Jiang Qiaoxi received two phone calls early in the morning, taking the handset from his father.
The first was from his cousin in Hong Kong. As Jiang Qiaoxi buttoned up his shirt, his cousin asked, “I heard you had an argument with your dad and turned in a blank test paper for your transfer exam?”
Jiang Qiaoxi remained silent, focusing on fastening his collar button.
“Since you can retake the test today, take it seriously,” his cousin said earnestly. “Show your true ability. How do you know Qunshan doesn’t have good teachers?”
A dog’s barking filtered through the receiver from his cousin’s end, reaching Jiang Qiaoxi’s ears.
Suddenly, Jiang Qiaoxi felt incredibly sad.
“Lassie misses you,” his cousin said.
“I miss her too,” Jiang Qiaoxi replied.
“Study hard in Qunshan,” his cousin continued. “Only then can you do what you want in the future.”
Perhaps due to Jiang Qiaoxi’s prolonged silence, his cousin probed, “How’s Qunshan?”
“Not great,” Jiang Qiaoxi answered bluntly.
His cousin paused, then asked, “Have you made any new friends?”
Jiang Qiaoxi hesitated before responding, “No.”
The second call came from the teachers’ office at the provincial experimental primary school. Jiang Qiaoxi had shouldered his backpack, ready to leave for school when his father called him back, asking if he needed the driver to take him.
Just then, the landline rang.
“Jiang Qiaoxi!” It was a former classmate from the experimental primary school, a boy named Fei Linge. “Finally able to call you! Did your new home in Qunshan just get connected to the phone line?”
Jiang Qiaoxi remained silent, hearing commotion in the background, as if many people were gathered around.
Fei Linge said, “Hey, don’t crowd! Cen Xiaoman… Cen Xiaoman! Don’t you want to talk to Jiang Qiaoxi?”
Jiang Qiaoxi held the receiver, seconds ticking by. A familiar girl’s voice approached the phone.
“Jiang Qiaoxi…” Her voice was soft and gentle. “When are you transferring back?”
His father interjected, “Your little friends have come to see you.”
Jiang Qiaoxi turned around. Through the screen door outside the living room, he saw Yu Qiao, Cai Fangyuan, and others standing at his doorstep, each drinking from a carton of milk.
“I don’t know,” Jiang Qiaoxi told his former classmate on the phone. “I need to go to school now.”
Yu Qiao stood outside, milk straw in his mouth. Seeing Jiang Qiaoxi emerge, he tilted his chin, gesturing for Jiang Qiaoxi to look next door.
Lin Qile’s door was open, crying sounds emanating from inside.
“I don’t want to…” It was Lin Qile wailing heartbrokenly. “Don’t demolish the construction site…”
Lin’s father couldn’t help but laugh, torn between amusement and exasperation as he tried to console her inside.
“Cherry, this construction site was built for the power plant project in Qunshan. Once the plant is finished, the uncles and aunties will move to the next site to build another power plant. Mom and Dad will go too. With everyone gone, no one will live here anymore, so it’ll have to be torn down.”
Lin’s mother chided, “Why are you telling her this out of the blue?”
“Our daughter asked me,” Lin’s father replied. “I can’t lie to her.”
Jiang Qiaoxi walked to Lin Qile’s doorway. He saw Lin’s father in plain work clothes, crouching before Lin Qile. He held her arms, steadying her as he smiled at her tear-stained face and wet eyes.
“When the time comes, we’ll move to the new site with the uncles and aunties!” Lin’s father said softly. “There will be a new place for us to live.”
Lin Qile listened, choking out, “Will Uncle Yu be at the new site too?”
Jiang Qiaoxi heard Yu Qiao snicker beside him.
Lin’s father assured her, “Of course! If he doesn’t come, we’ll call him and ask, ‘Why aren’t you here? We’ve all moved!'”
Lin Qile, milk straw in mouth and backpack on, haphazardly tied her red scarf and led the way as usual, now at the front of their “gang of five” with Jiang Qiaoxi’s addition.
Cai Fangyuan asked Jiang Qiaoxi if Lin Qile had shown him around the compound yesterday.
Jiang Qiaoxi nodded.
Perhaps Cai Fangyuan had seen their silhouettes under the streetlights last night.
Instead, Cai Fangyuan said, “I knew it! Every time a new kid comes to our compound, she rushes to play tour guide, without even asking if they want to—”
Hearing this, Jiang Qiaoxi continued walking with Cai Fangyuan and the others. He looked up at Lin Qile’s back.
