Xia Lei finished compiling the Distributor Incentive Reward Statistics, and handed it to Kong Sheng for review.

Kong Sheng read through it carefully, marking the distributors with clearly inflated figures in blue circles, then marking the cautiously wait-and-see ones in red circles: “Next month, we need more blue circles and aim to eliminate the red ones.”

Xia Lei nodded. He understood that the distributors had been lured by the bait of rebate incentives onto the gambling table, and had each thrown in their first batch of chips to varying degrees — but the house, Kong Sheng, thought it too little, and wanted to coax them into throwing more chips next month.

“The first round’s incentive rebate is 20%, right?” Kong Sheng answered his own question. “Looking at this situation, the second round needs adjustment.”

“Then increase the force, change the second round to 25%?” Xia Lei asked.

“Exactly the opposite — change it to 15%!” Kong Sheng leaned back in his chair and waved his hand.

“How can we lower the incentive?” Xia Lei suspected he’d heard wrong. “If it goes lower they won’t be enthusiastic anymore.”

“Don’t look at the numbers — look at the logic behind the numbers, look at the signal being released.” Kong Sheng twirled the marker in his hand. “Very simple reasoning: everyone is making judgments about expectations. The first round was already 20%. If the second round is 25%, then distributors will think — maybe the third round will be 30%? The further along it goes, the better it gets, so there’s actually no urgency to increase their bets in the second round.”

“Conversely, the first round is 20%, the second round drops to 15%, everyone might predict the third round will be 10% — the further along, the thinner the margins. Better to deliver all your chips in the second round,” Xia Lei reasoned along Kong Sheng’s line of thinking.

“Right — chasing rises and cutting losses,” Kong Sheng said. “In business, the game is always about playing human nature. A lot of scarcity marketing works the same way.”

“Hearing you explain it like that, I’m reminded of new building launches. Last week I went to look at an apartment and the sales agent only let us view the unit for three minutes before chasing us out — could that be scarcity marketing?”

“Specific situations need specific analysis,” Kong Sheng advised. “Look at the broader market and policy first. Shanghai will soon implement purchase restrictions — that’s the fundamental reason. By the way, you’d better move quickly on buying an apartment. A lot of well-informed professional investors are stockpiling properties.”

“Thank you for the pointer, Boss!” Xia Lei admired Kong Sheng’s perceptiveness — on many matters, Kong Sheng could see straight to the essence of things.

As their work discussion drew to a close, Xia Lei said finally: “Boss, I’d like to take my annual leave next week to go back home one last time.”

“Why the last time?” Kong Sheng asked, puzzled.

“The military-industrial factory back home has gone bankrupt. It will soon be abandoned, and the workers are currently being dispersed and relocated,” Xia Lei said. “I want to go back and see my teachers and classmates, the friends I grew up with.”

“I can see you’re a person who values loyalty,” Kong Sheng said. “Then take your leave as soon as you can.”

After booking the tickets, Xia Lei and Xiao Dan went to the shopping mall to buy gifts for Xiao Man and Chunchun. When the two of them grew tired from walking around, they sat down at a beverage bar to drink fruit juice and rest their feet.

“Has work been going well lately?” Xiao Dan asked Xia Lei.

“I’ve stopped feeling anxious about it.”

“How so? Has Kong Sheng’s scheme to fleece people stalled?”

“Quite the opposite — the plan is going very smoothly,” Xia Lei said. “I feel that Kong Sheng’s view of things is quite accurate. I might have misunderstood him before.”

“Oh no. Stockholm syndrome. You’ve been immersed in the scheming for too long and it’s started to seem reasonable to you.” Xiao Dan said, worried.

“I think that Kong Sheng’s approach is firstly legal — he’s only exploiting weaknesses in human nature, which can be understood as a business technique. All is fair in business, and those who take the bait do so willingly.” Xia Lei explained.

“It seems that if I don’t pull you out, you’ll genuinely get sucked in,” Xiao Dan laughed and shook her head.

“How about this — let’s simulate a debate, the two of us. I’ll take Kong Sheng’s perspective and see whether I can persuade you.” Xia Lei took a sip of watermelon juice to clear his throat. “The debate topic: should moral judgment be applied to legal commercial conduct.”

“Bring it on,” Xiao Dan raised her straw. “I’ll take you apart completely.”

