Person in a Bottle

A Novel by Sun Wei

Chapter One

1

May 15. It was the first Saturday after the May Day holiday. The sun shone splendidly in the cloudless sky. Temperatures in downtown Shanghai jumped up quickly. The Huiyang Department Store in the Xujiahui intersection had seen a constant and lively flow of weekend fun-seekers. At approximately 3:10pm, Zhang Yue and Xu Mingzhi showed up in the central lobby of the store on the ground floor. They were walking towards the Center Café. That was the time the No.6 waiter at the cafe said he remembered them walking in.

Although the appointed time for the meeting was 3:30pm, they reached 20 minutes earlier.

Zhang Yue, 35, was a senior engineer with the Dajiang Electronics Co Ltd, a sole Japanese-owned enterprise based in Shanghai. The square-faced man with short clean-cut hair was wearing a pair of eyebrow-frame glasses, a green T-shirt with irregular strips, and a pair of sports shoes. He was of medium build, roughly 175cm tall, and still in better shape than many men of the same age.

Xu Mingzhi, 30, was a feature editor of an evening newspaper. The slim woman must be at least 168cm tall even if you discount her high heel shoes. Judging by her face, she wasn't that beautiful, only that her extremely white skin lent her a unique delicacy. She was wearing an apple-green boat-neck silk sweater, which ensured a perfect match for her skin. Having a ponytail tied up, she had nice slim-cut trousers and high heels. With a proper dab of make-up, she seemed to be more carefully dressed up for the date than her partner Zhang Yue.

Sitting in the soft couch of the café, one could have a good view of the escalators going up and down the nine floors of the store. Festive garlands and colored paper-cutting flowers were still left dangling from the transparent top glass ceiling, like rays of sunlight that filled every inch of the lobby with warmth and delights.

It is best at this time of the day to slightly close your eyes for a quick snooze. Who doesn’t? I mean, who doesn’t want to sit idle on a sunny weekend afternoon like this, especially after Shanghai has finally bid adieu to the Plum Rain season? Nobody will fault you for thinking of some cold drinks and daydreaming.

If I hadn’t happened to take a nap at home that afternoon, I would have taken the Metro to Xujiahui as well. The café was almost fully packed, but I would have managed to find a seat to myself. With a book in hand, I would have been reading a whodunit mystery in the café while sipping milk foam from a cappuccino. Perhaps, when Zhang Yue and Xu Mingzhi walked in, I would have happened to look up and seen them. They would have been standing by my side because I had taken the only seat for two that was available by then. Had it been the case, what happened later might have happened to me, or any other young woman who had been sitting there.

However, I was not there. So when they came over, they found this table for two on the outskirts of the patio — a small square table with two face-to-face sofa seats.

They each took a seat by the table. It was a big armchair, a little too big for one but definitely not comfortable enough for two. About two or three minutes after they sat down, Mingzhi looked up at Zhao Yue as if something was going wrong.

“But ... where would she sit when she comes?” she asked.

So, Zhang Yue gave up his seat and squeezed into the same sofa as Mingzhi. There was barely enough room for them to sit side by side. Can’t be blamed, eh? The sofa wasn’t designed to hold two adult buttocks at the same time! Now the pair seemed particularly intimate and close, with not only their elbows but their whole backs pressed against each other.

At this moment, the No.6 waiter came up and handed them the menu — an 8K-sized book with brown leather cover.

“This is so crowded,” Zhang Yue murmured as if talking to himself, “I can’t even turn the pages.” He stood up and sat back on the sofa opposite Mingzhi.

“Then where will she sit when she comes? She will squeeze with you, or with me?” Mingzhi grumbled, a little irritably. The sudden agitation brought a blush to her cheeks.

The No.6 waiter was taken aback by her sudden change of mood just as he was about to appreciate her white smooth skin closely. What a tender and delicate woman she is, he thought.

Zhang Yue seemed to have anticipated her reaction.

“Don’t be nervous. It isn’t worth it,” he said.

