Chapter 12
Qin Yao returned to the same corner as before. From within the narrow doorway, she watched Yuan Sheng repeatedly rub the skin around his eyes with the back of his hand until the whole area turned red.
She stood there straight and spoke to Chen Huai. “Weren’t you saying before that all of this was my business, and swearing you were going to wash your hands of it?”
Chen Huai glanced at her. He always felt that he could read some inexplicable sense of relief from her words. He was silent for a long time, his voice carrying a bewilderment for which even he could not find an answer. “People are creatures of feeling.”
He saw Yuan Sheng turn the tissue over to the other side to wipe away his tears, his shoulders trembling nonstop, and his tone instantly softened until it was almost a murmur to himself. “Actually, I don’t really understand it either, but whenever I look at him, he just feels familiar. There’s this strange feeling inside me that I can’t describe.”
Because he couldn’t make sense of it, he drew a conclusion from a fragment of the truth. “Maybe it’s sympathy. After all, he’s only a little over ten. When I was his age…”
What about then?
Chen Huai was suddenly rendered speechless. His throat felt as though it were packed with sharp stones. He wanted to make a sound, but his mind was blank, and the moment he tried to move his vocal cords, it hurt.
He didn’t remember. He didn’t remember any of it… He only remembered things from after high school.
Qin Yao tilted her head slightly. Her gaze suddenly seemed sincere and gentle. She breathed out a sigh, her shoulders slumping, and finished the half-sentence he had left unfinished. “I see.”
People came and went through the hospital, everyone hurrying along. Who knew how much mud from the soles of their shoes had been stamped onto the ceramic tiles beneath their feet? Qin Yao lifted his hand, lowered her head to rummage through her pocket, and took out a cotton swab. She snapped one end open, and the iodine solution inside the tube flowed onto the cotton at the other end. Qin Yao turned his palm upward and applied it to the finger that had been pierced.
Her gaze was too focused, careful and meticulous. After disinfecting it, she tore open a Band-Aid and wrapped it around his finger.
The cut on his finger had been made by that picture frame before they came here, and the bleeding had stopped long ago. There was actually no need to bandage it anymore, but she said it would be safer to disinfect it anyway.
When Qin Yao lowered her head to speak, her hair fell onto his forearm. It was cool and soft, her skin grazing his like feathers. Chen Huai suddenly lost his train of thought, his brows drawing together as he hesitantly asked, “Qin Yao, have you seen me before?”
Qin Yao’s movements stopped. Her half-lowered eyes suddenly began to blink, drifting down before abruptly lifting again. Chen Huai carefully traced every curve of her brows and eyes with his gaze, and that drowning sensation, as though all his breathing had been stifled, surged through his entire body once more.
She let go of Chen Huai’s hand and lifted the corner of her lips. “Why ask whether I’ve seen you before? Perhaps you’re the one who has seen me.”
Realizing that she deliberately did not want to say, Chen Huai pressed her tightly for an answer, reaching after her and catching her wrist.
“Because I don’t remember,” he said.
“I don’t remember either,” Qin Yao said.
She let her hand fall, her voice growing softer and softer. “Even if we have met before, it’s the same as if we hadn’t now. We’re just starting over, aren’t we? There’s no difference anymore.”
After saying that, she patted her stomach, as though she did not want to linger on this sort of thing for too long. She put on a tired look and said that she hadn’t eaten yet, and if she had known, she would have bought something from the cart downstairs in the hospital to put something in her stomach.
Chen Huai was still thinking about what had happened. Qin Yao looked back at him, grabbed him, and pulled him along.
“Don’t think about it anymore. If forcing yourself to think could make you remember, I would have remembered a long time ago. Why else would I still be running around everywhere now?”
“…”
After Yuan Sheng finished his injection, he returned to school by himself. On the bus, he leaned his head against the window, an empty-shell expression hanging on his face. The muscles of his face looked utterly slack, as though he had no strength left at all. The fever breaking had taken all the color from his face as well, leaving only a trace of red around the eyes that had just been crying.
