EGRV 21 | An Old Acquaintance

【No matter how similar they were, so similar that even their scars overlapped, they were still different.】

Just before he left the shop, Liang Muyie handed him a canvas bag. Inside were two neatly folded squares of fabric, washed and dried—the clean clothes he had borrowed from Chi Yu’s trunk last time. Chi Yu always liked to wear clothes a size too big, so they had fit Liang Muyie perfectly.

It just so happened that all of Chi Yu’s clothes at home were in the wash, so he could only wear his training gear to work at the shop. He said thank you, picked up the sweatshirt, and started to walk away. As he spoke, he single-handedly grabbed the back collar of his tight long-sleeved shirt and pulled it off.

“Don’t—” The words nearly tumbled out of Liang Muyie’s mouth before he could stop them.

He wanted to say, “Don’t take off that black compression shirt,” but he also wanted to say, “Don’t get undressed here.” All he could do was stare at Chi Yu’s back. The muscle definition there was just as pronounced, like a piece of flawless jade, marred only by two black KT tape strips stretching from his right shoulder blade to his shoulder. It was likely a muscle strain still on the mend. Above his shoulder blade, in a spot the tape didn’t cover, he had a tattoo. It was very abstract, looking like a crooked number 7, but the vertical stroke at the bottom was a rather irregular line.

Chi Yu quickly changed his clothes. As he bent his head to reach for his keys, the loose collar of the sweatshirt dipped down again. Liang Muyie saw that he had pulled the sweatshirt on directly, with no T-shirt underneath, and there, on his left collarbone, was a noticeable surgical scar.

“You broke your collarbone too?” he asked, unable to hide his curiosity.

Chi Yu nodded. “Happened when I was sixteen. I fell coming off the big air ramp. It was the last jump of the day. A comminuted fracture. My season was a write-off. They took me out on a stretcher.”

Competitive skiing, even when it wasn’t big mountain backcountry, was invariably high-risk. When Chi Yu was on the youth training team, he was often the first to arrive and the last to leave, always pushing himself to the limit. His coach couldn’t talk him out of it. Back then, the coaches at the training camp were divided into two factions. One believed he had exceptional talent and was destined for greatness; the other thought his temperament was too unstable and that he took too many risks, making him extremely “crash-prone.” They believed he would never become the kind of backcountry expert who explored the great mountains and polar regions.

But they all agreed on one thing: for young Chi Yu to have skied for so long without a serious accident was purely down to the grace of good luck. However, his luck ran out the year he turned sixteen.

On the day of the accident, his father, Chi Mian, happened to be in Canada and came to watch him train. By then, Chi Yu rarely participated in slopestyle or big air freestyle competitions, spending most of his time skiing powder and off-piste. But since Chi Mian was there to watch, he skipped his off-piste training and returned to the ramp to practice his aerials. He wanted to land a triple cork 1440* for him.

The greatest irony was that Chi Yu was so focused on practicing the trick that he didn’t even notice Chi Mian had already left. As he lay on the stretcher, he was still wondering which hospital would be the least trouble for his father.

However, the very next season, he successfully landed a triple cork 1440 at the X Games big air competition in Aspen. He wasn’t the first in the world to do it, nor the first at the X Games, but his was the best performance of the day. He unexpectedly took home the gold medal.

“So when I told you the last run is the most dangerous, I really wasn’t kidding,” Chi Yu added.

Liang Muyie tugged down the collar of his own T-shirt, revealing an almost identical scar. “What a coincidence.”

Seeing it, Chi Yu smiled too. “How’d you get yours?”

Liang Muyie said, “Rock climbing in the wild. A rock fell on me. Don’t let its size fool you, that little bone hurts like a motherfucker when it breaks.”

