December's damp cold pushed through the studio's high windows. The air tasted sharp with turpentine and acrylic, threaded with dust and a metallic tang. Thin, gray daylight fell through the skylights and pooled on the two-meter wooden frame in the center of the room. Su Ziyan had a faint dusting of plaster on the tip of her nose, like leftover powdered sugar. She stood on tiptoe to wedge a cut corrugated board into a slot on the frame; her hands were a little rushed and a white streak scored the board where her fingertip slid.
"Angle." The voice behind her was calm and unmistakable, precise as a blade. Ouyang Wen steadied the other end of the frame; the metal clasp of his tape measure flashed coldly in his fingers. "Tilt it left three degrees. You just adjusted it."
Ziyan pressed her lips together and said nothing. She braced the joint at the base, exerted force. Fine sawdust sifted down; the structure creaked and yielded a tiny shift. She stepped back and squinted at the evolving, irregular hexahedron—this was the "memory vessel" they were building for the cross-media project, titled Sound Rust. It was meant to hold sounds and show time's erosion.
"This corner," Ouyang said, standing now at her side, tapping a seam with a fingertip, "is too sharp. It feels cut. Urban memory needs blur, corrosion, a sticky cohesion." He frowned in that way leaders do, turning conceptual language into executable notes. His sleeve bore a smudge of hardened glue—no paint. "Try locally heating and bending with a heat gun, or tear the edge."
Ziyan echoed the word "cohesion" and found the dented blue paint tube in her coat pocket. It had been used for months; the aluminum felt cold and crumpled. She dug the heat gun from the toolbox and plugged it in, its cord rasping along the floor. Ouyang's precise "three degrees" pricked at her—he had that compass-like knack for finding structural flaws, the same way someone had once told her sketches were "too tense, not released."
The gun buzzed; a hot breath softened the board where it met. The edge curled and stank faintly of scorch. Sweat slid down her temple.
"Stop." Ouyang stepped forward and switched the gun off, quick and decisive. He pinched the softened edge and, with a gentle twist, removed the hard right angle. The corner became a textured, melted transition—worn like a wall chewed at by time. "We want this kind of worn edge, not a melted ruin," he said, gray dust on his fingertips. "Use physical deformation to simulate the force of time—that's the vessel's meaning."
He straightened, scanning the altered seam, then looked at Ziyan. "Send me the circuit plan for embedding the voice sensors tonight. I know a hardware senior—he sources chips a little unofficially; might get cheap components." He walked off toward the pile of schematics and the laptop, already thinking in parts and processes.
Ziyan stared at the gentle crease he'd made, then at the white streak on her fingertip. The small irritation she'd felt swelled into a complicated admiration. He always seemed to have an internal odometer that zeroed straight to the most efficient route.
Her phone buzzed. Lin Yichen's name lit the screen. She opened it to a photo: a southern winter square, warm light on gray bricks, a few yellow plane leaves on a bench. The camera angle was low, as if shot from the ground. The sunlight was slightly blown; it gleamed.
A short message followed: Yichen: The new city plaza by the school—trees are bare, light's still good. [grin]
Simple, ordinary sharing. Across the kilometers, Ziyan could imagine him squatting or sitting, the camera blocking half his face as he focused through the viewfinder—an alert, solitary presence among the crowd. That little otherness had used to feel safe to her. Now, separated by distance and months, the familiarity was like looking through frosted glass—outlines clear, warmth unreachable.
Her thumb hovered over the screen. "Nice" would be perfunctory. "Is it cold there too?" would be a question she already knew the answer to. She typed instead: Ziyan: The sun looks warm. It's freezing here; studio heating's weak. She sent it and shoved the phone back into her pocket a little harder than necessary. Across the room, Ouyang's fingers flew over the laptop keyboard; on his screen complex 3D models spun. He did not care whether the sun felt warm—he only cared that the sensors fit and the chips worked.
Evening found her curled under the top bunk, the lamp light tanning the room faintly. Gu Lei painted to loud music on the lower bed; paint cups clattered without consequence. Meng Qing read quietly at her desk; her lamp framed a small ordered island. The blue paint tube on Ziyan's desk caught the light and looked lonelier than usual.
A new post popped up in her feed—Ouyang's photo of the half-formed gray hexahedron, shot from above, the rough, shorn edge he'd emphasized lit like a scar. Caption: The cavity for Sound Rust, step one—material: the scab of the city. Thanks to partner @SuZiyan for today's "destructive" test. ????
Comments poured in. Meng Qing joked about physical deconstruction; Gu Lei gushed; a sculpture senior asked if the structure could withstand low-frequency resonance; Ouyang calmly replied he'd calculated the mechanics—if it collapsed, that would be part of the deconstruction.
Ziyan watched her name get tagged and read "destructive test." A thin, hot excitement pricked up inside—her name attached to something that sounded avant-garde and professional. Not the little school-mag illustrations of high school anymore. She hit Like, fingers hovering then tapping the icon. The tiny heart glowed.
In another city, Yichen sat in his dorm, the same photo on his screen. He saw her Like—a small red heart pinned under Ouyang's terse sentence. He scrolled. Another post from her: New project gears are turning. Tired but worth it. Moon emoji. Sent one minute ago.
His thumb hovered above the same heart icon. To tap would be to follow into her new sphere, to acknowledge seeing it through the glass. Not to tap would be to let that fragile link sink. The room hummed with the distant, steady whir of an air-conditioning unit and the wet scrape of tires outside. He pressed; the heart lit up red on his screen, a small, vivid dot.
He turned off his phone; the room swallowed the light. The darkness thickened—furniture and posture melted into black. Only the air-conditioner's monotonous whine remained, a persistent, empty rest.