The Scorching Sun - 5

Senior year settled into a rigid routine. Every day seemed to trace the same path as the hands of a clock, repeating themselves without end.

Even so, time itself was beginning to weigh on Fang Zhuo.

It wasn't the college entrance exam that made her anxious. It was the financial pressure waiting on the other side of it.

Her grades were badly lopsided, leaving her ranking awkwardly stuck in the middle. And there was no way around it. The rural elementary school she'd attended had never taught English, and her middle school hadn't fared much better either. Some of the teachers couldn't even speak standard Mandarin properly.

Compared to the other students at A High, English as a subject was an alien territory to her. She had no idea where to even begin catching up. And so the school scholarship remained out of reach.

Fortunately, her other subjects were solid enough to partly make up the shortfall.

Her goal was to get into a first-tier university. Tuition there was considerably lower. If she failed, she had no idea how she'd scrape together the extra money.

After paying her senior-year tuition, she had a little over thirteen hundred yuan left to her name. It was nowhere near enough to feel secure.

Fang Zhuo carefully recorded every last miscellaneous expense. Staring at the final balance, a number far too small to inspire any confidence, she reached for her workbook and buried herself in practice problems.

The evening self-study session buzzed with scattered whispers.

The back door opened, and their homeroom teacher walked in. She made a round of the classroom. As she passed Fang Zhuo's desk, she rapped her knuckles lightly against it.

Fang Zhuo looked up as her teacher leaned down and asked quietly, "Fang Zhuo, do you know XX Village in XX County?"

Her pen paused against the scratch paper. She hadn't expected to hear that familiar place-name again.

"I do," she replied. "I used to live there."

"There's a letter in the security office. It was forwarded here from that village and has been sitting there for days. The mail carrier never explained who it was for. Since nobody claimed it, the administrator opened it." The teacher paused before saying, "Come to my office and see if it yours."

Confused, Fang Zhuo stood frozen for a moment. After her grandmother passed, Fang Yiming had sold the house. She had no idea what could possibly need to be forwarded all the way to the school.

She got to her feet and followed her teacher to the office.

Inside, a few students were clustered around the desk asking questions. The homeroom teacher opened a drawer, took out an already-unsealed courier envelope, had Fang Zhuo confirm the address, then handed it over once verifying it matched.

The sender's name read: Ye Yuncheng. The return address was a small, underdeveloped town not far from A City.

The recipient was her grandmother. Someone from the village grocery store must've helped forward it to A High.

Fang Zhuo opened the envelope with her fingers and peeked inside. Her eyes widened.

Inside was a sum of money. And alongside it, a small white note.

She unfolded it and found only a few short lines.

They asked how Fang Zhuo was doing. Was she nearly an adult now? They hoped Grandmother would give this cash to Fang Zhuo. A person coming of age ought to have some money on them.

The handwriting was neat and elegant. At the bottom were a signature and a date. It was written back in June.

Fang Zhuo shifted her fingers slightly and noticed a final line tucked into the corner in much smaller handwriting.

"July 16. Fifteenth anniversary of Yaoling-jie's passing."

It was probably a quiet hope that she would come back to visit the grave.

Fang Zhuo had never known when Ye Yaoling had died. Instinctively, she tried to remember what she herself had been doing on July 16.

It hit her then. Her life back then held no real color. It was just a constant, blurring hustle. That day, she figured, was probably spent just like any other, working odd jobs under a blazing sun. Or maybe she'd ducked into a library for a bit, sat inside escaping the heat with a book.

 

Learning the news so suddenly left a strange emptiness inside her. Her chest tightened. A flicker of panic rose with it. Yet when she tried to grasp the reason, it slipped through her fingers.

Her homeroom teacher noticed the change in her expression. "Are you alright?"

Fang Zhuo folded the note closed and shook her head absently.

"Is this from your family?" the teacher asked.

After a brief hesitation, Fang Zhuo answered softly, "Yes."