He stood up and went back in the sofa with her again, deliberately squeezing her further inside. He put his hand over hers, pressed them hard and cracked a smile that was enough to reassure her.

Mingzhi ordered a cup of hot decaffeinated Blue Mountain and Zhang an iced Mocha.

And then?

Even the most diligent waiter couldn't have recalled what happened subsequently. The abundant sunshine in the café that afternoon made the No.6 waiter lethargic for a while. He only remembered there was a call for “Mr Zhang Yue.” He walked around the tables asking the name. When he came over to their table, the gentleman with eyebrow-frame glasses stood up. As the gentleman went to answer the phone over the counter, the lady looked surprised and confused. There was no one on the other end of the call when Zhang Yue answered.

It was 3:40pm. Zhang Yue was browsing through some of the magazines at the café. With only half of his back on the sofa, he was leaning to one side and half-turning against Mingzhi.

Mingzhi tucked herself easily on the other side. Squeezing her eyes, she started sending messages to her friend Ren Jinran on her mobile phone.

“Was that you who called for ‘Mr Zhang Yue’ in the café just now?” she texted. She had only told Jinran about today’s date. Maybe it was her trying to make fun of them on purpose.

She got a prompt reply: “Not me lah. Did you meet her? How was she?”

“Don’t mention it. She isn’t here yet. We are early, and we are still waiting …” her fingers pressed hard against the phone's keyboard.

Suddenly, as the light from her phone screen blinked for a second, she felt a chilling shrill on her left cheek. It came down her earlobe and right into the corner of her mouth. The pain crossed half of her face as she gave out a faint cry. She threw her phone away and touched her cheek, only to find her hand covered in some red hot fluid. And more was streaming down her face and onto her neck, chest, sweater and even on her slim-cut pants.

For a few seconds, she was amazingly calm — that's because she was just too shocked to react! As if in a spell, she stared at her palm which was smeared in blood and at the red spots on her beige pants. It wasn’t until Zhang Yue pushed away the coffee table in panic, looked at her in the face and stared at her cheek with aghast eyes that she realized what was happening. This was when she first screamed out loudly, as hard as possible. With thick blood in her hand and her eyes wide open, she even forgot to cry.

From the reflections on her phone screen that was already stained in blood, she saw an audacious cut on her left cheek that stretched between the earlobe and the corner of her mouth as blood oozed out uncontrollably.

It wasn’t until then did other people in the café figure out what was happening and wondered how it all happened. They saw blood start oozing out her face in the blink of an eye. However, nobody had moved into the café; none of the people in the lobby outside the café had noticed anyone behaving in an abnormal manner. On such a quiet, sunny and peaceful afternoon, it was difficult to miss even the slightest flickering of a fly. Yet the incredible crime was missed by all, including Zhang Yue.

2

Wuya.com is a relatively small website. But the dedication of its online editors is really something worthy of praise. They quickly produce a serial special report on the 5.15 Huiyang Department Store Disfigurement Case. Within ten days, every detail of the incident with pictures and illustrations relating to the accident has been posted online. If Sherlock Holmes ever lived in this century, he wouldn’t have to visit the site for fact-finding to solve a crime. All he would need to do is sit in front of a computer and read the web news every day.

I am not Holmes...just a female netizen slightly addicted to the Internet.

To be formally introduced, you can call me Zhou You, or Yo-yo for short. I am 29 years old now, a confirmed shengnv, a rather demeaning Chinese name for unmarried or unattached women in their late 20s meaning “leftover woman.” Or just a year short before being referred to as a baiquannv — a “queen in distress.”

To tell you the truth, I haven’t yet figured out what kind life I want for myself. Should I dig for gold or work to be famous as the perfect career woman that is admired by the mass or be just contended with falling and staying in love?

With a master’s degree from the Law Department of East China Politics and Laws, I seem to lack the necessary ambition to climb the ladder of success and be a partner in any law firm. Instead, I would rather be a junior clerk at a company's law department. I am tired of dating men. Neither am I interested in going for dinners, get-togethers, KTVs, BBQ outings or even New Year’s parties. None of these social activities appeal to me.

