The Scorching Sun - 82
Ye Yuncheng slowly made his way up the winding mountain road.
The uneven yellow dirt road was strewn with stones of all sizes. Nameless weeds crowded the roadside, the slope rose and fell without pattern. With no guardrails along the edge, the road almost seemed treacherous.
Ye Yuncheng glanced up, bent at the waist, and tried to step over a long, slanted mound of earth with his less-than-agile gait, taking a shortcut around the bend.
The mountain was considered an auspicious resting place, many local families had buried their ancestors here. But because it was so remote, it had always been desolate.
A few years ago, this mountain was put up for development, the government investing considerable funds to support the project. Oil-tea trees were planted across the slopes, rising in tiers like a series of terraced fields.
Those short young saplings had now grown lush enough to bear fruit. In another two years, they would probably reach their peak yield.
The road itself had been built back then to allow vehicles up the mountain, winding around the mountainside several times from the foot all the way up.
A few farmers came down the road toward him, hoes slung over their shoulders. When they saw Ye Yuncheng, they waved. Their eyes lingered curiously on his prosthetic leg, even after passing him, they stopped to look back a couple more times.
The scorching sunlight poured down from behind him, baking his back. His shirt was soaked through with sweat and clung damply to his skin.
In a haze, the familiar discomfort brought back the memory of being carried on Ye Yaoling's back all those years ago.
The girl who was only five years older than him used to carry him to and from school like this. She carried him along muddy roads, through noisy school grounds, back and forth between home and school.
In summer, Ye Yaoling's back was always damp, soaked in a mixture of sweat and the bitterness of life.
Whenever she turned around, she would smile at Ye Yuncheng and say, “Little brother, don’t be afraid. Everything will get better.”
It was probably the only comfort she knew how to offer, both to him and to herself: that uncertain promise that somehow, everything would get better.
Ye Yuncheng stopped walking, heat rising suddenly behind his eyes.
He hadn't waited for everything to get better. He hadn't even waited for himself to get better. Ye Yaoling was already gone.
Ye Yuncheng reached out and plucked a wild fruit from the side of the road.
It was small and orange, with a prickly skin. Whenever Ye Yaoling carried him to school and they passed plants like this, she would always pick two for him.
There was barely any juice when he bit into it, only a sour, astringent taste. The more he chewed, the more it dried out his mouth. When he bit through the seed at the very center, its coarse grains released a bitter taste as well.
It tasted like life. Pointless and dull.
After he became disabled, Ye Yaoling never once straightened her back again.
She stopped going out to have fun, and at home she often fell silent. Their parents would scold her, then make her take him out for fresh air at regular times.
He had been barely ten, not yet old enough to learn how to rein in his selfishness and willfulness. Now, whenever he remembered the worn-out shoes he had seen beyond her shoulder as she carried him, only shame washed over him.
Ye Yaoling walked so far every day, yet didn't even have a comfortable pair of shoes. On the day she left, she was wearing nothing more than a pair of old cloth shoes bought at a secondhand market.
When she brought those shoes home, she had been so happy. She told Ye Yuncheng that they fit perfectly.
The shoes had been a gift from Fang Yiming.
Ye Yuncheng covered his face. The road to the mountaintop seemed impossibly long, stretching ahead even as his exhausted body struggled onward, distant as the space between himself and Ye Yaoling.
He couldn't blame Ye Yaoling for loving that man, because the truly absurd ones had been them.
At least Fang Yiming had given her tenderness. Her family had given her nothing.
People in the countryside tended to marry young. Even before reaching the legal marriage age, a person could already become the subject of endless gossip.
They pointed at Ye Yaoling and whispered that her family was poor, that she had a disabled younger brother to support, that the burden was too heavy and she would never marry into a good family.
Ye Yaoling hated it.
She hated this place. She hated the people here. She hated her circumstances even more, and most of all, she hated her own helplessness. She could only resent how small her world was, how impossible it seemed to leave.
That day, Ye Yaoling crouched beside his bed, a brightness on her face that he hadn't seen in a long time, and told him that Fang Yiming was the person who treated her best.
He never lectured her about what society expected. He never talked about the pressures of reality. He praised her for being beautiful, clever, lovely, and all the other things she hadn't heard in far too long.
And more than that, Fang Yiming wasn't from here. He had only been passing through this place.
Ye Yaoling smiled with girlish sweetness, her eyes blazing with light.
Ye Yuncheng stumbled over his words. "From now on, I'll make Mom and Dad treat you better, too."
Ye Yaoling smiled, but said nothing.
Ye Yuncheng didn't understand that smile then. He thought she was happy, and eagerly climbed out of bed to comb her hair for her.
Some time later, Ye Yaoling cut her long hair short.
She stood before Ye Yuncheng's bed, appearing strangely unfamiliar, stroked his head, then took his hand and suddenly broke down, clutching him as she wept.
She told him that he was the person she worried about most, the person she felt most guilty toward. But Ye Yuncheng had their parents. He could go on living without her. This place, on the other hand, made her unbearably sad.
She was leaving. She would never come back.
Summer was just as hot as ever.
The year Ye Yaoling left, Ye Yuncheng finally learned how to use his crutches on his own.
He dug the wooden crutch he rarely used out from a corner and stubbornly followed the road out of the village for more than four hours. The skin on his chest and arms had been rubbed raw and was bleeding, but he still hadn't caught up with her. In the end, his parents found him and brought him home through their tears.
From one day onward, he no longer had a sister. It took him a very long time to realize it.
