Chapter 31
In the mock exams in April, Qin Yao ranked third in the grade. By May, several key schools in the city held a joint examination, and Qin Yao placed thirteenth among all the schools, first in her own school.
In the eight-province joint examination in January that year, her results could only be considered fairly good. Four months later, she had firmly secured first place and would not budge an inch, clinging to it for dear life.
At first, the teachers still did not quite believe that their school could really produce a student who would get into Peking University that year. But seeing how Qin Yao was determined to grind away at it, they too began to imagine whether, when the time came, they would really have to plaster the whole school with big-character posters.
“Have you finished all the papers I handed out before? If you still have some energy to spare, I have some more here...”
“Yes.” Before she could finish, Qin Yao picked up the thread. “Please give me the new papers.”
The teacher paused, then handed them to her. At morning self-study the next day, Qin Yao brought the papers over for her to grade, then asked for new ones.
“I gave you five sets yesterday. You finished them all in half a day?” The teacher was somewhat worried. “...Did you sleep last night?”
“I did.” Qin Yao rubbed her eyes. “About three hours.”
The teacher was not surprised by the answer, but her expression became much more serious. “I won't give you any new papers this week. Not until you're getting a full seven hours of sleep every day. Otherwise, don't do any more new problems.”
Qin Yao was silent for a moment, then insisted, “I don't need seven hours. I feel perfectly fine after three.”
“Fine my ass.” It was rare for the teacher to curse at her. “Look at your face. Do you have any idea how haggard you look? What's the point of doing that many papers when you're exhausted? How many students have I taught? A teacher knows better than you what will help you get better results. Now go get some proper rest. Otherwise, when you sit for the exam, you won't even score half of what you normally do.”
And so Qin Yao's supply of papers from the teacher was cut off. Instead, she got several sets of predicted exam materials from Cao Manman's friends at other schools and worked through them day after day until she was utterly lost in them.
Perhaps the teacher really did know how to get students into the best possible state for the exam. But she did not live in Qin Yao's world. She did not know how desperately anxious Qin Yao was inside, how she had spent more than a decade studying, all for the sake of waiting for that one moment. Naturally, she also did not know how much suffering Qin Yao had endured for the college entrance exam, or how much blood, sweat, and effort she had poured into it.
The small desk lamp she had once given to Chen Huai had returned to Qin Yao's hands. A month before the college entrance exam, she also turned down the convenience-store job. When she collected her final month's wages from the store, the manager gave her an apron, patted her on the shoulder, and said with a broad smile that she would surely triumph in the exam.
Qin Yao waved goodbye to the manager. When she reached the red wall, she opened the kraft-paper envelope. There was a full seven hundred and fifty yuan more in her wages. She looked up again and found a whole canopy of green overhead. The glaring sunlight sank heavily through the leaves of the banyan trees, falling into her eyes.
She looked at the clear, deep-blue sky. Birds flew overhead in a line. Qin Yao was so hot that she rolled up her sleeves and let out a heavy sigh.
Everything concerning Sun Fusheng was being handled by Chen Huai. He paid so much rent every month and served as a free caregiver, while Sun Fusheng's medicine pot grew emptier day by day, yet his body continued to deteriorate.
He used to be able to get out of bed and wander around, and whenever Chen Huai had the time, he would take him downstairs for a walk. Now, he often suffered such severe headaches that he could not even get out of bed, lying there for an entire day at a time.
Once, with his dry, parched lips parted, he somehow remembered the pot of lily-of-the-valley on the windowsill and asked Chen Huai to bring it over so he could have a look.
Sun Fusheng touched the plastic pot the flower was planted in, then gently pushed it back into Chen Huai's hands.
“From now on, it's in your hands.” The old man exhaled slowly, his cloudy eyes glimmering with tears. “...If one day I die from this illness, then my flower and my Xiao Yao will both be entrusted to you.”
Chen Huai parted his lips, and after a long while, a faint breath of sound came out.
“Mm.”
