The Deadline

Liu Jinu woke to full daylight.

The seal on the shop door was still there. That signboard was still there too, facing inward, hung in its place. Coming back from Zheng Ye's livestream room last night, he had turned those six characters over the whole way, could not make sense of them, and later fell asleep. He had not slept long, and woke earlier than any day.

He sat on the bed's edge and ran last night's events through his head. That livestream gave him a name, and gave him his first orders too. But an order is not money. Money waits until the goods ship, until the buyer receives them, until the account settles, before it lands in his pocket. His pocket was still empty now — more concretely empty than last night. The unread messages jamming a full screen at closing time last night were mostly requests to look at a piece, to place an order for real goods; that trust had been pushed to him a step ahead, and he had to catch it, but catching it is not the same as getting it.

The sublandlord's deadline was today.

A note was pressed under the door gap, freshly slipped in, its ink not yet dry. On it were only two lines: rent doubled; sign today or the shop is taken back. Below was drawn a circle, no name signed.

He stared at that circle a long time. The seal had been posted for three periods, none enforced; he had once thought the seal was hollow, that posting it was just posting it. Now he could see it was his own luck he'd mistaken for hollow. Three periods untouched was not mercy — it was someone waiting for a higher number. Today that number had come.

He unfolded the note again and read it a third time. The seal had once been the first thing he saw each day entering; seen so often, he'd treated it as just another mark on the wall. Only today did he see clearly that the mark had always stood between him and this trade — it was only that no one had come to collect before. Now someone had come to collect, and what they brought was not a person but a sheet of paper with a number.

The name he'd earned back last night would bring orders, and orders would bring cash flow. That was why he dared sit before Manager Tan today, lay this note open, and stake that not-yet-received cash flow against the doubled rent.

When Manager Tan arrived, he was folding the note.

Manager Tan was the first on this street bold enough to step inside after he'd sealed the door. Manager Tan was not shy: he pulled a stool over and sat, ran his eyes up and down that signboard like eyeing a cut of meat hanging on someone else's wall, and clicked his tongue when done.

"That signboard of yours," Manager Tan said. "Who in the trade doesn't know it. You've ridden that painting's coattails for years; the painting helped you for a while, but it can't help you now. You guard it — can it guard your rent for you?"

Liu Jinu said nothing. He folded the note into a small square and put it in his pocket.

"Let me show you a way," Manager Tan leaned forward. "Lend me the signboard to use — it won't cost you a scrap of flesh. You hang yours, I hang mine, each runs his own business. I'll cover half your shop rent. Sign, and the rent's settled, and you're at ease too."

"By 'lend me to use it,' you mean lend it for you to use," Liu Jinu said.

"Right. Joint operation. That signboard of yours — half goes to my use. Customers walk into my door and still see that same signboard. You keep your purity; I borrow your name."

Manager Tan paused and nudged the stool half a foot forward.

"Think it through," Manager Tan said. "The sublandlord's paper expires today. You don't sign, the shop's empty tomorrow. You guard a plaque till there's no place to hang it — is a plaque still a plaque then? My door at least lets you keep it hanging."

Liu Jinu said nothing. But he had heard that sentence into his bones. What Manager Tan wanted was to split that signboard in two — half left on the wall, half hung over some other door.

Zheng Ye came in just then.

Zheng Ye had folded the tripod last night and, before going down, brushed the ash off his shoulder, saying little. He came today for the replay of last night's livestream. He pushed the door, saw Manager Tan, paused a step, then went on.

"Hold on," Zheng Ye looked from Manager Tan to Liu Jinu. "What's the situation."

Liu Jinu laid out the note and Manager Tan's words. Zheng Ye listened, tapped twice on his phone case with his right hand, looked up, and brought the logic of the camera's world into the present.

"You're famous now," Zheng Ye said. "From the replay last night to now, the viewer count has more than tripled. Just open a livestream and sell — isn't that the end of it? The man who tells things apart sits before the lens, real goods go in the link, and one day equals half a month's rent for your shop. You don't need to grind over this kind of paper with them; grinding only wears away your own time."

Zheng Ye finished and shook his head first.

"I've seen your kind," Zheng Ye said. "Can't be talked around. If anyone could've talked me around back then, I wouldn't have tripped and fallen that time. You hold your line; I won't stop you."

