41. The Ladder Part 1

At the start of the second semester in past years, Lu Zhengming would always be caught up in graduation projects with the fourth-years. Besides worrying over the students, there were all kinds of meetings at the faculty, the department, and the studio. Teaching plans, academic events, and new rules cooked up on a whim by the administration. The list of trivial matters was endless.

Over the years, his once-edgy temperament had been smoothed out considerably. At the very least, when it came to dealing with these tasks, he could handle them as calmly and steadily as Yin Yan. But this semester, for once, he had luck on his side. He didn’t have to deal with any of it.

Somehow, Zhaohui had managed to poach two young lecturers from an institute down south. One of them had already made a small name for himself in the contemporary art scene. The other, though less impressive in terms of works, had a solid and engaging teaching style. Still, Zhaohui didn’t dare assign them to the lower-year students, afraid their offbeat methods would clash with the institute’s own approach and stir up another mess like the one Lu Zhengming had caused back in the day. Giving them the graduating class wasn’t an option either. Key projects needed to be overseen by someone reliable. After weighing all his options, the most suitable arrangement was to let them take over the third-years. These students already had a solid foundation and wouldn’t be easily led astray. At the same time, they were about to enter their practice phase, a perfect moment to broaden their horizons.

Lu Zhengming had been wanting to apply for time off to focus on his own work, but there hadn’t been enough hands on deck. This time, he finally had a good excuse and happily let go of the reins, giving the newcomers a chance to gain experience. For the entire semester, he had complete freedom. Aside from putting the final touches on his latest piece, he could also prepare it for exhibition. His agent had already locked in a venue. The first half of the year was off-season for exhibitions, so many galleries and museums had vacant halls waiting to be filled, giving him plenty of room to create.

And he didn’t disappoint. The work was completed smoothly, and he even managed to transport the fragile glass pieces safely to Beijing. The packaging plan drawn up by the glass factory’s engineer was airtight, and Lu Zhengming had gone the extra mile by hiring a driver who used to handle hazardous materials in tank trucks to transport the boxed artwork. The journey was stable from start to finish.

Lu Zhengming’s solo exhibition was held at a highly influential contemporary art center in the 798 Art District. The timing fell during the golden period for first-half-of-the-year exhibitions, around May Day.

With time, place, and people all aligned, success was almost guaranteed. After three years of silence, Lu Zhengming finally broke through his creative block and surpassed even his past self.

The gallery, which had remained dull all spring, was lit up by his vivid colored glass, and with it, the art criticism circles that had been quiet for nearly half a year. The pre-show interviews were translated into academic language and turned into articles, analyzing everything from a technical angle to a sociocultural one. Lu Zhengming didn’t bother reading the full texts. Just a glance at the headlines told him that their interpretations and his expression belonged to two completely different worlds.

The people who truly understood the work wouldn’t write such convoluted pieces. They would simply stand to the side, smile knowingly, or let out a soft sigh after a long silence.

In the middle of the noise and commotion, he pressed the loneliness back down into the bottom of his heart. For now.

The second time facing honor and attention, Lu Zhengming was far more composed. He no longer carried that excited, restless energy from years ago, nor did he let his sharpness leak out so openly. He presented himself like a mature artist, greeting visitors with calm humility, casually joking about his own work. At least, that was how it felt to him. But in the interview photos released by the media, his eyes looked no different from before. They still carried that same sharp edge.

That sharpness, perhaps, would never dull.

Yin Yan scrolled through the reposted reviews and interviews on Lu Zhengming’s Moments, smiling faintly as the thought emerged.

He liked Lu Zhengming’s edge. It was something he had never possessed, not even during the most hormonally charged years of adolescence. Back then, he had always been courteous, gentle, restrained, and soft-spoken, his roughness tucked deep out of sight.

There were plenty of likes and comments under Lu Zhengming’s post, mostly from colleagues and people in the same circle. Yin Yan left a reserved “Congratulations, Zhengming.” Just before sending it, for reasons even he couldn’t quite explain, he tapped the emoji panel on the left, picked a heart, and added it to the end before hitting send.

He imagined how Lu Zhengming might react to such a strange comment. A smile returned to his lips—one that lingered until the phone screen dimmed, reflecting his pale face next to that smile.

She prodded his spine with her insect limbs, just about to say something. Yin Yan spoke first.

“I know.”

But he didn’t delete the comment.

Yin Yan unlocked his phone and sent a WeChat message to Zhong Jingjing, congratulating her on her award at the provincial art exhibition.

