The Scorching Sun - 1

Fang Zhuo stood at the lobby entrance, a pair of umbrellas in her hands. Damp chill and slashing rain swept through the open glass doors, driven in by the wind.

The canvas shoes on her feet were worn through and splitting. Their faded, frayed fabric was mottled with mud from the roadside, and the cuffs of her trousers were flecked with grime. Perhaps worried about soiling the pale floor tiles, she lingered by the doorway, leaning on one of the umbrellas.

When Fang Yiming emerged from the stairwell with his briefcase, he saw Fang Zhuo speaking softly with his colleague, a faint smile on her face.

Fang Zhuo’s skin was not the fairest, but her features were refined and her aura was cool and lucid. With her tall, slender build, just standing there was enough to draw the eye.

A long, elegant strip of her neck was visible above her overly loose collar. The way she spoke, unhurried and measured, looked poised and composed. It stirred in him the memory of a face he had nearly forgotten.

Fang Yiming hesitated. Fang Zhuo noticed him and called out first, "Dad."

At her word, his colleague turned, surprise spilling across her face. Fang Yiming paused for a moment, then walked up. “What brings you here?” His tone gave away no hint of pleasure, but the words came out somewhat rushed.

“Such a thoughtful kid!” the middle-aged woman chimed in. "I had no idea you had a daughter this sensible. I thought you only had a son. What a pretty girl she is! Big eyes, high nose bridge. I’ll be honest with you, even if you’d hand-picked the best traits from you and your wife, you couldn’t make someone this good-looking.”

Fang Yiming had a high nose bridge, but the rest of his features were more rugged. His wife, Mrs. Lu, was ordinary-looking, if anything, her expression often edged with some sharpness, probably shaped by her temperament. Truth was, Fang Zhuo didn’t much resemble either of them.

Fang Yiming’s gaze darkened. The corners of his mouth twitched into a strained, unreadable smile.

Fang Zhuo said, "I take after my mother."

The woman studied her face, then waved it off with a laugh. “I’ve seen your mother when she was young. Maybe there’s some resemblance, sure, but you still favor your father more."

Fang Zhuo replied quietly: "My mother's last name is Ye."

The woman froze. Her gaze darted to Fang Yiming, clearly unaware that her colleague of over a decade had an ex-wife.

Fang Yiming gave a dry laugh, "She used to live in the countryside with her grandmother. Only moved here after my mother passed. She’s in her final year of high school now, stays at school most of the time. I hardly see her myself.”

“Ah…” The woman was warm and voluble by nature, she pressed on. “Are you settling in all right here?”

Fang Zhuo said: "I transferred in my second year. I'm mostly used to it now."

The woman noticed the logo on her school uniform. "A-High. That’s a good school. Solid."

A-High wasn't among the very top in City A, but it had a good atmosphere and decent college admission rates.

This uniform, though, was visibly ill-fitting on Fang Zhuo, its color had faded with age, clearly a second-hand. The woman thought it was off but didn’t dwell on it. 

Seeing the conversation stretch on, Fang Yiming cut in abruptly, "Why are you here?"

Before Fang Zhuo could answer, his colleague boomed, “What do you mean, why? To bring you an umbrella, obviously! Honestly, Old Fang, you’re too rigid for your own good.”

Fang Zhuo handed over the black umbrella, her head slightly bowed, polite and restrained. "The umbrella was still left by the door at home, so I brought it over.”

Fang Yiming took it without a word, nodded to his colleague, and turned to leave.

Outside, the rain had eased to a gentle, drifting fall.

Fang Yiming gripped the handle, shook the umbrella open, and glanced over his shoulder at Fang Zhuo. Perhaps finding no real reason to be displeased with her, he opened his mouth and said flatly, "I’m going to pick up your little brother. Go home on your own.”

"Okay," Fang Zhuo replied.

---

Yan Lie came out of his tutoring class, hammering away at his phone as he hurried under the storefronts awnings. When he glanced up, he spotted Fang Zhuo standing motionless by the side of the road.

He slowed his pace, now less than two meters from her. She didn’t seem to notice him, her gaze fixed on some ordinary building across the street.

On someone else, those half-lowered eyes might have read as tender and approachable. On Fang Zhuo’s face, they only looked cold and distant.

The tips of her nose and ears had gone pink from the chill, adding stubbornness to her otherwise unapproachable air, sharpening the irony in her faint smile into something far clearer.

Yan Lie was not that familiar with her. Though they’d been classmates for about a year, they’d probably exchanged no more than ten words total.

He’d always assumed someone with Fang Zhuo’s prickly, solitary nature would be temperamental and moody. But watching her stand there now, still as a silent tree, bearing that detached pride of an observer, he realized that might not be the case after all.

Before he could fully parse the feeling, Fang Zhuo sensed his presence. She pulled her gaze back, let it trail over him, then pressed her lips down, reeling in that elusive, sardonic smile. Her expression returned to its usual calm indifference. Lingering no longer, she turned and walked away wordlessly.

