No Such Thing (A YZ Short Story)

First Chance...

The endless stream of bustling humanity pouring along the sidewalk barely faltered as one man suddenly stopped, his lack of movement acting like a rock in a river - diverting the rush only, not holding it back. He visibly drew in a deep breath, or as deep as he could with the mask covering the lower half of his face.

The smog in Shanghai wasn't as bad as it was in Beijing, but it was still bad enough. Especially in this overly congested business district. Flattening the edge of the mask more tightly to his face, the man surged forward into the sea of pedestrians, looking for a nearby escape from the noise and crowds. He needed time to reflect and think before going back home.

After about thirty minutes, he found himself in a residential area. The young man stopped into a small store to grab a couple of bottles of water, then made his way across the street to a park. Though the laughing shrieks of children playing was loud, it was a good kind of loud. He smiled to himself as he watched the antics of a couple of boys playing superheroes before dropping his bag from his shoulder onto a bench and taking a seat in the shade of a tall oak tree.

Pulling the mask from over his face, he took a long drink of the icy cold water he had just bought. It wasn't an especially warm day, but the walk had heated him up quite a bit. He let his mind wander as he rested and cooled down, the mask hanging loose around his neck as the air seemed much clearer in the park.

He honestly wasn't quite confident about his audition earlier. He was told that he had done well, but his own self-criticism was strong. The audition had been set up by one of his favorite professors. A graduation gift he had called it. He really hoped that he hadn't let his professor down. Even if the screen test hadn't gone as he had hoped, he took a small amount of comfort in knowing that the character was a musician. Maybe his musical experience would make up for his lack of acting skills, that little extra something that could land him the role.

WeiZhou chuckled as the two boys playing nearby let loose a string of rather explicit curses at the imaginary monsters they were fighting. A shrill reprimand by a female voice from somewhere behind him sent a look of panic over the boys' faces, and made WeiZhou spit out the swig of water he had just taken.

His mind went back over every minute of his audition. Now, with it completed, he thought of things he should have said or what he should have done differently. Of course, he only thought of these things now, not in the moment when it could have mattered. It was much like a couple of years ago, when he had not accepted the role for a small webseries someone had dared him to audition for.

He knew it would have been a great experience, and the thought of bringing the character to life had been exciting. Why he turned it down in the end, WeiZhou wasn't entirely certain. He had regretted it almost immediately, but what had been done was done. He stroked his own ego thinking that if he had taken the role maybe the show would have done better, instead of just being barely a blip on the radar of internet netizens.

WeiZhou turned his mind to more positive thinking. He aced the audition, he would get the part, and he would be able to truly claim the title of rookie actor, he told himself. He had to repeat it a few times in his head before the thought took hold, but when it finally did, WeiZhou's smile beamed as brightly as the sun that had just peeked out from behind a passing cloud.

The two boys ran directly in front of him, once again gaining his attention. As he watched them racing around wildly, another figure came into his focus. A man, WeiZhou's age, maybe a little older, leaning against a tree about twenty metres in front of WeiZhou. Tall and lean, he had a camera poised before his face, aiming somewhere towards the clouds drifting overhead. WeiZhou watched the man for a minute, something about him seeming familiar, but when he lowered the camera, WeiZhou did not recognize the face he could now see clearly. He was still captivated, though.