Chapter 5
NOW THAT HE thought about it, though, Chen Hong, the fitness trainer, had yet to make much of an impression. Zhang Yuwen contemplated going back on the decision to rent to him and finding another tenant instead, lest the guy drag him into signing up for a gym membership.
He hadn’t received the rent yet, anyway. In fact, he hadn’t seen money from any of the four rooms he was renting out. Everyone was slow to pay him, but that was normal in today’s society; when it came to payments, it was common practice for people to drag their feet. It would actually be weirder if they paid on time.
Looking intently at his computer screen, which displayed a new potential tenant, Zhang Yuwen made a call to Chen Hong. “When are you moving in?” After all, Chen Hong hadn’t signed the contract or paid the rent. Zhang Yuwen suspected he hadn’t even looked at the contract.
“Oh!” Chen Hong exclaimed. “Oh! I’ll be there today. The contract is already signed. I’ll bring it with me.”
“All right.” Zhang Yuwen had no choice but to send the backup candidate an instant message: All rooms have been rented out. There was nothing to be done about it. A man had to keep his word.
Over at the fitness studio, Chen Hong was packing his personal belongings. He hung up the phone, searched through his email for the lease, and located it among a bunch of spam. He quickly printed it out, grabbed a pen, and then, using a flyer as a makeshift writing surface, skimmed the contract and signed and dated it.
Chen Hong was standing on the precipice of the big 3-0, waiting for time to tick down and punt him mercilessly into the life of an unaccomplished thirty-year-old. Contract signed, he looked around at the almost-empty fitness studio, suddenly feeling a bit sad. The studio’s lease was up this month, and its future was uncertain. He still owed his partners tens of thousands, and in a few days, he would have to bite the bullet and call them up to tell them the hard truth: The studio was in the red. They had to declare bankruptcy and file for liquidation.
But he refused to throw in the towel. He thought it was a test from heaven. He’d always been tenacious, a rare and commendable quality.
Some people saw it as perseverance, while others saw stubbornness.
When he’d come into this life, he allocated all the skill points the system gave him into physical strength. Born in a remote county, he weighed an astonishing 9.9 pounds at birth. He was sturdier than most of the other infants, and had a louder wail. This strong physique stayed with him through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, giving him an edge in most sports that didn’t require brainpower. His one tiny regret was that his nutrition hadn’t been up to scratch during his adolescence; as a result, his height was barely passable, a mere 5 feet and 10 inches. Among East Asians, however, it was perfectly adequate.
At the sports-focused college, he learned quickly that the talent gap between athletes often dwarfed the species difference between humans and earthworms. The bona fide prodigies eclipsed the athletic prowess that he was so proud of, and when it came to competitive sports, his barely passable stature made him look like a clumsy hobbit on the college’s basketball court. In short, he realized early on that he couldn’t make a living from sports.
He preferred to live a healthy life than to retire with a body plagued by injuries, so having lost all faith that he could make it as a sportsman, he turned instead to rehabilitation and training. Eventually, he wound up at the regular haunt of most jocks: the gym.
While he was in school, he worked at the gym distributing flyers and occasionally filling in as a part-time coach, giving pointers here and there and selling protein powder on the side. Figuring he’d mastered the ins and outs of the trade, he came up with the idea of launching his own lucrative fitness studio after graduation. But new gyms were all over the place these days, putting the trainers in fierce competition, and the influx of new entrants eroded the industry’s ethical standards, giving fitness trainers a bad name. These newcomers behaved either like popular streamers, relying on flirtation and innuendo to sell training sessions, or like financial advisors who earnestly went door-to-door seeking business.
Chen Hong, it seemed, fell into neither category.
His only advantage was the physique that he’d trained so hard for.
Working as an escort could, in theory, net him a pretty penny. Male clients paid better than female ones; he could potentially rake in an astounding daily income of ¥4,000, and if he were to bottom—a far more lucrative role—he could also have received additional allowances. But Chen Hong never considered moving in that direction. He couldn’t bring himself to take off his pants, nor could he swallow his pride.
His first gym was in business for less than half a year before it closed its doors. During his subsequent unemployment, he worked as a fitness trainer again and finally caught the eye of a trust fund baby who developed real feelings for him and dedicated himself wholeheartedly to pursuing Chen Hong.
Chen Hong’s sexual orientation wasn’t set in stone at first. After all, he came into contact with men’s bodies every day, and a lot of his studies revolved around the aesthetics of male muscles and physique. But while he saw himself as a straight guy, he thought he wouldn’t mind giving same-sex relationships a try, like an amphibious creature who could live on land or in water. It was just dating, no big deal. Try everything once, right?
Besides, this young man was both rich and attractive, showering Chen Hong with gifts and taking him to see the world. Burdened with mixed feelings, but nonetheless moved by these gestures, Chen Hong reluctantly yielded to him.
During their honeymoon phase, they enjoyed the most extravagant candlelight dinners and stayed at the most luxurious hotels. In this opulent, romantic atmosphere, Chen Hong ran the gamut from resistance to reluctant acceptance to acclimation to addiction in only twenty-eight days.