While sorting through her grandmother's belongings after the funeral, she'd found an entire stack of empty envelopes bearing the same signature.

Her grandmother was illiterate. Fang Zhuo could never figure out who would write to her so persistently, or why every envelopes had been empty.

Her grandmother had never mentioned them to her, and likely had never relayed Fang Zhuo's situation back to the sender, either.

Only now did the mystery that had followed Fang Zhuo throughout her childhood finally receive its long-overdue answer.

She had learned a little about her mother. And discovered that she had an uncle.

A crack appeared in the mask of indifference she'd maintained for so many years. More and more questions surged up from the depths of her mind, dragging her back to her childhood days, to that time when she'd been achingly curious about family, parents, and the affection she'd never known.

But the unfamiliar emotion had only just reached her eyes before Fang Zhuo forced it back down with sheer will.

She tucked the letter away, nodded to her homeroom teacher, and quietly left the office.

Only after stepping into the hallway, where students drifted back and forth, did she realize it was already break time.

Yan Lie was asleep with his head resting on his desk. As Fang Zhuo sat down, his eyelids twitched faintly.

Once quiet settled back over her, Fang Zhuo returned to the half-finished calculus problem in front of her.

Something was off tonight. Her thoughts kept drifting. She had already written out several formulas correctly, yet somehow couldn't carry the calculation any further. Her pen scrawled wildly across the page, only to realize she'd make a basic arithmetic error and have to start over from scratch.

Fang Zhuo rubbed at her hair and tossed the densely scribbled scratch paper aside. Turning her head, she realized Yan Lie hadn't been asleep at all.

He was still slumped over his desk, his eyes lazily half-open. His gaze unfocused, pointed in her direction.

Fang Zhuo froze. Their eyes met, and she forgot to look away.

Seeing her reaction, Yan Lie perked up a little and even struck first. "What are you staring at me for?"

Fang Zhuo: "..."

His shamelessness left her speechless.

Yan Lie sat up, slouching loosely in his seat, and grinned. "I was just watching a lost little lamb. Tell me, do you require the guidance of a wise man?"

Ignoring him, Fang Zhuo pulled out the answer key and checked her work. Her approach had been right after all. She'd only made a simple calculation error. After correcting a few numbers, the solution fell neatly into place.

Just when Yan Lie assumed she wouldn't answer him, she suddenly asked, "Does your phone have navigation?"

"So the lost little lamb really is lost?" Yan Lie laughed. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he unlocked it with practiced ease. "Know how to use it?"

Fang Zhuo had barely used phones with physical keypads before, let alone anything with a touchscreen.

Patiently, Yan Lie opened the navigation app and showed her where to type. He didn't show the slightest impatience as she slowly entered the address. Only when he saw the destination, Licun Village, did he mutter, "There's also a place like that near A City?"

Fang Zhuo tapped confirm. But the result that came back was: no suitable bus route available.

She paused, then looked at Yan Lie with quiet confusion, holding the phone a little closer to him.

Her long eyelashes blocked the harsh fluorescent light overhead. The shadows softened the usual chill in her eyes, while the shifting light brought the delicate lines of her face into sharper relief, making her already slender features seem even more fragile.

Yan Lie leaned in closer, catching a faint trace of milky fragrance lingering in her hair. His gaze traced down the contour of her face, then halted abruptly. He coughed, quickly averted his eyes, and leaned back. "Let me. "

He switched to a search engine instead. Fortunately, someone had asked the same question online.

The easiest route was to take the rural bus to its final stop, walk to a nearby bridge, wait for the daily minivan that passed through, and ride it to Licun Village.

The van only stopped at the village entrance. After that, she'd have to walk the rest of the way herself.

Fang Zhuo carefully memorized the route. Looking more solemn than before, she thanked Yan Lie and handed his phone back.

Yan Lie stuffed both hands into his pockets, seemingly lost in thought for a moment, then sprawled back across his desk, pretending to nap again.

***

Saturday classes didn't finish until half past twelve.