“To begin with — if we only talk about moral judgment, we might as well go back to the dogmatic era of the Middle Ages: famines, burning at the stake, the Crusades, the Black Death… It is precisely the development of commerce that gave us the Renaissance and modern civilization, electricity and telephones. Therefore, commerce is what drives human progress.” Xia Lei said.

“Wow, Xia Lei, you’re ambitious — opening a debate with stakes that big?” Xiao Dan thought for a moment. “Then I’ll offer a simple counterexample. The Opium War and the slave trade — how do you answer that?”

“Alright, I’ll concede that round,” Xia Lei surrendered quickly. “The opposing side may state their case.”

“Look at Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice — the unscrupulous moneylender is condemned by all of society,” Xiao Dan argued. “Social Darwinism, the law of the jungle, has been criticized countless times already. Good business must not do evil.”

“That’s not a contradiction either — they’re actually two different domains. In the domain of life-or-death survival and basic sustenance, upholding morality is undoubtedly correct. But beyond sustenance, how to eat well and dress well — that falls into the domain of development, which is about capability and competition. A merchant facing business questions is a merchant, not a saint, and cannot show false benevolence like Duke Xiang of Song, who ended up losing supporters through excessive chivalry.”

Xiao Dan thought it over and conceded some ground: “The tone of this debate, if set too high, becomes sanctimony, and if too low, it becomes animalism. Ultimately it still comes down to the individual.”

“What do you mean, comes down to the individual?”

“Specifically in Kong Sheng’s case, just follow your own nature and make a choice. As long as you can achieve a reasonable inner consistency, that’s enough.”

Xia Lei understood. He sighed and said: “Perspective determines viewpoint. If I weren’t a beneficiary in this, I might not defend Kong Sheng either.”

“You can also choose to exit this game.”

“I can’t exit — the new apartment still has a mortgage.”

“Then we won’t live in a big apartment. I can live in a small one too — and live with a clear conscience.”

“The person who married me shouldn’t have to live in a small apartment,” Xia Lei said. “Living poorly is the biggest failure of inner consistency.”

After finishing their juices, the two of them were silent for a moment, each feeling the other’s argument had some merit. In the end, Xiao Dan concluded: “Forget the debate — let’s rest our brain cells and sleep early. We still have a long journey tomorrow.”

Xia Lei also nodded: “By rights we’re not going back to Xi Tie Cheng until tomorrow, yet I already feel a kind of anxious shyness at approaching home!”

The next day at noon, Xia Lei and Xiao Dan’s flight landed in Shenyang. The two of them left the airport and went straight to the train station, and it was already four in the afternoon when they arrived in Tie Cheng. Taxi drivers in the station forecourt were actively soliciting passengers. Xiao Dan stepped forward to negotiate: “Xi Tie Cheng — sixty yuan for the whole trip, deal?”

“No, at least seventy.”

“Why seventy?” Xia Lei moved Xiao Dan aside and switched to a Xi Tie Cheng factory accent. “We’re going home — sixty yuan, take it or leave it?”

“OK, let’s go!”

When the car drove through the Xi Tie Cheng factory boundary, looking out the car window, the streets were nearly empty and all the shops had their shutters down; the windows of many buildings were already broken. Though the two of them had braced themselves for this, their hearts were still flooded with waves of desolation.

“I’m back!” Xiao Dan couldn’t hold back her tears.

The taxi turned two corners and ahead of them stood Xiao Man and Chunchun, waiting to welcome them. Xiao Dan raised her eyes and fixed them on the approaching Xiao Man — she saw that her former lover was standing with a straight back, his hair slightly unkempt, a white towel tied around his neck, looking like a hard-working Japanese chef.

Xiao Dan promptly pressed her knuckles gently against the corners of her eyes to keep the tears from falling again. She knew that these years had been lonely and difficult for Xiao Man — laid off, working odd jobs, going abroad, falling ill and being hospitalized. The handsome young man of their school days had been worn down into an ordinary, unremarkable person; the wind and frost had added several new wrinkles to his face. Yet his smile was still the same as before — warm and familiar.

When the car stopped, Xia Lei got out first and embraced Xiao Man warmly, then turned to take Xiao Dan’s arm as she stepped out. Xiao Man stepped forward and took Xiao Dan’s hand, tilting his head to ask Xia Lei: “If I hold it a little longer, do you mind?”

“Fine you — pay up!” Xia Lei said with a grin.