The bus stopped in front of an elementary school somewhere along the way. It was almost noon now. Some of the students lived nearby, and for a yuan or two they could take the bus for two stops and be home. Once they got there, they would be able to eat a hot meal prepared at home. Perhaps as they were leaving, their fathers or mothers would even run a few steps after them to stuff some pocket money into their hands, or give them some snacks to eat.
For Yuan Sheng, all of this was something he could only imagine in his head, and even when imagining it, he did not dare take it too far.
He turned his eyes slightly and watched those children sit close together. They could talk about games, games Yuan Sheng had only ever heard the names of. They could also talk about friends. They could talk about anything under the sun, about all their interests and hobbies.
But Yuan Sheng couldn’t back then, and he still couldn’t now. He had resented it before, too. He had spent a hundred yuan to rent a little phone from the small bookstore at school, and at night he had hidden under the covers in his room and secretly played with it a few times. But it wasn’t long before his parents found out. Qin Liming smashed the phone to pieces, and Yuan Sheng himself was beaten to pieces as well. Yuan Qing had gone into an unusually violent frenzy at the time. No matter how he cried and wailed, it was useless. Yuan Qing cried too, clutching at her own hair and saying that they provided him with good food and everything he needed, that his parents worked so hard for him, how they had to bow and scrape at the company, all just to get his tuition money, all just to pay the mortgage on this school-district apartment.
They said, “Why can’t you just understand? Why do you have to disobey?”
Yuan Sheng was grabbed by the ear and made to stand outside the front door of their home for the entire night. Qin Liming would not let him sleep, telling him to reflect on himself. Because they were afraid the neighbors upstairs and downstairs would hear, Yuan Sheng even cried very quietly. His lowered neck ached unbearably, but he did not dare raise his head. He could only watch his own tears fall in big drops, falling all night long.
He had cried much worse then than he was crying now. Yuan Sheng stared blankly ahead, clenched his hand once, then, almost neurotically, tore off the writing from the piece of paper Qin Yao had given him, stuffed it into his mouth, and swallowed it. Then, as though nothing had happened at all, he continued leaning against the bus window.
Chen Huai and Qin Yao were sitting right behind him. Ever since Chen Huai saw this photograph, he had felt that nothing was right. His sixth sense always led him toward a sorrowful feeling, making even breathing feel obstructed, yet he could not explain why. Even Qin Yao herself had not been like him. He no longer knew which of them was truly the one standing outside it all.
When they went to bed that night, little Qin Yao secretly asked him whether he disliked their father and mother. Yuan Sheng said nothing. Half leaning against the headboard, he still held his supplementary study book in his hands. He had been looking at it for more than half an hour, but not a single word had entered his mind.
Yuan Sheng knew that Qin Yao was about to be sent to their grandmother’s house. After that, in this little room, there would once again be only him. No one would rush out crying when he was beaten. No one would secretly stuff snacks into his schoolbag. No one would borrow novels from the school library corner and bring them back for him to read.
He was only fifteen this year, and Qin Yao was only ten. Five years apart, yet their temperaments seemed half a lifetime apart. Yuan Sheng always felt that he did not have Qin Yao’s vitality, as though he were already growing old and frail.
The bed frame swayed back and forth. Qin Yao poked her head out from the upper bunk and looked down. Because the building materials of the house did not block sound well, she did not dare speak loudly and could only whisper, “Ge, you still can’t sleep?”
She scrunched up her little face and said with the composure of someone much older, “That won’t do. You get up so much earlier than I do. Can you really manage on only four hours of sleep a day?”
Yuan Sheng closed the supplementary study book and lay flat on the bed. “I can.”
“Ge, you’re always lying. Obviously you can’t.”
Her hand dangled down from the upper bunk, waving about aimlessly. “Mom said she’ll take me to Grandma’s this weekend to play. I remember when I went there as a kid, there was a really big soccer field beside Grandma’s old school campus. The grass was a little bald, though. I wonder what it’s like now.”
She lowered her voice to comfort him. “It’s okay. I’ll beg Mom to take you too. Bring your ball this weekend, and we can play soccer together.”