It had happened back in his university days, when he followed Zhong Yanyun around on outdoor climbing trips. Many of the routes they climbed back then weren’t even graded. At the time, Zhong Yanyun was lead climbing, flashing an overhanging rock face, while Liang Muyie was on belay on the ground. As Zhong Yanyun climbed, he dislodged an entire chunk of rock, which smashed right into Liang Muyie’s shoulder, dislocating it as well. He had to endure the searing pain while paying close attention to the length of the rope in his hands, giving the lead climber enough slack for a fall.

Chi Yu had never heard him talk much about himself before. “You climb? Outdoor climbing?” he asked, then followed up with, “Ever been to Squamish?”

“Yeah, I was just there last week.”

Chi Yu tentatively asked another question. “Why did you come to Canada?”

“Work’s been busy lately,” Liang Muyie replied without a second thought, giving the official answer. “I’m here for a vacation.”

He didn’t really need to answer; Chi Yu already knew. In essence, he was no different from Cheng Yang or Vicky—just another winter visitor, here for a holiday to unwind. No matter how similar they were, so similar that even their scars overlapped, they were still different.

And yet, some force pulled at him, compelling him to look into that person’s eyes, to hold his gaze a little longer, a little deeper, to see him show an expression reserved for no one else.

---

When Chi Yu left, he asked a young guy who was organizing inventory in the warehouse to keep an eye on the shop. Not wanting to be out for long, he opted for a quick meal, picking a random ramen shop on the street to get it over with.

The two of them sat at an outdoor booth by the street. Chi Yu was hunched over, shoveling noodles into his mouth, when a man suddenly walked by, stopped for a few seconds, and then called Chi Yu’s name.

At first, Liang Muyie didn’t see who it was, but he noticed Chi Yu’s expression change and followed his gaze. The man was tall with short brown hair and was wearing a flannel plaid shirt.

He came over to greet Chi Yu, opening his arms for a hug. Chi Yu, still in the middle of eating, hesitated slightly. Liang Muyie saw it, and he knew this was more than just a simple East-West cultural difference. Chi Yu was always hugging his skiing buddies; he wasn’t the type to be reserved or stingy with a hug.

But Chi Yu still put down his chopsticks, stood up, and granted his wish. The brown-haired man talked to him for quite a while—or rather, talked at him for quite a while. He said he was helping shoot Rossignol’s first-ever annual snowboard film and asked how Chi Yu was doing, if he’d changed his number, and handed him a business card. Finally, he mentioned some competition sponsored by a foundation and asked if he was going to participate.

A freestyle skier’s main income, besides prize money, ads, and sponsorships, came from a source that couldn’t be ignored: extreme sports films. Big mountain backcountry skiing, due to its high-risk nature and demanding terrain requirements, had no World Championships or World Cups, and it certainly wasn’t an Olympic event. Therefore, films were all the more crucial for an athlete’s exposure. Appearing in more films and completing more thrilling big mountain descents would naturally increase an athlete’s market value. In recent years, all the major snowboard manufacturers had started producing their own feature films. And Max’s career had taken off not from any championship win—his best result in an FWT pro event was only top three in the North American region—but from his participation in a Rossignol feature film.

Chi Yu hesitated for a moment before asking, “Did you come alone?” He spoke English slowly and clearly, and this time, Liang Muyie heard him perfectly.

The man opposite him clearly knew what he was asking. He smiled and replied, “Max told me he’s coming next week. How many years has it been since you two competed on the same stage? He said—”

Chi Yu cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I’m not interested.”

As if sensing the atmosphere had grown too stiff, he added, “Thank you, but no thanks.”

The brown-haired man nodded, seeming to take his previous answer as a yes, and said, “Well, I’ll be looking forward to your performance.”

After he left, Chi Yu was visibly uncomfortable. He didn’t continue eating, instead habitually chewing on the nails of his right hand. Liang Muyie had noticed it the night they went night skiing—it was a little tic he had when he was anxious.

He spoke up. “Want to switch seats?” The brown-haired man and his friends were sitting one row over, at a table that gave them a direct diagonal line of sight to Chi Yu.