In this one month, they made love in a variety of ways every day, so Chen Hong also became something of an expert in that regard. But never in his wildest dreams did he anticipate that while the rich guy’s feelings were genuine, so was his tendency to be fickle in love.
Some people were like that. They fell head over heels into every relationship, only to lose interest a couple weeks later and turn back into a stranger. With the turn of a calendar page, everything abruptly ended.
Chen Hong felt like he’d been in a dream when he got the news that it was over. He’d had no idea that the other guy was only using him for a change of scenery. He didn’t know that he was like a gacha card in a romance game, liable to be cast aside to await his fate—getting dismantled into crystals—once the novelty wore off. Perhaps he was just one of many from the rich guy’s “bedding men from all professions” collection or “dating men from every zodiac sign” challenge… Whatever it was, he had met a specific criterion and happened to be decent-looking, and that was why he was “blessed” with this fleeting, heaven-sent romance.
He took a month to bounce back and move on. His healing period took two days longer than the romance itself, which was uncommon. Of course, he didn’t cause a scene, even if he could have gotten compensation by doing so; he still had his pride as a top.
His rich ex-boyfriend knew the current market well. He didn’t gift Chen Hong a house or a car, but instead discreetly assigned a daily usage price to Chen Hong’s body, arbitrarily giving himself a discount like he’d subscribed to a monthly package. In the end, the value of the gifts he gave Chen Hong totaled exactly four thousand yuan a day.
Chen Hong kept some gifts as mementos and sold the others for a small sum to start a new business. At twenty-eight, he was a different man.
His experiences with so-called high society, courtesy of his ex-boyfriend, had changed his mind about changing the world. No longer limited to philanthropic ideas about helping other people get healthy, he set his sights on a fitness salon.
He planned to start a private fitness studio and take on high-end clients and government employees as members, acting as a facilitator, middleman, and errand-runner for them, like a mama-san at a nightclub.
The difference was that, on top of selling fitness services, he’d also organize social events for his members.
High-end! That was the key. That was the only way he’d be able to survive and rise above the fierce competition. But no matter how Chen Hong tried to hypnotize himself, reality insisted on following its own rules. Chanting “high-end” over and over didn’t magically make his business high-end; his fitness studio had very few members, most of whom were ordinary folks struggling to make a living. He turned to his ex-boyfriend for help, and the guy introduced him to a few people, but then, fearing that Chen Hong would embarrass him in his social circles by boasting about their relationship to his clients, he cut off all contact between them.
Chen Hong was forced to take matters into his own hands. He found a job as a fitness trainer teaching group classes for a government department. It didn’t pay well, but it gave him access to “high-end individuals,” which was a good start. He hired two employees to take care of the gym while he went around networking, occasionally offering personal training sessions to a few rich members.
In that period, he adjusted the membership renewal price a few times, causing the already fragile relationship between supply and demand to collapse. Almost all of his members left, and also during this period, one of his trainers hooked up with a regular gym-goer, a wealthy woman, and left with her. Chen Hong accepted his resignation with mixed feelings and turned his sights on the remaining wealthy members.
Strangely, girls didn’t show much interest in him, perhaps because he was no longer fresh young meat. Or maybe it was that he was too prim and proper around women and never flirted or joked with them. The gays at the gym, meanwhile, seemed to be obsessed with him. It was possible that he gave off different energy after the unique experience of that one-month fling with his ex-boyfriend. Out of habit, he still wore the same clothes and hairstyle as he had during that ill-fated relationship, which might well have been catnip for gay men.
He didn’t want to date men anymore, though; he had to return to the world of heterosexuality, lest he disappoint his parents. On his twenty-ninth birthday, he started dating an online girlfriend, pouring out his woes to her every day. In their relationship, he found diversion in times of loneliness and understanding in times of hardship. Suddenly, life seemed bright. His business was running at a loss, but Chen Hong was willing to do whatever it took to give his girlfriend a good life. He agreed with what people said about settling down, and started to think there might be something to starting a family first before establishing his career.
Optimistic that this new romance might change his luck, he arranged to meet the girl he so deeply loved…only to find out that “she” was a boy who habitually wore a wig, applied lipstick and makeup, and used a voice-changer to deceive straight men online. This boy was surprisingly generous and open-minded, inviting Chen Hong to sleep with him and record a video as a keepsake. After Chen Hong turned him down, he threatened Chen Hong with the private photos and videos that Chen Hong had previously sent “her” at “her” request.
Chen Hong was shocked to realize that this person was a repeat offender who used cybersex to get the other party to masturbate on camera, then sold the video recordings to adult websites for extra cash. So Chen Hong beat him up, threatened to call the police, and demanded that he delete the videos completely. His “lover” panicked and pleaded for mercy. Thinking about the many nights “she” had comforted him and kept him company, Chen Hong couldn’t bring himself to follow through on his threats, and in the end, he let him go.
In this way, the twenty-ninth year of Chen Hong’s life swooshed past like the waters of the Liujin River. Chen Hong knew very well that time was continuous and linear, and his circumstances wouldn’t change at the stroke of midnight on his birthday. But seeing the mess he was in as he approached his thirtieth, with his career at a dead end, his studio on the precipice of filing for bankruptcy and liquidation, and his assets sold off to repay his debts… He couldn’t help but panic.