“You need a receipt for that!” Xiao Man joked back, then turned and introduced Chunchun to Xiao Dan: “The mistress of my home — Chunchun.”

“Hello, Xiao Dan sister!” Chunchun said excitedly, reaching out to take Xiao Dan’s hand. “You’re even prettier than in the pictures, you know.”

“Not at all — look at that young girl’s face of yours, how I envy you.” Xiao Dan said, putting her arm around Chunchun’s waist.

The four of them chatted and laughed their way into Xiao Man’s home. Stewed dishes had been prepared in advance in the kitchen, and the fish and chicken were already filling the air with their aroma. Xiao Dan volunteered to tie on an apron and slice the bean jelly noodles and hot peppers, then she and Chunchun watched together as Xia Lei and Xiao Man made the snow-floss red bean paste.

Beating the egg-foam batter was the first step in making snow-floss red bean paste. Since Xiao Man’s home had no electric mixer, chopsticks served in its place. Chunchun tried in the middle of the process, and within less than a minute her wrist had gone numb. “You have to beat the egg whites in one continuous motion without stopping, otherwise they’ll lose their structure and go watery,” Xiao Man said as he sprinkled in the starch and kept beating until the egg whites turned into a semi-solid foam. Meanwhile Xia Lei had already rolled the bean paste into balls the size of glutinous rice dumplings and passed them to Xiao Man to coat in the foam batter, then set them into a pan of oil on low heat to fry slowly until the batter puffed up evenly into a snowy fleece.

“This dish was taught to me personally by Xia’s father. I ate many meals at Xia Lei’s home when I was growing up,” Xiao Man told Chunchun.

“Back in those days, Xiao Man was the fastest in the world at setting up a folding table at my house!” Xia Lei laughed at the memory.

“Back in those days, Xiao Man’s schoolbag might not have a pen, but it was guaranteed to have chopsticks in it,” Xiao Dan also laughed. “We all used to call him the Son of Xi Tie Cheng.”

All the dishes were set out on the table. Chunchun poured drinks for everyone, and she asked Xia Lei: “Xiao Man says you two were secretly drinking baijiu together in middle school — is that true?”

“It is. I believe it was second year of middle school. Right at this table, if I remember correctly.” Xia Lei said.

“Did you have anything to go with the drinks?” Xiao Dan asked.

“I don’t think there were any dishes — what did we use as a snack?” Xia Lei couldn’t remember.

“I’ll give you a hint,” Xiao Man stood up and shook the room door back and forth.

“Walnuts! That’s right — walnuts!” Xia Lei had a sudden realization. “That winter, Xiao Man and I used the door to crack over a hundred walnuts and completely loosened the door hinges!”

“Friends returning to their hometown must drink their hometown wine,” Xiao Man raised his glass and proposed a toast. “Come, come — the first cup, to our former times!”

After dinner, Xiao Man accompanied Xia Lei to the First Residential District to see the old house, leaving Xiao Dan and Chunchun to rest in the room and apply face masks.

The furnishings in Xiao Man’s room were arranged just as they’d always been. Xiao Dan found a small globe on the bookshelf — the gift she had given Xiao Man. The inscription on the base, “From Magellan of Class Two, Grade One, High School”, was still clearly visible.

Chunchun leaned in to look at the globe too, and asked curiously: “Is this Magellan a classmate of yours?”

“Magellan is me. I gave one each to Xiao Man and Xia Lei, with a promise that when we grew up we’d travel around the world together.”

“You were all so romantic back then. Xiao Man has never mentioned it.”

“Perhaps Xiao Man himself has forgotten.”

“Xiao Dan sister, may I ask you something a bit presumptuous?” Chunchun hesitated, then finally said it aloud. “Did you really have feelings for Xiao Man before?”

“Yes.” Xiao Dan said with a smile.

“If time could flow back, would you and Xiao Man still have parted?”

“I think we would have, yes.”

“May I ask something even more presumptuous — why wasn’t it Xia Lei you liked back then?”

“Silly girl, the time was different, the frame of mind was different,” Xiao Dan flicked the tip of Chunchun’s nose lightly. “As long as every feeling you have is genuinely heartfelt and sincere, that’s enough.”

“Can time really change a person that much?” Chunchun asked wistfully.

“It changes a great deal, of course — though not everything.”