Today, Lin Qile wore a pale yellow dress, different from yesterday’s. Under her red scarf hung a red string around her neck, starkly visible against her white skin—a thin cord holding amber.
Her two pigtails swung back and forth on her shoulders, as restless as she was.
Cai Fangyuan grumbled, “When I first transferred here, it was scorching hot at noon! She walked so fast! Walked all afternoon, exhausting me…”
At school, Jiang Qiaoxi was called to the principal’s office before the first class. The old principal told him to find time today to retake the exam, so the fourth-grade teachers could gauge his learning progress.
While uncertain about other subjects, the fourth-grade Class 1 math teacher already had a clear understanding of Jiang Qiaoxi’s math skills. When called to the blackboard to solve a problem, Jiang Qiaoxi had written the correct answer before the teacher could even step down from the podium.
In contrast, the class music representative Lin Qile struggled immensely. She held the chalk seriously at the podium, ears perked to catch whispers from behind.
“Five!” Cai Fangyuan whispered from below. “Lin Qile, five!”
Finally hearing him, Lin Qile hastily wrote “5” in the brackets, regardless of the question.
Yu Qiao said, “Six!”
Du Shang covered his mouth with his math book: “Don’t listen to them! Seven!”
“Eight!” Cai Fangyuan quickly followed up.
Under the math teacher’s cough, the students below all covered their mouths, not daring to laugh.
The final answer was indeed “eight,” but as soon as math class ended, Lin Qile and Cai Fangyuan started fighting fiercely.
Jiang Qiaoxi sat behind Cai Fangyuan, still reading during the break, though his desk occasionally felt the impact of their scuffle. His deskmate Yu Qiao was reading a sports newspaper.
Just a few days ago, on September 5th, the Chinese men’s basketball team defeated South Korea 63-45 in the 20th FIBA Asia Championship.
“Hey,” a group of boys gathered around Yu Qiao to look at the newspaper. Yu Qiao said to Jiang Qiaoxi, “Look at Hu Weiding, he’s amazing!”
The boys kept discussing a few names: Hu Weiding, Wang Zhizhi, Bateer—
Lin Qile then poked her head over, her pigtails nearly touching Jiang Qiaoxi’s pencil case.
“Wow, who’s this?” Lin Qile asked in surprise.
“Which one?” Cai Fangyuan inquired from behind her.
“This one,” Lin Qile said seriously. She pointed at the newspaper, which showed a group photo of the Chinese men’s basketball team. Lin Qile looked up at Yu Qiao.
Yu Qiao glanced at the photo. The person Lin Qile pointed to was a tall, unfamiliar face he didn’t recognize.
Looking at the news, this player was only 18 years old, on his first national team appearance, without any standout performance in the game.
“What about him?” Yu Qiao wondered why Lin Qile was suddenly so curious.
Lin Qile exclaimed, “He’s so tall!”
Cai Fangyuan turned to Jiang Qiaoxi and said, “I told you, she’s just an idiot.”
Yu Qiao took back the newspaper, seemingly unwilling to have his precious break time interrupted further by Lin Qile’s exclamations.
Just then, Lin Qile’s classmate from the school broadcasting station came to the classroom door to find her. Lin Qile left, and Du Shang came over to ask, “Who was she asking about just now?”
Yu Qiao, still reading the newspaper, replied without looking up, “Don’t know, someone called… Yao Ming?”
The school broadcasting station gave throat lozenges to its young members. Although Lin Qile no longer participated in the station’s work, the supervising teacher still remembered her and wanted her to return to broadcast a program about historical and cultural trivia regarding Macau’s return at the end of this year.
Lin Qile, with several lozenges in her mouth making her cheeks bulge, asked, “Hasn’t this been broadcast before?”
“That was about Hong Kong’s return. This is about Macau,” the teacher explained patiently.
Lin Qile returned to class, happily eating from a small pack of throat lozenges. Cai Fangyuan, having just finished cleaning the blackboard, saw her and tossed aside the eraser, exclaiming, “Lin Qile! You’re not sharing?”
Jiang Qiaoxi, writing exercises, suddenly asked Yu Qiao, “Why do you play with girls?”
Yu Qiao had finished reading the newspaper and noticed Lin Qile eating candy. He stood up, seemingly planning to trade the newspaper for a piece of candy.
Hearing Jiang Qiaoxi’s question, Yu Qiao turned back, puzzled.
“Who are you talking about?” he asked.
“Lin Qile,” Jiang Qiaoxi replied.
Yu Qiao stared at Jiang Qiaoxi as if hearing this for the first time.
“You’re saying she’s a girl?”