It kills me to wear the stiff-collared business suit and stone-hard high heels all day long at work and meet clients and deal with tough legal terms. What pleases me most is when I am finally off work and at home. I quickly get into my favourite pink cotton sportswear, tie my hair up with a clip, and tuck up into a sofa with a blanket draped over my shoulders. Most of the time, I watch the satellite TV. When I feel hungry, I call for Pizza. If I am in a good mood to venture out, I head straight out on my own, cheekily loafing around in my home sportswear and sports shoes. Perhaps I won’t even bother to comb my hair. I would go to see a film at the cinema near my home, or try out a small restaurant and order a couple of dishes just to eat my heart out, completely ignoring other people's sneers. And I have no plans to change the status quo until the day I shall close my eyes for good, if — it is not necessary.

He Ying has been nagging me all the while because of my sloppy lifestyle. She once read about baiquannv from an article title in a magazine and pointed it out to me as a warning over my miserable prospect of being single.

He Ying is my direct boss and manager of the law department. If women are categorized as “the lost women” or “the winning women”, He Ying is a sure winner then. She married her first date at the age of 26 and has a son who is five years old now. Boasting of rich experience in family life, she is eager to pass on some of it to me now.

Every time she tries to set up a date for me, I have to dodge her with talks of office ethics.

“Sister He," I said, "You are the manager of the department and my direct boss. Everyone in the office can do match-making for me, but not you. Because if I said no to the date you set up, I would be defying the will of a superior which is against my work ethics. If we were engaged later, he might suppress me due to his connection with you which is against my family ethics, isn't it?"

My arguments obviously left her dumbfounded. Blinking her eyes for a while, she finally blurted out: “Yo-yo, if I had to make you stand in a court argue for a case, you would be indisputable.”

But I’d rather live in the cyber world than face a hard nut in the real world.

I don’t know if you ever tried searching your name on the Google search engine when you are bored to death sometimes. One day I keyed in my name Zhou You in the Google search and 23,651 results with the word “zhou you” showed up. It wasn't anything surprising as my name means “travel around” in Chinese, so most searched results were web links of travel agencies. But just as I turned to Page 35, the 523rd result caught my eye. I clicked on it and saw a webpage, saying:

～～

Zhou You, I don’t know if you would ever see this post one day?

Do you know that I keep changing my MSN signature just to make you know my mood of the day?

Do you know that I often queue up at the ticket booth at the cinema near your house? When it is my turn, I will go back to the end of the queue again, hoping that you would one day pass by and I would say: Ah, what a coincidence! Shall we go to see a film together?

Do you know that every time I see you frowning while walking in the street, I am thinking if you were with me, I would never ever let you frown!

Maybe you would never read this post, and you would never know how much I would like to say to you, Zhou, let me give you the happiness you want. If there were a day that you got to see these words, I think I shall die with closed eyes. I may be exaggerating a bit but I mean it.

～～

Ah, Jesus Christ!

The subject of the post was #Night comes, and I miss you so much!# The ID name of the post was Nutcracker. And the post was dated at 2:17am, October 23, 2003. There was no follow-up, nor was it twittered or commented by any other people. Had I not been bored to death that day, I am afraid I would never have read the lonely post that had gone silent for almost four years!

Aha! Who the hell you are, I thought to myself, a namesake in this world? It seemed that she was in the stars... Lucky to have found love! Just as I was about to shut down the page, I hesitated for a while, and then moved the mouse from the top right to the top left. I entered the home page of the web forum where the post was from and got myself registered as Zhou You as my online ID. I re-clicked the previous post, leaving my comment under it in red Size 2 characters:

～～

Copy that! May you rest in peace!

～～

I am telling you all this just for you to know how I happened to discover this wuya.com and the website forum bearing a tattoo of a black angel, called JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW. What a twisted name it is!

