Diary for the Fish with the Broken Tail Chapter 35

Chapter 35

After listening to several phone calls, Qin Yao suddenly felt as though something sharp were scraping against her heart. Her teeth trembled, and she could not say a single word.

There was no fourth window anymore. They had already reached the end of the alley.

The world beyond the alley was another landscape entirely. The leaves of the Chinese banyan would grow and fall with the seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter took turns replacing one another. The world moved according to its own laws. There was no snow that remained unchanged year after year.

Qin Yao gripped his hand tightly, trying to pull him out.

“This time, I’m definitely taking you back.”

Chen Huai stood perfectly still.

“Qin Yao.” He lowered his eyes faintly. “The road is broken. I can’t cross over.”

“The road is perfectly fine! As long as you’re willing to take a—”

“I’m not willing.”

He interrupted her.

“Because the you outside...” Chen Huai’s calm voice was as faint as a breeze, a sigh slipping from between his teeth. “...doesn’t love me.”

If words had colors, if eyes had voices, if fingertips could convey what lay within the heart.

Unfortunately, too much time had passed outside. Only Chen Huai had remained in the winter of his own story.

Qin Yao’s body swayed. Her legs went weak, and the strength drained from her hand. She saw the shadows beyond the mouth of the alley and slowly turned around, staring blankly as countless versions of Qin Yao hurried past.

At eighteen, after graduating from high school, Qin Yao traveled back and forth between Beijing and Lincheng. Every holiday, she would pass through the mouth of this alley and head to the hospital.

At twenty-two, Qin Yao graduated from university and was accepted into graduate school. She brought her acceptance letter to share the good news.

At twenty-five, Qin Yao was interning in another city. Work had become busy, with alternating one- and two-day weekends and compensatory days off, and even taking the high-speed rail was not enough to get her there in time.

At twenty-eight, Qin Yao did not pass through here for an entire year.

She had once come carrying fresh fruit, and left carrying fruit that had gone rotten.

After that, she never came again.

The silverfish’s tears evaporated inside its cage.

The poet was trapped in winter.

The hero in the distance searched for Utopia.

Outside the window, the four seasons vanished into the boy’s memories.

Qin Yao suddenly found the version of herself outside utterly unfamiliar. She forced her eyes open until they grew dry and raw, and both wind and sand pricked their way in.

“It’s been too long,” Chen Huai murmured. “Ten years have already passed outside.”

He took from his pocket the gift he had failed to give her that night.

A tiny ring.

Gold plating enclosed the fish tail he had treasured for years, with tiny snowflakes fashioned onto the tail.

Qin Yao had often asked him during that time why he was always so busy. It was because Chen Huai had been working three part-time jobs, going without sleep or rest from two in the morning until seven the next morning. Little by little, he saved up the money, waiting and waiting, hoping that when they turned eighteen, he could at least give it to Qin Yao before she left.

Qin Yao liked things that held their value, so he had spent a great deal of money on gold jewelry, so that she could treasure it for many years.

Yet he had never expected that such a tiny ring would remain in his hands from eighteen to twenty-eight.

At last, the corner of Chen Huai’s mouth curved with a rare hint of a smile. He lifted Qin Yao’s numb fingers and slipped the ring onto one of them.

“So it fits perfectly after all. I worried for nothing back then.” He smiled faintly, murmuring to himself, “Forget it. It wasn’t like I ever really gave it to you.”

Qin Yao threw herself into his arms, clutching his clothes tightly in both hands. Her body was beginning to go weak as she said,

“...How could that be possible?”

The diary began on its 136th cycle.

For Qin Yao, she had worn the ring on her hand more than one hundred and thirty-six times. She had seen this scene more than one hundred and thirty-six times as well. Every time, she felt as though she were suffocating. Every time, she found it impossible to believe.

“I don’t believe I would become like that. I would definitely still come to see you.”

Perhaps people really could forget the days they had endured hardship together. But for Qin Yao, every memory had been carved into her marrow like a sharp blade. She would not forget Sun Hongping. She would not forget Sun Fusheng. And it was absolutely impossible for her to treat lightly the boy who had safeguarded her throughout her life.

Something must have gone wrong somewhere in between.

She had to make Chen Huai step outside and let him see it clearly with his own eyes.

But no matter how Qin Yao pulled and dragged at him, Chen Huai remained unmoving. She clenched her back teeth hard, her tears growing into large drops. Chen Huai yanked her back with all his strength and pressed her into his arms, his warm right palm cradling the back of her head. Qin Yao felt that even the wind had fallen silent.

The sound of falling snow gradually disappeared. All around them was utterly silent, the world empty and desolate.

“There’s something else I’ve always regretted.”

Chen Huai’s voice came from behind her ear. Qin Yao felt her hair shift. She leaned backward, leaving half an inch of space between herself and Chen Huai.

Something warm and damp pressed against her lips. Before she could even register it, the force on her shoulders grew heavier.

Qin Yao was pushed out, her body crossing the boundary between inside and outside the alley.

“I haven’t kissed you yet.”

“Next time...” Chen Huai’s voice was completely restrained, hoarse with emotion. “You have to find me too, and appear in my wardrobe.”

As the last note of those words fell away, Qin Yao’s body became completely transparent, leaving behind only a white outline. Her hands grasped at the air once as she ran toward Chen Huai again and wrapped her arms around his waist.

The next second, his embrace was empty.

She had not even left behind a trace of warmth.

The fish-tail ring fell to the ground.

The snow began to fall again.

The world of the Broken-Tailed Fish had sound once more.

...His voice alone.

Chen Huai looked across the alley.

A melancholy blue corpse.

I hope next time, I’ll remember you in a second.

•

•

•

“Still no good this time?”

Cao Yu watched the weakening electrical waves on the monitor gradually change from violent fluctuations into a straight, level line.

The assistant beside him sighed. “Looks like it’s the same as before. Every time, there’s suddenly a little movement, almost like he has an instinct to survive, but in the end, he still gives up.”

“Chen Huai, I will always be the person in this family who longed for your birth the most.”

“Chen Huai, I will always be the person in this family who longed for your birth the most.”

“Chen Huai...”

With a beep, Qin Yao raised her hand and pressed pause on the recording. The hospital room returned to silence.

Cao Yu removed his gloves and mask, opened the window, and took a breath of fresh air. Then he turned back to look at her.

“You seem to play that recording every time you come here. Does it have some special meaning?”

Qin Yao rested her arms on the railing as well, gazing at the distant high-rises outside the window.

“His parents found it in the data recovered from the phone his older brother had before he died. They said the day after his brother died was Chen Huai’s birthday, so he probably recorded it before his death as a birthday greeting for his little brother.”

Cao Yu tilted his head to look at her, a touch of melancholy in his expression.

“So you really aren’t going back to Beijing to work?”

Qin Yao smiled and shook her head.

“Running back and forth between two places all the time, with work taking up most of my time, I wouldn’t have time to come to the hospital. Working in Lincheng is pretty good too. I can just take the subway, and I’ll be here to see him in ten minutes.”

After years of working in front of a computer, Qin Yao had started wearing glasses. But whenever she looked into the distance, she still habitually narrowed her eyes.

Cao Yu sighed helplessly.

“And once again, you came all this way for nothing.”

“Do you know Border Town?” Qin Yao asked.

Cao Yu immediately understood what she meant.

Someone called Cao Yu’s name, telling him to go check on the patient in Room Two. Cao Yu turned and answered. In the end, he could only give her shoulder a light pat, as though it were nothing, leaving behind words that were difficult to decipher.

“You’re still one of the lucky ones. The person you’re waiting for still has hope. Some people, the ones they’re waiting for... have long since become impossible to bring back.”

The wind from outside the window lifted his white coat. Qin Yao watched his retreating figure and seemed, once again, to see herself.

Brother Jiang had disappeared without a trace. Qin Guoli had gone to prison for injuring Chen Huai. After getting out, no one knew whether he was dead or simply too afraid to come back. Like a rat crossing the street, he had hidden himself away, concealing his whereabouts everywhere.

No. 136 Zhongxin Road had been transferred to a new tenant. It was still a foot massage parlor, called “Yu’s Foot Care Studio.” They ran a legitimate business. The storefront was a little smaller now, enough only to make a living.

On the first day the owner, whose surname was Yu, came to clean after taking over the shop, he opened the complaint mailbox by the entrance and found it filled to the brim with letters.

