The Scorching Sun - 26

 Yan Lie’s test paper was handed back. Fang Zhuo desperately wanted to see what this wildly imaginative master of language had written. 

Her fingers had just reached the corner of his desk when he quickly covered the paper with one hand before she could take a look.

Yan Lie grinned. "Guess what I wrote about?"

Fang Zhuo couldn't quite figure out what was going through his head, but judging by the smug expression on his face, it had to be some novel, obscure plant. 

Then again, this was someone who preferred bald chickens.

How was she supposed to grasp what a straight-laced guy his age actually liked?

Yan Lie urged. "Come on, guess. What do you think?"

Left with no choice, Fang Zhuo lowered her voice and ventured, "Foxtail grass?"

"...?" Yan Lie's expression blanked out for a second. "Is your world populated entirely by wild weird weeds?"

Fang Zhuo thought that should be a hint. "A head of cabbage?"

Yan Lie laughed despite himself. "Is that really what you think of me?!"

Fang Zhuo looked alarmed. "Don't tell me… that red spider lily wasn't yours, was it?"

Yan Lie took a deep breath, faced her wide, innocent eyes, and surrendered completely. Moving his hand aside, he finally let her see.

The answer was perfectly standard, perfectly mainstream, perfectly respectable—Bamboo.

Yan Lie said, "I also have to bow to the rules of exam-oriented education, okay? How else do you think I keep my grades steady?"

Fang Zhuo nodded in understanding and skimmed through the essay. She quickly realized that the secret behind a top student's high scores was making mainstream topics exceptional.

Even writing about the same stalk of bamboo, Yan Lie's neat, powerful handwriting had already given his subject an extra measure of grace and strength.

Unlike Fang Zhuo. Her topic was tumbleweed. Her handwriting was tumbleweed too.

Yan Lie asked again, "Are you a little disappointed?"

Why would she be disappointed?

Fang Zhuo looked at him suspiciously. "Would you rather be a foxtail grass?"

Yan Lie looked genuinely offended. After choking on his response for several seconds, he finally managed:

"Why are you so dense?"

"Are you roasting me?" Fang Zhuo said. "Aren't you dense too? You're literally famous for being straight-laced. I've never even said anything about it."

Her expression practically radiated: Look how tolerant I've been.

Yan Lie opened his mouth to retort, but she had effectively shut him down.

After years of pretending to be an invincible straight guy, he'd finally met the certified, genuine model. This had to be his karma.

Unable to let it go, he retaliated. "With handwriting like this, you need to start practicing elementary school calligraphy all over again."

Fang Zhuo silently pulled out her homework book.

A few moments later she turned back around. "How do you practice elementary school calligraphy?"

Yan Lie: "..."

Punching a pile of cotton would be less frustrating than arguing with her.

For the sake of his own health, he decided not to get angry.

***

Since this was a short weekend, they effectively only had one day off.

Fang Zhuo didn't want to waste a precious half of it on the bus, so she didn't go home.

She borrowed Yan Lie's phone to let Ye Yuncheng know.

It had been more than half a month since she'd gone back. Ye Yuncheng was probably worried.

Before calling, Fang Zhuo carefully composed a long text message explaining her recent situation and giving him a report on her latest exam scores.

Ye Yuncheng was delighted when he received it.

To be precise, as long as Fang Zhuo appeared, even the most trivial news made him happy.

They exchanged several text messages, catching each other up on miscellaneous matters, before Fang Zhuo finally called.

Yan Lie was deeply moved by her determination to save him phone charges.

At the same time, he felt that achieving text-message freedom and call freedom for Fang Zhuo might be impossible in this lifetime.

Unless she got a smartphone and a plan with a massive data package.

The latter seemed like it would happen soon enough. She’d need a phone for university, wouldn't she?

With a popsicle hanging from his mouth, Yan Lie sat on the empty bleachers by the sports field, letting his mind wander through all sorts of random thoughts.

The signal beeped, and Ye Yuncheng picked up.

Fang Zhuo exchanged pleasantries, asking how he'd been lately and if his health was okay. After getting a reassuring answer, she went straight to the point, "Our school is holding a parent-teacher conference next week."

Ye Yuncheng paused. "At this time of year?”

Other schools usually focused on the hundred-day oath ceremony to boost student morale as the college entrance exam drew closer. A High's tradition was a little different.

The closer they got to the exam, the less they wanted to emphasize the formalities. 

Which parent or student didn't already know the weight of the gaokao? There was no need to poke at their already sensitive nerves.

The school usually just quietly piled on the pressure, the assignments, and the study hours.

Their homeroom teacher called it "slow-boiling the frog." Once it was cooked and served up on a platter, they’d see if it was a prize dish or not.

So while others made a big deal out of the final hundred days, A High preferred the two-hundred-day mark.

After Fang Zhuo explained this, Ye Yuncheng fell silent, seeming to choose his next words carefully.

His breathing on the other end of the line was unsteady. Fang Zhuo picked up on his hesitation, almost able to picture him starting and stopping, wanting to say something but holding back. She added, "The teacher says it's our senior year, so it's best if everyone can make it."

"Oh." Ye Yuncheng said. "Maybe I'll ask your Uncle Liu? If he's free, I can get him to go and sit in for you."

Fang Zhuo frowned and adjusted her posture, sitting up straighter.

Yan Lie couldn't understand why such a simple matter was taking so long. He nudged Fang Zhuo's arm and leaned in close, gesturing for her to put the audio on speaker.

The slightly rambling words came through the speaker:

"But your Uncle Liu is pretty busy. Rural poverty-alleviation work has been demanding these past couple of years. Besides helping families out of poverty, he has planning responsibilities and development projects to oversee... he probably doesn't have the time."