Nevertheless, I keep going back to the forum since then, as if I were enchanted by the name itself. The web forum has become the most important part of my life. If I don’t log in to read a few posts, I will feel upset throughout the day. Once I even smashed up a mug due to a cable failure in the office. He Ying thought I was irritated by email disruptions. Only I knew that it was the sudden cut-off from the Internet forum that originated a sensation of emptiness in my mind — a fear that I had never experienced before.

It is hard for me to explain what the theme of the forum is. Generally speaking, there are times when we want to share our most important thoughts and feelings with a particular person in our life. However, chances are we may not meet that person again, or we may not be able to talk face to face though we live under the same roof. The forum, to some extent, serves as Zhou Muyun’s tree hole. Every secret revealed on the forum is silently waiting for a moment to be read by an intended Mr or Ms Right.

3

The ringing of the phone brings me back to the office reality from the cyber world. I am used to the weightlessness of such a sudden fall. While my eyes are still lingering on the screen, my hand finds the phone's receiver without even looking. I pick up the phone and put it to my ear. Strangely, there comes only the dial tone from the other end.

I look up to see He Ying going “Uh, oh” at the desk opposite me. With a smile on her face, she turns to my direction, as if to suggest “Hurry back to work. I know you were sneaking online again, eh?”

10:20am, May 25, 2010. I am sitting in my old-fashioned office, which is comfortably bright and spacious. The door is wide open throughout the day as I always insist on it. There is a small stainless nameplate in both English and Chinese on the door frame. It reads: Law Department, Paro Pharmaceutical. Above the plate are four artistic iron numbers: 1906.

Gradually the smile on He Ying’s face disappears as the “Uh-huh” sounds she makes grew weary. We have some serious problem to handle. The Paro Bio-Medicine Research Co Ltd, sole-funded by the Paro Pharmaceutical is being sued for "unintentional killing due to clinical drug trials." The case has been accepted by the court.

Ai-De-Kang, literally meaning “love brings health” in Chinese, is a new anti-depressant that was successfully developed by the Paro research center a year ago. Technically speaking, the action mechanism of the new synthesis is far superior to any mono-functional antidepressant. It is said Meng Yu, director of the research center, gave a very inspiring description of the newly developed drug at a high-level company meeting, which was quite surprising though, because he had never ever been so eloquent with words before.

“Do you believe there is such a kind of panacea in this world? With just one pill every morning, you will be in a perfect positive frame of mind in just two weeks time. No matter how much you wanted to end your life due to a psychological meltdown over a recently lost lover, or a life of destitution, or years of loneliness without love. Suddenly you feel nothing. Your appetite is back and your sleep is back. When you get up in the morning, you have the smile on your face. You walk on the road and you notice the new buds on the twigs of a willow, so you jump to touch it. You feel happy, safe, and contented as if you were in a stable relationship with someone you love. Even the least significant thing in this world becomes interesting and meaningful,” Meng Yu said at the meeting.

It was during research for an anti-hypertension drug in 2003 that Meng Yu happened to develop a new compound that could work wonders on parts of the brain that affected the mental status of the person. In 2005, Meng Yu quit his teaching job at the university and joined the Paro. His major task was to lead the research of the new drug on which the Paro had banked its future.

Ai-De-Kang has been tried and tested on the animals and volunteers with satisfying results so far. It has now entered the Phrase III Clinical Trial, which is the Patients Group Experiment. In fact, once a new drug enters the Phrase III trial, its safety and effectiveness is pretty much an assured thing. The Paro has contacted the Center for Clinical Pharmaceutical Research of the Rui’an Hospital to pick up some samples from patients and inquires about their willingness to cooperate with the experiment.

Just ten days ago — in the third week when the patients were put into trial — unfortunately, the No.23 patient, a young woman called Su Ya committed suicide in the apartment where she lived alone. Su’s parents couldn’t accept the fact their daughter killed herself. After finding out the clinical data from her treatment record, they got in touch with a lawyer and sued the Paro. The case is now in the hands of He Ying and me.