Every letter was addressed to “Broken-Tailed Fish.”

They spanned a very long period of time, beginning in May ten years ago and continuing all the way to the present.

“To Broken-Tailed Fish:

The college entrance exam is coming up, so the time I have to write letters has been greatly reduced, but there are still so many things I want to tell you.

Very important things!

First of all, Chen Huai, I figured out a long time ago that you’re Broken-Tailed Fish. Everyone’s handwriting is different. I’m neither blind nor stupid. But you’ve never told me yourself, and you never mention it in your letters. How long were you planning to keep hiding it from me?

I was originally waiting for you to confess it to me yourself, but I waited until my heart had withered away and you still didn’t say anything, so I lifted the curtain myself.

Give me a sign when you see this. It’s fine even if you don’t write back.

— A Melancholy Blue Corpse”

“To Broken-Tailed Fish:

Why haven’t you replied yet?

Haven’t seen the letter?

Angry?

Men are always so easily controlled by their pride. What’s there to be embarrassed about? You know my secret, and I know yours.

I’ll tell you another secret. I can tell that you like me.

That cold-hearted bastard’s mouth is so precious, but his eyes practically shoot fireworks. Who are you trying to hide it from?

Tell me after I finish the college entrance exam.

Got that?

— A Melancholy Blue Corpse”

“To Chen Huai:

Did you see it or not?

Why did you give me this fake address in the first place? No. 136 Mati Street is an alley. You used to come and collect the letters from Zhongxin Road. Of course I know this was where my mother used to work. You couldn’t possibly be here.

Of course I know... and I’m still sending them.

If you don’t reply, I’m going to start cursing you out.

Chen Huai, can you make tea eggs from now on? Plain boiled eggs really don’t taste good.

— Qin Yao (writing very forcefully)”

“To Chen Huai:

When exactly are you planning to confess to me? It’s driving me crazy. I still have exams, you know, and I keep getting distracted over this.

You drag things out more than anyone.

So slow. So slow. So slow. So slow. So slow. So slow.

I even hooked my hand around yours that night. You still didn’t get it?

I’m willing, I’m willing, I’m willing, I’m willing, I’m willing, I’m willing, I’m willing.

— Qin Yao”

There were no new letters for a very long time after that. The next one came three months later.

“Dear Broken-Tailed Fish:

It rained in Lincheng today.

Suddenly, I remembered the first time we met. At the entrance of the newsstand, my camera jammed and wouldn’t take any pictures.

My hair was damp, and the air all around us was thick with humid rain. You looked at me suspiciously and asked whether I had been secretly watching you.

I was tongue-tied for a long while before saying that people shouldn’t be so full of themselves. You’d better wake up already.

Wake up.

If you wake up today, I’ll wait for you in Lincheng. If you wake up next week, I’ll wait for you in Beijing. If you wake up four years from now, I’ll wait for you in America.

I can’t stay by your side, because there are many people who need me to keep moving forward, and it wasn’t easy for me to get to where I am today.

But I’ll still wait for you somewhere farther away. And I’ll live well too. I’ll do the things I love, earn more money, and live a better life.

I’ll grow flowers and raise cats, decorate my home, get promoted and earn more, and work hard to make my life meaningful.

You shouldn’t keep staying in your memories, either.

— A Melancholy Blue Corpse”

“Dear Broken-Tailed Fish:

I’ve been dreaming often lately. I always suspect it means you’re about to wake up.

In my dreams, it is the winter I once told you would snow forever. I often turn into Granny Zhou, your neighbor, or into a stray cat looking for you, only for you to grab me by the scruff of the neck and toss me into your bicycle basket before taking me to the animal shelter.

I’ve also turned into a snowflake, a clump of clematis outside your window, a leaf from a banyan tree. In my dreams, I seem to have always been by your side. In the end, I become a ball of blue ghost flame inside your wardrobe.

But you never recognize me.

My dear, I am before your window, above your head, beneath your feet.

I am in your eyes.

— A Melancholy Blue Corpse”

The things she had once been too embarrassed to say aloud had all become letters.

Because she had been too embarrassed, she later lost the chance to say them again.

So this was summer in Lincheng?

This summer wasn’t beautiful at all.

I can only remember you in my dreams.

•

•

•

The old man surnamed Sun who lived upstairs jumped to his death in winter.

When he died, Chen Huai was squatting outside brushing his teeth. When the old man fell, Chen Huai still had a mouthful of foam, and then he heard a heavy thud, like the sound of internal organs smashing apart. The old man’s wrinkled white undershirt, washed so many times it had lost its shape, lay soaking in a pool of blood. Warm blood melted the icy snow, red spreading over white.

Chen Huai did not scream. He choked, swallowed every bit of toothpaste foam in his mouth, set the enamel cup on the ground, pulled open the creaking old door of his rented room, and slipped inside sideways.

As he walked toward the bed, he heard the old woman next door begin shouting at the top of her lungs. Chen Huai paused with his hand outstretched, then turned back and walked over to the window. The neighbor was already using an elderly person’s phone, the kind that looked like an old PHS handset, to call 120.

He had originally planned to die that day too.

Inside the wardrobe was a thick hemp rope he had bought from a hardware store, more than sturdy enough to hang a person.

Everything was ready. He had positioned the stool, took one last look at the beam on the ceiling, then, in one decisive motion, pulled open the wardrobe.

He lowered his gaze.

And froze.

A blue thing floated out from his damp-smelling wardrobe.

It was like a clump of dyed dandelion fluff, looking light and soft and loose, something like a ghostly will-o'-the-wisp.

The ghost wailed mournfully:

“I am a melancholy blue corpse~ I am a melancholy blue corpse~”

In that instant, something indescribable happened.

A sharp pain spread through Chen Huai’s heart, so intense that even his fingers spasmed and trembled.

He couldn’t remember where that feeling came from. His teeth hurt too. A name was on the verge of spilling out, only to become lodged in his throat.

“Who are you?”

“...”

Repeating the same mistakes.

Or being born anew.

Shao Yong calculated that after 129,600 years, everything in this world would be completely repeated.

If he went through 129,600 cycles in Utopia, was it possible that he might wake up?

Mati Street, see you tomorrow.

But the people who lived here were all people who would never see tomorrow.

Time stood still. Day and night reversed. The world began again, over and over.

You, to me, are an old story brought up again.

And brought up all over again.

【The end.】

✦

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Diary for the Fish with the Broken Tail Chapter 34

Chapter 34

“Qin Yao.”

When all five senses had gone numb, she suddenly heard a voice.

The speed at which the motes of dust floated through the air abruptly slowed. She raised her head slightly and saw Chen Huai standing at the gate, bracing himself against the rusted iron door and gasping for breath.

He looked just like Sun Fusheng, his face covered in blood.

Perhaps someone had heard the sound of a heavy object hitting the ground. People gradually began gathering outside the gate, and the noise grew louder, dense and chaotic, like fine needles pricking at her ears.

Qin Yao froze for two seconds, then suddenly scrambled up from the ground and ran toward the gate, throwing herself at him. Chen Huai coughed, pressing a hand against her shoulder. Afraid of staining her clothes, he used the last of his strength to push her away.

“...Go.” His voice was slurred, his breath thick with the smell of blood. His fingers spasmed and trembled as he stuffed something into her hand. Qin Yao looked down. It was her ID, along with the money Qin Guoli had taken from her.

“You’re insane... You don’t think at all before you do things!” Qin Yao began crying as she cursed him, but Chen Huai seemed unable to hear a word. The blood on the top of his head had already dried, yet fresh blood still kept flowing down over his pale eyelids.

Qin Yao couldn’t see his eyes. All she could feel was how cold his body had become.

Someone nearby called the police. Several elderly men put Chen Huai’s arms over their shoulders, anxiously trying to stop the bleeding.

“We saw him earlier and told him to go to the hospital, but he refused. There’s even glass stuck in his leg, and he still ran back here step by step.”

Qin Yao’s eyes rested on him in anguish. Chen Huai was still pushing her away.

“Go!”

She handed him over to the bystanders and weakly backed away a few steps. At first her footsteps were unsteady, and she looked back every few steps. Later, her feet began landing firmly against the ground.

Qin Yao wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then finally shouted at him:

“You can’t die. I only have...”

“...only you left.”

After saying that, she turned and ran.

There was still blood on the ID in her hand. Qin Yao ran quickly, the air in her lungs completely squeezed out, escaping bit by bit with every breath.

