In any case, although the old umbrella wasn’t retrieved, it was settled that Xin Hexue would spend some time every weekend afternoon at Lin Oufei’s house for tutoring. When Xin Zhiying found out, she gave Mother Lin a red envelope containing money, but Mother Lin refused it repeatedly and returned it. All Xin Zhiying could do was send some local specialties from Xin Hexue’s grandmother as thanks.
Xin Hexue didn’t go to the Lin house every Saturday and Sunday either, because more often he was playing with Lu Yang. But not long after, the P.E. teacher scheduled additional training for the basketball team on weekends, and Xin Hexue said he wouldn’t accompany Lu Yang to training on weekends anymore.
Lu Yang of course had no objection; the sun was strong on the court, and he was afraid Xin Hexue would get dizzy from the heat.
This way, he spent every weekend afternoon at the Lin house.
However, Xin Hexue didn’t mention the tutoring to Lu Yang. He and Lin Oufei also didn’t talk much at school, and Xin Hexue always left with Lu Yang after school, so it seemed his relationship with his deskmate was quite distant.
Only on weekend afternoons would the two of them sit on the mat, their heads close together, reading picture books.
“Have you finished reading ‘The Three Little Pigs’?”
Lin Oufei asked.
“Finished.” Xin Hexue took the picture book out of his bag and placed it on his knees. “But there are many words I don’t know.”
“I’ll teach you later.”
Lin Oufei got up from the mat and pulled a dictionary from the bookshelf. “Take this back with you.”
Xin Hexue flipped through it. It was a thick children’s English-Chinese illustrated dictionary with black-and-white hand-drawn illustrations. It seemed well cared for; although there were some marks, there was no damage or scribbling like in ordinary elementary school textbooks. It was clean.
Lin Oufei sat back down and said calmly, “I’m giving it to you. I don’t use it anymore anyway.”
He had an even thicker dictionary on his bookshelf.
“Thank you.”
Xin Hexue smiled at him.
Lin Oufei met those eyes, froze for a moment, then looked down. “You’re welcome. It’s no big deal.”
Xin Hexue felt that this neighbor was very not straightforward.
He opened the dictionary’s title page, which was blank except for Lin Oufei’s name written there. Xin Hexue bowed his head and carefully wrote his own name next to it.
Xin Zhiying had enrolled him in a children’s palace calligraphy class. After a year of practice, his handwriting was much better than his peers’ and already showed a graceful tendency.
[Lin Oufei, Xin Hexue.]
Different handwritings were placed side by side.
Lin Oufei pressed his lips tightly into a line, staring at the row of names.
“I will cherish this dictionary.”
Xin Hexue said with a bright smile.
“I’ve already given it to you.” Lin Oufei took the picture book, flipping the pages with sharp crackling sounds. “Use it however you want.”
Xin Hexue returned from tutoring next door, holding the dictionary. Zhuang Tongguang asked him what he wanted to eat tonight, as his father had brought back a crucian carp after work.
He thought about it and said he wanted crucian carp and tofu soup.
Zhuang Tongguang’s cooking skills, inherited from Xin Zhiying, were already good enough to make decent home-style dishes. “Okay. I bought you a lemon soda when I came back this afternoon. It’s on the first shelf of the fridge.”
“Thank you, Big Brother.”
Xin Hexue opened the fridge; sure enough, there was a bottle of Zheng Guanghe lemon soda.
As the soda gurgled down his throat, Xin Hexue pushed open his bedroom door and was startled to find Lu Yang sitting on his bed with a sullen face.
Lu Yang was so angry his hair seemed about to stand on end. “Xin Hexue, you actually had an illicit affair behind my back with that Lin guy!”
“You’ve betrayed the solemn vows we made before Guan Gong!”
Xin Hexue choked on his soda. “…Ahem, ahem!”
He put his things on the desk and said seriously, “Lu Yang, you are not allowed to sleep during Chinese class from now on.”
Who taught him to use idioms like that?
Xin Hexue: “Also, ‘illicit affair’ isn’t used that way.”
What kind of ‘illicit affair’? A brotherly one?
Xin Hexue genuinely believed that Lin Oufei was a good friend who taught him English and gave him books, but their friendship was nowhere near as strong as his childhood bond with Lu Yang since kindergarten.
“Don’t change the subject.”
Lu Yang was already convinced that Xin Hexue had betrayed their oath of brotherhood.
Xin Hexue glanced at the open window and said helplessly, “Lu Yang, do you know that someone in this world invented something called a door? You can open it, pass through it, and enter the room.”
He spoke earnestly: “You don’t need to climb the window every time.”
Lu Yang said if he hadn’t been clinging to the pipe outside, he would never have known that Xin Hexue was secretly making friends with Lin Oufei behind his back.
He really talked a lot once he started, so Xin Hexue stuffed his mouth with a bottle of the hated orange soda.