Fang Zhuo asked, "Is it not convenient for you to come?"

Ye Yuncheng asked cautiously in return, "Is it convenient for me to go?"

"I don't know if it's convenient for you." Fang Zhuo said, puzzled. "Have you not been feeling well lately?"

They seemed to have reverted to the awkwardness of their first phone call, the pace slowing to a crawl. It was as if every single sentence had to be weighed and turned over in a veiled probe.

Ye Yuncheng said, "Wouldn't it be awkward if your classmates saw me?"

"Why would it be awkward?"Fang Zhuo's voice rose slightly. "Aren't you quite handsome?"

Yan Lie burst out laughing and chimed in from the side, "Of course, our uncle, with a face like that, has to be at least the village heartthrob, right? Not that I'm saying other people's parents aren't good-looking, but do you know the percentage of middle-aged men who don't care about managing his physique?"

Fang Zhuo paused, then said, "My uncle is actually only thirty-four this year."

Yan Lie was genuinely shocked.

Although Ye Yuncheng had a handsome, delicate face, there was something weathered about him. Perhaps his steadiness and reserve made him seem more like an elder, so much so that Yan Lie had never once considered "his age" as a topic. He had only ever thought the man was dependable.

Ye Yuncheng laughed. "You two still think I'm young?"

Because of his physical disability and the string of misfortunes that followed, he’d always felt that the course of his life had been decided long ago.

From the moment he was old enough to understand the world, he seemed to have leapt straight past adolescence, skipped over youth entirely, and landed directly in an old age.

If Fang Zhuo had never appeared, his thirty-four would have looked exactly the same. His forty-four, his fifty-four... probably no different.

Or perhaps there would never have been another decade to speak of at all.

The word "young" felt strangely distant to him. Yet hearing it now brought a tingling warmth, like the first sign of spring returning to dead wood.

Yan Lie declared, "You are still young!"

Thirty-four was an age when a person still had endless possibilities ahead of them.

"My parents aren't coming anyway." Yan Lie grabbed Fang Zhuo's hand, pulling the phone closer, and softened his tone. "Uncle, come, okay? You can attend for me too. If you don't come, won't the two of us become the orphan group?"

"Don't talk nonsense." Ye Yuncheng's voice had become noticeably lighter. "Then I'll come early that day?"

Yan Lie said enthusiastically, "Not too early, the main meeting is in the afternoon. But if you do come early, I can show you around the school.A High has money these days. They've renovated several gardens and classroom buildings over the last few years. It's a pretty nice walk."

Ye Yuncheng answered rapidly, "Good, good."

On Sunday evening, the class monitor came around with a form to collect the attendance list.

Fang Zhuo wrote Ye Yuncheng's name and contact information beside her own.

When she was about to fill out Yan Lie's section too, her deskmate raised a hand to stop her and then carefully, neatly copied the exact same information onto his own line.

The class monitor glanced down at the list. "Huh?"

Yan Lie spun a pen between his fingers, lifted his chin, and boasted, "Never seen it before? Good desk mates share parents too."

The monitor pushed up his glasses and said flatly, "Can't say I have." Then he lost interest and walked away.

On the day of the parent-teacher meeting, Ye Yuncheng still arrived exceptionally early. He took the first bus and made it to the school before ten.

After receiving the call, Yan Lie gave him directions and waved at Fang Zhuo, "Come on, let's go pick up our uncle!"

Fang Zhuo stood up.

Somewhere deep down, she couldn't shake the feeling that Yan Lie was acting more like Ye Yuncheng's actual nephew than she did.

These two definitely text in secret at night, comfortably using those familiar titles with each other.

Ye Yuncheng was wearing a dark trench coat today. The wide cut concealed part of his crutch, while the sharp tailoring accentuated the line of his shoulders and back, lending him a handsome, almost dashing air.

Even with limited mobility, he made an effort to stand straight, waiting beside the flower bed, staring intently at the plants inside. 

Only after getting closer could they see the distant, drifting look in his eyes.

Fang Zhuo had every reason to suspect he'd borrowed the coat, it clearly did not look cheap. And the way his hair was neatly styled, which might even have involved hair gel, she suspected he had woken before dawn to prepare.

Today's Ye Yuncheng didn't look like someone attending a parent-teacher meeting. He looked like someone who should be modeling on a magazine cover.

Fang Zhuo wasn't very good at compliments.

As they approached, she was still searching for appropriate words.

The person beside her was much more open. He seemed capable of saying exactly what was in his heart at any given moment. 

Fang Zhuo was just about to ask him for advice when Yan Lie broke into a brilliant smile, stuck up his thumb, raised his eyebrows at the man ahead, and offered a knowing, "Uncle!"

Ye Yuncheng snapped out of his thoughts, lowered his head with a shy laugh, then looked back up at them. A little awkwardly, he asked, "Did I come too early?"

Yan Lie said, "Not really, we were just setting up the classroom. But the teacher isn't here yet, so if you want to chat with her, you'll have to wait a little."

Seeing Fang Zhuo staring at him without blinking, Ye Yuncheng couldn't help but look back.

"What is it?"

After a moment's thought, Fang Zhuo answered honestly. "You look very sharp. Very handsome."

Ye Yuncheng reached out to ruffle Fang Zhuo's hair, smiling. "You also look very sharp. Very pretty."

His hand naturally brushed across the scar on her forehead, which still hadn't completely faded.

His lips tightened slightly.

Pretending not to notice it, he draped an arm around her shoulders and guided her into the school.

---

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