Grandmother had been a woman of few smiles. When Fang Zhuo tried to speak to her, she was usually reluctant to respond. The rare times she did reply, she never met Fang Zhuo’s eyes.

Looking back carefully now, Fang Zhuo’s childhood self had been so small and so innocent — practically wearing her longing for attention on her face for anyone to see.

Faded memories played through her mind like a worn-out film, and Fang Zhuo realized, in a daze, that perhaps her grandmother had noticed all of those little gestures all along.

The low wooden bench in the courtyard facing the road. The front gate that was never locked no matter how late she came home. The old clothes mended and patched. The secondhand cloth shoes worn to a clean, pale white. The steaming bowl of white congee on the table waiting on evenings when she came home feeling low.

Perhaps in her grandmother’s eyes, all of Fang Zhuo’s persistent, stubborn clinging had been so terribly naive — and so terribly pitiable.

You said you didn’t want me to rely on you — yet you tolerated every trouble I brought along with me.

She had been born into a brutal age, and reality had taught her that without strength you could not survive. So she had long since strangled her own innocence — and used the same approach with Fang Zhuo.

If Fang Zhuo wanted to push back, let her push back. If Fang Zhuo wanted to cry, let her cry. If Fang Zhuo wanted to be willful, take away everything she had — let her batter herself raw and come crawling back, covered in dust.

A person destined to be tempered by hardship could not afford the luxury of leaning on others.

This was her grandmother’s way of showing her: the world was wide, but she did not yet have the means to walk out into it.

Toward the very end, Grandmother had lost her voice entirely. She lay on her side, eyes fixed on whoever was beside the bed.

Fang Zhuo had assumed she was looking at Fang Yiming. It turned out she had been looking at her.

After she was gone, there would be no one left to make white congee for Fang Zhuo, to leave the door open for her, to scold her about her studies.

Fang Zhuo thought she understood now why Grandmother had refused to accept Fang Yiming’s money.

Accepting nothing from him on a whim of generosity meant no ties to him, and therefore no reason to grieve over someone unworthy. Whether he favored others over her, whether he wronged people, whether he deceived himself or was simply foolishly blind — none of it had anything to do with Fang Zhuo.

Fang Zhuo wiped her face hard, clearing the blurring wetness from her eyes, lifted her head, and said in a hoarse voice, “Homeroom teacher — can I borrow that ten thousand yuan?”

The homeroom teacher didn’t say a word, just pulled the bundle of bills from her bag.

Fang Yiming involuntarily stepped back, the twenty thousand yuan he had just re-withdrawn from the bank still held in his grip. But Fang Zhuo stuffed the money back into his arms anyway, her tone utterly flat and wholly distant: “I don’t need your help. Goodbye.”

Fang Yiming opened his mouth to speak, but Fang Zhuo had already turned her back to him. She tucked her hands in her pockets and walked away without looking back.

The man stood rooted to the spot, not knowing what to do. He felt the weight of that money pressing down on his shoulders, pressing down on his chest, until he could barely breathe.

An incomprehensible bewilderment came over him again — the same feeling as when, long ago, he could never understand how his own mother could be so cold — and now he couldn’t understand why Fang Zhuo would refuse his goodwill even at a time like this.

He turned to the homeroom teacher with a stiff smile. “Would you mind holding onto this for her, Teacher? Let her use it to pay the medical fees — and the rest as living expenses.”

The homeroom teacher didn’t take it. She simply shook her head. “The child is already grown. Talking about making amends now doesn’t sound very realistic. She’s eighteen, not eight. What she needs at this point in her life isn’t money — it’s the drive that’s keeping her going. So this isn’t mine to accept on her behalf.”

She slung her bag over her arm, gave Fang Yiming a polite nod, and hurried back toward the ward.

Yan Lie left with the homeroom teacher for school; Xiao Mu and Liu Qiaohong left for the countryside. Within a few minutes, the ward fell quiet.

Fang Zhuo moved a stool to the side of the bed and sat there, lost in thought. The dying light of sunset cast a deep red across the world, slanting in from the window. Filtering through the drifting curtains, it projected an irregular rectangle onto the surface of the blanket.

A delicate, unnamed floral scent drifted in on the breeze, dissolving the stale heaviness of the hospital ward.

Ye Yuncheng rested with his eyes closed for a while, then called out softly, “Zhuozhuo.”

Fang Zhuo looked over at him. Ye Yuncheng said nothing more — only smiled.

Fang Zhuo smiled back, just as gently.

She moved her chair a little closer and asked, “You used to send Grandmother quite a few letters, didn’t you? What did you write?”