Xiao Man and Xia Lei rode their bicycles through the vast emptiness of Xi Tie Cheng. There were no more streetlights on the roads; Xia Lei held a flashlight in one hand while pedaling, and asked Xiao Man: “Have you and Chunchun talked about marriage?”

“Chunchun is still young. I’ll wait a bit longer.”

“How did the two of you get started?”

“Strangely enough, from the second time I met Chunchun, I felt not only fondness but also tenderness — a kind of protectiveness.”

“Why?”

“Her situation was something others couldn’t understand, but I could. Perhaps it’s what they call sympathy between kindred spirits.”

The two rode to the First Residential District, where the once-familiar buildings now stood in decay and ruin. Xia Lei’s family home had vines growing through the iron window grating; since his parents had moved to Shanghai’s Zhuanqiao district, the old apartment had remained locked.

“I always feel that when I’m old, I’ll come back to live here,” Xia Lei said, rolling up his sleeves, clearing away the vines.

“By then, the house will either have been torn down or collapsed on its own,” Xiao Man said, starting to climb the heating pipes along the wall. “Forget clearing it up — let’s climb the heating pipes one more time.”

“Yes — this might be the last time we ever stand here,” Xia Lei stopped what he was doing.

“Sitting here, I can picture all the lights from before,” Xiao Man sat on the pipes as he had in childhood, legs dangling, pointing to various spots from memory. “The plum tree outside Feng the Model Worker’s house at the first entry of the alleyway, the earthquake shelter Old Chen’s family built at the second entry, the double-happiness character pasted on the newlyweds’ window on the second floor of Building A, the sauerkraut crock that was always sitting by the staircase. I can remember the lights of every one of these homes. I also remember that Wu the Model Worker’s family in the middle of the second floor didn’t often draw their curtains, and next door Old Si’s couple — whenever they had a fight the whole building could hear it. Old Si’s wife, when she lost her temper, would throw the television out the window.”

“I can picture it all too,” Xia Lei also climbed up the heating pipes and sat with his back to Xiao Man. “The alleyway behind — there was a warehouse with tarpaper roofing, the pump room by the South Shaolin temple, the Yang family vegetable garden where we used to steal gourds, up the hillside at Old Mao’s place there was a sheep pen, and we used to go up on the roof to look at the stars and practice howling like wolves.”

“Tonight’s stars look exactly the same as when we were children,” Xiao Man said, gazing upward.

“Remarkable — in Shanghai you simply can’t see this many stars,” Xia Lei agreed.

The starry river turned overhead, the Milky Way dimly visible, and the two of them felt as though they had returned to childhood.

“People say that for every person on earth there’s a corresponding star in the sky. Which stars are ours?” Xia Lei asked.

“You and Xiao Dan are both in the Milky Way,” Xiao Man said. “Because Beijing and Shanghai are like the Milky Way — where all the finest talents of the country gather.”

“How could I count as any kind of talent? I’m just a cog in a capital machine, every day is pressure and wear… This time coming back, I brought some worries from work with me. But fortunately tonight, sitting here with you looking at the stars and thinking of the most simple and pure happiness of before, I’ve finally started to figure things out.”

“Figured what out?”

“Look — neighboring stars within the same constellation may actually be extremely far apart in real space, while two stars that appear to gaze at each other from great distances may actually be very close together.”

“Because constellations… are a flat illusion?”

“Exactly. Life is the same way — it’s easy to fall into the illusion of flatness,” Xia Lei said. “Many people confine themselves to a coordinate plane, measured by material things, bound by vanity, frequently anxious, always afraid of losing what they have. They forget the inner freedom of being human, they forget the three-dimensional sky.”

The following day, the four of them visited Teacher Tong and her husband together. Teacher Tong and Teacher Xu had one last wish — to climb White Horse Mountain one more time.

White Horse Mountain was the highest peak of the continuous range surrounding Xi Tie Cheng, and from the summit you could look down over all of Xi Tie Cheng. All six of them set off without delay. Xiao Man dismantled the last two floor mops from Teacher Tong’s home, removing the wooden handles to serve as walking sticks for the old couple, and together they climbed along the winding mountain path, stopping and resting as they went, until after an hour they finally stood at the summit.