Seeing that he’d noticed, Chi Yu gave a wry smile. “Forget it, that’d be too obvious.”

Given his attitude, Liang Muyie ventured a guess. “Your ex?”

Chi Yu shook his head. “No.”

Strictly speaking, he and Max couldn’t be considered exes. It was just a youthful impulse; neither of them had belonged to the other. And the brown-haired man was named Ryan, a friend of Max’s entire family and Max’s best friend since childhood. He had basically watched the two of them grow up together. During those years, Chi Yu had benefited from his association with Max, and Ryan had taken quite a few photos of him.

Later, after his bitter falling out with Max, he had moved to the West Coast alone and cut off contact with almost all his friends from Mont-Tremblant, including the man right in front of him.

Seeing that Liang Muyie wasn’t about to change the subject, Chi Yu explained again, “He is an old acquaintance. But… how do I put it? It’s just very complicated.”

Liang Muyie found it amusing to watch him search for the right words. This wasn’t the first time he’d heard the word “complicated” come out of this simple person’s mouth.

“It’s not that complicated. Ex, not an ex; slept together, didn’t sleep together; like him, don’t like him. Those are pretty much the only options.”

He’d said it to provoke a reaction from Chi Yu, but he didn’t expect Chi Yu, still chewing his nails, to answer each one. “Not an ex, didn’t sleep together, don’t like him.”

“If you don’t like him, then stop looking,” Liang Muyie said, once again catching his wandering gaze. He was realizing that Chi Yu was very uncomfortable around people he didn’t know well. If there was a corner in this restaurant, he would have retreated into it, pulled on a thick shell, and hung up a “Do Not Disturb” sign.

Chi Yu brought his focus back to the person in front of him and realized Liang Muyie had been watching him the entire time.

He forced himself to speak, to explain. “He’s a friend of an ex. I didn’t expect to run into him here. It’s like… someone from a past world just materialized.”

Liang Muyie had heard their entire conversation and had more or less figured it out.

“So…”

Chi Yu glanced up at him, thinking he was about to press him for more details about Max. But instead, the man asked, “What was that competition he mentioned?”

“The WinterLasts Foundation, Freestyle Big Mountain Challenge,” Chi Yu repeated.

WinterLasts was an environmental foundation started by two leading figures and outdoor explorers in backcountry skiing and snowboarding. After more than a decade of chasing deep powder all over the world, they had witnessed firsthand the effects of global warming: melting snowpacks and disappearing glaciers. So, they took a portion of their income and established this non-profit organization. To promote their cause, they held a freestyle competition at a North American ski resort every January, with all proceeds from broadcasting and advertising going toward ecological conservation projects.

Because it was scheduled just before the series of IFSA qualifiers, the competition always drew a host of top-tier athletes and received a lot of attention. And this year, it just so happened to be hosted at his current training ground, Whistler-Blackcomb.

Liang Muyie asked him, “Do you want to go?”

Chi Yu said, “I should go.”

He was almost certain the venue would be on the Blackcomb side.

For Chi Yu, who had started skiing on a broken board on the small hill in his backyard, ski resorts were his best training ground when he didn’t have the means to be helicopter-dropped in New Zealand or play in the natural big mountain powder of Europe. For the past two years, he had skied at Whistler from sunrise to sunset, in every possible snow condition. He knew where the snow would accumulate in what weather, whether it was powder or hardpack, where it would be icy. Chi Yu was as familiar with every contour of these two mountains as he was with the lines on his own palm. From the perspective of timing, location, or venue, he should participate. And yet, he had dragged his feet until now, without even registering.

He told himself it was because the registration fee was pretty expensive.

“Should go, or want to go?”

Chi Yu paused for a long time before saying, “I want to go.”

“Then go,” Liang Muyie said.

Chi Yu met his eyes and nodded.