The Scorching Sun - 10

With the holiday approaching, even if it was only three and a half days off, the students had already grown noticeably restless.

Test papers for every subject had already been handed out. Judging by the sheer volume, the teachers hadn't left them much free time at all. Fang Zhuo squeezed in a few practice papers whenever she could, afraid she wouldn't have time once she was at Ye Yuncheng's place.

As Friday drew closer, Fang Zhuo found herself growing nervous. Mostly because she barely knew Ye Yuncheng. She'd left so abruptly last time, certain she'd never see him again. Now she had no idea what attitude to adopt when facing him.

Part of her felt she shouldn't waste so much mental energy on this, not with the college entrance exam looming. Maybe Ye Yuncheng, like Fang Yiming, only felt a vague sense of obligation toward her. What deep affection could possibly exist between two people who had never spent real time together? They weren't even the closest of blood relatives.

Yet another part of her couldn't suppress that faint, persistent itch deep inside, the one that kept imagining Ye Yuncheng as a truly good person. Lonely, similar souls always find themselves drawn together, like moths circling a light, even if it meant mistaking a cold flame for the scorching sun.

Holding a battered plastic water bottle, Fang Zhuo watered the potted plants lined along the windowsill. She watched quietly as sparkling droplets splashed onto the leaves, gathering into round pearls before rolling gently downward. Somewhere along the way, her thoughts drifted a thousand miles from where she stood.

Yan Lie wandered over and stood beside her like an immovable stone for a while before saying, "So you're the one who's been watering these flowers."

Caught completely off guard, Fang Zhuo jumped and gave a startled shiver. Straightening the bottle in her hand, she asked, "Who else would it be?"

Yan Lie poked at one of the leaves with his fingers. "Never paid attention. Just noticed the plants in here kept multiplying. Figured someone must have brought them in."

Most were succulents, planted in repurposed plastic bottles with holes punched in the bottom. What had started as a single plant had slowly multiplied into well over a dozen, quietly soaking up the sun in the corner under the care of a nameless gardener, now growing lush and strong.

Fang Zhuo said, "I scavenged them."

"You can scavenge flowers?" Yan Lie teased. "What, they were perfectly happy growing in the dirt, and you did your good deed by picking them up?"

"They really were scavenged!" Fang Zhuo protested.

Yan Lie couldn't grasp the critical distinction between picking wildflowers and scavenging wildflowers, but seeing how seriously she was taking it, he reached over and ruffled her hair, pulling his hand back before she could react. "I know, I know," he laughed. "You scavenged them."

Fang Zhuo shook her head.

This guy's paws were clearly itching for trouble.

"What are you doing for the Mid-Autumn Festival?" Yan Lie turned and leaned his back against the windowsill, stealing a glance at her from the corner of his eye. "My family's not home. I'm thinking maybe I'll stay at school."

Fang Zhuo said, "I'm going home."

Yan Lie pressed his lips together. "To your uncle's?"

Fang Zhuo: "Mm."

Yan Lie let out a long, drawn-out "Oh..."

The sound pricked at her, Fang Zhuo couldn't help flicking a glance at his face, wondering what weird mood had seized him today.

"Is something wrong?"

"Nothing."

Even as he said that, Yan Lie shoved his hands into his pockets and walked away, his whole expression clouded over.

***

On Friday, the students could leave after morning classes. Fang Zhuo didn't have much to pack besides her homework and practice exercises.

She shouldered her black backpack. Yan Lie was already waiting at the door, he said he'd see her off.

Fang Zhuo informed him of a decision she'd reached after long and careful consideration. "Thank you, but I need to stop somewhere and buy a few things first."

Yan Lie asked, "Where?"

Fang Zhuo: "The market."

Yan Lie thought he'd misheard. "Huh?"

In all his years of school, he had never met a classmate who went home for the holidays carrying groceries.

A familiar tune suddenly floated into his mind.

