like I was in a dream. I could feel everything from cremation to sky burial to burial at home, and now, with late-night palpitations, I almost felt like I was embracing death. You wouldn’t believe me, but every time I pressed the keypad lock, it felt so tragic, and that sound reminded me—here we go—let’s die together.”

The audience was laughing hysterically, some even slapping their thighs. Reflecting on her roommates, Gu Yi sighed, and the laughter grew even louder. “I rented from Zhiyou for two or three years because it was cheaper, facing north, and I never wanted to leave. I thought, maybe if I meet a good roommate, we could develop something. Later, I saw the roommates change in the app. Two men and two women. I thought, this is it! When I moved in, I was so excited. A three-bedroom, one-living room apartment for five people—was this a love apartment or what? But it turned out to be one gay couple, and one lesbian couple, and suddenly I felt super safe. I even started wondering if I should break my own bottom line, so I could get a chance with both rooms...”

The last part was made up. Yu Dule had once said that Northeast people’s genes were naturally funny, especially when they were poor, because their jokes always mixed humor with tears. Gu Yi didn’t want to accept the second part, though. Was it only poverty that made jokes funny? Well, she’d never seen a rich person cry. But as she saw the audience applauding for her bizarre roommate stories, she couldn’t argue with that. The curtain call felt even more melancholic.

When she lifted her head, the stage lights came on, and the audience in the back row, who had been unclear earlier, now all had expressions. She waved to prepare to leave, but she noticed the man from the first row who hadn’t laughed last time—he was sitting in the back. This time, he had a name and a face. His name was Liang Daiwen. His hair covered his eyebrows, and even while drinking, his eyes were still on himself.

He still wasn’t smiling!