“I sent a few. Nothing much — your grandmother couldn’t read.” He spoke very softly. “Whatever I wrote, she would never have asked someone to read it to her. She didn’t want you to see me. She didn’t want to know too much.”

Fang Zhuo nodded.

“But she did write back once.” Ye Yuncheng asked, “When did your grandmother pass away?”

“During my first year of high school,” Fang Zhuo said. “Not long after Qingming Festival.”

“Mm. Around that time, she sent me a photo of you from your middle school graduation ceremony.” A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “But it was such a terrible photo, I didn’t recognize you in it.”

Fang Zhuo let out a small laugh. “No wonder — I always wondered where that graduation photo got to. Though it really was an awful picture. Our homeroom teacher took it herself.”

Ye Yuncheng reached up and lightly stroked the top of her head. “It’s a very precious keepsake. Your uncle has been keeping it safe for you.”

He propped himself up on his elbows, settling against the pillow with some effort, and said haltingly, “When you graduate, your uncle will go with you to have a proper photo taken. It’s been years since I’ve been in a photograph. By then you’ll wear a beautiful new outfit, stand beside me — and I’ll shave this beard off too — and after we’re done, we’ll go show your mother.”

Fang Zhuo blinked hard against the sting in her eyes and said, “All right.”

Ye Yuncheng dipped his chin to gesture at her work. “Go do your homework. No more sitting around chatting with me.”

Fang Zhuo asked a nurse for a few sheets of blank paper, copied down problems from her phone, and spread out on the windowsill to work through them.

Mathematical problems could be solved. But many of life’s questions had no answers, no matter how clever one might be.

Like an open-ended future. Like a past with insufficient conditions.

The future had no end. The past had no verdict.

She would no longer linger in what was called the past, and let it hold her back from the road leading to the future.

That evening, the police came to take her statement and, in the process, returned the ten thousand yuan. After Fang Zhuo heard it from them directly, she finally allowed herself to believe what Wei Xi had told her.

“How was the money found?” she asked in astonishment. “Why so quickly?”

The police officer shook his head in wonder. “Your classmates — they’re something else. They went straight next door and got into a tussle, and even with us right there they wouldn’t let go. We’re not authorized to conduct searches at will, you know — but before I could even say a word, they were shouting in my ear from all directions, nearly deafening me, and then they turned around and started giving us a lecture on moral responsibility. Now there’s something. Bold as anything for their age.”

Fang Zhuo pictured the scene and found it genuinely surreal.

A second officer chimed in: “Though credit where it’s due — your classmates did make the difference. That thief is a habitual offender — couldn’t keep his hands still. He stole the money and hid it under his pillow, planning to pick it up later in the evening to settle a debt. If your classmates hadn’t stopped him right then, by the time he’d spent it you’d never have seen it again — that type doesn’t fear consequences.”

“Those students…” The first officer furrowed his brow, clearly struggling to make sense of the world. After a lengthy search for words, he settled on a carefully diplomatic description: “Rather distinctive.”

When the thief had been cornered by Bai Lufei and the others, the coworkers around them had no idea what was happening. The thief, banking on their familiarity, had started spinning a story. His workmates assumed outside troublemakers had showed up, and crowded around to back him — which made the situation increasingly chaotic.

Each time the thief tried to slip back inside to dispose of the evidence, Bai Lufei clung to him and refused to let go. For it, he took several punches, leaving a number of bruises blooming across his body.

In the end, one of the workers went in and pulled the money out himself — which was how the whole business was settled.

“These students are going to receive a serious talking-to from us,” the officer said. “Even if their intentions were good, acting impulsively and throwing procedure out the window — they need to understand that. Here’s the list of names. Take a look.”

Fang Zhuo genuinely hadn’t expected Bai Lufei to go to bat for her like that.

So much time had passed since that old incident that she had long stopped dwelling on it. And in the process, she realized, she had also been carrying quite a few misconceptions about Bai Lufei.

She accepted the paper, thanked the officers, and saw them to the door.

Ye Yuncheng had never liked causing inconvenience to others, and threw himself into his recovery with great diligence, following his doctor’s instructions to the letter. His recovery progressed at an impressive pace.

Yan Lie came to the hospital the next day to tutor Fang Zhuo, and brought the potted plant along too.

“While you were gone, everyone in the class was making daily pilgrimages to water it — circling nearby N times a day. If I hadn’t kept watch, it would already be dead. School is too dangerous — you’d better look after it yourself.”

And so the guardian of the planting fields in his little red cape came to take up a post on the windowsill.

A week later, Ye Yuncheng was successfully discharged. Fang Zhuo gathered up her small potted plant and returned to school.