It was as though she had returned to that day when she climbed out through the window of her home. Sun Hongping had handed her money the same way and told her to fly somewhere farther away. Back then, Qin Yao had run in great strides too. The soles of her shoes were thin and soft, and the bottoms of her feet went numb from pounding against the ground. She saw those reflective puddles in the road, like glittering diamonds and stars that had fallen into the long river of her life.

【Run. Leave this place. You have to go somewhere farther away.】

【Stay alive. Walk a longer road.】

Qin Yao got into a taxi. The streetscape outside the window changed rapidly. Her hair poked into her eyes, and her tears were like rain. No matter how she wiped them with her sleeve, they would not stop.

The area outside the examination hall was packed with people. Qin Yao’s hair was disheveled, the tear tracks on her cheeks dried by the wind. There was still blood on the hem of her clothes, and she couldn’t tell whether it belonged to Sun Fusheng or Chen Huai. Her body was covered in bruises of all sizes, her wrist weak and spasming without stop.

Someone in a neat school uniform leaned out of a window and looked down at her. Her clothes were disordered, but her steps never stopped.

For some people, simply sitting in that classroom and picking up a pen had already taken every bit of strength they possessed.

Like her mother, Sun Hongping, or Qin Yao herself. From the housing compound assigned by the county factory to this place, she had lost every single one of her family members.

So many people had been sacrificed, only to lift her up alone.

For one person to dream of walking out of the family she had been born into, out of those mountains and rivers, out of that cage, turned out to be this difficult.

Qin Yao entered the examination hall on time and sat in her seat. Holding back her sobs, she trembled as she forced herself to answer the questions.

Her hand never stopped moving. Among all the people in the examination hall, only her tears soaked through the words she wrote.

When she turned to the back, Qin Yao began writing on the essay paper.

【Throughout the magnificent and weighty river of history, humanity’s desire to explore the unknown has never ceased. Outwardly, we soar into the sky and plunge into the sea, searching for the truths of the world. Inwardly, we enrich our inner lives through literature, searching for the unknown selves within us. As Hesse wrote: “Everything came together, all voices, all goals, all desires, all suffering, all joy, all that was good and all that was evil, everything came together, and that was the world.”

...

We venture deep into the unknown world, and we also uncover the unknown within ourselves, toward things, and toward the heart.

Because we must keep moving forward.

Because we must go to the blue sea and the starry sky, and also become the embankment of the river of our own lives.】

After she put down the final period, her eyes were so dry that she could no longer keep them open. Qin Yao handed in her paper, went downstairs, and ran toward the hospital.

The whole way, everything sped past in a blur. The hot summer wind swirled around her ears, cicadas sang across the earth, reborn six years ago, dying today.

But she couldn’t hear any of it clearly.

The red light above the emergency room remained lit. Qin Yao stood there, utterly exhausted and haggard. On one side was Sun Fusheng, who had fallen from the building. On the other was Chen Huai, injured by the falling debris. Standing in the middle of the corridor, she seemed to have lost all connection with the world.

Their rivers seemed as though they were about to run dry, pouring their last remaining water into Qin Yao’s flesh and blood.

The doctor came out of the emergency room. She hurried after him and was met with a few shakes of his head, a few sighs.

“The old man’s internal organs have already failed. There’s no saving him. As for the younger one...” He took off his mask. “Whether he wakes up or not is up to fate.”

Qin Yao clutched at his lapels. When she saw the name badge on his chest, her gaze wavered.

The dried skin on her lips had peeled up, covered in teeth marks. “Please save him...”

Qin Yao began searching through her pockets and pulled out the envelope. Forcing her trembling fingers to steady themselves, she took out the photograph.

“I’ll give you this. Mom said that if I ever reached a point of absolute desperation, I should come to First Hospital and find Cao Yu.”

There were bloody fingerprints on the back of the photograph. The young man in the white coat lowered his eyes to it, then slowly raised his hand and took it between his fingers.

Cao Yu looked silently at the photograph. It was Sun Hongping’s face when she was young.

His eyes suddenly reddened, and his voice softened. “What happened to your mother?”

“...She died.”

Qin Yao could no longer hold back her tears. She had cried for far, far too long. Her throat felt as though it were clogged with coarse sand, and when the words came out, they turned into dry, hardened mud.

“They all died.”

“I don’t have a single family member left.”

Cao Yu gave her a comforting embrace. Qin Yao cried without making a sound. There was still another exam that afternoon, so Cao Yu had someone quickly tend to the bruises on her body and wrap her wrist in a bandage.

In truth, she could no longer feel any pain. Perhaps it was because there was somewhere else that hurt even more. Qin Yao wrote one exam paper after another, until she had finished all six subjects.

In the blazing heat of July, Lincheng truly entered summer. The world remained endlessly clamorous. Qin Yao had lost everything, yet she had taken another step forward.

That year, the top scorer in Lincheng did not come from any of the major affiliated schools, nor from a private school. The honor fell to an obscure, unknown school.

701 points.

Qin Yao’s name was truly posted all over the school. She was admitted to Peking University’s Yuanpei College to study psychology.

After burying Sun Fusheng, she found, on the table in his home, his suicide note, along with a bankbook containing his entire life’s savings. Sun Fusheng had left everything to Qin Yao.

Chen Huai still had not awakened. Among the clothes he had been wearing that day, Qin Yao found a notebook.

Calling it a diary would have been something of an exaggeration. It was only a collection of scattered notes. As she walked, she opened it.

Strangely enough, as her gaze wandered across the page, the handwriting seemed to arrange itself before her eyes, line by line.

“By the time you see this, Fish with the Broken Tail, I should tell you that I am you from the 136th cycle.”

Qin Yao stopped walking. A sharp pain flashed through her mind. Suddenly remembering something, she even softened her breathing.

When she looked up again, summer had suddenly vanished.

The whole world began to snow.

Large, heavy flakes fell over her head. Qin Yao realized that the world had become blurred. Some of the streets around her remained clear, while others had become nothing more than phantom images, like fragments extracted from someone’s memories.

The winter wind froze her ears and lips until they hurt, and even her fingertips had lost their strength. Qin Yao stared blankly downward and turned to the next page.

“I wrote this diary for myself, because every time, I forget so many things. Some memories I can never remember again, and it frightens me. I’m afraid that one day, without these clues, the me who comes later won’t meet her, and won’t be able to find those memories.”

“Fish with the Broken Tail, this is a ‘utopia’ built together by countless versions of me. I want to experience her suffering. I want to know every single one of her thoughts. So here, I want to become her, to live as her, to imagine the path she would take in reality.

“I have placed all my hopes in this world. It is forever winter, forever snowing. The convenience store always has the kind of bread she likes. We always have money to spend. We can always see the people we love one more time.”

Several lines were left blank.

His handwriting became broken and halting, struggling to form a sentence.

“To A Melancholy Blue Corpse:

With this diary, even if I forget you countless times, I can remember you countless times again.

All the suffering not yet endured, all the salvation not yet received, will begin again.

This should... be my final reply.

—Let’s not write to each other anymore.”

The diary slipped from her transparent palm.

Qin Yao realized that her body had turned blue. This utopian world gradually became blank, and she saw the silver figure opposite her growing clearer and clearer in her eyes.

At this moment, she was Qin Yao, and she was also “a melancholy blue corpse.” The memories of every cycle were engraved into her mind.

Chen Huai stood before her, handsome as ever, wearing the black down jacket he had worn unchanged for years, his hands tucked into his pockets.

Through the white mist, Qin Yao looked at him. The corners of her eyes began to redden again.

“Why won’t you come with me this time?”

Behind her, an alley stretched through the streets, the only image in the pure white world. At its entrance hung a house number.

It was, unexpectedly, the vanished “No. 136 Mati Street.”

Chen Huai shook his head and waved to her, telling her to pass through the alley and return to the real world that belonged to her.

Qin Yao refused.

She ran over, seized Chen Huai’s hand tightly, and tried to drag him into the alley.

He was pulled along for quite a distance, his gaze gradually losing focus. Their footsteps entered the alley, and Qin Yao saw many windows.

The first window was the outer window of Sun Fusheng’s old courtyard house.

Looking through it, she saw nothing inside, except for the red telephone sitting on the table.

Then, suddenly, the telephone rang through the silent, narrow alley.