Yan Lie remained where he was, phone still raised, watching her retreating figure. He felt he understood her strange temperament just a little better now.

Because he had worn that same expression for a certain person many times himself.

***

Fang Zhuo sat on the sofa. Her so-called younger brother crouched by the coffee table watching TV, remote in one hand, phone in the other, only glancing at the variety show on screen now and then.

Outside, the rain thinned but did not stop. Fine, slanting drizzle fell without rest.

Not long after, Mrs. Lu returned from work. When she opened the door and saw Fang Zhuo, her shoe-changing motion hitched for a second. Then she lifted her head and called her son’s name, urging him loudly to go do his homework. Without sparing Fang Zhuo another glance, she headed straight into the kitchen to help Fang Yiming cook.

The drone of the range hood mixed with their hushed voices, indistinct, punctuated by the clatter of cookware and the irritable clank of Mrs. Lu setting out plates.

Half an hour later, a long, drawn-out call echoed from the kitchen, summoning the boy to eat.

Three sets of bowls and chopsticks were laid out on the table. The family of three sat together at one end of the rectangular table, chatting idly over their meal.

On the TV, the variety show guests were playing a game. Their exaggerated laughter, set against the mundane conversation, lent a note of farce to the already absurd scene.

Fang Zhuo almost laughed.

When she first moved in, Mrs. Lu hadn’t exactly welcomed her, but lines had not been this openly drawn. It seemed a year of friction had worn away the last of Mrs. Lu’s patience.

Fang Zhuo sat on the sofa a while longer. When the show cut to commercials, she got up, walked to the dining table, and sat in one of the empty wooden chairs, staring at them silently.

Perhaps uncomfortable under her stare, Fang Yiming shifted like he wanted to speak, but Mrs. Lu’s motion to pick up a dish shot him down.

The boy, who’d been buried in his food, turned to glare at Fang Zhuo. The look in his eyes held the raw viciousness of a wolf cub. Probably thinking she wasn’t worth his trouble, he just clicked his tongue and turned away, shifting his seat a little farther from her.

Fang Zhuo’s eyelids trembled. She spread her fingers flat on her knees, her expression blank as she blinked.

"This semester’s tuition hasn’t been paid," she stated.

Fang Yiming tilted his chin at Mrs. Lu. “I told you to withdraw the money this afternoon. Do you have it?”

"No rush." Mrs. Lu spoke softly, slowly. It should have sounded gentle, but somehow, there was always an off-putting, singsong quality to it, a grating lilt that made her sound sarcastic. "That thing I asked you to consider. Have you thought about it?”

Fang Zhuo’s reply was calm and absolute. "No."

"I'm doing this in your best interests." Mrs. Lu said, her chopsticks picking idly through a dish, measuring her words. "I pulled a lot of strings to arrange this for you. If you transfer to No. 3 High, the school will make you a priority. If you get into a first-tier university next year, all three years of tuition will be refunded. And if you keep your grades up, you'd get several thousand in scholarship every semester. You can’t keep up at A-High. Your teacher called me last time, your foundation is too weak."

Fang Yiming remained silent throughout.

Mrs. Lu put down her chopsticks. "Don’t look at him. Look at me."

Fang Zhuo shifted her gaze to her. "No," she repeated.

Fang Zhuo had never met her mother. From as early as she could remember, she’d lived in the countryside with her grandmother.

Her grandmother didn’t like her much, nor Fang Yiming for that matter. She gave Fang Zhuo scant attention, rarely spoke to her, and never mentioned anything about her mother. Fang Zhuo only learned her mother’s full name from her birth certificate.

Despite this, her grandmother never stopped her from going to school. Fang Zhuo’s tuition had been scraped together from the old woman’s land-loss insurance payments.

When she realized she didn't have long left, the old woman gathered all the free-range eggs in the house, tucked a red cloth bundle under her arm, and silently, falteringly, led Fang Zhuo to the school she attended at the time.

No one knew what she said to the school administrators. But in the end, her homeroom teacher personally took her to A-High, pulled every connection they could, and secured her a chance to sit for a special placement exam. Only after she passed was the transfer approved.

By every measure, A-High was a good school. No. 3 High, on the other hand, was a third-rate institution; in recent years, the number of students admitted to first-tier universities could be counted on one hand.

Fang Zhuo’s voice hardened with emphasis. "Give me my tuition."

Fang Zhuo always understood the truth. She was like a tumbleweed drifting through the desert, blown whichever way the wind brought her, rootless, unwanted wherever she landed.

But deserts were vast and open, while her own world was narrow and suffocating, hemmed in by towering walls.

She loathed that life, that endless, sunless days of solitude and desolation.

She wanted to scale those towering walls and look up at a sky full of stars; to push through the shadows and greet the radiance of the sun.

Growing up, people often rested pitying hands on her shoulder and said, "You have to study hard."

In her world, there was only one road ahead: study.

Either accept your fate, or study your way out.

She had clawed and crawled her way this far through sheer grit. No one was allowed to ruin her life anymore. 

---

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