A few minutes later, she replied, “Oh, I’m so embarrassed! Professor Yin, I should’ve been the one to congratulate you first on winning the Gold Prize!”

She added a sticker of a cat covering its face. She liked inserting these little images into conversations, and chatting with her never felt like talking to a colleague. It was more like chatting with a student.

Yin Yan sent back another sticker—a hand gently patting a cat’s head. It was one he had saved from the student group chat, something he sometimes used to communicate with them.

Zhong Jingjing followed up with a stream of flustered messages and, once again, offered to treat him to a meal.

“Afternoon tea,” Yin Yan replied. “I know a place. They have great cake and milk tea.”

Zhong Jingjing answered with a gleeful emoji. At her age, it was hard to say no to his suggestion.

This time, she wasn’t wearing heels. Beneath her pure white dress was a pair of soft pink ballet flats. The dessert shop was still a good distance away when she spotted Yin Yan waiting by the door. She jogged over, her backpack bouncing wildly on her back.

Yin Yan waved and smiled at her. “Careful. The path is uneven.”

Without her heels, Zhong Jingjing was noticeably shorter than usual. The aggressive edge she usually forced into her demeanor was gone, replaced by something softer.

She greeted him, and he opened the door for her. They walked into the shop together.

On the other side of the door, it felt like stepping into a different world. The place didn’t follow any trendy interior design. Everything inside, from the furniture to the light fixtures, came from secondhand markets or demolished houses. There were dark green velvet curtains, teak floors, round tables made of inlaid wood, and a velvet sofa the same shade as the curtains, its armrests draped with white lace doilies.

Zhong Jingjing burst into laughter the moment she sat down. “It looks just like the house I lived in when I was little.”

“Look at that round table,” Yin Yan said. “Doesn’t it remind you of the one in your parents’ place?”

Yin Yan handed the menu to Zhong Jingjing, who studied it while nodding. “Yeah, when my mom moved, the only thing she brought with her was that table.”

Zhong Jingjing’s mother had been one of Yin Yan’s professors during his undergraduate years. She didn’t have many works and rarely appeared at events. Among the classical painting faculty, she kept a low profile. She didn’t teach oil painting, mostly sketching to the lower-year students. Her health had never been good. There was always a shadow in her demeanor, and she rarely spoke to anyone. Yin Yan had been one of the rare exceptions. He always had a way of making people like him.

It was in Professor Zhong’s home that Yin Yan first encountered tempera painting. The meticulous, complex technique drew him in immediately. He could still recall one of her works—small in size, flawless in technique. It held its own against the better-known names in the studio.

He had only seen childhood photos of Zhong Jingjing. Never the real thing. Her mother had kept her in boarding school during those years. That empty home bore no sign of other residents. No pets either. The silence in that space had always felt excessive.

For those four years, Yin Yan had done quite a bit of assistant work for her, and a few other things too—like lifting heavy objects, the kind of tasks that are difficult for a woman living alone. One time, while reorganizing the studio at her request, he found an old sketchbook.

Yin Yan opened it quietly, thinking he might get a look at her early studies, but what he found were sketches of a man. Many of them. Different angles, different clothing, all the same person. Near the back were portraits of Professor Zhong herself, but in a completely different style, as if drawn by someone else entirely. He calmly returned the sketchbook to where it had been and pretended he had seen nothing.

Not long after, he came across a published artbook in the library and immediately recognized the man from the sketches. His name was Dai Wangyun, an alumnus of Pingyuan Academy of Fine Arts, now a well-known department head at a major art institute in Beijing. He would go on to become a deputy director at the National Academy of Painting.

Yin Yan kept that secret to himself—until Professor Zhong died and Zhong Jingjing returned to Pingyuan.

“Now Dai Wangyun’s talking about ‘making amends’? Where the hell was he when my mom was alive?” Zhong Jingjing scoffed, stabbing into a freshly served piece of cake. Her tone was sharp, but the moment she took a bite, her face lit up like a giddy schoolgirl. “This is really good!”

Yin Yan smiled and ordered a pot of floral fruit tea to cut through the sweetness, then waited until she was finished. “Have you thought about what you want to do next?”

Zhong Jingjing clutched her dessert fork, unsure what he meant.

“You don’t have to be grateful, but you also don’t need to reject his help outright,” Yin Yan said, pouring her a cup of tea. “He owes you. You’re not out of line for taking whatever you want from him.”

