Chapter 1: The Ninth Month After the Expulsion Notice

The last Friday of September, the table tennis room on the third floor of Xiangyang Elementary School was as stifling as a steamer. A typhoon had just passed, but the weather hadn't cooled down; instead, it had trapped all the humidity inside the building. The room was a converted old classroom, the walls painted green halfway up, the lower half pitted and scarred from countless ball strikes, exposing the raw concrete beneath.

Only three of the six tables were still standing. The other three had their legs removed and leaned against the wall, topped with old scoreboards and a half-opened box of training balls. The air smelled of rubber and sweat. The electric fan on the wall spun listlessly, pushing out hot air, its blades trembling under a layer of accumulated dust.

A few washed rubber sheets were drying on the windowsill, their edges curling like withered ears. Condensation clouded the glass, reducing the plane trees outside to fuzzy silhouettes. The sideline of the table nearest the door had a crack where the white paint was peeling, looking like a dried scar.

Chen Ling crouched on the floor picking up balls, tossing them one by one into a plastic basket. They had rolled everywhere; some had wedged themselves under the table legs, forcing him to lean in and reach deep with his entire arm. As he squatted, his right knee hit the floor first, a sharp twinge from an old injury echoing inside. Two dented balls remained at the bottom of the basket; he picked them out and tossed them into a wastepaper box in the corner.

The word "Scrap" was written on the edge of the box, the ink blurred by the dampness. A drop of sweat fell from his chin to the floor, creating a small dark spot that vanished almost instantly in the heat. His knees grew sore from crouching, and they popped loudly when he stood up.

He gathered the last of the balls into the basket and pulled a worn, curled Training Notebook from his pocket. He flipped to the last page, which read: *Month nine of removal. Spare session 114.* He had pressed too hard with the pen, poking a hole through the paper. He tried to smooth it out with his thumb, but the hole remained.

The previous hundred-plus pages were densely packed with dates, session numbers, and the forehand error rates of every child, the handwriting growing smaller and smaller as it squeezed into the grids. The earliest pages were in a different hand—back then, he had been recording his own training volume.

Outside, the playground was empty. The bell hadn't rung yet. The white lines on the track had faded to pale ghosts, and the rope atop the flagpole tapped against the metal pole in the wind—click, click. He stuffed the notebook back into his pocket, picked up the basket, and walked toward the corner, unplugging the ball machine on his way. Tomorrow was Saturday; the after-school clubs wouldn't be meeting.

A single ball remained stuck in the machine's chute, the head frozen mid-turn, as if it had simply forgotten what to do.

Someone was standing in the doorway. Chen Ling saw the shadow first, stretching across the floor and cutting the light in half. It was a man in his forties wearing a dark gray windbreaker, clutching a phone. The screen was lit, aimed directly at Chen Ling’s face. A crack ran across the corner of the screen, slashing from the top left to the bottom right like a thin bolt of lightning.

Chen Ling caught the scent of rain on him, mixed with the damp smell of the windbreaker. He didn't know how long the man had been standing there, but he noticed a ring of dried, yellowish-brown mud caked on the man's shoes—the kind of mud that only came from the outskirts of town.

The man held the phone forward. On the screen was a screenshot of a news article. The headline had been cropped out, leaving only a blurry profile photo and half a sentence: *Provincial Team announcement: Athlete Chen, due to...*

"It's you, isn't it?" the man asked, his voice low. "My son studied under you for three months." When he said "three months," his Adam's apple bobbed, as if the words were something he had to force down his throat. Chen Ling glanced at the screenshot, set the basket on the floor, and said, "It's me."

He didn't ask where it came from or who had shared it. He had seen this screenshot four times in the last six months, and each time it had been blurrier than the last.

"Come with me to the principal's office." The man turned and walked away, then paused after two steps to look back. "Don't try to run."

Chen Ling didn't run. He straightened the basket and slotted the paddles back into the rack one by one before following him downstairs. There were eleven paddles in the rack, all left there by students. He could tell whose was whose just by touch, knowing every quirk and flaw. One of the grips was loose, so he instinctively wrapped a few turns of tape around it.

The sound-activated lights flickered on one by one as he walked down the hall. A class was still in session next door; the teacher's voice drifted through the door, the words indistinct, though he could make out the line "The sunset clouds and the lone duck fly together," read very slowly. Chen Ling peeked through the small glass window in the door. The seat by the window in the third row was empty. He lightened his step as he passed, afraid of tracking water from his soles into the classroom.

An open workbook lay on that empty desk, its pages fluttering one by one as a breeze seeped through the window gap.

The office at the end of the hall was open. The principal was pouring water for a woman with permed hair; when he saw Chen Ling enter, the cup stopped mid-air. The water was fresh, steam rising and instantly fogging the sides of the glass. A ceremonial banner hung on the wall with the words "A Garden of Students" in faded ink, dated several years ago.

A row of certificates sat beneath the banner. The most recent one was from a district competition three years ago, the glass frame coated in dust. The second hand of the wall clock ticked loudly—*click, click*—each beat feeling like a countdown. The water dispenser let out a gurgle. The man in the windbreaker spoke first: "Principal, I don't care how you hired him, but this man cannot teach my son."