Liu Jinu gave him a look.

"I understand your path," he said. "But I can't lend out the signboard."

"What's wrong with lending it — it's not selling. You lend me the name, the money's yours."

"If I sold it, no one would believe a word I say afterward."

Zheng Ye urged no more. He flipped the phone over, screen down, and set it on the counter. He was precisely the man who had not taken that path, and why the man before him refused to take it, he understood better than anyone. He had seen too many who lent out their name and could not get it back, and too many who, after lending it, could no longer say clearly whose name it was.

Manager Tan listened from the side and smiled — a smile with no warmth.

"Fine. You keep the signboard. Then the doubled rent — what'll you sign with? Those orders in your pocket have an account cycle long enough to raise a child."

Liu Jinu had reckoned it too. The livestream brought a name, brought orders, brought the goodwill of some who pushed their trust to him first. But trust can't be pledged against rent. Fail to sign today, and the shop is taken today. All he could move in his hand was the path Zheng Ye spoke of, and the signboard he himself refused to loosen.

He gave Manager Tan a look.

"Thirty percent," he said. "Going forward, thirty percent of my shop's cash flow goes to you. I'll take the doubled rent, but not one character of the signboard gets lent."

Manager Tan stared at him like watching a man who won't leave the table. He looked a long while before speaking.

"Thirty percent. You'd better be sure. Once this is signed, every sum that comes in, I take my share first. Not for a year — for as long as this shop stays open, I keep taking."

"Sign."

The agreement was brought by Manager Tan, already written, with only the number line blank. Liu Jinu filled in thirty percent and put down his brush. The doubled-rent line, he signed too. The two sheets stacked together weighed heavier than any piece on his counter.

Manager Tan slipped the papers into an inside pocket and patted them, like taking something that should have been his. Liu Jinu watched that hand and did not stop it.

Manager Tan took the agreement and did not linger; before leaving he looked once more at that signboard, his gaze like counting something no longer wholly belonging here.

The door closed again. The seal was still there, the signboard still there, facing inward. But from this day, every penny this signboard nurtured would first give up thirty percent, flowing into another's hand. Another piece of what his father left was gone. He had once thought keeping the signboard meant hanging it in its place, facing inward, unseen by anyone. Only today did he learn the signboard is not safe merely hung on a wall — it hangs on every penny that comes in. The money given away, the signboard gives away a seam. The seam is tiny, too small for others to see, but it is there.

Zheng Ye stood at the door a while and did not come in. Through the door he looked at that signboard, then at Liu Jinu, and in the end said nothing and turned to go downstairs.

He stood alone in the shop and looked up at that signboard a long time. Facing inward, its lacquer he had painted by hand last year. When he painted it he'd thought the plaque would hang on forever. Now the way it hung on had one more hand reaching in from outside than before.

The day passed slowly. He sat a while, wiped the dust from the counter, then dragged that ledger missing a few pages out from under the cabinet, opened to the empty pages, glanced, and closed it. Those pages had been taken from his cabinet by someone who had entered two doors before him. He now couldn't even get those pages back, yet for a signboard he'd signed away another thirty percent of his cash flow. This is how accounts are reckoned — one weight upon another, and his father's things dwindled away like this, bit by bit.

He closed the ledger; the cover sprang and did not shut tight.

At night he took two inquiries for real goods and agreed, but the money had not yet arrived. The name was there, the account empty, thirty percent to be split, the rent doubled. He calculated this way and that and found no number that let him breathe. The ash outside settled a layer, on the seal, on the signboard, on the account he'd reckoned to midnight and never balanced. The bit of backbone the name had bought him was, by now, not enough to cover a restless night.

The night deepened.

The phone buzzed on the table. He picked it up; the screen flashed Bi Shunli's name.

He answered.

At the other end silence held a beat, then the voice trembled, trembling so the words would not come straight.

"My father's in the hospital," Bi Shunli said. "That strand of beads — I pawned it this afternoon."

Liu Jinu held the phone and made no sound. He remembered signing his name on that paper at the pawnshop, taking responsibility for that strand of beads, thinking he'd talked the man out of it and the beads would not move again. Now the beads had moved, and the stroke he'd signed still hung in midair, unable to land.

The screen's light fell on his face and slowly dimmed.