Wei Qingyue only felt a great anguish in his heart — the kind of “great anguish” one encounters in classical Chinese reading comprehension exercises — spreading from his chest, flooding him and pulling him under in an instant. He had never known what a person had to experience for their heart to feel such “great anguish.”
Youth is uneven, each person with their own joys and sorrows, but for the most part people are fed and clothed, with parents whose only demand is that you study hard, and yet — just that, just that — so many people still live unhappily.
Wei Qingyue had studied hard, yet could only manage this much. He had never known that someone still thought of him this way. The girl’s face was as comically swollen as a pig’s head. He looked at her, then slowly stood up.
Without saying a single word to Jiang Du, Wei Qingyue walked back to school with Zhang Xiaoqiang.
The school had called the police, and the matter escalated to the police station. The man was shouting about wanting a paternity test, insisting that beating one’s own child was perfectly justifiable — that beating your own child was not against the law.
This outrageously arrogant man had the most ordinary of names: Wang Yong.
Wang Yong had a criminal record. Years ago, he had been imprisoned for rape — ten years — and later imprisoned again for theft. He had only been out for a short while this time.
The school administrator told the police that Jiang Du’s student file had no parental information filled in, only the names of two elderly guardians.
“Officer, now you understand why I hit the child, don’t you? She doesn’t recognize—” Wang Yong was cunning, his mouth full of twisted reasoning. The officer silenced him with a sharp reprimand: “Even if she is your child, beating her like this is still against the law. What do I know? What do you know?! Hmm?!”
Wang Yong was ultimately detained.
Jiang Du took a full week off — two days in hospital, and the remaining days at home.
The school was draped with banners, red ones, impossibly long, streaming all the way from the top floor down to the first, emblazoned with rousing words. It seemed as though if you just reached out your hand, you could truly touch a bright future.
The countdown would soon shift from two digits to one, but the city seemed to have entered its rainy season. They said it was moderate rain, yet when it fell, torrents cascaded down the bus windows, shattering the neon lights into pools of tangled apricot-red and smoky blue. From the roadside drifted the scorched fragrance of scallion-fried lamb.
Jiang Du’s scrapes began to scab over. Her grandmother wouldn’t let her pick at them, afraid they’d scar. But scars — scars are not things that stay only on the skin.
No one mentioned that day. She heard her grandmother weeping quietly in the room, a floor covered in cigarette butts from her grandfather’s smoking. He said one word — “a sin against heaven” — and then let out a long, long sigh.
At meals, her grandmother tried to speak several times, each time swallowing the words back down. Outside, the rain grew more urgent, washing over the fresh green osmanthus tree.
“Little one, there’s something I want to discuss with you,” her grandmother said, though she held her bowl of rice, barely touched. Her chopsticks were held apart like two wayward dashes going their separate ways. “Your grandfather and I are thinking of selling the house and moving somewhere else. We’ve also looked into Mei Middle School over there — you can transfer and keep your student enrollment. When the college entrance exam comes, you can still take it at Mei Middle School. It won’t hold you back.”
At the dinner table, her grandfather was absent that day; her grandmother said he’d gone to see an old friend. Jiang Du guessed he was running around dealing with something, though she didn’t know what.
The rain was so heavy.
“We haven’t done anything wrong, so why do we have to move? Why do I have to transfer?” Tears welled in Jiang Du’s eyes. She didn’t understand — there was too much she didn’t understand. Had the world changed? Perhaps this was how the world had always been. She simply hadn’t known it before.
Her grandmother fell silent, her hands trembling faintly.
There were things Jiang Du never asked about, not a single word. If she didn’t ask, she could pretend they were false, that they had never happened.
At the dinner table, there was no laughter anymore. The meal was very bitter.
Outside, a knock on the door suddenly came. Grandmother and granddaughter both stiffened, exchanging a glance. It was her grandmother who stood up first, walked to the door, peered through the peephole, then turned to Jiang Du:
“It’s a classmate — that same classmate who walked you home.”
Even in this downpour, Wei Qingyue had come to find her.
For one moment, her feelings had no name. Wei Qingyue was always different from everyone else — he ranked first in school, the kind of good child the world approved of, yet he smoked and fought, always with an untamed air. The idol of every student at the opening ceremony, he could walk her home and still beat up a predator. Yet behind him stood a paternal authority he could not overstep. He was a person of two faces. Jiang Du thought that she likely held no great significance for him — she had simply happened to become a part of his actions, a result of who he was.
