EGRV 45 | Flight

[Only his aviator was still flying.]

After New Year’s Eve, Liang Mu also noticed that Chi Yu had become a little different. During sex, he became more proactive and passionate. He attributed this to their growing familiarity with each other’s bodies. He knew almost all of his sensitive spots, knew how to make him lose control, and Chi Yu also knew how to arouse his desire. Every encounter was thoroughly satisfying.

It was just that Chi Yu was one arm short of free movement, so he was temporarily at a disadvantage. Every time they reached the end, he would always hold his wrist, or his waist, or the back of his neck, and enter him fiercely.

But once the climax faded, Chi Yu became even more taciturn and reserved than before. Liang Mu later felt that while the physical distance between them had closed, Chi Yu’s heart had drifted far away, so far that he couldn’t grasp it even if he reached out.

Compared to the fleeting passion of the moment, he even felt that the Chi Yu he saw during the day in the Whistler backcountry, using his shoulder as a support and the lens as his eyes, was more real.

He could probably guess the reason.

“Have you bought your return ticket?”

In the sun-drenched cafe, Cheng Yang sat across from him, sipping his coconut milk latte, and asked Liang Mu.

The two had gone skiing together one last time earlier that day. There was still some filming work to wrap up in Squamish, and he knew this might be his last time snowboarding for a long while. Before he left, Chi Yu heard about it and took the DOA from his hands, putting it back on the board rack. Liang Mu thought this was a case of returning property to its rightful owner, but Chi Yu took out another board—one he himself had just ridden a couple of days ago, which was standing against the living room wall. It was that Jones “Aviator.” A true big mountain board, stiff and stable. Chi Yu said, with your current skill, you deserve this board.

Even the bindings were set to his favorite angles.

Liang Mu nodded and said, “I bought one for a week from now.”

Cheng Yang pointed out, “Have you told Coach Chi?”

Liang Mu shook his head again, “He has a competition in a couple of days, I haven’t told him yet.”

Cheng Yang looked at him with a playful expression, saying nothing.

Cheng Yang had found out about their affair. Liang Mu hadn’t actually intended to hide it; he just didn’t want to broadcast his private life with a megaphone. Besides, Cheng Yang used to have a crush on Chi Yu.

One day last week, he borrowed some equipment from Cheng Yang, and they agreed that Cheng Yang would swing by to pick it up at six the next evening. When the next day came, Chi Yu was in his bed. The two had just come down from the snowy mountain and had taken a hot shower. Chi Yu spent a long time in the bathroom, and when he came out, he straddled him, legs apart.

He said, “I’ve been kneeling and waiting for you on the mountain all day, my knees hurt. Let’s make it quick.”

But Cheng Yang arrived early. When he knocked, Chi Yu was being thrusted so hard he couldn’t even kneel steadily.

At that moment, Liang Mu, fearing he might have something come up in Squamish and be unable to return to the city in time, had given Cheng Yang a spare key to his apartment. If he wanted to, he could come right in. Liang Mu cursed at the ceiling, pushed Chi Yu off, and opened the door just a crack. Wrapped in a towel, he handed the things to Cheng Yang.

Cheng Yang understood, there was someone in the house. 

“You’re…”

Before he could finish and leave, he heard the person inside walk into the living room to get a drink of water.

It was Chi Yu. He was only wearing a pair of very short shorts, his upper body bare.

Cheng Yang’s face turned red at the sight.

“He also knew this day would come. And I did say before that I’d be leaving at the end of the month,” Liang Mu explained.

“What about after that? Never see each other again?” Cheng Yang, on the other hand, had a good attitude. After learning about their situation, he only pressed Liang Mu to tell him how it all happened. He had known him for twenty years and was long familiar with Liang Mu’s pattern for handling emotional matters. Except for that unspeakable secret crush in his youth, his adult relationships had always been very healthy. They were happy when they were together, and when they broke up, it was a clean break.

“It won’t come to that. I have some ideas, it’s just that for the time being…” Liang Mu lowered his head and took a sip of coffee.

Cheng Yang heard the unspoken message and was a bit surprised, “You photographed him?”

“Yeah.”

Cheng Yang’s interest was piqued. 

“Let me see. I want to see.” Seeing Liang Mu’s expression, he added, “It’s not something I can’t see, is it…”

Liang Mu smiled and denied it. As if to prove his innocence, he immediately took his laptop out of his bag and showed Cheng Yang the photos he had taken a few days ago.