Lu Yang gulped noisily.
He angrily ran down the street to his home and told Zhu Cuifeng, “Mom, even Mencius’s mother moved three times for her child. Our family needs to move too.”
Zhu Cuifeng picked up a rolling pin and said, “You little brat, I think you want your mother to be like Yue Fei’s mother and tattoo characters on your back, give you some blooming patterns.”
**Mencius was a classical Chinese philosopher in the Confucian school. He is referenced here due to the famous legend of “Mencius’s Mother Moving Three Times,” in which she relocates their home to avoid negative influences on her son, making her a cultural symbol of a parent sacrificing for a child’s upbringing..
Yue Fei (1103–1142 CE) was a legendary Chinese general and national hero of the Song Dynasty. He is famous for his unwavering loyalty and his campaigns against invading armies. The most famous legend about him involves his mother tattooing the four characters “精忠報國” (jīng zhōng bào guó), meaning “Serve the country with the utmost loyalty,” on his back before he left for battle.
Lu Yang looked up at the starry sky at night, thinking sadly…
His home was too far from heaven, and too close to his mom.
………
The power plant’s affiliated elementary and middle schools were next to each other, just different gates left and right, sharing a large bicycle shed in the middle.
On rainy days, the grassy areas on both sides of the cement path became muddy. The small puddles churned up by bicycle wheels would only calm down long after school ended.
It wasn’t dismissal time yet. Two middle school students were bent over sneakily, mosquitoes buzzing in the grass clumps near the puddle.
They had just started their crimes as a gang.
“Teacher, it’s them.”
A clear, pleasant voice rang out, and a Young Pioneers squadron leader wearing two stripes on his sleeve descended from heaven.
Xin Hexue pointed at the two perpetrators, with an affiliated elementary school teacher behind him.
Judging from the mosquito bites on their arms, it was clear they had been deliberately lying in wait here for a while, waiting for them to fall into the trap.
The elementary teacher roared, “Which middle school class are you from? Were you the ones who pulled out the bicycle valve cores those previous times too?! What are your homeroom teacher’s names? Get your parents here!”
The case of the missing valve cores, which had troubled both schools for weeks, finally concluded with the two perpetrators caught red-handed.
“Thanks to the enthusiastic student Xin Hexue for reporting it.”
The teacher shook his hand.
Xin Hexue smiled, showing the two-striped sleeve badge he was wearing. “It’s what I should do.”
The cleaning areas had rotated this semester, and it was their class’s turn to clean the bicycle shed. Previously, during a hygiene inspection, Xin Hexue had noticed something and just happened to see these two leaving the bicycle shed sneakily.
Today, at the same time, he and the teacher lay in wait for over ten minutes earlier and sure enough, they caught these two students who found pleasure in pulling out others’ bicycle valve cores.
The two middle school students’ homeroom teacher scolded them harshly and waited for their parents to come pick them up.
Xin Hexue grabbed his backpack straps and said in farewell, “Teacher, I’m going home first.”
Two malicious gazes followed his back until he disappeared past the office door.
………
The last class before lunch was a quiz.
Lu Yang sat on his chair as if there were needles pricking him. He scratched his head and ears, twirled his pen, looked left and right, but couldn’t write the answers.
Suddenly, an idea came to him. His eyes lit up, and he started writing stroke by stroke.
[Answer…]
He bit the pen cap.
‘Oh, don’t forget the colon.’
Lu Yang sighed, his gaze drifting to the front row. Xin Hexue had already stopped writing, sitting on his chair like a graceful little white bamboo shoot, checking his work seriously.
‘As expected of the princess!’
On the other side, Lin Oufei stood up, put his pencil back in the pencil case, and directly handed in the quiz paper.
‘He didn’t even check it! What is he being pretentious for all day long!’
Lu Yang sneered, cursing Lin Oufei to take a “big duck egg” home.
But right now, it seemed more likely that he himself would go home to eat a cold mixed century egg and a broom.
Lu Yang noticed Lin Oufei saying something to the teacher at the podium, then going out the front door, his figure quickly passing by the back door.
Lu Yang raised his hand high. “Teacher, I need to use the restroom!”
“…” The homeroom teacher smiled stiffly. “Go ahead.”
The restrooms were located at the end of each floor’s corridor. Straight ahead was the girls’ restroom; the boys’ was around the corner.
In the corner were a water storage tank and two mops leaning askew. It seemed the students on duty hadn’t tidied them up properly.
Lin Oufei stood in front of the sink, turned on the faucet that smelled of rust, and cold water rushed out, rinsing the sink’s inner wall.
He was scrubbing off the graphite dust that had accidentally gotten on his fingers while sharpening a pencil.
He wondered if the nearby stationery store sells mechanical pencils.