"A chicken in one hand, a duck in the other?"

"Yeah." Fang Zhuo nodded seriously. "That's the idea. Can I borrow your map again to look up the way?"

Yan Lie thought she was joking. It wasn't until she actually stopped in front of a poultry stall that he realized just how naive he'd been.

The vendor was selling chicks. Tiny, yellow fluffballs huddled together in a large basket, cheeping boisterously, bursting with energy and cuteness.

Fang Zhuo asked the price, then crouched down to make her selection.

"You do farm work at home?" Yan Lie asked with great interest. It was his first time seeing anything like this. "Can chicks this small really survive?"

Fang Zhuo scooped one up and examined it in her palm. "Yes."

"What are you looking for? Do you judge chickens based on looks too?” Yan Lie's eyes swept over the sea of fuzzy little heads and suddenly landed on his dream chicken. He scooped it up and held it in front of Fang Zhuo. "I think this one's perfect. Look, it's barely got any fluff on its head. Balding at such a young age. Now that's character!"

Fang Zhuo: "..."

She lifted her gaze and gave her deskmate a flat look, seriously tempted to pretend she didn't know him. Before she could say anything, the middle-aged vendor across from them burst into laughter, "That one just got plucked bald by a customer. Don't worry, it's not sick."

Fang Zhuo accepted the chick for a look, but no matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn't connect with the scruffy little thing. She handed it back. "I want hens."

The vendor said regretfully, "None left. I've only got three or four free-range ones."

"Won't roosters do?" Yan Lie asked.

Fang Zhuo: "Hens lay eggs."

Yan Lie said, "Roosters crow at dawn."

"As if anyone nowadays doesn't own an alarm clock.” Fang Zhuo glared at him. "Hey, ge, stop messing around!"

Yan Lie blinked at the way she'd addressed him, then obediently shut up and crouched quietly beside her.

He gently stroked the chick's head with his thumb, watching it flap its tiny wings desperately in an attempt to escape his palm. But even its cries and its strength were so feeble. Only its eyes, black as lacquer beads, shone brilliantly bright, as if stubbornly proving its refusal to surrender.

Yan Lie nudged Fang Zhuo again, negotiating in earnest. "I'll pay. Let's raise it, okay?"

Seeing how strangely attached he had become, Fang Zhuo could only tell him the harsh truth. "This is a meat chicken. I'm raising it to eat.”

Yan Lie visibly shuddered.

The vendor fanned the flames from the side. "Anyone else who buys these raises them for meat."

Yan Lie asked, "Can't it just be a chick-en mascot?"

Fang Zhuo: "??"

Fang Zhuo felt like her brain was a ball of yarn a cat had gotten hold of. And that cat, fully aware it was being unreasonable, was now sitting there with its paws tucked beneath itself, gazing up at her with innocent, crystal-clear eyes, silently pleading.

After a brief internal struggle, Fang Zhuo took her little cardboard box and finally placed Yan Lie's chosen bald chick inside.

The boy immediately brightened. "Thanks, Zhuozhuo."

In the end, Fang Zhuo picked out eight chicks altogether. She figured she'd come back for more the next time free-range hens were available. After the chicks, she went to the shop next door and bought the cheapest bag of rice she could find to take home as feed.

The two of them carried everything out of the market. Yan Lie tied the sack of rice onto the back of his bicycle and walked alongside it, pushing it all the way toward the bus stop.

At the stop, he locked his bike to a nearby railing and helped Fang Zhuo carry the rice onto the bus.

When the doors closed, Yan Lie was still standing across from Fang Zhuo, the ten-kilogram sack of rice resting by his feet.

Fang Zhuo stared at him with wide eyes.

Yan Lie said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "How are you supposed to carry something this heavy all that way by yourself? I've got nothing else to do anyway. Might as well see it through. I'll take it as far as the bridge where you transfer."