“Buy her whatever she wants. Xiao Yao has had a hard life. You have to take good care of her, you hear?” Sun Fusheng lay on his side on the bed, tapping his fingers one by one as he counted. “She likes edamame, duck feet. Potatoes have to be cut into chunks, not shredded. Stir-fry them until they're soft... She doesn't like apples crisp, either, because her teeth aren't good. She lost two of her back teeth. She kept putting it off and putting it off until they were completely hollowed out, and they couldn't even be filled anymore.”
Sun Fusheng grew sleepy, and his voice became quieter.
“...They couldn't be fixed anymore.”
Chen Huai touched his chest. His heart was still beating. He figured it was only because the old man was feeling weak that he spent the whole day half-asleep, unable to stay awake for long before drifting off again.
Once May arrived, Qin Yao's room was lit day and night. The secondhand desk lamp was often left on for an entire night.
In fact, she had lied to her teacher too. Getting a full five hours of sleep on two days of the week already counted as a reward to herself. The other two days, she stayed up all night. Once she took a pen into her hand, she would write and scribble until the daylight outside overwhelmed the desk lamp and dazzled her eyes, already webbed with red veins.
The replacement pen refills she bought were cheaply made and ran out quickly. In one night, she could use up almost two. The test papers and reference books at her feet gradually covered the works Sun Hongping had left her on the bookshelf.
Back then, Qin Yao had thought that studying the humanities would not make her any money, so when it came time to choose her academic track, she had gone with pure science. Yet by the spring of this year, she had decided she wanted to study literature after all. That left her with no choice but to figure she would get admitted first and then change majors. She just did not know whether changing majors would be easy.
There were only twenty days left until the college entrance exam. The school began trying to ease the students' pressure and gave them two days off, telling their families to take them out and help them relax.
Qin Yao still stayed cooped up in her room. She was biting the refill barrel in her hand until it was covered with tooth marks when she heard someone knocking outside.
She rose from her desk and opened the door.
Chen Huai stood there with both hands tucked into his pockets, his reassuring eyes looking straight at her.
“What is it?” She instinctively looked upstairs. “Something happened to the old man?”
Chen Huai said, “He's fine.”
Qin Yao thought for a few seconds, then asked very seriously, “Then did something happen to you?”
He flattened the corners of his lips, pulled a hand from his pocket, took hold of her wrist, and tugged her outside.
“I'm fine too. I think you're the one who's about to have a problem.”
Qin Yao was pulled forward hard enough that she stumbled several steps, her forehead nearly colliding with him. She could only grab both his arms to steady herself, her expression puzzled. “What could possibly be wrong with me?”
Chen Huai frowned and questioned her. “How many days has it been since you last went outside to get some exercise? It must have been two months, right?”
She still refused to go out. “Because I have an exam coming up!”
“I know.” His tone brooked no refusal. “You can keep studying tomorrow. Today, come out for a walk. Isn't that what the school holiday is for, so you can relax?”
Qin Yao was about to struggle again when he shot her a glance and said something that was hardly threatening at all. “If you don't go out, then I won't go back to school next year either.”
She found it amusing and tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Why should I be responsible for your life too?”
“But I want to be responsible for your life.” Chen Huai said it calmly. “So I want you to come out of your room. Get some sun, too. I don't want to see you shut yourself away, not having anything to do with anyone.”
Qin Yao's feet immediately rooted themselves into the ground like nails, and even Chen Huai could no longer pull her along. She had not even had time to change her shoes. Half her body was bathed in the summer light, while the other half disappeared into shadow.
The place where their palms met gradually slipped from their wrists down to their fingers, lightly hooking together.
She looked at him, and Chen Huai did not avoid her gaze either. He turned his head and looked back at her.
Not a single word passed between their lips. At this moment, in perfect understanding, they chose to say nothing.
Afraid the other might find out, yet afraid they might not. More afraid still that there would never again be a chance to say it.
Their fingertips touched, and the collision of their gazes betrayed their hearts first.
This was the second summer the two of them had spent together, and the second summer they had come to hate.
They had shared their troubles, shared spring, summer, autumn, and winter... and shared the beating of their hearts, too.