A strong force suddenly yanked the back of his collar from behind. Lin Oufei’s palms were still wet and dripping, splashing water everywhere.
Lu Yang glared fiercely and threatened viciously: “You are not allowed to talk to Xin Hexue! He has a good temper and doesn’t know how to refuse others, but actually, he’s annoyed with you deep down.”
Annoyance meant dislike.
Perhaps stung by the words, Lin Oufei’s face darkened. But he quickly rearranged his expression. “Is that so?”
Lu Yang: “Of course.”
Lin Oufei said calmly: “Then why are you the one telling me? What identity are you using to tell me? Xin Hexue’s best friend?”
“Really?” He questioned Lu Yang, throwing out one question after another. “Are you so anxious to threaten me because you’ve discovered that I’m smarter than you, also play basketball, am his deskmate and neighbor, and my family’s situation is better than yours, so you feel you can’t compare to me and have a sense of crisis?”
Lin Oufei: “Aren’t you actually wavering in your heart about who deserves to be Xin Hexue’s best friend? Is it really you?”
Lu Yang’s face changed, turning ugly.
Lin Oufei said casually: “See, you’re not even sure of the answer yourself.”
Lu Yang suddenly realized: “So you’re not a stutterer; you can say so much in one breath?”
Lin Oufei: “…”
‘What kind of friend did Xin Hexue make?’
“Get lost.” Lin Oufei pushed him away in disgust. “Don’t act like Xin Hexue’s dog, barking at me every time I get close to your master.”
Lu Yang suddenly laughed: “You actually discovered it? I am Xin Hexue’s dog.”
“How could you tell?”
“Your eyesight is really good.”
“…”
Lin Oufei decided not to argue with a fool, lest brain damage spread through the air.
He walked out without a word, but was stopped at the corner of the stairwell outside the restroom.
Several boys not in school uniforms stopped him. They didn’t look like they were from the affiliated elementary school based on their height and looked more like they were from the neighboring middle school. As they approached, a foul smell of smoke drifted over.
It was the age where smoking and perming hair were ways to show individuality. Their shirts were half-tucked, half-untucked, looking no different from hoodlums outside.
‘Skipping school?’
Lin Oufei glanced at the empty corridor.
“Hey, you’re from this floor, right? I need to ask you something.”
The tall boy leading the group said.
Lin Oufei walked forward expressionlessly. The shorter boy quickly blocked his path. “How dare you ignore our boss? Do you know who our Brother Zhao is?”
Lin Oufei: “Do I need to know?”
“Don’t interrupt!” the shorter boy said. “Our Brother Zhao is a famous figure in the affiliated middle school. If not the school bully, he’s at least a, a…”
He couldn’t think of a word for a moment.
Lin Oufei: “A grade-level bully?”
Shorter boy: “Right, that’s it.”
‘What damn bully.’
Lin Oufei felt that he had encountered too many idiots in Lingzhou.
“Alright, don’t scare the elementary school kid.” Brother Zhao stepped forward arrogantly and asked Lin Oufei, “You’re from this floor, right? I’m asking about someone…. it’s a little brat. He hasn’t even grown all his feathers, yet he got my brother a parent call and a demerit.”
Lin Oufei had no interest in the muddled grudges in their heads. “I’m not from this floor. I just came down to use the restroom. If you’re looking for someone, ask him.”
He pointed his thumb towards Lu Yang, who had just come out of the restroom, and walked away indifferently.
“Do you know someone called Xin Hexue?” Brother Zhao asked.
Lin Oufei’s steps stopped.
“A fatherless, motherless bastard. How dare he oppose my brother? I’ll teach him a good lesson today!”
Lu Yang’s smile vanished. He looked at Brother Zhao. “What did you just say?”
Lin Oufei’s eyelids twitched. He looked back and saw Lu Yang charging at the other party like an angry bull, shouting menacingly. “You dare say that again? I’ll tear your mouth apart!”
‘This idiot actually started a fight in the corridor!’
………
The homeroom teacher had just been called away by a phone call. There were still five minutes left before the end of class, and Xin Hexue was having the group leaders collect the quiz papers.
Even though the dismissal bell hadn’t rung yet, the back of the classroom suddenly erupted into chaos, and students from other classes also gathered in the corridor outside.
“Class monitor, Lu Yang is fighting with some middle schoolers!”
“And… Lin Oufei?”
“Is that a mop from the restroom in his hand? Ahhh!”
‘Lu Yang was fighting with middle school students?’
Xin Hexue’s heart skipped a beat, followed by an indescribable feeling of suffocation. The quiz papers fell to the floor. He rushed out into the corridor, pushing and squeezing to the front of the crowd. “Make way, make way.”
No one knew better than Xin Hexue, a frequent bystander, how fierce Lu Yang could be when fighting.