Since he was already on the bus, Fang Zhuo couldn't exactly object. Besides, she had no doubt that if she said, "You don't have to," he would immediately accuse her of "burning bridges after crossing the river," or some other bizarre accusation.

She gripped the overhead handrail and said softly, "Thanks."

By the time Fang Zhuo arrived beneath the bridge with her little white workers, dusk had already settled over the land.

The sunset clouds today held no brilliance. After the sun sank, all that left at the horizon was a layer of grayish-white mist. Dark clouds drifted above the ink-washed mountains in the distance, like the careless stroke of a drunken painter's brush.

"It'll probably be dark by the time you get home." Yan Lie turned around and rummaged through his backpack. "Here, take this flashlight. You're carrying so much stuff. Why don't you call your uncle and ask him to come pick you up?"

Fang Zhuo shook her head quickly. "I can manage on my own. Don't trouble him."

Yan Lie frowned slightly but didn't push it. He just tucked the flashlight into a small pocket of her backpack. "I'm putting it here. Be safe. You..."

He had been about to tell her to call him when she got home, but first, Fang Zhuo didn't have a phone, and second, they weren't close enough for words like that yet. The sentence died halfway out of his mouth. When he looked up, he found her still listening attentively, waiting for him to finish. Just as he was about to think of something else to say, a minivan drove toward them, cutting off his train of thought.

Yan Lie hurriedly raised a hand to flag it down. "Your ride's here."

Fang Zhuo climbed aboard and took a seat by the window, meeting the young man's gaze through the dusty pane of glass.

Noticing her looking at him, Yan Lie lifted a hand and waved, his smile softened by the dim, overcast light.

As the van pulled away, his handsome face gradually blurred into the distance. Fang Zhuo leaned closer to the window, craning her neck for one last look. The words, ‘Get home safe’, lingered on the tip of her tongue for what felt like forever, but it never found their moment, and even when his figure vanished completely, she still hadn't spoken them.

As the vehicle lurched on, the last trace of sunlight was swallowed by the night.

Scattered lights swept past outside the windows as the city's clamor slowly gave way to the quiet stillness of the countryside.

The driver called out the stop and pulled over at the village entrance.

Fang Zhuo hugged the cardboard box against her chest with one arm while struggling to lift the sack of rice with the other, awkwardly carrying everything off the van. 

She'd only been to this village once. But she remembered the route being very simple. Go straight, turn right at the end of the rice paddies, then continue straight again, and she should arrive.

Such a simple route. Yet night and day were two completely different worlds.

The farther she walked along the endless road, the more unfamiliar everything became, until she had no choice but to admit that she was lost.

A thick, oppressive darkness closed in around her like a vast black cloth smothering her vision. That familiar suffocating feeling began tightening around her chest again. No matter how deeply she breathed, she couldn't force it down. For one fleeting moment, she wanted nothing more than to turn around and go back.

She wasn't really afraid of the dark. What terrified her was getting lost in it. Night transformed every familiar road into a maze. She hated wandering the same wrong paths again and again, hated how it reminded her of being trapped in the hills as a child, unable to find the way out, abandoned by the world until the first light of dawn finally guided her home.

She circled the area twice, trying to figure out her bearings. The chicks in her arms, jostled by the tilting box, began craning their necks and cheeping. Their tiny cries pierced the silence, becoming the warmest, most human sound the night had to offer. The noise snapped Fang Zhuo's muddled mind back to clarity in an instant.

She crouched down, set the box on the ground, and fished the flashlight from her backpack, shining it along the road and the darkness ahead.

Still no sign of the rice paddy. That meant she probably hadn't gone the wrong way.

As the flashlight continued to sweep through the darkness, beneath the constant chorus of cicadas came the faint sound of rolling wheels over the road.

 

Then, from a distance, someone called out:

"Fang Zhuo!"

Fang Zhuo slowed her breathing, waiting. At last, she saw a figure stumbling toward her up ahead, one uneven step after another.

 

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