By the time Cheng Yang finished looking, holding his breath, the coffee was getting cold. He spoke, seriously, “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you take photos like this. I can’t say they’re beautiful, but… they’re very primal, very powerful.”

After flipping through them repeatedly, he paused on one particular photo. For the shoot, Chi Yu wasn’t wearing a helmet and was looking down at the snow. In the heavy snow, his shell jacket was zipped up to the top, covering half his face, with his goggles resting on his forehead, leaving only a pair of downcast eyes, his lashes as dark as ink, his expression serene. The photo was taken from the left. Liang Mu always felt that the left and right sides of Chi Yu’s face were not quite symmetrical. The right side was proper and well-behaved, but the left side, due to the old scar near the corner of his eye, appeared wild and untamed. He preferred his left face.

Cheng Yang couldn’t find the right words to describe it: “It’s… how do I put it, it has that kind of chaotic power that churns the heavens and earth into a mess. It’s good, very captivating, like your style.”

A scar, a wildfire, a feather, a storm.

Outside of commercial shoots, he never obsessed over making people look good. Seeing his old friend’s approval, Liang Mu also smiled.

“He is a pioneer, an aviator.” He completed the sentence Cheng Yang had left unfinished.

Cheng Yang blinked and said, quite emotionally, “You can really bear to let go.”

He was a photographer himself; he could tell with one glance whether a work had heart in it. At this moment, he didn’t know who to feel sorry for.

Liang Mu, however, spoke in a casual tone, “There’s always the future. Our career paths… perhaps they will intersect again.”

“To be more specific?”

Liang Mu thought for a moment but decided not to say it out loud.

“It’s currently just at the idea stage. I’ll tell you when it can be implemented. When the time comes, you can give me some advice.”

“Are you planning a photography exhibition?”

He shook his head. Ever since the photo of Chen Nian’s final climb on Mount Mu unexpectedly won an award, his fame had soared, but he had never again produced a work with such impact.

“Filming another ‘Life is a Mountain’? The project you’re currently working on?”

“Those are all other people’s ideas.”

Seeing that he wasn’t going to say more, Cheng Yang didn’t press him and just wished him well for the future.

When Liang Mu got home, he found he had a missed WeChat call from Wang Nan’ou. He called back, and Wang Nan’ou, as expected, mentioned that Liang Jiansheng had come to him to ask about the routes for Queer Shan and Yuzhu Peak.

Liang Mu explained the backstory to him: “During a New Year’s meal, he mentioned that he climbed Mount Siguniang with a guide from Lifeng last year without even telling me. So I said this year…”

Wang Nan’ou understood his meaning and immediately went along with it, “That won’t do. Don’t go with Lifeng this year, come with us.” Longshan had grown bigger in recent years and was becoming a strong competitor to Lifeng in high-altitude expedition projects in the six to seven-thousand-meter range in China.

Wang Nan’ou and he had a life-and-death friendship. Seeing that Liang Mu needed help, he immediately offered, “The best time to climb Yuzhu Peak is in September, right before the National Day holiday. You can join our VIP group directly. Queer Shan is a bit more difficult, I’ll arrange for someone to accompany him separately. By the way, when does your uncle want to come? Maybe Boss Qian and I can accompany him together.”

Upon hearing this, Liang Mu quickly said, “Don’t trouble Boss Qian, and you don’t need to come either. Just recommend someone reliable.”

Wang Nan’ou of course readily agreed.

“Speaking of Boss Qian, does she still climb these days?” Qian Xiaoxian held the female first ascent records for several technical peaks in Sichuan Province, such as Mount Yaomei. Liang Mu had accompanied her several times to photograph her. But in recent years, Liang Mu hadn’t heard much news about her.

“The boss is busy with company matters. We’re preparing to register a branch in Nepal to expand our sustainable ecological climbing projects on Everest,” Wang Nan’ou explained the situation before adding, “She also got married and adopted two children. Recently, she has sort of retired behind the scenes to return to her family. Alas, those of us who retire, retire, and those who scatter, scatter.”

Hearing this, Liang Mu also felt a sense of melancholy.

Wang Nan’ou spoke again, “Muye, since we’re on the topic today, let me be nosy and ask. Back then, on Queer Shan…”

He had been in good health but suddenly decided to turn back just before the summit push. He had actually asked about this a long time ago, but Liang Mu had just fobbed him off with four words, saying “the feeling wasn’t right.”