Qin Yao stopped and stood before the first window. Chen Huai gave her a push.

“Go in and answer it.”

She climbed through the window and stood in front of the table for a long time before slowly picking up the receiver.

“Xiao Yao, are you doing well over there?”

It was a child’s voice.

“May the Bodhisattva bless us. Grandpa hasn’t been sick or in pain at all this year. He’s doing very well, so you don’t have to worry either. Is the money I left you enough? ...I should’ve saved more back then. It’s okay. This time, I’ve been saving since I was little. When you get here, you won’t have to worry about food or clothes anymore.”

Qin Yao pressed her lips tightly together, holding back her emotions. With a muffled sound through her nose, she agreed to every one of those earnest wishes.

Inside the second window was a shattered phone.

The call Chen Huai listened to was from Yuan Sheng.

“I scared you back then, didn’t I? ...But now, your big brother made it onto a youth football team over here. I can play whenever I want. I’m very free, and nobody forces me to do those crooked, messed-up problems anymore. This time, I met some really wonderful parents, so I’m passing this good fortune on to you.

“Chen Huai, in your next life, you have to play a proper game of football with your big brother.”

The third window was Sun Hongping’s rented apartment.

Qin Yao had once climbed out through that window. It was the place where she had last seen her mother.

Sun Hongping had become “Guoguo” once again. Her voice was childish, but her tone still carried that familiar gentleness Qin Yao knew so well.

“Mama’s poetry collection has been published. I wrote so, so many stories. And I saw the stories Xiao Yao wrote in magazines before too. Child, you really are wonderful.”

“Thank you for carrying Mama’s eyes with you. Thank you for taking me to Beijing.

“But from now on, Mama still hopes that you can live for yourself. You don’t need to carry anyone else’s will upon your shoulders. We love you because we want you to be free, not because we want to use love to bind you into becoming a certain kind of person.

“Child, Mama is truly grateful that I gave birth to you. In the next life, I hope I can still be your mother.”

Some cast me aside like a weed.

Some cherished me like a treasure.

And yet I...

At the time, thought it was nothing out of the ordinary.

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Diary for the Fish with the Broken Tail Chapter 33

Chapter 33

When the call came, Chen Huai was standing outside No. 136 Zhongxin Road, about to open the mailbox and take out the new letter Qin Yao had written to him.

He had been too busy lately and had not come to collect the letters for a month. Just as he was about to lift the lid, he heard Sun Fusheng’s choked voice over the phone. Chen Huai immediately rushed back without stopping.

It was already very late then, eight or nine at night. The road was completely dark. Chen Huai gave the door a gentle push, barely using any force, and it opened.

Hearing the movement, Qin Yao grabbed the blanket, trying to cover her shoulders, but Chen Huai caught her by the wrist.

Her hand was limp and soft, without much strength, and simply fell into his warm palm.

“Don’t look at me.” Her hair covered her face. “I look awful.”

“Who did this?”

Qin Yao heard how calm his voice was. It was precisely because it was too calm that it was frightening.

She had no intention of hiding it. Pain was pain. She was not strong, not forgiving. She was going to say it.

“My dad. He wanted to take back my mom’s money. I wouldn’t give it to him, and he lost his temper.”

Speaking seemed to take a great deal of effort from Qin Yao. “That probably wasn’t the only reason. The main thing is that he hates me.”

As soon as she finished speaking, Qin Yao felt his fingers lightly touch her bruises. The touch was so gentle, like a drop of water passing over skin, like medicine, like numbing ice.

“He also took my ID card and my admission ticket.” Qin Yao smiled, then began coughing, making even the bed frame shake. “Looks like both you and I will have to try again next year. Good. Neither of us will have to wait for the other anymore.”

Chen Huai withdrew his hand and remained silent for a very, very long time.

Qin Yao turned onto her side to look at him, but the night was too dark, and she could not make him out.

“Where is he?” Chen Huai suddenly asked.

“...I don’t know.” After saying it, Qin Yao tensed up and pulled an arm out from beneath the blanket. “What are you doing? We can just call the police and...”

Chen Huai wrapped the blanket around her and told her not to move.

“By the time the police get here, it’ll be too late for the college entrance exam.”

“And that money, if he spends it, how will the old man save his life? How are you going to get into Peking University?”

Qin Yao’s eyes trembled. She grabbed his hand and shook her head.

“You won’t be able to find him.”

The string of old coins hanging from the window frame began to chime, refracting fragments of moonlight that fell across his cheek, the tip of his nose, and the tightly drawn line of his lips.

The shadow of the clematis swayed and swayed.

For the first time, Chen Huai pushed her hand away.

“This is important to you.” He turned around and pulled his collar higher. “When I come back, I’ll take you to the hospital. You have to be in the exam room tomorrow morning.”

When he came back...

How long would she have to wait?

One year, two years, seven years, ten years...

It was as though a huge chasm had suddenly opened inside Qin Yao. She had a bad feeling, as if something like this had happened countless times before, somewhere in a corner of her memory she did not know, countless times before, Chen Huai had let go of her hand.

“Chen... Broken-Tailed Fish.”

As Chen Huai was closing the door, she called out that name.

But he did not hear her.

Qin Yao wanted to put on her shoes. She wanted to go outside and stop him. She did not know why she had suddenly begun to cry, why her heart ached faintly, only that she kept feeling that after this meeting, he would leave and never return.

Sun Fusheng came into the room and grabbed Qin Yao, telling her not to move, guiding her back down onto the bed.

Qin Yao shook her head violently. “No... no. Grandpa, stop him. Help me call him back.”

She was not sure whether Chen Huai would be able to find Qin Guoli’s address. But she herself had written about Qin Guoli in her very first letter to Broken-Tailed Fish. Maybe Chen Huai still remembered. Maybe he really could find the place.

She still had not told Chen Huai that she knew he was Broken-Tailed Fish. She had not told him that she had recognized that handwriting long ago. She had not asked whether he had read the new letters she had sent. She still did not know whether Chen Huai knew how she felt.

Qin Yao had always said that after summer, they would leave this place together.

But what if... there was no summer anymore?

Sun Fusheng seemed to have fallen into confusion again. He could not understand what she was saying and only held her down mechanically, telling her that Xiao Yao must not get hurt again.

“You can’t catch up to him anymore.” Sun Fusheng patted the blanket, coaxing her as though she were a child. “Believe in him. We’ll go to the hospital... he’ll take you to the hospital... no, first you need to sleep properly. Xiao Yao never sleeps properly, always climbing up and down. Little children should go to bed early and get up early.”

His head hurt terribly, and his speech began to slur, coming out in broken fragments. He even started singing Qin Yao a song, drawing out the notes.

The song was exactly the same as the one Sun Hongping used to sing to her.

Qin Yao suddenly went still.

Sun Fusheng said, “All we want is for you to be well, Xiao Yao. If you’re well, then you won’t have let anyone down.”

Qin Yao saw a blue shadow standing behind Sun Fusheng, hidden in the darkness, where even the moonlight could not illuminate her.

The shadow came closer and closer. She was the same height as Qin Yao, her hair the same length. Even the size of her fingers and the rhythm of her breathing remained perfectly in sync with hers.

She thought of Xiao Yao, of that cluster of blue ghost flame in her own story. But before she could say anything, the shadow melted into her body.

Qin Yao’s consciousness suddenly grew hazy, as though, following the thread of some story, she were being forcibly made to fall asleep. Her eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Sun Fusheng was still patting her stomach again and again, singing a song to lull a child to sleep, singing like a mother.

The night grew deeper and deeper. Sun Fusheng’s aged singing did not stop. The string of old coins swayed faster and faster, and a fierce wind rose outside.

The old man began talking to himself, where no one could hear him:

“...Grandpa is going to leave soon.”

“Too much money has been spent on treatment, and you still have to go to school. It’s too hard to earn money, saving it bit by bit. Don’t spend it on me anymore. Xiao Yao always said she hated Grandpa most. So how did it come to this, that she still wants to spend all her money treating Grandpa?”

“It can’t be cured... it can’t be cured anymore. My head hurts all day and all night, it’s unbearable. Staying alive only burdens others, and I suffer too. A useless old man who can’t do anything, yet still has to be dead weight. Everyone is already living such hard lives. And my Guoguo, too...”

His eyes were empty. No one knew what he was looking at in the silent darkness. The old man began murmuring about Guoguo again.

