EGRV 28 | Winning and Losing
by cloudies【The human body isn’t made of iron, and the human heart even less so. To say it doesn’t hurt is a lie.】
About twenty minutes into the drive, the person beside him finally spoke. “The doctors and nurses are all starting to recognize you. How many major and minor incidents have you had over the years? A competition is just a competition. And it’s just a challenge-level one at that.”
Chi Yu reflexively argued back, “Every competition is important. You don’t understand.”
“You’re wrong. It’s precisely because I understand that I don’t want to see you like this. You were the one who said you wanted to ski for a lifetime. Your body is your greatest asset. How are you going to ski for a lifetime if you’re riddled with injuries later on? It’s not like you don’t know these things.”
Chi Yu didn’t respond. After a long pause, he managed to squeeze out a sentence. “I… paid the registration fee.”
“Registration requires…”
“I paid the registration fee, and I need to finish in the top ten.”
Chi Yu had started making a name for himself at fourteen, sweeping all sorts of freestyle snowboarding competitions. Competing all over the US and Canada on his own was an exhausting endeavor. Back then, what kept him going, besides the glory itself, was of course the money. He was too young to teach students, so he worked in the ski resort cafeteria to earn money. Every competition had a registration fee. He couldn’t fall, because only by staying on his feet could he get a ranking, and only with a ranking came prize money.
The same trick, the same take-off technique, the same success rate in daily practice—the difference between landing it and not sometimes just came down to that little bit of belief.
For most people, it was a line between winning and losing. For Chi Yu, it was the difference between being able to pay rent, having private health insurance, and eating a decent dinner. It wasn’t just about winning and losing; it was about survival and ruin. He had to land it. He had to win.
Liang Muyie didn’t respond to that.
He’d been around the block, and most of the friends he knew in the circle were around thirty, a watershed moment in their careers. Just in the past few years, he had seen too many excellent athletes retire early due to injuries. If it were merely a matter of judging short-term or long-term risk, he would have had a say. But now Chi Yu was saying it wasn’t just about taking risks; it was about money.
He also knew that once Chi Yu made up his mind, not even nine bulls could pull him back. Just now at the bottom of the slope, Gao Yi had said it: young Chi is defined by one word—stubborn! When he encounters a problem, he just goes for it. Telling him not to do a 720 because the snow is bad is useless. Once he’s set on something and thinks he can do it, no one can talk him out of it.
When they arrived at his house, Chi Yu, perhaps fearing that he would lock his door again, unbuckled and jumped out of the car before it had even come to a complete stop.
Liang Muyie said nothing. He also got out, walked to the trunk, and while taking things out, said to Chi Yu, “Go on and open the door. What time should I pick you up tomorrow?”
His words made Chi Yu remember that his own car was still at the base of the mountain. He did indeed need a ride up. His head drooped, and his bravado deflated by half.
“I can find…” Find Gao Yi? The guy is injured himself. Other friends? Everyone had their own plans. At the last minute, he was too embarrassed to trouble anyone else.
Liang Muyie remained standing under the halo of the streetlight, holding Chi Yu’s snowboard in his left hand, his head bowed, waiting for an answer. It was as if their confrontation in the car had never happened. His emotions showed no fluctuation; he was always planning the next step, the next thing to do.
The calmer he was, the more it highlighted Chi Yu’s own agitation. Chi Yu ducked his head to avoid his gaze and walked straight to his own front door. He stood there, but with his right arm unable to straighten, he fumbled for a long time and couldn’t get the keys out of his jacket pocket.
Liang Muyie looked up and saw him standing at the door with his head and arms hanging low, exactly like the scene from a few weeks ago. The dim, motion-activated lightbulb began to flicker again, but this time, he couldn’t pretend not to see.
The edge of a snowboard is made of hardened steel, solid and sharp. The moment he fell, he was carrying the kinetic energy of a free fall from over ten meters high. The human body isn’t made of iron, and the human heart even less so. To say it doesn’t hurt is a lie.
He helped Chi Yu prop the snowboard by the door, then reached into the pocket of his snow jacket and pulled out his keychain.
“Then 5:30 tomorrow morning.”
The keys jingled. The temperature was only ten degrees below zero. The moisture from their breaths mingled into a single cloud. They were both silent in the dark night.
