Boys of Ice and Fire

Slipped Discs

Ethan had too many principles, or rather, idiosyncrasies. Apart from his obsession with rice, he also found it necessary to sleep every noon. If not, he would fall into a lethargic state the whole afternoon, thus under-performing whether it’s at school or at work.

Luckily, Monkey Education allowed employees to take a rest between 12:00-14:00, so that they could have a lunch and, as was the choice of most, take a nap.

So when Ethan survived the Northern China’s winter cold outside and dashed back into the 3rd floor workplace, he found many of his co-workers in Shaun’s group had fallen asleep, by resting their heads on their arms folded on the desk. It’s just like high school.

To Ethan’s great surprise and interest, Ethan was among one of those colleagues! As the leader, Ethan’s desk was placed at the very entrance of the area assigned to his group, nestled against the wall. So every time Ethan wanted to get back to his desk, he had to walk past Shaun’s desk. What a good chance to sneak a peak at Shaun every time I get in and out of the area!

For now, Ethan was taking his share of a nap by the desk. However, he was not resting his head on his folded arms on the desk, like most of his group members did. Rather, he was reclining on his chair, his head held back, thus revealing his entire face, eyes closed, snoring silently, in the eerily quiet time of day.

But what struck Ethan the most was the fact that Shaun was not wearing his glasses, thus exposing his facial features as they naturally looked like. Seeing that no one was around, Ethan inched a little bit closer to Shaun to take a closer look, holding his breath with great effort for fear of being discovered by Shaun.

Ethan could tell that without the spectacles, Shaun’s face gained an even more exquisite and smooth contour, his congenially-shaped features neatly and naturally laid out in a harmonious combination. On top of that, Shaun had absolutely zero-acne skin, in a slightly tanned color.

What piqued Ethan’s curiosity even more was that Shaun had a checkered blanket in the color of caramel over his torso, supposedly to fend off the random, cold draft coming from the Tower’s central air-conditioning system. Ethan dwelt on the blanket a little bit longer and realized that in each small checker there was the company’s highly conceptual and artistic logo. So this must be something like a gift given out by Monkey Education at a certain festival.

Ethan gave no more thought to this blanket. As much as he coveted this blanket, he guessed there was no way the company would grant such an artistic and functional piece of fine work to a new worker. Ethan guessed he could inquire Shaun about how to get such a blanket, though, when he felt he could freely talk to Shaun, not only as his group member, but as his friend.

Then the issue of sleeping position led to a major issue troubling Ethan. As much as he would like to sleep just like his fellow workers, he had a medical condition that prevented him from doing so. It was called Lumber Disk Herniation.

At the end of the year 2019, it was exactly because of this condition that Ethan had to quit his loved position as a project creator at China Film Animation. Struck with the symptoms of LDH all of a sudden, Ethan couldn’t even sit down without inducing excruciating pain at the waist or a numbing feeling down his right leg back then. But that job at CFA required sitting through endless meetings, so Ethan could do nothing but quit.

With some rehabilitation exercise at a hospital and several months of lying in bed at home, Ethan was able to sit down for long hours again by the autumn of 2020. It had been almost a year of idling around, more than Ethan could bear. So he started working again, for a small company working on the animation of Chinese Opera.

Three months later, the online education industry boomed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, doling out high payments and favorable conditions. That’s when Ethan got this almost serendipitous opportunity, to be able to loom over the sleeping beauty that was Shaun, and to scrutinize a serene nap of his.

Its symptoms never being able to fully recover, LDH continued to trouble Ethan. Despite his ecstasy about working for Shaun, Ethan had actually been feeling slight numbing sensations down his right leg again these days. Ethan deduced it might have something to do with the fact that he had to sit too long on the subway every day, 3 hours in total, round way. (For someone with LDH, lying down is the most helpful, sitting is the most harmful, while standing is considered somewhere in-between. That’s a rule of thumb prescribed for patients of this sort, roughly explained by the varying amount of stress exerted on the waist in different body positions. ) Or it might have to do with the fact that Ethan was in a constant state of excitement these days about meeting Shaun. (Mental state elicits LDH symptoms too.) But who knows?

The thing was, it was paramount that Ethan found a proper place to take a nap now. He could not sleep in such a twisted body position as his colleagues. If his symptoms continued to deteriorate, so much that he would have to, after so many twists and turns, quit THIS job with Shaun, it would simply be disastrous.

But where can I find such a place as can serve the purpose of a bed, in an Internet company overflowing with desks and meeting rooms?!!!