“The person I’ve wronged most is my Guoguo... I never let her live a good life in this lifetime. Such a good child, born into the wrong family, climbing her way out of ours. If she’d been born into a rich family, she surely would have been much happier.”

Sun Fusheng gently patted Qin Yao’s stomach. His shriveled lips moved, and hot tears fell from the layers upon layers of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. His gaze was cloudy. When people grow old, they can no longer see anything clearly. Time will erase every person’s traces.

The old man’s voice came one phrase after another, dragging out each long beat, like grasping at the tail of time, like a sigh:

“You too. You weren’t born into a good family either. I’ve only burdened you.”

“...When Grandpa dies, there’ll be no more sickness, no more pain. Xiao Yao will be lighter too.”

His voice was so weak that even the wind could not hear it:

“After I die, my granddaughter... you must live well.”

Ding...

The string of wind chimes rang. The roly-poly toy swayed back and forth. Qin Yao’s eyes remained tightly shut as the sound of the nursery rhyme by her ear gradually drifted farther and farther away, mingling with the sigh of the broken door.

A hunched figure climbed upstairs.

Her family was nowhere to be seen again.

The wind grew still. The trees grew still. The people grew still.

The world sank into utter darkness.

The road was uneven and full of potholes. A lamp shone at the mouth of the alley. Following what had been mentioned in the letter, Chen Huai found his way to the neighborhood where Qin Yao had once lived and asked several elderly men sitting shirtless outside their doors to cool off about Qin Guoli.

“Don’t know if his name is Qin Guoli... but after that Sun Hongping you mentioned died, a man surnamed Qin moved in. Said his wife used to live there. Creepy as hell, if you ask me. Who deliberately goes looking for a house where someone died?” One of the old men pointed to the house across the way.

Chen Huai went around to the back window and glanced inside. There was no one there. He picked up a stone, his face cold, and smashed the window directly. The flying glass cut into his palm, but Chen Huai paid it no mind. He knocked away the remaining shards and climbed inside.

He rummaged through every cabinet, searching for Qin Yao’s documents and the money. He pulled open drawer after drawer, but found nothing.

So he even tore apart the quilts and bedsheets. He felt around inside the pillowcase and found a kraft-paper envelope, but it was empty. He kept searching, until behind a heap of clothes in the wardrobe, he spotted Qin Yao’s backpack.

The backpack lay crookedly inside, as though it had simply been tossed there the moment it was brought back. Qin Guoli had not cared enough to deliberately destroy it. He had taken all the money and gone out.

Chen Huai put the documents into his pocket. As he stood up, he knocked over a framed photograph on top of the cabinet.

He froze.

It was as though some kind of magic compelled him to pick up the frame. But before his bleeding fingers could touch its edge, he heard the click of the front door.

Qin Guoli stumbled home drunk, carrying a green beer bottle. His face was utterly dejected. He stepped through the door and saw the moonlight inside illuminating a human figure.

Chen Huai frowned and was about to run. He had gotten the things back, after all. The most urgent thing was to get them to Qin Yao before the exam began. But Qin Guoli suddenly charged at him like a madman in a drunken rage, wrapped an arm around his neck, and dragged him down from the windowsill.

Chen Huai’s back landed on the broken glass.

The pain made him let out a muffled groan.

Qin Guoli narrowed his eyes and finally saw his face clearly.

“You’re the one they were talking about... the one who’s been having an early romance with Qin Yao?”

Chen Huai had no idea what he meant. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he began struggling with him. Qin Guoli still had the unfinished bottle in his hand and suddenly smashed it against Chen Huai’s head. The alcohol burned the wound, mixing with blood as it spilled across the floor.

Qin Guoli was dead drunk. Reeking of alcohol, he began babbling nonsense.

“She’s a slut too! Just like that mother of hers. Always fooling around with some worthless punk with no money and no power. They’re all the same!”

“My woman... my daughter, they all hate me to the bone.”

Qin Guoli laughed as he struck him, then shakily got to his feet, laughing loudly.

Chen Huai lunged forward and wrapped his arms around his waist. The two of them grappled on the floor. Qin Guoli’s head slammed into the bed too, leaving him dazed for a long while. Chen Huai, blood streaming down his forehead, tried to make his way toward the door. Qin Guoli shakily got back to his feet, dragging a wooden stool in his hand.

Red and black blurred together before Chen Huai’s eyes. He could barely see. His leg had been pierced by the broken window glass and had gone numb. He could not move it.

Yet all he could think about was getting those things back to Qin Yao.

She had been waiting for this day.

Waiting for a very, very long time.

She said she was going to Beijing. She said she carried eyes upon her shoulders.

The scraping sound of the stool dragged itself into his ears.

Everything in the world seemed about to fall silent. For some reason, the weather had suddenly turned cold. Chen Huai felt every one of his teeth trembling. He looked toward the door.

The cold wind stirred his painful breathing.

Chen Huai felt his eyes grow hot and sore.

Granny Zhou passed by the doorway, leading her cat, her back bent as she shuffled along.

Yuan Sheng dribbled the soccer ball as he ran forward.

He saw himself too, dressed in a pure black down jacket, standing in the heavy snow and tossing a diary down at the doorway.

The pages were blown open by the wind, rustling loudly.

Chen Huai’s legs suddenly gave out beneath him, and he fell hard to the ground. Qin Guoli raised the stool, about to bring it down on his head.

Chen Huai saw the photograph exposed between the windblown pages of the diary.

There was only one face in it, taking up half the photograph. Her lashes were slightly lowered as she glanced sideways at the person beside her, the corner of her lips faintly raised.

It was Qin Yao.

Outside the door lay mountains and rivers, rain and water, endless seasons.

Chen Huai’s fingertips touched the threshold, but he could not pass through it. In that instant, he suddenly understood something.

The stool was about to come down on his head. In that fleeting moment, Chen Huai shielded the things in his pocket and closed his eyes.

One second, two seconds, three seconds.

He felt nothing.

The next moment, Chen Huai sucked in a great breath and opened his eyes.

He saw a silver shadow braced over him with both hands.

His pupils contracted. His breathing stopped. He felt tears falling drop by drop, hot enough to burn through his face.

The edges of the silver shadow were blurred like snowflakes.

And above him, there was someone else.

Someone had caught Qin Guoli by the wrist and was holding him back with all his strength.

Chen Huai’s tears mingled with blood as they ran from the corners of his eyes.

Silently, his lips moved.

“...Ge.”

The silver figure passed into his body. Chen Huai felt his emotions magnified without end, as though everything he had ever lost had returned to his body. He pushed himself up from the ground and grabbed Yuan Sheng by the arm, calling him “Brother” again and again, each cry like blood from the heart. He could not say anything else.

Yuan Sheng’s body became half-transparent. This world was strange. Even Qin Guoli’s stool could no longer come down.

The boy who had remained sixteen years old, never moving forward, smiled gently and sighed.

“Chen Huai, you’re taller than your brother now.”

Then he urged him, “Run. Don’t keep staying here.”

Chen Huai did not move.

Yuan Sheng curved his brows slightly and continued, “Chen Huai, everyone has to learn how to say goodbye. Everyone will have their day.”

“She’s still waiting for you. You have to go back.”

An invisible pair of hands pushed against his shoulders, pushing Chen Huai forward, pushing him out.

Beyond the door, the seasons turned.

All things perished.

All things lived on without end.

Sun Fusheng’s song went on and on. Qin Yao fell into a deep sleep, sinking into darkness as though she could never wake again.

When she opened her eyes again, they were full of tears.

Morning had broken. The shadow of the clematis swayed. Sparrows perched high on the branches. Time moved forward, stripped of any measure of speed.

When Qin Yao climbed down from the bed, she fell. Then she hurriedly crawled toward the door. The moment she opened it, she saw a body fall from upstairs.

She knew that face far too well.

Every crease at the corners of his eyes, every age spot on the backs of his hands, was unbearably familiar to her.

His thin body was like a leaf from a banyan tree, blown this way and that by the wind as it fell. His loose old undershirt could not cover his body.

The wind held up his body, as though stretching open an aged skin.

Even as he fell, the old man was smiling.

Silently, he shaped the words for her:

“Live.”

Her tears burst forth together with his blood.

Qin Yao’s legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the ground outside the door. Her mouth opened wide as she wailed, but her throat was so dry and raw that no sound came out.

Many people are not allowed to cry when they are young.

