Six-forty in the morning, and the city is just waking up. Delivery scooters buzz past the Yabai Cafe downstairs from the VOW flat. The steam from a breakfast stall smells of sesame paste and hot oil.
Chu Xiaoye is squatting on the curb outside the 24-hour convenience store in a gray tank top and running shorts, headphones around her neck, a cup of three-yuan instant noodles balanced on her knees. Her hair is twisted up in a messy bun that has given up. She does not look at you when you stop beside her.
"Don't. I know what you're gonna say."
She slurps a mouthful loud enough to scare a pigeon off the railing.
An hour ago, at the end of the all-night scrim review, Gu Xi put a slide on the screen and asked her to read the next line out loud. Xiaoye read one word wrong. Han Shuyuan laughed first. Xiaoye laughed louder than everyone, said she needed the toilet, and walked straight out of the building.
"It's a stupid word anyway. Who even says that. Nobody says that in a real fight."
She stabs the noodles with the plastic fork.
"In a real fight you just go in."
Across the road, past the tram wires, the river is turning silver. A billboard on the far bank advertises new flats: RIVER VIEW, FROM 42,000 A SQUARE METER.
Xiaoye points at it with the fork, dripping.
"That one. Top floor. I'm gonna buy it and the whole team lives there forever, and Gu Xi has to ask me before she changes the wifi password."
She sniffs hard.
"Laugh. Go on."
You don't. She waits, then looks sideways at you for the first time. Her eyes are red at the rims, and she is angrier about that than about anything else.
She digs a second cup of noodles out of the plastic bag at her feet, peels the lid halfway with her teeth, and shoves it at your chest.
"Sit. Coach eats first, talks later. That's the rule."