"First, just... catch your breath."
A sharp gasp came from the other end of the line.
Chen Zhuo frowned, fumbling for the right words as he pieced them together in his mind.
"That man... his family died because of the war, because of a bomb."
Chen Zhuo paused, as if to check the logic of his own statement.
"You just... you just made a phone call."
"You didn’t do anything wrong."
Chen Zhuo raised his voice slightly, trying to drill the words into Miao Shian’s head.
"Don’t take the blame for the bomb."
Miao Shian said nothing on the other end.
"That kid who bit you..."
Chen Zhuo felt a wave of helplessness and sighed.
"He’s only ten years old."
Chen Zhuo’s voice softened.
"He just lost his mother. He’s terrified."
"When people are desperate, they can’t think straight. He saw your clean clothes, saw you were better off than him, and so he hated you..."
"You can’t blame him for that."
Chen Zhuo said slowly.
"But you definitely can’t blame yourself. Don’t get hung up on this."
Chen Zhuo knew these words were probably hollow.
But he had to say them. He had to lift the responsibility for that death off Miao Shian’s shoulders.
Otherwise, he was afraid Miao Shian would do something drastic.
"But... I messed it all up."
Miao Shian’s voice was still hollow, as if swirling in a bottomless black hole.
"I thought lining up would be enough to get water... I thought having a phone would be enough to let people know they were safe."
"My rules were useless. Nothing was of any use."
Chen Zhuo’s fingers tightened around the receiver.
’I can’t let the conversation keep going down this path.’
Talking about who was right or wrong, or whether rules had any meaning, was pointless with someone facing life and death in a war zone.
Chen Zhuo’s mind started racing.
He needed a concrete anchor, something tangible he could touch and see, to pull Miao Shian back down from that empty void.
He pricked up his ears, listening carefully to the background noise from the receiver.
Besides the wind, there was a steady, rhythmic, mechanical sound.
"Shian."
Chen Zhuo suddenly changed the subject.
"Hm?"
"I can hear... a really loud noise on your end."
Chen Zhuo stared at the window at the end of the hall, which was now letting in light.
"A RUMBLING sound. What is that?"
Miao Shian paused.
About three or four seconds passed.
"It’s the generator."
Miao Shian’s voice regained a bit of focus.
"A heavy-duty diesel generator with a water pump."
"Is it still running now?" Chen Zhuo asked.
"It’s running."
"Good."
Chen Zhuo nodded, though the other man couldn’t see him, and took a deep breath.
"Shian, listen to me."
Chen Zhuo’s tone was no longer the cautious, soothing one from before. He’d found some of the same energy he had when he led the training team through problem-solving exercises.
Pragmatic and direct.
"Let’s forget about the rules, okay?"
"The lines you drew for the queue were useless, so get rid of the lines. The things you brought were useless, so pack them up."
Chen Zhuo looked at the martial arts novel on the floor.
"None of that can save a life."
"Stop thinking about all that."
Chen Zhuo’s voice was crystal clear, traveling down the phone line and tapping, bit by bit, into Miao Shian’s ears.
"I want you to focus on that generator."
"That kid who bit you, he’ll need water again tomorrow, right?"
An extremely faint "Right" came from the other end.
"Then go figure out that machine."
Using a simple, unadorned logic, Chen Zhuo gave Miao Shian his orders.
"If the generator breaks, you fix it."
"As long as the machine is running, as long as water is flowing from the pipes, even if they don’t follow the rules, even if they hate you..."
"They’ll live if they drink the water, right?"
"Stop thinking so much, okay?"
Chen Zhuo’s tone ended on an extremely gentle request.
"Just think of yourself as a guy who fixes water pumps. Throw everything else away."
A long silence followed.
But this silence was free of the suffocating panic and self-doubt from before.
The sound of the diesel generator traveled clearly through the satellite signal and into Chen Zhuo’s ear.
That mechanical, grinding, RUMBLING sound was, in this moment, incredibly grounding.
No good or evil.
No right or wrong.
Only the meshing of gears and the instinct to survive.
An unknown amount of time passed.
"The generator..."
Miao Shian’s voice had finally regained some stability. It was quiet, but it was no longer trembling.
"The fuel line is clogged. It’s leaking a bit."
"Mm."
Chen Zhuo grunted in acknowledgment.
"I’ll go fix it."
"Okay."
Chen Zhuo said.
"Stay safe. Come back alive."
"Captain."
"I’m here."
"Yeah."
BEEP—BEEP—BEEP—
The call was disconnected. A monotonous dial tone echoed in the hallway.
Chen Zhuo didn’t hang up the receiver right away.
He just remained in that position, leaning against the wall, for a long time.
At the end of the hall, the sun had fully risen. Bright sunlight streamed in, casting long patches of light across the floor tiles.
Chen Zhuo slowly placed the receiver back on its cradle.
He looked down at the cup of soy milk in his hand.
More than half of it had been squeezed out onto the floor during the phone call.
The rest of the soy milk was now completely cold.
He bent down, picked up the martial arts novel that had fallen on the floor, and brushed the dust off its cover.
He suddenly felt that the stories of swift justice and thrilling vengeance, of saving the world, were so childish they were almost unreadable.
’In the real world, there are no great heroes.’
’The hope for survival, it turns out, hangs on a leaking diesel generator.’
Chen Zhuo, holding the cold soy milk and the book, slowly walked back to dorm room 215.
He tossed the book onto his desk and pulled out a chair to sit.
Outside the window, the calls of the cicadas finally merged into a single, continuous drone—noisy, yet full of life.
Chen Zhuo stared at the play of light and shadow on his desk and closed his eyes.

Comments

Loading...