In that second, Chen Huai was the first to open his mouth, only to hesitate. In the end, all that remained were skin illuminated by the summer light until it seemed to glow, eyelashes trembling with the turmoil in his heart, a gaze that slipped away, and tightly clenched teeth.
Qin Yao.
Will there ever come a day when you find out that I am Broken-Tailed Fish, when you find those letters in my schoolbag and learn that I actually received every single one?
In your bright and brilliant life, will there be three seconds when your whole world trembles because of me?
I am greedy for only those three seconds.
Because I cannot leave this place.
“...”
That day, they walked two laps around the Shancheng Alley pedestrian path. Qin Yao rose onto her toes to tug down the leaves of the roadside trees, and she also crouched down to stroke the cats outside the little shops. They kept walking until the sky was just beginning to darken. Qin Yao let out a long breath of exhaustion and said to Chen Huai, “A few years ago, the piece I submitted to the magazine was The Boy from Shancheng Alley, that fairy tale about Xiao Yao searching for the land of dreams.”
Chen Huai listened quietly. Qin Yao always said whatever came to mind.
“I changed the title so many times back then. The first version was called Boys Have No Utopia. A magazine sent it back, saying it wasn't easy enough to read and wasn't suitable for children's healthy physical and mental development. That's when I changed it to the title it had at the time. But I still like the first one.”
Qin Yao tipped her head back and looked at the slanting sunlight covering the hillside, her eyes curved with a sigh of wonder.
“Utopia. What a beautiful thing...”
“If I had a Utopia of my own, it would probably snow all year round, icy and cool. I could see my mom, my grandpa, mm... and I'd bring you along too. We could live happily and carefree forever. We'd always have money to spend, bread to eat, snowdrifts to step on, and ice to slide across.”
She began speaking in that literary, old-fashioned way again.
“Forget summer completely, and live happily in a world where winter never ends.”
Chen Huai laughed. “Dreaming again?”
She disliked how long the summer days were, yet also disliked that they were not long enough, lighting lamps to extend the daylight, wishing the streetlights would shine a little farther along the road home.
After the holiday, Qin Yao returned to school. Seeing that she looked considerably more refreshed, her teacher handed her new test papers again. Her heart stirred slightly, and she asked the teacher whether, if Yue Jian graduated this year too and left, there was any chance Chen Huai could come back and repeat his senior year.
Seeing that she had brought up the matter again, the teacher could not help feeling a headache and told her the truth.
“Don't worry about this for now... Judging from Yue Jian's grades, there's an eighty percent chance he'll have to repeat the year too. If you don't want Chen Huai to confront him head-on, it's better to have Chen Huai try another school.”
Yue Jian was not exactly a promising student. His family had spoiled him to one degree or another, and otherwise he would not have been able to cause such chaos over the most trivial little matters.
As the college entrance exam drew near, he was unwilling to study either. All day long he fooled around and whispered to the people around him. The teacher did not want him affecting everyone else's grades, so she told him that if he did not want to study, he could go out and play, go shoot hoops or run wild on the field. If he wanted to give up on himself, no one would have the time to bother with him.
Yue Jian immediately lost his temper. He kicked over his chair, grabbed his empty schoolbag, and went downstairs, his face full of hostility as he headed toward the main gate.
A tall, burly man stood outside the school and called out to him, asking whether he knew Qin Yao, a senior.
Yue Jian looked him up and down. “Yeah. That crazy girl. What do you want?”
“Oh, it's like this.” The man smiled. “I'm her father. She hasn't come home for a long time. Has she been staying somewhere else with another boy?”
Yue Jian had seen the two of them walking home together when he had waited outside for Chen Huai after school. He had always been suspicious of Qin Yao and Chen Huai's relationship. After hearing the man's words, Yue Jian thought it over carefully, then laughed.
“So that's how it is... I knew those two were dating behind their parents' backs. They actually ran away together and started living together?”
“Really? That's what's happening?” Qin Guoli pretended to be worried. “Then where is she staying? I need to bring my daughter home.”
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