Fang Zhuo packed her things at an unhurried pace, slung her backpack over one shoulder, and headed for the school gate.

Cars crowded both sides of the main road. Even from over a hundred meters away, the chorus of honking horns drifted across the street.

Fang Zhuo paused at the gate. Facing the identical tree-lined streets stretching in both directions, she couldn't tell which way to go. In the end, she turned back to ask the guard for directions to the bus stop and made her way following the gradually thinning crowds.

A bicycle sped past her, then slowed and reversed until it was keeping pace alongside her.

The rider kept one foot on the pedal, controlling the bike with ease. Seeing her stubbornly stared straight ahead, he whistled to get her attention.

Fang Zhuo finally turned her head. "What a coincidence," she said to her deskmate.

Yan Lie wore a black-and-white baseball cap. He lifted the brim with one hand, revealing the bright, effortlessly handsome face beneath it. "And here I thought I'd mastered invisibility."

Planting one foot on the ground, he stopped the bike beside her. “Heading for the county-town bus?" He gestured toward the back. "Hop on. It's right on my way. I'll take you.”

Fang Zhuo glanced uncertainly at the rear seat.

"I know the way," Yan Lie said. "It'll be faster. You don't want to get there too late. Or you might get stranded and not make it back."

Only then did Fang Zhuo climb on carefully, found her footing on the frame, and gripped the hem of Yan Lie’s jacket tightly.

"Ready?"

His voice floated back on the breeze, carrying with it the faint, refreshing scent of lemons.

As his weight shifted onto the pedals, a sliver of previously blocked sunlight broke through—and they surged ahead.

Electric scooters and pedestrians crowded the lane. Yan Lie threaded effortlessly through them like a fish cutting through water.

Fang Zhuo, however, was tense.

She sat bolt upright on the back seat, as steady and rigid as a stone. Yan Lie didn't even need to look behind him to sense how stiff she was.

He glanced down at the hands clenched in his clothes, the fabric already wrinkled beyond shape. The bloodless pallor of her skin and the blue veins standing starkly on the backs of her hands told him everything about her state right now.

Every muscle in her body seemed stretched tight. Every hair on her body on high alert.

Yan Lie laughed. "I ride really steady. Don't be scared!"

"Oh." After a beat, Fang Zhuo added awkwardly, trying to cover herself. "I'm not."

Even so, Yan Lie slowed down anyway, riding steadily along the roadside.

By the time he dropped her off at the bus stop, the bus was just pulling up from down the street.

Fang Zhuo hurried over and climbed aboard.

Yan Lie watched until the bus pulled away. Just as he turned his bike around to leave, he spotted a face full of grievance beneath a giant billboard.

After sharing a dorm room for more than two years, pretending not to notice would've been a little too cold. He smiled and raised a hand in greeting.

Shen Musi looked ready to burst into tears. "Lie! Lie! You've gone too far! I thought you never gave people rides! Aren't I your long-lost little brother?!"

"Alright," Yan Lie said. "Want me to take you back to school instead?"

"I'm going home!" Shen Musi raged. "I walked twenty minutes to get here! Damn you!"

Yan Lie parked his bike behind the bus stop and walked over. "Fine. Then I'll wait for the bus with you."

The young man was tall and well-built, his lean muscles visible beneath his clothes. Even his complexion was several shades fairer than most boys. Standing there, he was like a human spotlight, drawing glances from nearly everyone who passed.

Feeling all those curious looks landing nearby, Shen Musi grew increasingly sour. After a long silence, he finally muttered in a pointed tone, "You've changed."

"I haven't." Yan Lie gestured with his hand. "You weigh about twice as much as Fang Zhuo."

Shen Musi: "No, I don't!"

A moment later, Shen Musi frowned. "Why are you smiling like that?"

Yan Lie's mouth curved up. In the direct sunlight, the color of his irises washed out to a hazy blur. "Nothing," he said, still smiling.

"I just realized she's exactly my type.”

---

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