Spring exchanged some logistical messages on the subway to, one, let Autumn know they were on their way, and two, inquire about Lady Zhao's plans. She was working late, she responded. They should keep her posted on their whereabouts and she would try and meet them at some point, but, she wrote, adding Ander to the message group, Ander needed to be back by ten because they had a six a.m. start the next morning for their trip to Dar-For Mountain which they still had to pack for.
"She is like your mother," laughing, scrunching his eyes â Spring laughed at everything.
"She is not like my mother," Ander said. He tried with his intonation to convey that one of the two â it wasn't clear which â was substantially crazier than the other.
Spring and Autumn lived on the thirty-something-th floor of a new high-rise in Hongkou. Spring was LGBT, Autumn was not. They were identical, technically, but Spring stayed clean shaven and wore contact lenses and had clearly spent a great portion of the summer outdoors, while Autumn had grown a mustache and beard, wore thick rimmed glasses that he kept taking off and de-fogging (it was strangely humid in their apartment), and in general appeared ten years older and twenty years gloomier than his sibling.
Ander accompanied Autumn in the kitchen as he applied himself to the preparation of a five-dish meal with a certain mesmerizing deftness Ander couldn't help but admire. Spring was around the corner at the dining table watching (and giggling at) videos he had been sent.
Autumn talked about his work and life. When users of a certain time-accounting programme ran into intractable problems, they called a help-line number, and Autumn's phone would ring. He had a head set, a computer and a floor-to-ceiling view of northern Shanghai in his bedroom that doubled as his office. He didn't ever have to leave the apartment. He could remote-access computers all the way in Chengdu, if that was where the caller was from, and he would click around their desktops for them reconfiguring their settings as they stayed on the call and complained.