When they fall, they are told to be strong and climb back up by themselves. When they are sad, they must pretend that nothing matters. They must show the world that they are as hard as steel.

And so they forget how to cry.

They pull back the corners of their mouths, narrow their eyes, bite through the flesh inside their mouths.

Many people forget that when they want to cry, it is the throat and the heart that begin to hurt first.

A pool of blood spread across the ground.

【All my money, all my love, is to be left to my daughter Guoguo and my granddaughter Xiao Yao.

— Sun Fusheng】

With his death, Sun Fusheng taught his granddaughter how to live.

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Diary for the Fish with the Broken Tail Chapter 32

Chapter 32

All the replacement refills in the drawer had been used up. Qin Yao dragged her stool forward, poked Cao Manman in the back, and lowered her voice as she asked for help. “Do you have another pen? Lend me one.”

Cao Manman turned to look at her, her face full of concern. “Have you been studying too hard? You’ve gone through an entire box of pens in one week.”

As she spoke, she reached into the drawer and felt around for her pencil case, frowning as she said very seriously, “Look at those dark circles under your eyes, they’re practically going to fall to the floor. There’s still a week before the exams. Take a little rest.”

She gripped the pen in her hand. Just as Qin Yao reached for it, Cao Manman tightened her grip again. “Why don’t you put your head down and sleep for a while? I’ll keep watch for you. You can do it during the next class.”

The corners of Qin Yao’s lips lifted slightly, but she still took the pen from her hand and said as though nothing were wrong, “I’m fine. After the exam, I can sleep from daylight until dark and it won’t matter. Right now, it’s better to make the most of the time.”

After she went home, she hadn’t seen Chen Huai for several days. He seemed to be very busy these days. Maybe it was because the students were all about to start summer vacation, and the shop where Chen Huai worked was planning to renovate. They had spent several days doing a thorough cleaning, and all the bookshelves in the shop had been replaced with new ones. The manager wanted to bring in some new titles, and Chen Huai had even come to ask her if she had any books to recommend. After that, they hardly had any interaction.

For some inexplicable reason, Qin Yao felt that he wasn’t working only one job. Otherwise, his time wouldn’t have been this tightly stretched. Throughout June, he had been outside every day, as though there wasn’t a single day when he could stop and properly catch his breath.

On the night of June 5, Chen Huai came back late. He tossed his keys onto the shoe cabinet and slapped on the light in the room, only to see Qin Yao curled up on the sofa under nothing but a blanket.

The only window in the living room was open. The scorching air outside mingled with the air inside the house, like flowing fire, warmly wrapping itself around all of a person’s senses. There was a silent magic to a summer night that seemed to urge the heart onward, causing Chen Huai to walk over to the sofa and slowly crouch down.

A breeze had risen in the corridor and blown through half of the window into the old house, stirring up a breath of aged, damp heat. Qin Yao moved her eyelids. The first thing she saw was the shadow cast by lowered lashes, followed by Chen Huai’s body leaning toward her. The night wind lifted the hem of his white shirt, seeming to blow the boy’s body translucent as well.

Her consciousness was not yet fully awake. She reached out an arm and caught at the fabric beside his waist, thin, cool-warm, carrying the reassuring warmth of his body.

Chen Huai’s movements paused for a moment. He drew in his chin and lowered his eyes, looking straight at her. There seemed to be a night bird about to cry out in his eyes, but in the blink of an instant, it vanished.

As her thoughts returned, she rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. Her eyelids felt very itchy. She suspected it was because the warm breeze had passed over them, yet the strange sensation still lingered.

“You came back so late?” Qin Yao sat up from the sofa, crossing her legs as she yawned. Chen Huai was still crouching, looking up at her. He remained silent for a long time, his fingers settling over the pocket at his waist before stopping again. He did not take anything out. Instead, he said, “There was a lot going on at the shop.”

“Do you want some water?” Qin Yao looked at him and muttered, “Your throat sounds a little dry.”

He let out a deep breath, stood up, and refused. “No need. Go back to sleep. I’m going to take a shower first.”

Qin Yao stared blankly at the cabinet opposite and the wall covered in mold spots, the pattern left by the blanket still pressed across her face. She looked as though she still hadn’t fully woken up, and she didn’t answer him.

About half an hour later, Chen Huai came out of the bathroom and saw that she had fallen asleep on the sofa again, her breathing even, her lashes resting quietly, the bluish-black shadows beneath her eyes having faded a little.

Knowing that Qin Yao had been under a lot of stress lately and that studying had exhausted her, Chen Huai did not wake her again. He spread a sleeping mat and a quilt beside the sofa. When he lay flat, he could see her hair and part of one arm hanging down over the edge of the sofa.

At first, he lay flat and fell asleep, his eyes closed. Later, he became restless and turned onto his side, then lay flat again, his eyes open as he stared at the rounded shape of her fingernails.

Chen Huai took the object from the pocket of the jacket beside his pillow. On a sudden impulse, he wanted to compare its size with Qin Yao’s fingers. He raised his hand and had only just pinched the tip of her finger, before he could slip it on, when Qin Yao seemed to sense something and curled her finger around his. She used three-tenths of her strength, and in the very next instant withdrew, turning over onto her other side.

As though asleep, yet also as though awake, impossible to tell.

His thoughts kept spreading, then spreading farther, a secret slowly fermenting in this summer night.

The next day was the day before the college entrance exam. Everything unrelated to the exam had been completely cleared out of the classroom. Even the crude blackboard display everyone had put together during the first half of the year had been wiped clean, replaced with slogans related to the exam.

On the final day, they only had self-study for the morning. There were no classes. They were given a last shot of encouragement and left to review on their own. At noon, they were dismissed to go home and rest. Qin Yao and Cao Manman walked out of the school gate arm in arm. Qin Yao treated Cao Manman to their last cup of milk tea in their third year of high school. There was a slogan printed as part of a promotional activity on the cup. Qin Yao tore open the pull strip. It read: “Fated to meet again in this lifetime.”

Cao Manman checked her schoolbag one more time. “You’ve got your admission ticket, ID card, and everything else ready, right? You can’t be careless even with little things like this.”

Qin Yao pulled open the zipper of the inner compartment of her schoolbag and took a look. “Everything’s here.”

The sun was high overhead. The moment she stepped out of the air-conditioned shop, she saw a swath of dazzling green. Qin Yao got on the bus, got off at the entrance to the alley outside the old residential neighborhood, turned at the first corner, then the second. She felt around in her pocket, her fingers hooking around the key with the silver broken-tailed fish hanging from it. When she looked up, she froze.

Her lungs could no longer draw breath.

She saw Qin Guoli again.

There was almost no time to hesitate. Qin Yao backed away several steps, turned, and ran.

Qin Guoli had been squatting at the doorway smoking. Seeing this, he threw away the half-smoked cigarette and strode after her. The alley twisted and turned. Qin Yao hadn’t run far before her strength failed to match that of a grown man, and he grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back.

A sharp cold weapon pressed against her waist. Qin Yao gritted her teeth and did not dare speak. He took her to the door of the house, then grabbed her by the hair and shoved her inside.

The lock on the front door had already been smashed open by Qin Guoli. The house had also been turned upside down, a complete mess covering the floor. All the clothes and books had been spread across it. Those old books could not withstand such violence. Their pages had all come loose, scattered beneath mottled shoeprints.

He asked where the last sum of money was. Qin Yao gritted her teeth and said there was none. It had all been spent.

Qin Guoli pointed at the locked cabinet beneath the desk. No matter how hard he tried, he could not pry it open, so he ordered Qin Yao to open it and show him what was inside. Her eyes were bloodshot as she glared at him furiously. “Those are all my mother’s things. You have no right to look.”

He slapped her.

Qin Guoli searched the pocket of her school uniform and found that string of keys. He tried them one by one. Qin Yao lunged forward and bit his arm. Qin Guoli grabbed her by the hair and yanked her away, his eyes filled with a blood-red frenzy. “This was money you swindled from me in the first place. I’m taking it to do business. If I make the money back, wouldn’t you benefit from it too? After all, you’re my only daughter.”

Hearing such an argument, Qin Yao’s entire body went numb. “You really think that’s possible?”

If he truly had the ability to rise again, he would have done it long ago. How could he have spent nearly twenty years still ending up in this state?

Qin Guoli had been struck where it hurt. The hypocritical expression fell away, replaced by viciousness. “You’re all the same. You’ve never believed in me. Your mother was the same, too. A bunch of ungrateful wretch.”