Looking back now, saying, "I'm your family," or, "I'm the one who truly cares about you," sounded almost laughable.
Love was never supposed to be implicit. It wasn't supposed to hide itself, or come with conditions and circumstances. It wasn't supposed to rank itself beneath someone else, always giving way and standing behind them.
Otherwise, it was better left unspoken.
Why couldn't she be the person someone loved most? Her own feelings had already been hollowed out to nothing.
Their parents went from cursing her, to regretting everything, to grieving her loss in less than a year. After that, crushed by the blow and worn down by overwork, they died in misery.
On their deathbeds, they called Ye Yaoling's name. They worried about what would happen to Ye Yuncheng when there was no one left to care for him.
Ye Yuncheng finally reached the gravestone.
Fang Zhuo had already tidied the grave once, it was now much cleaner. But with spring and summer bringing everything back to life, the weeds around it had begun to run wild again.
Ye Yuncheng sank to the ground, breathing heavily, and relaxed the residual limb that ached from the strain of the mountain road.
Leaning against the stone, he kneaded the muscles of his leg with one hand. In a daze, he remembered the day Ye Yaoling had come home.
By then, their parents were already dead, and he was still underage. After all the upheaval in his life, he had fallen far behind in school and was caught between taking a leave of absence and trying to continue his studies.
Television programs celebrated the arrival of the new century. The streets were lit up with decorations, and people proudly proclaimed themselves the new generation of a new era, as though simply living to see it was some great achievement.
The images flashed across the screen showed places he had never been, filled with a prosperity he had never dared imagine.
The grand celebration of the world had nothing to do with him.
Ye Yuncheng assumed that Ye Yaoling had gone in search of a new life, that she must be living in some great metropolis like those.
When she appeared again, she was still beautiful, poised, and composed, but she wasn't doing well. Her face was haggard, her body painfully thin. Only the smile she managed to summon at the corners of her lips gave her any semblance of spirit.
She went with Ye Yuncheng to tend their parents' graves, talked with him, and helped him straighten up the room.
It rained for several days during her visit. At night, Ye Yuncheng's phantom limb hurt so badly that he broke into a cold sweat and could barely keep his eyes open. Yet his heart remained light with happiness. He finally had a family again.
Ye Yuncheng turned around and lowered his eyes to the words carved into the stone, smiling. "Jie, I've come to see you."
During those days, after learning that their parents had died and Ye Yuncheng had been living alone, Ye Yaoling was consumed by guilt.
She couldn't understand why she had spent her whole life doing things she would eventually regret. She had spent so long keeping herself busy, only to begin understanding life when it was almost too late.
Ye Yuncheng comforted her, telling her he was doing fine.
Ye Yaoling urged him to continue his studies. "I went out into the world, and I realized that education can change so many things. It's not just about making money. More than that, it gives you confidence. It gives you something to stand on. For people like us, studying is the bestl thing we can do."
Ye Yuncheng was so happy that he agreed to everything.
Later, when Ye Yaoling died of illness, he couldn't remember those words. All he could feel was that life had defeated him, he gave up on himself and chose to drop out of school.
"But I have been studying, Jie." Ye Yuncheng spoke very carefully. "Even after I dropped out, I kept reading. I haven't fallen that far behind. Now I'm learning video editing and programming... Can you believe it? I have hundreds of thousands of followers. I can take care of myself now."
He turned around and smiled. "You wouldn't believe it. The internet is incredibly advanced now, and the government is doing a lot, too. There are all kinds of free university courses on public platforms. You can listen to them and watch them whenever you want without paying a cent. There are paid courses, too, of course. I just haven't reached that level yet."
In this country, knowledge was cheap to obtain, and yet knowledge itself was something precious.
If Ye Yaoling had lived to see this day, she would have thrown herself into life with renewed determination.
Her youth would never have had to end. She could have kept running forever.
Ye Yuncheng's voice gradually faded, his words tangled with low, choked sobs and hoarseness.
He remembered how young Ye Yaoling had been when she died, and how much of it had been because she couldn't afford treatment.
Poverty had followed her all her life. No matter how hard she fought, she could never shake it off.
She had wanted to stay beside Fang Zhuo a little longer, but every day in the hospital cost money, by the time she finally went to find Ye Yuncheng, she was already close to the end of what she could endure.
At dusk, Ye Yaoling sat on the threshold outside the house. She had thought everything through, and told Ye Yuncheng about Fang Zhuo, calmly leaving him with one final instruction. "If you have the time, go see her. If she makes the same mistake I did, remember to tell her this. A woman should never think she can use marriage to escape from life. I only understand that now. There are some things you can't get through just by gritting your teeth. Sometimes all you're doing is giving up on yourself."
Ye Yuncheng swallowed hard, fighting desperately to hold back the emotions surging through him. But every time he came here, regret, sorrow, remembrance, and all the other feelings too heavy to bear would always rise together, tangled beyond separation.
"I don't know how to tell you about everything that's changed over the years... Anyway, Zhuo Zhuo is doing well. She got into A University. She's like you. She's extraordinary. She did what neither of us ever managed to do."
"She's strong, independent, and hardworking. She's much more clear-headed than you and I were back then. She isn't afraid of anyone abandoning her. She doesn't need your worries or your final instructions."
Ye Yuncheng carefully set the flowers beside him in front of the gravestone, bent his right knee, and, still somewhat awkwardly, pushed himself to his feet. Beneath the sweltering summer sun, he stood tall and straight in the quiet of the mountain.
"I can walk on my own now, Jie."
"You can rest easy now, too.”
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