Liang Mu chuckled softly on the other end of the line. Only then did he explain, “I was dragged there by a friend. It wasn’t until the night before the summit push that I found out the expedition was funded by Yang Lifeng. He wanted to get some kind of first ascent record for a university student mountaineering team. Having me along was just to use my name to take a couple of photos, which he would then publish in magazines.”

“You really just went down from C3 and left?”

“What else? At C3, the expedition leader even told me, it’s just four hundred meters, you’ll be up there in no time, a piece of cake. I thought to myself, damn it, back when Lifeng Expeditions was leading a group on Mount Mu, trying to save Chen Nian would have also been a piece of cake. The guide asked base camp over the radio whether to rescue, but base camp couldn’t make a decision. Who do you think gave the final order? He didn’t save him because he was afraid that if the rescue failed, he’d be responsible for a death and tarnish his reputation.”

“And the photos of that university student climbing team in the end…”

“Anyone can take photos. I didn’t need to put myself through that.”

“Sigh…” Wang Nan’ou let out a long sigh. He understood Liang Mu’s feelings. Any high-altitude climbing team needs to be united; there’s no room for even the slightest rift, let alone a blood feud. Taking one step forward would not only be a betrayal of his dear friend but also a betrayal of himself.

Chatting about his old grudges with Lifeng Expeditions had put Liang Mu in a foul mood. He then remembered something else and changed the subject, “By the way, there’s something else I want to ask you. Back then on the North Face when we were doing acclimatization training, we saw…”

The two of them ended up talking for another half an hour. After hanging up, he opened his computer again.

Chi Yu had told him his rough plan for the remaining ten months of the year. The FWT qualifiers were concentrated in February and March, so he would be very busy.

After this three-star qualifier in Whistler, there was a four-star event in Kirkwood, California, in early March. In mid-March, a three-star event in Copper Mountain, Colorado. Then, in Les Arcs, France, a four-star event.

The higher the star rating, the more difficult the competition and the more points awarded.

Next year, there was another FWT qualifier in Altay, Xinjiang, but it was only a one-star. However, Chi Yu said that if he wasn’t injured by then, he would like to go and ski the big mountains in China.

Liang Mu flipped through his own calendar. After he returned, he would also be busy organizing the materials shot in Squamish this month, followed by that Jiayun advertisement that Li Xiangwan had turned down for him. His work schedule was relatively flexible; he would generally know about two months in advance if he would be free to take on projects.

He had scheduled his summer training in New Zealand. The FWT finals would be the following winter.

If this plan were to be implemented, it wasn’t impossible. By then, he would also have the confidence to respond to Chi Yu’s “in the future.”

He opened his phone and saw that Xiang Weiwei had just posted a few short videos. Clicking on one, it was Chi Yu practicing in the backcountry of Blackcomb Mountain during the day. Xiang Weiwei filmed it from a first-person perspective right beside him, making the big mountain backcountry look particularly perilous, like jumping off a cliff. And Chi Yu, wearing the ordinary black shell jacket he wore during pre-competition training at Diamond Bowl, fully geared up from helmet and goggles to a face mask, raised his recently healed right hand and shouted “Drop in,” then did a flip, a 180-degree grab, and flew into the snowy slope with thick powder below.

It was a very ordinary day in his life, no different from the other three hundred and sixty-four.

There was a consensus in their line of work that you couldn’t rely on intuition, but on reason. However, just like that night at the foot of the mountain waiting for Chi Yu to rescue Gao Yi, he had an unprecedentedly certain intuition that Chi Yu would get everything he wanted. He was so pure and simple, like the snowy mountain before him. With his eyes closed, he could see Chi Yu standing on the summit of Verbier, looking down on the world.

Liang Mu never spoke lightly of dreams; he knew the price mortals paid for them. Beyond the price, one also needed luck and opportunity. Whether it was Qian Xiaoxian, Zhong Yanyun, or Chen Nian, they all had legendary careers. And he was fortunate enough to have accompanied them at different stages of their lives, recording their brilliant moments.

But now, the gods were to descend to the mortal world, the clouds had scattered, and the meteors had fallen. Only his aviator was still flying.

He wanted to film China’s best big mountain skier, skiing China’s best big mountains.