Zhong Jingjing washed the sweetness down with tea, but her expression, which had just relaxed, tensed right back up. “Of course I want to make something of myself, to show him I can do just fine without him. Dai Wangyun never raised me, never taught me a thing about painting. Now he’s old and suddenly realizes I’m his only daughter, so he wants to trade in power for affection…”

She let out a snort. “I don’t want to give him that satisfaction.”

Yin Yan looked at her gently and sighed. “You’re just like your mother.”

“He says that too.”

Yin Yan sipped his black tea.

Zhong Jingjing leaned forward slightly, her tone serious. “Professor Yin, you’re not like him. I don’t want to go to the Academy because I can’t stand Beijing’s art scene. It’s way too hierarchical, I wouldn’t survive there. But you should go. With your skill, staying in Pingyuan is a waste.”

Yin Yan gave a modest smile. “That’s kind of you, but if I really did go, I probably wouldn’t even get a word in.”

“How could that be? You paint better than some of the people running the Academy,” she said.

“It’s not that simple.” Yin Yan shook his head. “To reach that level, you need more than just skill with a brush…”

“Well, I already recommended you to him.”

Yin Yan looked at her, his fingers slowly interlacing.

Zhong Jingjing held her teacup in both hands, head lowered, cheeks slowly turning red. “I told him… if he could get you to come to Beijing too, then I’d consider his offer…”

“Xiao Zhong.” Yin Yan’s expression turned serious. “I can’t accept that.”

“I know you don’t actually have a girlfriend. You said that just to turn me down…” Zhong Jingjing looked up, desperate, her eyes rimmed with red. “But I… I just…”

“Don’t,” Yin Yan said. His knuckles had gone pale from how tightly he was gripping his own hands. He could hardly bring himself to meet her eyes. “Don’t say any more, Xiao Zhong.”

An unexplainable sense of agitation gripped him.

Everything was unfolding exactly as he had hoped. Faster, even. He had been carefully paving the way, working the art academy circuit, leveraging his award from the national exhibition, and maintaining his relationship with Zhong Jingjing. He had planned to gradually build a connection to Dai Wangyun through her. But the man had simply taken him straight to the finish line.

Yin Yan tried to retrace every step. Helping Zhong Jingjing stay on at the academy. Verifying her background. Using her to initiate contact with Dai Wangyun. Every move had followed the rhythm perfectly. The only variable he hadn’t accounted for was Zhong Jingjing herself.

He remembered being cautious, careful not to cross any lines, never giving her any reason to think there was ambiguity between them. So how had things ended up like this?

He could have played the part. It wasn’t beyond him. Being the good guy was something he knew how to do, if he really wanted to, but he had no interest in it. He didn’t see it as a burden, just something not worth the effort.

Yet at this moment, he couldn’t bring himself to keep up the act.

Yin Yan took a deep breath. He knew he was about to say something stupid, do something even dumber. The spider behind him would never forgive this. But still… still… He closed his eyes, and Lu Zhengming’s face surfaced once more. Yin Yan exhaled, and said.

“I’m sorry, Xiao Zhong. I’m gay.”

“Professor Yin…”

Yin Yan sank into the sofa, weighed down by an exhaustion so deep he couldn’t bring himself to move. Just one light sentence, and it had snapped the ladder he had so carefully built upward. If he ever wanted to climb again, there would be no shortcut like this.

Zhong Jingjing smiled gently, considerately. “You don’t have to give me an excuse to save face, Professor Yin. I’ve known for a while that you don’t have feelings for me. I just couldn’t let it go. I wanted to try again… Of course, I know you’re not that kind of person. It was wrong of me to test you this way… I’m sorry.”

By now, all Yin Yan could do was offer a bitter smile.

“But I didn’t lie to you. Dai Wangyun really is interested in you. If there’s a chance, the two of you should meet… Think of it as my way of repaying you for teaching me to paint.”

Her eyes were bright, sincere. For a moment, they reminded him so much of Lu Zhengming’s eyes.

Lu Zhengming again.

Suddenly, his stomach began to ache. The smile on his face grew more and more strained.

“Professor Yin, are you okay?”

“Probably my stomach acting up. It’s nothing. I’ll take some medicine.”

Under her worried gaze, Yin Yan went to the counter to pay. He called a car for her, forced himself to act light and cheerful as he saw her off. Then he returned to the shop, sat down in a soft chair, face pale, and sent a message to Lu Zhengming:

Send me your address.

While waiting for a reply, he opened the flight booking app and bought a plane ticket to Beijing for that same night.