Swinging fists, locking throats, slamming people to the ground and beating them mercilessly, punches whistling through the air….it was frightening to watch, and he was crazy like a wild dog.
Lu Yang’s moves were honed through real experience, while the middle school students on the other side were just all bark and no bite. They just had numbers on their side. And with Lin Oufei providing backup, they couldn’t hold their ground at all.
“Lu Yang, stop fighting!”
“The teacher will be here soon.”
Xin Hexue’s forehead was beaded with sweat. He didn’t understand how those boys had provoked Lu Yang. Right now, Lu Yang was seeing red and couldn’t hear him at all.
That suffocating feeling swept over him again, as if someone had suddenly covered his mouth and nose. When he inhaled, his throat made a faint sound like bellows.
“Thump, thump, thump…”
His carotid artery pulsed with a violent, irregular heartbeat.
“Lu Yang, stop fighting.” The edges of Xin Hexue’s vision gradually darkened. He suddenly clutched his chest and fell to the ground, instinctively curling up like a shrimp. His hand gripped his collar tightly, soaked in cold sweat. He whispered, “I feel bad… Lu Yang…”
“Xin Hexue!”
“Xin Hexue!”
The corridor was in chaos, and Lu Yang’s calls seemed to come and go. Xin Hexue could only feel that he was being lifted up by Lu Yang.
“Go to Class Two, Grade Five upstairs and find Zhuang Tongguang! I’m taking him to the hospital now!” Lu Yang was extremely tense.
“Okay.” Lin Oufei didn’t object.
“Brother Zhao, did someone die?”
“This has nothing to do with us! We didn’t hit him!”
Lu Yang carried Xin Hexue on his back and roared: “Get lost! I’ll beat you up every time I see you from now on.”
It felt like a bumpy road. Xin Hexue lay on Lu Yang’s back, his heart racing uncontrollably at an excessively high speed, like a mad bird crashing against its cage.
Xin Hexue thought in a daze that since he was lying on Lu Yang’s back, Lu Yang could probably feel it too.
No wonder Lu Yang was crying as he ran, letting out a heart-wrenching shout: “Xin Hexue, I’ll never fight again! Don’t die!”
He was just making threats moments ago, now he was crying so noisily.
………
Drip.
Drip.
The liquid level in the IV bottle slowly descended.
The bulky TV on the wall was playing the evening news, and the sound was noisy.
When Xin Hexue regained consciousness, his vision was a vast expanse of white. He soon realized it was because he was staring at the hospital ceiling.
He moved his eyes, scanning the surroundings. He had often visited the factory hospital before because Xin Zhiying worked there.
This wasn’t the factory hospital. He saw an enamel basin under the next bed…Lingzhou City First People’s Hospital.
How did he end up at the city hospital?
Zhuang Tongguang’s worried face entered his field of vision. “Xiaoxue, how are you? Is anywhere else uncomfortable? Does your chest hurt?”
Xin Hexue sat up with Zhuang Tongguang’s help and shook his head. His face was still pale. “Big Brother, I’m fine now. Not uncomfortable.”
Xin Zhiying returned to the ward from outside, a hot metal lunchbox trembling in her hand. She rushed forward, put the lunchbox down, and hugged Xin Hexue. “You scared me to death, you scared me to death…”
Her hands stroked the child’s back firmly, as if repeatedly confirming Xin Hexue was alive and well in front of her.
Raising a child was extremely exhausting mentally. While children brought adults joy, adults had to be extremely careful, afraid the child might slip away from the world unnoticed.
Xin Hexue slowly hugged Xin Zhiying back. “Aunt, I’m really fine now.”
While eating the hot meal Xin Zhiying had brought from a restaurant, Xin Hexue asked, “Has Big Brother eaten?”
Zhuang Tongguang said, “Dad and I ate outside. Dad has the night shift, so he went back first.”
Xin Hexue nodded and remembered something. “Where’s Lu Yang?”
Xin Zhiying peeled an apple sent by the Lu family and said with a smile, “He was guarding you the whole time. He even skipped afternoon classes. Just now, your Auntie Zhu dragged him home by the ear to do his homework. He’ll come see you tomorrow after school at noon.”
“Oh.”
Xin Hexue sipped the soup his brother fed him.
There was a knock on the ward door.
Mother Lin brought Lin Oufei, carrying a basket of fruit. “Sister Xin, Xiaofei was worried, so we came to see Hexue.”
Lin Oufei hung his head and looked away. “I’m just here to bring you your homework.”
He was filled with self loathing as he said these annoying insincere words, and his face became gloomy.
“Thank you, Lin Oufei.”
The angel in the hospital bed smiled at him.
………
Lin Oufei told Xin Hexue about what happened after noon.
Xin Hexue then learned that Lu Yang had carried him all the way to the factory hospital. Seeing the severity of the situation, the factory hospital quickly sent