Everyone looked out over the factory district spread below them. Cradled in the embrace of mountains, Xi Tie Cheng was like a child in its mother’s arms. Teacher Tong pointed out each feature to Chunchun one by one: at the foot of the mountain was the Fifth Residential District; not far off was Yan Bei Shopping Center and the Cultural Palace Club; farther still was the Fourth Residential District, and what had once been the grain store, the general food market, the ice cream factory, the factory children’s middle school, the bachelor dormitories, the factory administrative building, and the foreign guests’ reception house; farther yet was the Second Residential District, the gymnasium, the technical school, the workers’ hospital, and the factory children’s second primary school; and still farther were the Lunan bathhouse, the Lunan kindergarten, and the labor services company. At the very farthest reaches the eye could see was the production zone of Xi Tie Cheng factory, wrapped layer upon layer in barbed wire and high walls, chimneys and factory buildings just barely visible.

A cool mountain breeze swept through the pine forest. Hearing the rare summer sound of the pines stirring in the wind, everyone was moved and delighted. Teacher Tong spotted a jutting boulder and greeted it like an old friend; she cheerfully called to Teacher Xu: “Lao Xu, come — right here, sit with me one more time. Let Xiao Dan take a photo of us.”

“Is this boulder a historical site?” Xiao Dan raised the camera and asked curiously.

“No, it isn’t a historical site — we just used to sit on this boulder often when we were young,” Teacher Tong said with an endearing shyness. “We had just been assigned to Xi Tie Cheng then, living in the bachelor dormitories. Teacher Xu and I would often come up the mountain on weekends, sit on this boulder, watch the sunset, play harmonica, recite poetry, and sing songs.”

Teacher Xu stood on the boulder and pointed down at the valley with his walking stick: “When we first arrived, the factory was newly built and conditions were hard with little entertainment — there wasn’t even a bathhouse. A big truck hauled us into Tie Cheng City every week to take a bath, back and forth hundreds of li just for one bath. Later, we watched Xi Tie Cheng grow bigger day by day — roads and railways were built, workshops and chimneys rose up, buildings and streetlights came on, the young men and women who had joined the factory married and had children, children ran in the streets, then went to the factory’s schools, then took their exams and got their jobs and were all grown up. In the blink of an eye all these years have passed — the green hills remain, and how many sunsets have reddened since?”

On the last evening before leaving Xi Tie Cheng, Xiao Dan and Xia Lei wanted to hear Xiao Man play and sing on his guitar one more time. Xiao Dan suggested going to the school corridor, saying the empty echoes there were particularly good. So the four of them climbed over the wall into the factory’s children’s middle school.

In the evening glow, the campus shimmered with golden light. The bicycle shed, the morning exercise platform, the horizontal and parallel bars, the boiler room, the flagpole, the iron-framed spectator stands — all were as clear and present as ever, as though school had just let out for the holidays.

The main teaching building door was locked. Xiao Man asked whether anyone believed he had a key to the building. Xiao Dan didn’t believe it; Xia Lei shook his head too.

“Then you’ve both lost the bet.” Xiao Man said with a smile. He walked into the boiler room and felt around in the coal ash until he produced a large key.

“Of course!” Chunchun suddenly understood. “It must have been Old Hu the school custodian who told you this secret!”

Xiao Man unlocked the door, and they all walked up to the third floor to the Class Two, Grade Three high school classroom.

“We’re back.” The three of them spread their arms wide and exclaimed together. They found their old seats and sat down, and the fragmentary flashes of memory buried deep in the past floated up: a note that had once fallen from a book, a curtain that had once lifted in a breeze, a butterfly that had once fluttered in through the window. They seemed to hear again the jingling of key chains against lunch boxes, the rushing sound of the blue curtains billowing in the wind, the precise ticking of the clock’s second hand, the soft scraping of pen nibs across paper. Those days that had once seemed so dull and routine, day after day, glowed in memory with warmth and light.

“Come now — let’s begin,” Chunchun pulled Xiao Man up to the front of the room and hung his guitar around his neck. “I hereby announce: the ‘Sounds of Xi Tie Cheng Through the Years’ concert by idol superstar Xiao Man, is now beginning.”

“Go, Xiao Man! We love you!” The three of them cheered and shouted together.

“My deepest thanks to the three most dear people in my life! Farewell, youth! Farewell, Xi Tie Cheng!” Xiao Man pressed his hand to his heart, began to pluck the strings, and sang: “Those dark rolling eyes and your smiling face, how I struggle to forget the way your expression changed. Those light-drifting days of the past just slipped away like this, and looking back now, several years have already quietly gone by…“