Liang Muyie’s right hand tightly gripped one of the keys and reached past Chi Yu’s body to push open the door.
“Liang Muyie, why are you…”
Before he could finish, the door was open.
Liang Muyie had driven him home once before, but this was the first time he had stepped inside. Chi Yu’s place was a semi-basement, which was rather damp and cold year-round, especially in winter. Now, with all the lights off, it had a somewhat gloomy feel.
He took two steps into the living room. By the dim light from the doorway, he saw that Chi Yu’s home had no sofa, no television, none of the places for relaxation and entertainment found in a normal person’s home. The largest wall in the living room was covered with snowboards. Some were on specially installed wall racks, but most were just leaning against the wall.
No wonder Chi Yu had lent him a board that was almost brand new; he must have had at least twenty of them. There were symmetrical boards, directional ones, minis, oddly shaped ones, and swallowtails. Besides snowboards, he also had several skateboards and a hard surfboard. A corner was piled with various fitness equipment: a barbell set, resistance bands, a yoga mat, a balance ball, and so on.
This didn’t look like a living room; it looked more like a self-converted gym.
The only coffee table was piled with various documents. On the living room floor was a moisture-proof mat and a sleeping bag. Chi Yu had an old, overstretched rhomboid muscle injury in his back and preferred to sleep on a bed as hard as a steel plate, sometimes even sleeping directly on the floor.
It was hard to even find a place to stand in the entire living room. Seeing the situation, Liang Muyie just told him to rest well and then turned and left.
It was only after he got home and checked his phone that Chi Yu saw the missed call from Gao Yi and dialed him back.
Gao Yi had exported the training videos and emailed them to him. He also called to ask what time Chi Yu’s run was scheduled for tomorrow. They chatted briefly about the practice session from the day before.
When Gao Yi and Xiang Weiwei had left, Liang Muyie had taken over for them. As they were leaving, they had looked back and seen the two of them, having swapped jackets, their helmets touching, talking about something. Xiang Weiwei had urged him to get some gossip. To please his wife, Gao Yi had jokingly asked Chi Yu over the phone, “So what’s the deal with you and little Liang?”
Normally, Chi Yu was someone who could take a joke. Even if he didn’t want to say, he would have laughed along. But unexpectedly, this time the joke didn’t even cause a ripple. Chi Yu was silent for a long time, and Gao Yi felt guilty on the other end of the line. Then, he dropped a bombshell.
“Remember I told you about that Chinese friend who skied, the one I trained with when I was seventeen?” Chi Yu had just started, but Gao Yi already knew who he was talking about. Chi Yu had many athlete friends, but over the years, there was only one name he brought up repeatedly, that lingered on his lips and in his heart.
In Banff, Chi Yu had confessed to him after a few drinks, and he himself had looked up the news from back then. Chi Yu had been driving him to a competition at night when they got into a car accident. Liang Yichuan had died at the scene, and Chi Yu had also been seriously injured, forced to take a two-year hiatus from competition. Liang Yichuan, Liang Muyie. The surname didn’t lie. Gao Yi instantly understood the whole story.
“How… how did you know? There are so many people with the surname Liang in the world.”
“Their voices are very similar. I actually saw him once, back then, on the street. At the time… I couldn’t see clearly. Yichuan said his older brother was a photographer; Muyie also said his younger brother was a skier… Anyway, there’s no mistake.” There was a pause on Chi Yu’s end, the scraping sound of a steel file against a board’s edge. “I’d rather I were wrong.”
And the birthday. Liang Muyie clearly hadn’t been celebrating his birthday in recent years, which was why Cheng Yang had reacted that way. Even he himself had initially reacted with surprise and shock, not joy. And he, Chi Yu, was the originator of all his pain.
Not only that, but he had also rubbed salt in his wound. He had seen that Liang Muyie barely ate any of the birthday cake that day. As for making a wish and cutting the cake, it was probably just to save him from embarrassment.
Gao Yi sighed.
“Sigh, since you’ve said this much, I have to give you some advice.”
Chi Yu said patiently, “Go ahead, Brother Yi.”
Gao Yi didn’t lecture him at length. He just said one simple sentence: “Chi Yu, you have to tell him.”