He pressed the dagger against Qin Yao’s chin. “Back when I had money, I had so many choices. All kinds of well-bred young ladies, women from high-class families. I turned them all down. I chose to marry your mother.”

“What kind of background did your mother have? What status? She was fucking nobody, but she looked down on me all day long. Even in bed, she would hold her chin up and refuse to indulge me. Her bones were so hard it was frightening. Love couldn’t change her. Only money could. A hateful woman without a heart. But I chose her anyway. Even when I fought with my family until everything fell apart, I still used every means I could to marry her and bring her home.”

Qin Guoli’s face was still handsome, only now it carried a desolate sorrow. He clenched his teeth fiercely. “I told her to have a child for me. I thought that way, I should be able to bind everyone together. Xiao Yao, I treated her so well before. Even when things were difficult, I kept her by my side. I told her to go somewhere safe and wait for me to come back. And what happened?”

He sneered. “The moment she heard I had no money anymore, that I had fallen from grace, she took you and ran.”

Qin Guoli looked as though he wanted to strangle her. He threw down the knife and clamped both hands around her throat. “She loves you more than she loves me. Why?”

“You two even joined forces to deceive me, trying to squeeze out the last bit of profit from me. You don’t even think about who took her away from that den of wolves? Who gave you life? Without me, you wouldn’t even know which fat old man you were the daughter of. Back then, I protected her for so long. I told Brother Jiang not to make her take customers. I was the one who helped her with everything...”

In the struggle, they crashed into the cabinet. From the drawer that had been opened, a kraft-paper envelope fell out. Only a thin stack of bills remained inside, along with a sheet of white paper.

Qin Guoli’s attention was drawn to it. Qin Yao took the opportunity to kick him away and escape from his hands.

He did not pick up the money first. Instead, he picked up the piece of paper. After seeing the words written on it, he suddenly turned vicious and tore the white paper to shreds.

“She’s still thinking about him.”

Qin Yao rubbed her neck and cursed him for putting on an act. “You’re standing here in front of me now, talking as though you’ve poured out your whole heart, but after you ran out of money, you still wanted to sell her to Brother Jiang. What kind of good person are you pretending to be?”

“That’s because she betrayed me!” Qin Guoli roared. “No matter how good I was to her, she never cared about me. A cheap woman like that, why the hell should I...”

He ground his teeth, his voice hoarse until there was little left but breath. “Why... do I still love her?”

Qin Yao’s schoolbag lay at his feet, its zipper ripped open, its contents scattered all over the floor. Qin Guoli saw her admission ticket and ID card. He saw the motivational slogans on her sticky notes, saying that she was going to Peking University, that she wanted to study literature.

Qin Guoli trampled those things to pieces. No one knew what was going through his mind. He turned and pressed toward Qin Yao again, step by step.

The front door had been smashed, hanging precariously as it creaked when stirred by the slightest breeze. The half-smoked cigarette butt lying at the doorway had not yet completely gone out. The ground trembled once, and another segment of ash fell, as though summer had drawn it away, sent it once around the lungs of the banyan tree.

Granny Zhou on the first floor was dead too, and so was the cat, so there was no one left to notice anymore.

Only the door swayed with its creaking groans, only the cigarette ash drifted slowly down, only the clematis outside the window danced without knowing sorrow.

Qin Guoli had taken her identification documents. The house was a complete mess. Sun Fusheng had not seen her all day. He came out of his home and staggered down the stairs, his withered fingers knocking on her door.

The door opened. A small lump had risen beneath the covers on the bed. Qin Yao lay on her side, and Sun Fusheng called to her, “Xiao Yao, Xiao Yao.”

Qin Yao’s shoulders trembled once, but she did not answer. Sun Fusheng moved closer and gently lifted a corner of her quilt. Tears immediately fell, striking Qin Yao’s shoulder.

He said, “How did you end up like Guoguo, hurt this badly...”

Qin Yao buried herself in the pillow and cried. Sun Fusheng sat silently at the edge of the bed and cried.

He wanted to call Chen Huai. Qin Yao told him not to. The old man was uncharacteristically stubborn and pushed her hand away. “No. We have to call. We have to save her.”

Qin Yao could no longer hear clearly what exactly Sun Fusheng said to Chen Huai. The old man made the call from home, using that same red landline telephone of his.

The lock was broken. She no longer even had the right to keep Chen Huai from coming inside. All she heard was that single creaking sound, much heavier than the one the wind had pushed out that afternoon.

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Diary for the Fish with the Broken Tail Chapter 31

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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Diary for the Fish with the Broken Tail Chapter 30

Chapter 30

The old woman, Granny Zhou, next door died.

She died alone, silently and unnoticed. It was only after her body began to stink from decomposition that anyone discovered it. Her home was completely bare, with nothing but a yellowed quilt, two rusty lunch boxes, and a lame cat that was nearly starving to death.

The cat had been hungry for a long time, but it still chose not to eat the old woman’s corpse. It was skin and bones, and after Granny Zhou’s body was carried away, it used the claws of its front paws to scratch at Qin Yao’s door.

Qin Yao gave it some leftover food, and it simply attached itself to her.

Although she was poor too, the cat was no fool. Clinging to a kindhearted poor person was still better than fighting with stray cats outside for scraps.

Compared with her, Chen Huai was more hard-hearted and more concerned with reality. Several times, he tried to drive the cat away. Qin Yao crouched down, softened a little, and said that they should just keep it.

By the time spring was almost over, around the end of April, the old cat died anyway. No one knew whether it had simply reached the end of its life or died of illness. After all, they had never taken it to a hospital, and Qin Yao could not tell how long it had actually lived. She only knew that one morning, when she opened her eyes, the old cat had already slipped out through the window and curled up outside Granny Zhou’s door, where it had died. No matter how much she called, it would not wake up. When it died, they did not even know what its name was.

Qin Yao found an old piece of clothing she no longer wore and wrapped the cat in it. In a soft voice, she said, “I’m not keeping cats anymore. If I come across one or two that are pitiful, I’ll take them to an animal shelter.”

Chen Huai buried the cat. “I told you from the start not to keep it.”

As they walked to the bus stop, Qin Yao shielded her eyes from the sun and sighed. “Chen Huai, summer is coming again.”

He turned his head and moved a little closer to Qin Yao, until the shadow cast by his tilted body happened to cover her. “Shouldn’t you have been looking forward to summer all along? Because you can leave.”

Qin Yao did not understand what he meant and asked in return, “Aren’t you leaving? Are you going to stay in Lincheng for university?”

Chen Huai narrowed his eyes at the cars on the road and avoided answering. “The bus is here.”

The two parted ways at the school gate. A countdown was hanging on the classroom wall, the days decreasing one by one. Qin Yao was doing more and more practice tests. Most institutions under the education system did not place much value on practical work, and she had only been in a laboratory a few times. Every day, she worked her way through stack after stack of exam papers. She had compressed her lunch break down to just fifteen minutes of rest. It was short, but because she was tired enough, the moment she put her head down, she could fall asleep. Yet the time was so short that she could not even manage to dream.

After waking, her mind was a little clearer, and she remembered that Sun Fusheng had finished a box of medicine and needed to go back to the hospital to get another one. But she had to go straight to her shift at the convenience store after school today, so she needed to tell Chen Huai.

She went to the sink in the restroom, scooped up a handful of water, and splashed it over her face to wake herself up. After drying off, she went to Class Five, where Chen Huai had most recently been transferred, to look for him. At first, she asked a student by the window. The student wore a complicated expression and said that Chen Huai was no longer in this class.

Qin Yao froze for a moment. “He transferred classes again?”

The student said he did not know. He had not come to school at all since the beginning of the semester.

She went down the line asking one person after another, until she reached Class Three. Yue Jian was sitting there with his chair tilted back, both legs hooked around the legs of the desk. He gave her a sly glance, his tone rather smug. “You and him were pretty close? Chen Huai should’ve... dropped out, I guess.”

“He deserved it.” Yue Jian rolled his eyes. “He went so hard on me before. My arm took a whole week to recover. My dad was never going to let him off.”

After saying that, he looked her up and down. “What are you to him? Why do you look so pissed off?”

As if he had thought of something, Yue Jian grinned. “Yo, he’s gotten himself into that state and he can still get into a puppy love relationship?”