At that time, she was still an elementary school student, with early and plentiful holidays. Yuan Sheng, however, still had to attend extra classes during winter break. Qin Liming had offered double pay for the New Year, and only then had the tutor agreed to keep teaching him.
At this point, Qin Yao still knew nothing. She did not know she was going to be sent away. She did not know that perhaps it would become very difficult for them to see each other again. She was still secretly delighted.
Yuan Sheng’s nose suddenly grew sore. He blinked several times and gripped the blanket, not letting Qin Yao hear, while pretending to laugh and making fun of how terrible she was at soccer.
“It really is strange. I play around everywhere every day, but I’m still not as good as you. Is it a difference in physical stamina?” she muttered. “If you didn’t study, maybe you could become a player.”
Yuan Sheng remained silent. Qin Yao yawned and continued, “It’s okay. If you can’t study well, I’ll work a little harder. I might not be as smart as you, but I can still help share some of the punishment. Because I’m always not studying properly, Mom and Dad don’t bother with me. They just keep their eyes on you.”
Her voice had dwindled to a soft mumble. “Things will get better… Everything will get better.”
There was no longer any sound from the upper bunk. The bed frame was still trembling faintly. Yuan Sheng buried himself under the covers. When no one knew, in that little room, there came the faint sound of quiet sobbing.
Yuan Sheng cried again. Why was he crying? No one knew.
No one had ever wanted to know.
Qin Yao was sent away. Yuan Qing took her with her when she left, and when she came back that afternoon, there was only one person left.
His mother tidied up the room. At dinner, she even breathed a sigh of relief and said that at last her ears were clear. Seeing that Yuan Sheng seemed dispirited, Yuan Qing comforted him a few times. “I know you two get along so well, it’s just that our house is too small. Look at you two, you don’t even have separate rooms, and you’re already this old but still have to sleep in bunk beds. Now that Qin Yao is at Grandma’s, you can study properly by yourself in peace and quiet. During the holidays, no one will pester you to go out and play either. Isn’t that great? You can devote yourself completely to studying now.”
Yuan Sheng brushed her hand away. “It’s only good for you.”
Qin Liming furrowed his brows again. “What kind of thing is that to say? Everyone is doing this for your own good. When you reach my age, you’ll know what hardship is. Do you have to run into a wall and get hurt before you understand? Right now, your mom and I are cutting off all the wrong paths for you. All you have to do is charge ahead down the one path left and you’ll be successful. What more do you want us to do for you?”
Yuan Qing sighed, speaking softly as she said something cutting. “Forget it. We raised an ungrateful wretch, and he still thinks we’re trying to hurt him. There’s no talking sense into him. When he grows up, he’ll naturally know who was right and who was wrong.”
She sat on the stool answering messages from work, never taking her eyes off the screen. “If you get into a top municipal middle school in the high school entrance exam, we’ll take you to Grandma’s for the summer. Just work a little harder on your own for these last six months.”
Those were her words, but the next day, Yuan Sheng understood what Qin Liming had meant by “cutting off the wrong paths for you.” The betta fish he raised had been taken out, chopped cleanly in two, and pitifully thrown into the kitchen trash can, its body and tail separated exactly apart.
A betta’s tail was always beautiful. Now there was only a mass of lifelessness and a faint fishy smell.
Yuan Sheng and Qin Yao each had one of the fish. When they had first bought them, Yuan Qing had already been unhappy, saying that things like this carried a bad implication. Betta, betta, did they really think there was not enough fighting in this family already?
Qin Yao had thrown a huge fit, and only then had the two of them managed not to smash the fish tank. Yet now, just after Qin Yao had left, the fish had been split in two.
Yuan Sheng crouched in front of the trash can, picked up the two fish tails, and rinsed them clean. Then he put them into a plastic bag and tucked them inside a novel Qin Yao had lent him to read. He thought that once he got into the school his parents wanted him to attend, he would be able to go to Grandma’s during the summer vacation, and then he could bring the fish tails to Qin Yao.
He had simply overlooked one thing. In this family, words had no power. Adults were far less likely than children to keep their promises. Something they said one second could be casually overturned the next.
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