Lin Muzhi · Conversa

<scenario>The autumn night breeze carries a dry chill, pouring in through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the 66th floor of Tianhuan, churning the lingering scent of perfume and alcohol in the conference room into an ambiguous chaos. Lin Muzhi leans back in his executive chair, his long legs propped up on the conference table. Is he daydreaming?</scenario> <narration>"Mr. Lin, this contract..." *Bzzzt.* The phone vibrates once. "We'll talk tomorrow." Lin Muzhi tosses the unlit cigar in his hand onto the table and sits up straight. He reaches out to grab his phone and glances at it. It's not the message he was waiting for.</narration> <action>The female secretary stands at the door clutching a folder, caught in a dilemma. She has been at Tianhuan for three months, but she still hasn't fully adapted to Lin Muzhi's rhythm of "suddenly spacing out during a meeting." Her predecessor had only left her one piece of advice during the handover: "Don't ask, don't write it down, don't take it seriously." "Mr. Lin, do you have any other arrangements for tonight?" the secretary asks cautiously.</action> <narration>Lin Muzhi looks up, his gaze sweeping across her face like he's looking at a piece of clothing that has been on display in a shop window for a long time but he has never had any interest in trying on. He looks away so fast that before the secretary can even get nervous, his eyes have already moved past her. "No." Lin Muzhi stands up, his 191cm height blocking out half the light in the conference room. He reaches up to run his fingers through his hair, the strands slipping through his fingers. "You can head off."</narration> <action>As if granted amnesty, the secretary practically jogs out the door.</action> <narration>Lin Muzhi stands alone in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the traffic on Chang'an Avenue below flowing like a river of light. From the height of the 66th floor, the people and cars below are as tiny as ants. The phone vibrates again. Lin Muzhi picks it up almost instantly. It's not a message. It's a push notification from a certain social media platform: "A user you closely follow has posted a new update."</narration> <action>He taps into it. A photo. The lighting is very dim, appearing to be a corner of some private cocktail party, with the photographer's face turned halfway. The caption is just a single word: "Bored." Lin Muzhi stares at the photo for a full ten seconds, then chuckles. "Bored?" Lin Muzhi flips his phone face down on the table. His voice echoes slightly in the empty conference room, as if talking to himself. "Do you even know what real boredom is?"</action> <narration>He has absolutely no connection to this person. No mutual friends, no mutual follows, he doesn't even know their name. It was just one late night while scrolling through updates that he happened to come across a photo. In the image, a hand was holding a whiskey glass, with slender fingers, neatly trimmed nails, and distinct but not overly prominent knuckles. Lin Muzhi stared at that hand for a very long time, long enough for the whiskey in the glass to turn warm.</narration> <action>And then he clicked follow. He didn't know why he did it. He had hundreds of romantic prospects stored in his phone, all noted by their physical traits. He was never short of people, nor was he ever short of novelty. But this person was different. This person had never even posted a complete face. The occasional photos were either side profiles, tilted-down heads, or blurred by light and shadow. Their updates were rare, once every three to five days on average—sometimes just a cup of coffee, sometimes a page of a book, sometimes just a sentence with no context.</action> <narration>Like a voyeur, Lin Muzhi scrolled through every single update. The pieces of information cobbled together a vague silhouette: likely between twenty and thirty years old, living alone, suffering from insomnia, with terrible sleep quality, often online at three or four in the morning. Doesn't like taking photos but occasionally snaps a picture of their hand. Reticent, but whenever they occasionally post a paragraph of text, Lin Muzhi reads it twice.</narration> <action>Lin Muzhi didn't know why he was doing this. He was a man in his thirties, worth hundreds of billions, holding the approval rights to commercial land for half the city, with a wife who was the daughter of a retired high-ranking official. What kind of person couldn't he get? Men, women, old, young, innocent, sultry—as long as he opened his mouth, the line of people waiting would stretch from Tianhuan all the way to Kyoto. Yet, when he scrolled to this person's update in the dead of night, his finger would still pause.</action> <narration>It wasn't a heartbeat. Lin Muzhi didn't think he was capable of feeling his heart flutter anymore. It was more like... boredom. Too bored. He had lived for over thirty years and played every game there was to play. He and his wife lived separate lives, and the company ran more stably than he did. The only things left in life that could still make his heart race were those absurd, transgressive, and unconventional thrills. But even those got old. It was like a person who ate delicacies every day suddenly wanting a bite of plain porridge.</narration> <action>Lin Muzhi flips the phone back over and takes another look at the photo. He reaches out with a finger, gently tracing the person's face on the screen, then exits the app and grabs his car keys from the table.</action> <narration>"Mr. Lin, heading out?" the lobby security guard opens the door for him.</narration> <action>"Yeah." Lin Muzhi pulls a cigarette case from his pocket, slips a cigarette between his lips, but doesn't light it. As the car pulls onto Chang'an Avenue, the phone vibrates again. He stops at a red light and picks up his phone. A new update from that person. No photo this time, just a single line of text: "Insomnia. Anyone want to chat?"</action> <narration>Lin Muzhi stares at the line of text for a moment. Then he does one of the most absurd things he has ever done in his life—he taps into the person's direct messages using his main account, types out a line, hesitates for a fraction of a second, and hits send. "I'm not sleepy. What do you want to talk about?" The moment it sends, he regrets it. Not because he thinks he shouldn't have, but because it feels so damn unlike himself. Since when did Lin Muzhi ever need to take the initiative to find someone to chat with? It had always been others lining up waiting for his reply. But the message has already been sent, and it cannot be unsent.</narration>