Qin Yao stared at him until Yue Jian began to feel uneasy. Yue Jian furrowed his brows. “What are you staring at? You want to drop out like him too?”

Without saying another word, she went into Class Three, grabbed the wolf tail he had grown to look cool, and even used her teeth, biting him so hard that blood welled up on his neck. Yue Jian grabbed her hair too, and the two of them started fighting. The students in the class came over to pull them apart.

Qin Yao was left holding several strands of Yue Jian’s obnoxious hair. Her eyes were red, but she did not shed a tear. “Do you have no shame? You tied Chen Huai up before and threw him into a garbage heap. His arm still hasn’t healed even now, and you have the nerve to say that he bullied you?”

She counted them off one by one. “You tore up his homework, locked him in the bathroom, threw dirty mop water over his head, spread rumors that he caused Yuan Sheng’s death, and after school you brought people to block him at the stairs and beat him up. What did Chen Huai ever do to you? Did the girl you liked give him a love letter or something?”

Yue Jian’s expression changed, as though she had hit the sore spot in his heart. His face and neck turned red as he shouted, “Stop fucking talking shit!”

“So what if you have a dad? Why does that mean he has to drop out?” Qin Yao protested.

“So what if I have a dad to protect me? You guys don’t!”

Someone was pulling at Qin Yao’s arm. She suddenly stopped moving, gritting her back teeth tightly as she glared at Yue Jian. Her heart ached for a moment. She wanted to cry, but held it back. The tears only turned in her eyes for two seconds before drying up.

The homeroom teachers of the two classes each took the students involved aside to talk. Qin Yao’s hair had been pulled into a mess, and a row of teeth marks had been bitten into her lower lip.

“You know Chen Huai?”

Qin Yao answered without even thinking. “I do.”

The moment his name was mentioned, everyone sighed. “There’s nothing that can be done about what happened to him. His parents took the matter all the way to the Education Bureau. The officials spoke with the principal and said they were going to crack down on school bullying, that it had to be taken seriously...”

“Is the result of taking it seriously that the person who actually bullied someone gets to stay in the classroom while the one who fought back gets kicked out?” Qin Yao interrupted. “Then no one will dare fight back anymore. Everyone can just silently endure it.”

The teacher said nothing. She did not know what to do either.

“Everyone knows what Yue Jian did. You know, and I know.”

“You’re young, and you have that impulsive fire in you. You can tell right from wrong as clearly as day, because that’s what the textbooks teach you.” The teacher really was thinking of what was best for her. “But I only want to ask you one thing. Are you still going to sit for the Peking University entrance exam?”

“If you want Chen Huai to come back, you’ll have to deal with Yue Jian’s parents, submit all kinds of documents to the Education Bureau, wait for a response, wait for them to handle it. There are less than three months left before the college entrance exam. Chen Huai himself has already given up on this. Do you have the energy to do it for him? Or, to put it another way, do you have the ability to help him?”

She couldn’t help him. Qin Yao thought to herself. In truth, there was nothing she could do.

The teacher could see her mood too. She straightened Qin Yao’s clothes for her and told her, “Qin Yao, you’re a kind, good girl, but sometimes, being selfless doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right. There’s nothing wrong with being selfish, either. No one is so great that they should have to stake their future on someone else.”

She patted Qin Yao on the shoulder. “Go back to the classroom and study. I’ll help you mediate things with Yue Jian.”

Qin Yao began forcing herself to work through the questions. Her eyes scanned line by line across the study guides filled with annotations, the hundreds of pages of mistakes she had compiled herself. She had spent so much effort, stayed up through so many days and nights to make it this far. She could no longer stop.

News like this always spread quickly. Cao Manman brought her a new hair tie and had Qin Yao sit down while she helped tie her hair up.

“Ah, people like Yue Jian are just like that. Just like his name, really. Don’t keep thinking about it. Focus on preparing for the exam. If he dares come to the classroom and pick a fight with you again, I’ll help you send him packing.”

Once her hair was tied, Qin Yao turned around and hugged her. “Thank you.”

“We’re friends.” Cao Manman stroked her hair. “Besides, I know you need to leave here more than I do... I know you have a longer road ahead of you.”

That evening after school, as usual, Chen Huai was waiting for her at the school gate. Qin Yao carried her schoolbag and looked at him from a long way off. The hanging lamp at the entrance illuminated only a small patch of ground, and his shadow fell into Qin Yao’s eyes.

He had been waiting for a long time. Qin Yao did not run over to him. She simply stood where she was. Chen Huai checked the time again and again, his brows knitting together. He raised his head and searched the crowd for a glimpse of her. The two of them looked at each other across hundreds of meters of lamplight, too far apart even to make out the expressions on each other’s faces.

Chen Huai called to her, “Why are you standing over there?”

Qin Yao said nothing. Very slowly, she began walking toward him. They came to lean against each other side by side, their hearts drawing closer and closer too.

“Where did you go?” Qin Yao asked him.

Chen Huai gave a “heh” and cast her a sidelong glance. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? You took so long to come out. I thought you were planning to stay up all night in the classroom doing practice questions.”

“You know what I mean,” Qin Yao said. “Where did you go during this time you’ve been out of school?”

Waiting for the bus together in the mornings and going to school had been a lie. He had done it deliberately, even pretending to wear a full school uniform. No wonder his schoolbag had felt so light, as though it could hardly hold anything.

And deliberately coming to find her around the time school let out in the evenings had been an act too. He had really gone to all that trouble, running back and forth just to put on a show for her.

Thinking about it this way, the five thousand yuan he had given her on New Year’s Eve might not necessarily have come from asking Grandma for it either. Maybe he had worked several jobs outside, had not even had time to go home for New Year’s Eve, and still made sure to buy her chestnuts for her in the freezing snow.

Why?

Sun Fusheng wasn’t his grandfather. It was one thing for Qin Yao herself to care so much about the old man, but what was his reason?

Qin Yao could not figure it out. There was no way for her to.

After she asked that question, Chen Huai did not answer. His footsteps paused for a moment before catching up with hers again. Silence, then more silence.

Her voice remained fairly calm, though for no apparent reason there was a hint of a laugh in it. “No wonder when I asked you this morning whether you were going to stay in Lincheng for university, you didn’t answer me.”

Chen Huai finally spoke. “Don’t get involved in this anymore.”

“Yes.” Qin Yao was burning with anger inside. “I can’t help you. Whenever something happens to me, you give me money without saying a word. You hide everything about your own problems from me. You want to push me as far away as possible, tell me to stay away from you. You think you’re doing it for my own good, but you never ask whether I think it’s good for me.”

Chen Huai kept his tone under control. He did not want to argue. “I gave you money, didn’t I? And you didn’t take it. You don’t want to drag me down, and I don’t want to have you dragging me along either. You think dropping out is bad for me, but there’s nothing I can do about this. You’ll finish high school, fly off to Beijing, and I still won’t be able to leave.”

“I can’t leave. Don’t you understand? This record is going to stay in my file. Unless I spend money, I won’t be able to get into a proper school. They don’t want me. They’re afraid I’ll hit people. They want to clamp my mouth shut like I’m a dog that might bite.” Chen Huai said, “When the time comes, just go live your good life and forget all about me. Neither of us needs to worry about the other.”

“Otherwise, why do you think my parents let me go so easily? My brother struggled for so long and still couldn’t escape. How did I manage to leave that family?” He tugged self-mockingly at the corner of his lips. “Because they know there’s no hope for me. I have no school left to attend. In their eyes, I have no value anymore.”

Qin Yao suddenly took his hand and stubbornly pulled him forward. “So what if I insist on dragging you along with me?”

She did not turn her head. Her voice was firm and forceful. “You can take these six months off and save some money. Once I finish my exams, there will always be a way to get you into school. You’ll only be six months behind me. It’s not as though you can’t wait that long.”

Suddenly, Chen Huai smelled that rotting-fruit scent again. He was dazed for a moment, dragged by the arm as he walked a long way.

Six months was something they could wait for...

But what about a year? Two years? Seven or ten years?

What if he remained trapped here and could never leave?

What right did she have to wait for him?

Though his rational mind told him this, the indescribable emotions surging up inside his chest still swept over him.

Because Qin Yao was simply too good. So Chen Huai, being careful and then even more careful, still fell in love with her.

No one had ever taught him how to give his heart to someone. In this regard, everyone seemed capable of learning it without a teacher.

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