The girl walked forward and opened the door. What she saw was the boy’s face lifting in that instant — his eyes clear, his hair damp and hazy from the rain, his sneakers black and already soaked through.
He wore a striped long-sleeved shirt; his casual dark jeans may or may not have been wet too.
“Here — the handouts and test papers your class distributed during this period.” Wei Qingyue passed over a carefully wrapped plastic bag. “Your seatmate copied notes from every subject for you. She said you two may not have talked much, but she hopes you recover soon.”
Jiang Du’s face was a ghostly white, thin and translucent — as if even a sheet of paper could draw dark red blood from it. She took the plastic bag, hugged it tightly to her chest against her chin, and looked at him with flickering, somewhat unfamiliar eyes, saying nothing.
“Child, why don’t you come in and sit for a bit?” her grandmother said, standing behind Jiang Du, offering Wei Qingyue a smile that was slightly awkward and inexplicably tense. The old woman seemed like a changed person — gone was her naturally warm and radiant ease.
Wei Qingyue smiled faintly, just barely. His dark eyes said nothing aloud, but with silence, the damp hair falling over his brow and lashes seemed to have something to say.
“Don’t stand outside — come in and have a cup of tea before you go. Look at you, coming all the way in this rain to bring Jiang Du her materials.” Her grandmother tried to find something to say, coaxing Wei Qingyue inside.
Jiang Du stepped back, bent down to find him a pair of slippers, then watched as he placed his umbrella at the entryway. The raindrops fell from it — very much like tears.
The two of them sat on the living room sofa. Her grandmother found some tea leaves and filled a disposable paper cup with hot water.
“You two talk — I’ll go tidy up the kitchen. Oh, by the way, child, have you eaten?” her grandmother asked, still tying on her apron. Wei Qingyue quickly said he had already eaten.
Her grandmother let out two apologetic little sounds of acknowledgment and went into the kitchen.
For a moment, there was only the sound of rain on the balcony — overwhelming, all-encompassing — giving one the illusion that the river was about to overflow its banks.
“If there are any problems you can’t figure out, you can ask me.” Wei Qingyue held his paper cup and sipped the scalding water.
Jiang Du smiled briefly. Her eyes drifted to his long sleeves, and what she guessed was that Wei Qingyue had certainly been beaten — his arms must be covered in wounds, ugly ones, which was why he wouldn’t let anyone see. Just as she was hiding at home, still not knowing how to gather the courage to go back to school.
She suddenly stood up and retrieved the scar-removing ointment her grandfather had managed to obtain, and handed it to Wei Qingyue. He did visibly pause — and then, remarkably, he laughed. He took it and looked it over briefly, his expression just as indifferent as always:
“Thanks.”
“During military training, why did you sit by the edge of the sports field every day?” He seemed to have simply picked a topic at random and started talking — he didn’t ask are you feeling better, didn’t say anything to comfort or counsel her.
Jiang Du wore that shy expression again. She said: “I’ve had a weak heart since I was little — a hole in it. I can’t do vigorous exercise.”
Saying this, she looked at Wei Qingyue’s face, and suddenly knew where her hole was — it ached faintly, but strangely, with him sitting right there before her, the hole simultaneously became tender and vivid. A warm spring wind rushed in, winding and lingering, until the hole was filled completely, and grass grew green within it, delicate flowers bloomed, and above it all shone a very bright sky.
Wei Qingyue didn’t respond, only sipped his hot tea again. On the coffee table lay two science books; he idly flipped through one and asked: “You like popular science?”
“I like useless but interesting knowledge.” Jiang Du’s voice finally had a little life to it.
Wei Qingyue smiled: “What do you mean by useless but interesting knowledge?”
“In primary school, I used to love poking the sensitive plant over and over, watching it fold shut. Back then I wanted to know why it was so miraculous. Knowing why a sensitive plant closes its leaves has no practical use, but it’s very interesting. Something like that, I suppose.” Jiang Du spoke at a leisurely pace. She was actually a bit tired — the particular tiredness of making a careful effort to maintain the kind of ease you’d have talking to a casual friend. But she was happy today.