The woman with the permed hair jumped in quickly: "Our child is applying as an Athletic Student next month. If he trains with someone like this, it'll be a scandal even if he gets in."

As she spoke, she dropped her bag onto her lap, the metal clasp hitting the coffee table with a sharp *ding*. She didn't look at Chen Ling once, as if by refusing to see him, she could make him cease to exist.

The principal set down his water cup, his face a mask of awkwardness. "Coach Chen is a temporary hire, just a per-hour contract..." He looked at Chen Ling. "Xiao Chen, about this..."

"I'm leaving," Chen Ling said. He kept his eyes on the cup of water on the desk, ignoring the two people in the room. The steam had died down, and a thin layer of white mineral scale floated on the surface. He remembered the day he left the Provincial Team nine months ago; there had been a cup of water just like this on the table, and no one had touched it. He'd known this day was coming, he just hadn't expected it to be the last Friday of September.

The office fell silent for two seconds. The ceiling fan spun—round and round. From downstairs, the distant shouts of children squeezed through the gaps in the window, muffled and indistinct.

The principal counted out eighteen bills from a drawer and pushed them across the desk, then added two more. "This is for the month. The extra is... for your trouble."

The bills were old, the edges soft, and one was held together with a piece of clear tape. As he reached the fifteenth bill, the principal's hand paused for a split second, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he didn't. Chen Ling folded the money, stuffed it into his pocket, said thanks, and turned to leave. Behind him, the man in the windbreaker spoke up: "See? This is how it should've been handled from the start."

No one answered him.

In the hallway, a skinny boy was crouching against the wall, clutching a racket. He stood up as Chen Ling emerged. "Coach Chen, are you coming back tomorrow?" The boy was short for his age; his school uniform sleeves were too long, rolled up twice. He had been crouching right in front of the office door—who knew for how long—and the fabric on his knees had been worn white.

The zipper on the boy's racket cover was half-broken, held together by a safety pin. The toes of his shoes were scuffed white, and one lace had snapped and been tied into a clumsy knot. Chen Ling noticed the part of the zipper held by the pin had been wrapped in clear tape, the edges now blackened with grime. Chen Ling paused. "No," he said. "I'm not."

The boy let out a long, drawn-out "Oh," and then fell silent. He held out his racket. "Then can you take a look? My forehand is still floating."

Chen Ling took it, feeling the face of the racket and pressing his finger into the rubber. "This blade is too stiff; get a softer one. The floating isn't your hand—it's your feet. You're not getting into position."

He handed the racket back. "Tell your dad to buy you a forty-degree one." The boy nodded vigorously, clutching the racket back to his chest, ignoring the safety pin digging into him. Chen Ling looked at him once more, then changed his mind about what he was going to say. "Move your feet first, then the hand follows."

From downstairs came the short, sharp blare of an electric scooter's horn. It was that old clunker he'd had for seven or eight years; the horn was raspy, the second beep even fainter than the first. Chen Ling looked out the window. Luo Tieshan was parking under a sycamore tree, half a bag of balls sitting in the basket. He looked up and yelled toward the third floor: "Chen Ling! What are you dawdling for? The evening shift starts at six!"

A few sycamore leaves had fallen onto the seat, but the old man didn't bother to brush them off. A small puddle had gathered under the tree, and the scooter's wheels splashed a few drops of mud as he pulled in. The old man nudged the balls deeper into the basket so they wouldn't roll out. He was wearing a faded red T-shirt with "Tieshan Gymnasium" printed on the front, though half the letters had peeled off, leaving only "Tieshan" and "Gym."

The old man's voice was booming, echoing through the entire hallway and triggering the motion-sensor lights to brighten. Chen Ling called back and headed down.

By the time he reached the second-floor landing, Luo Tieshan had already made it up, taking the stairs two at a time. His footsteps thudded, and his breathing was heavier than his stride. His knees were shot; he should have been using the railing, but the man refused to slow down, preferring to gasp for air. The old man came to a halt at the door of the principal's office just as the man in the windbreaker was walking out. They nearly collided.

"Who the hell are you?" The man stepped back half a pace. Luo Tieshan didn't move; he planted himself in the doorframe, blocking the exit completely. "Luo Tieshan, from Tieshan Gymnasium downstairs. I recognize this kid's talent. You people aren't fit to teach him."

He was half a head shorter than the man, but his shoulders were broad, standing there like a brick wall.

"What do you mean I—" "Do you even know what a fixed match is?" Luo Tieshan's voice suddenly spiked, booming through the corridor. "Have you seen him play? How many matches? Last year's provincial tournament, round of eight, who was he against, what was the score, and which set did he collapse in—can you tell me any of that?"

The man choked for a moment. "That's what they're saying online." "Online they probably say your son is making the National Team." As soon as that hit, the hallway went silent for a heartbeat. The woman with the permed hair poked her head out of the office to peek, then quickly ducked back inside.

The man followed the old man's gaze toward the end of the hallway. It was empty, with the motion-sensor lights clicking off one by one. "I'm not here to argue." The man put his phone away, the screen going dark, his tone softening slightly. "My son loves the game. I can't let him be with someone who..."