He had thought that the pressure of the competition wouldn’t affect Chi Yu at all; this was a guy who got excited for big events. But the pressure he was under was more than just the competition.
There was another long silence on Chi Yu’s end. Then he said, “Yeah, I know.”
“I know it’s hard for you, your relationship with him now…” Gao Yi swallowed, choosing his words carefully. “You’re so close, you’re friends. But dragging it on isn’t a solution either.”
The sound of Chi Yu’s edge tuning stopped. Then, Gao Yi heard him say, “I know. After the competition, I’ll tell him.”
Hearing this, Gao Yi lost his mood for gossip.
“Brother Yi, please, when you see him tomorrow, don’t tell him. I…”
“I understand,” Gao Yi naturally understood. “It’s your business. I’ll let you tell him yourself. Don’t worry. Don’t think about this for now. Focus on the competition. Think about your line, that 720, how cool that’s gonna be, right?”
Chi Yu gave a bitter smile and said, “Honestly, I’ve been thinking about this more than my line these past two days.”
He couldn’t help but think that if Liang Yichuan were still alive, he would still be skiing the “shortcut” through the woods with him. Before meeting him, Chi Yu had never skied with a good skier. After meeting him, he spent half his time skiing off-piste on his splitboard. He had used his splitboard to its full potential, even attracting the attention of manufacturers. He had a small segment in their product promo video for the next season and earned his first-ever advertising income as a snowboarder.
The day he received the check, Chi Yu had split the income with Liang Yichuan. At the time, Liang Yichuan was trying to save up to buy a car behind his dad’s back, saving every bit of allowance he could in a Doraemon piggy bank. Until the day of the accident, Chi Yu knew the exact balance in that piggy bank.
Liang Yichuan rarely spoke about his older brother to outsiders. Perhaps there was always a hard-to-define sense of competition between young brothers. It started with teenage hormones and later evolved into a matter of professional pride.
To this day, Chi Yu now knew why. Liang Muyie had grown freely into the man he was today, standing tall and proud, coming and going as he pleased. His success cast a shadow, and Liang Yichuan had grown up in that shadow. He always had a fire in him, wanting to do better than his older brother. Anyone else would probably have felt the same.
But whenever Liang Yichuan mentioned him, saying “my brother’s project,” “my brother is off filming in some mountain,” “my brother said once I’m good enough, he’ll go ski the highest mountain in the world with me,” the pride in his voice was palpable. Chi Yu’s knowledge of him was just bits and pieces, like looking at flowers in a fog, standing in that shadow, looking up at a towering tree.
If Liang Yichuan were still alive, if he hadn’t agreed to rush to that competition, he would be twenty years old now. Once past the competitive phase of adolescence, he would have been more willing to hang out with his older brother. He would have definitely pulled Liang Muyie along and introduced him to everyone present. And he and Liang Muyie would have met in a completely different way. Maybe in Canada, maybe on a big mountain in China.
If there was a button that could reset everything between them, he would press it without hesitation. But reality wasn’t a virtual game, nor was it a training ground. No matter how many times he practiced, he could never get a do-over.
By the time Liang Muyie got back to his own place, he finally opened his phone to check his messages.
Zheng Chengling had sent him the preliminary scouting and training plan for the following week, asking which day he wanted to come shoot so he could arrange to purchase the right equipment. For their usual climbing training, they mostly used dynamic ropes, rarely static ropes. So how many meters of static rope to buy depended entirely on the photographer’s plan.
Liang Muyie had an idea. He called him, first confirming the specific arrangements for the next week.
After confirming the work details, he asked, “President Zheng, I have a question. Could you help me ask around?”
Zheng Chengling was a straightforward person and had long since started calling him brother. “Stop with the ‘President Zheng.’ Just call me Old Zheng. What’s up? Just say it. If I can help, of course I will.”
Liang Muyie thanked him with a laugh, then finally asked, “Has Summit China… ever considered sponsoring a snowboarder?”
“I know they do in the US, but not yet in China. We only started making apparel in the last five or six years, you know. If there’s a suitable candidate, we can definitely consider it. I can even help you propose it to headquarters. The skiing you’re talking about, is it…”
“It’s big mountain backcountry, freestyle, extreme sports,” Liang Muyie said, inspiration striking. “The highest mountain is always the next one*. That kind of thing.”