The river festival had four days. On the second day there was a footrace for children, which had been a tradition long enough that nobody remembered starting it, which was the standard qualification for tradition in Qinghe.
The race ran from the north dock to the south dock along the riverside path — approximately three hundred metres of relatively flat ground complicated by a root system near the midpoint that had been tripping children for twenty years and showed no signs of being removed. It was open to children between eight and thirteen. The prize was a length of red ribbon, which sounds modest and was, but which had the specific social value of visible display that no amount of modesty could diminish.
Wei Liang was nine. He had never officially won anything. He found that this bothered him less than he expected, which told him something about his relationship to official things.
He was, however, fast. He had discovered this incidentally — Qinghe was a town you moved through on foot, and he moved through it constantly, and speed had accumulated as a byproduct of attention and practice the way most useful things did.
Hao Jin was competing. He wanted to win in the particular way that large, physically confident people want to win things when they have been consistently underestimated in terms of wanting — as if the wanting were disproportionate to their size and therefore embarrassing. He had not told Wei Liang this. Wei Liang had seen it anyway, in the way Hao Jin practiced on the north bank in the mornings before anyone else was there.
On race day, the path was dry. Good conditions. Twelve children lined up at the north dock.
Wei Liang assessed the field. The root system at the midpoint was the variable. Most children either knew about it and adjusted, or didn't know about it and tripped. Hao Jin knew about it. Wei Liang knew about it. Three others knew about it. The rest were going to have a challenging midpoint.
The start signal was given.
Wei Liang ran. He ran well, settling into a pace that felt sustainable and also happened to be near the front. The root system took two children off the race at the midpoint, as expected. Four others were going hard too early. By two-thirds of the way down the path, it was Wei Liang, Hao Jin, and a girl named Bai Mei who Wei Liang had not adequately assessed, which was an error.
They were level entering the last fifty metres.
Bai Mei fell back. It was Wei Liang and Hao Jin.
Wei Liang was a step ahead. He could feel it — the edge, the small clear advantage, the place where the race was his if he extended it.
He looked back.
Hao Jin's face was doing something Wei Liang had not seen it do before: entirely open, the way faces are when they want something enough that wanting it has taken over everything else. Every footfall was maximal. He was not holding anything back. He had nothing left to hold.
Wei Liang looked forward.
He calculated the distance remaining. He calculated the margins. He slowed — not obviously, not in any way that announced itself, a few percentage points of effort redirected — and crossed the finish line a step behind.
Hao Jin won by two steps. He turned around with his hands raised and his whole face doing the thing it had done in the race, except now it was doing it without the effort, which made it more visible, more real: open completely, unguarded, simply glad.
Wei Liang finished second, catching his breath, and said: "You just barely beat me."
Hao Jin said: "I know." He said it quietly, and he said it with his eyes meeting Wei Liang's for a moment, and the I know meant more than two words.
Wei Liang nodded. He looked away first.
He had not told anyone about this choice and would not. He was not interested in credit for it. He was interested in the fact that Hao Jin's face had been worth the two percentage points, which seemed to him to be a useful piece of information about what things were worth.