Fifteen minutes later, Paro’s vice CEO Lu Tianlan, He Ying and me are discussing the case at the conference room on the 19th floor.

From legal perspective, we have a 90 percent chance of winning the case because every patient signed copies of complex and detailed papers stating their consent to join in the new drug trial voluntarily under the supervision of the ethics committee.

What worries the Paro is that such an accident right before the national FDA's approval, especially if it goes to court and arouses the attention of the public, is very much likely to cast doubt over the effectiveness of the new anti-depressant and hamper its marketing possibility. Moreover, if the FDA bureaucrats take an over-cautious attitude following Su's suicide, Ai-De-Kang will remain in the laboratory as a molecular formula forever.

We can win the case but lose the new drug. For a company like us, nothing is more miserable than that.

He Ying suggests if we reach a deal in private with Su’s parents. Just give them some money as compensation and make them disappear from the public eye as soon as possible.

“Bad idea!” Lu Tianlan says, raising her eyebrows. Her pen making a perfect whirl over her slender fingers, “That means we admit there is a problem with the drug itself. The media may take it as a chance to make a big fuss about it.”

Lu Tianlan, 36, also single, is the vice CEO of the Paro Pharmaceutical Group. It is said she started her career as a junior sales representative of the company 12 years ago, knocking on the doors of the hospitals around the city. She got promoted as the sales director and finally became the vice president of the company. The skinny woman, about 160cm tall, has a pointed chin, slanting sharp eyes and straight black hair that hides her age.

Today at this crisis meeting, she is wearing a square-collar white shirt, a dark blue wool vest and an impressive long dress with blue Campsis flowers. To be honest, I adore her from the bottom of my heart. If there ever were a spokeswoman for the word baiquannv, she would be just it. Except for a marriage, she has had everything that a woman desires—beauty, independence, style and career.

He Ying, though three years younger than Lu, is plump and round faced. At 165cm, she doesn’t look any taller than Tianlan with her hair cut short around her cheeks. She is a wordy speaker, prefers pink and has to get changed into her maiden dresses on her day offs. It is said that the two of them are good friends and share each other’s secrets. I don’t see anything in common between them, but I believe He Ying is a careful and considerate friend.

With her suggestion for an out-of-court settlement ruled out, He Ying goes to order tea for us at the receptionist’s desk. Red tea cups in hand, the three of us sit face to face discussing the case for another 40 minutes without a solution. In whatever way a person died. She committed suicide while undergoing medication trials. If the victim’s parents are hell bent on taking legal recourse, it is almost impossible to wipe out the negative effects of the case it may have on the new drug, Ai-De-Kang.

Suddenly Tianlan says: “Who would commit suicide without any concrete reasons? Failing in career, loneliness, a lost love, or a chronic disease … all could lead to a sudden psychological breakdown. In other words, who is even born with depression?” With one finger, she makes the pen stand straight against the desk. A rarely seen smile creeps up onto her face.

She's right. If we can find the motivation for Su Ya’s suicide, public opinions will not hold the new drug responsible for her death. How can a pill be responsible for a person’s life!

*

May Day in China, also known as the Labour Day, is a week-long public holiday starting on May 1 every year.

Xujiahui, also spelt Zigawei in Shanghainese, is a historical and cultural area in Xuhui District of Shanghai. The area is a well known precinct for high-end shopping and entertainment.

Plum Rain season called Meiyu in Chinese usually starts in the middle of June and ends in early July, lasting for about 20 days. The climate during this season is characterized by continuous rain and hot temperatures.

Wuya in Chinese means the boundless universe.

Baiquan in Chinese means “the lost dog”, and nv means “woman”. The phrase refers to the group of women who get high education, have got a good job, but have no lovers. It comes from a prose title written by a Japanese female writer, SAKAI JUNKO.

Zhou Muyun is the major character in the movie 2046 (2004), directed by Wang Kar-wei, a renowned filmmaker in Hong Kong.

(Translated from the Chinese by Xu Qin)