Jiang Qiaoxi discovered that Yu Qiao and the others would only acknowledge Lin Qile as a girl in one situation.
When female classmates Qin Yeyun and Lin Qile were wrestling fiercely, the fight had moved under the desks.
Cai Fangyuan sat in his seat watching the battle, remarking, “This mountain can’t contain two tigresses!”
Suddenly, Lin Qile let out a loud cry. Jiang Qiaoxi, who had been writing, looked up.
Qin Yeyun’s hair was disheveled, her face scratched in several places, yet she laughed triumphantly under everyone’s gaze. Straddling Lin Qile like a small horse, she clutched something in her hand, two thin red strings dangling from her palm.
“Give it back to me!” Lin Qile, pinned to the ground, shouted urgently. “Give it back now!”
Qin Yeyun glared at Lin Qile, saying, “You always get Yu Qiao to fight for you, don’t you? Why don’t you ask him to help you now?”
With these words, everyone inside and outside the classroom fell silent.
Yu Qiao was the quietest of all. Cai Fangyuan turned to look at him, seeing an expression that said, “Who’s she calling? Who’s calling me? Who am I? Why should I care?”
Du Shang bravely spoke up at this moment: “Qin Yeyun… don’t go too far!”
“Mind your own business and shut up!” Qin Yeyun looked up, disgusted.
Lin Qile struggled several times but couldn’t get up from the ground. Her eyes reddened with anger: “Give me back my amber—”
Qin Yeyun smugly shook her head, still straddling Lin Qile and waving the amber to taunt her, sticking out her tongue.
A few minutes later, Lin Qile stood in the corridor outside the classroom, punished alongside Qin Yeyun by their homeroom teacher.
Lin Qile clutched her amber, her eyes red-rimmed, pouting unhappily.
The homeroom teacher first publicly scolded Lin Qile and Qin Yeyun, making them stand in the corridor.
Then, with a gentle demeanor, he entered the classroom and kindly told Jiang Qiaoxi to skip the next PE class and come to the office for a small test.
Lin Qile unconsciously raised her head.
Looking past the classroom door, she secretly watched the classroom where Jiang Qiaoxi had been quietly studying and was now standing up beside Yu Qiao.
Most of the PE class was free activity time.
Lin Qile sat on the parallel bars, venting her frustration: “None of you helped me, yet you want me to help you… hmph, I won’t help at all…”
Cai Fangyuan stood under the parallel bars, explaining, “It’s not like that. You two girls were fighting. Helping either of you would be bullying a girl, right?”
Lin Qile grumbled, “So you just watched her bully me like that!”
Du Shang licked his lips nervously, saying, “Cherry, it’s not that we didn’t want to help. Qin Yeyun is just so unreasonable.”
Yu Qiao spoke up bluntly, “When you fought with Qin Yeyun, she didn’t ask anyone for help either.”
Hearing this, Lin Qile let out a frustrated sigh.
“Besides, look at her face,” Yu Qiao added. “See what a mess you’ve made of it.”
Lin Qile jumped down from the parallel bars, tucking the broken amber into her dress pocket. Yu Qiao’s words seemed to make sense. Lin Qile thought that if she fought Qin Yeyun one-on-one, it would be unfair if others helped.
“Let’s go!” Lin Qile said.
Seeing Lin Qile finally willing to move, Cai Fangyuan excitedly caught up.
“I’m telling you, my book is in the second filing cabinet against the wall in the principal’s office—”
Jiang Qiaoxi was absentmindedly writing his test paper in the principal’s office. The old principal had given him one class period, but Jiang Qiaoxi finished in less than ten minutes.
In the city’s Olympic Math tutoring class, Jiang Qiaoxi had already mastered this material when he first enrolled. After finishing, he still felt unsettled.
“Study hard in Qunshan too.”
His cousin had told him this.
“Only then can you do what you want in the future.”
Jiang Qiaoxi carefully reviewed the paper a few more times, considering it was checked. Fortunately, the principal only asked him to take the math test, which was the most time-efficient. He put down his pen, about to leave, when suddenly he heard a voice from outside the window.
It was a girl.
“Stand steady, Cai Fangyuan!”
Note:
On September 5, 1999, the 20th Men’s Asian Basketball Championship was held in Fukuoka, Japan. The Chinese men’s basketball team defeated South Korea 63-45 to win the championship.
Team roster: Wang Zhizhi, Gong Xiaobin, Sun Jun, Hu Weiding, Li Xiaoyong, Yao Ming, Bateer, Li Nan, Zhang Jinsong, Fan Bin.