Page 72 of From Beijing, With Love

They stepped into the lobby and were momentarily engulfed in darkness. With the door closed behind them, the small lobby was completely private.

Before a word could leave Daniel’s mouth, Yang pressed him against the mailbox and kissed him long and hard. The metal mailboxes rattled behind Daniel from their collective weight.

“What was that for?” Daniel asked when they finally broke apart, a goofy smile plastered on his face.

“For coming to Xi’an. For having dinner with my family. For everything,” Yang said. He gave Daniel another peck on the lips before he stepped back. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Daniel repeated, willing his heart (and other parts of his body) to calm the hell down. That single word sounded so damn sweet.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONEYang

Hunched over the desk whose surface bore the marks of the last decade and half, Yang pounded the keyboard like it owed him something. He was on his fourth cup of instant coffee, the acidic, bitter tang clinging to his tongue. The coffee was truly awful, but it was the best he could manage at five in the morning while the rest of Xi’an slept.

Even with Nainai shooing the uncles and aunties away early last night, Yang had still gotten into bed on the wrong side of midnight. This black sludge masquerading as coffee was his only hope of getting the draft proposal done so he could spend the day with Daniel and Poppy.

It shouldn’t be this hard. Yang knew what Dr. Sun wanted to see in the proposal: more of what had been coming out of the lab in the last decade. In other words, research that focused more on novel discovery than applicability, using the fancy lab equipment furnished with grant money, accompanied by a computational model. A clear path with grant potential along the way.

For someone who had spent his whole life following directions, Yang watched his words veer further and further out of the narrow lane he was supposed to stay in and into the unfamiliar world of medicine and oncology. He wanted to know why current medical interventions for cancer failed and how to develop better ones, which had little to do with his training as a physicist.

It just wouldn’t work.

Highlighting everything in the document, he pressed delete, making the screen as empty as his coffee cup. Letting out a sigh, he walked to the kitchen.

“You are up early.” His dad, a mug in hand, stood next to the laminate countertop, which was peeling around the edges.

“Just working on the proposal.” Yang yawned into a closed fist before turning on the kettle. “It’s harder than I thought.”

“It’s okay if you don’t have a grand vision. It’s just a proposal at this stage. Not set in stone.” His dad spooned loose-leaf tea into the chipped mug, whose interior was stained with two decades’ worth of brown rings. The mug had been a gift from Yang’s mom once upon a time.

“I have a vision,” Yang said defensively. He wasn’t a bumbling first-year PhD student who was still figuring out his career path. “But I also know what Dr. Sun wants.”

“And the two don’t match,” his dad said with a low chuckle as he pushed his glasses up. “Yangyang, I’ve read my fair share of lofty research proposals from grads who thought they knew better. They don’t. Listen to your old man and just stick to your adviser’s vision. Your time will come. Just work hard and wait.”

Work hard and wait.

Yang had followed these exact words dutifully for years. Hearing them again now seemed unfair, like finally seeing through an empty promise.

“We are out of coffee.” Yang emptied the last bit of the brown granules into his cup, his grip on the jar too tight. “I’ll pick more up later. Need anything else from the supermarket?”

“Don’t bother.” His dad waved his hand. “Your nainai got everything needed to make all your favorites. It’ll be just the three of us for dinner, and you can tell me about your proposal.”

Yang smiled. He knew that Ba meant well with what he’d said earlier. He always did.

When he got back to his laptop, the first ray of sun was piercing through his bedroom window. With the buildings packed so closely together, Yang had a better view of the neighbor’s TV than the sky, but there was always that brief moment after sunrise where the light managed to cut through the concrete jungle.

Tenacious and unyielding.

Yang willed himself to start typing, to write the story that his adviser would want, but he couldn’t. He thought about Daniel’s unwillingness to compromise on what he believed in. He needed to do the same.

He started to type, but not about novel scientific approaches or funding strategies. Instead, he told a story of how his last research study answered a biological question with physics methodologies—the quantitative used as a means to get to the qualitative. He wrote about how his results showcased a definitive link between one single gene and cellular resilience. Then he expanded on its wider implications outside the narrow scope that was their research, outside the small box that was their lab and even biophysics.

He was writing about the future—the pivot necessary to build on his previous work to make it relevant for the development of novel cancer therapy. He cited research coming out of the world-renowned cancer research institute in France, whose clinical oncology studies he had followed for years but always thought were too far from the path he was on as a physicist. Now he saw a clear bridge between their works, even if that bridge was paved with ambiguity.

Yang was feverish as he wrote, energized in a way that he hadn’t felt for a very long time. When he was done, he stepped back and looked at the proposal. It was drastically different from his previous attempts because it was uncompromising. It was Yang’s thoughts, his hopes, in black and white. His and only his.

The responsible part of his brain reminded him of what was at stake—the postdoctoral fellowship he had coveted for years, the one his future at Tsinghua hinged on.

Stay in line. Work hard and wait, the little voice said. That’s the right thing to do.