When Lin Qile was nine, she read Kazumi Tada’s “Itazura na Kiss” on her way to school. She thought if she were to write a love letter to someone, there would be only one choice.
She would write to the person who was kind to her, who cared for and protected her, not someone like Naoki Irie who would make Kotoko Aihara a laughingstock.
“Why did you write him a love letter? What were you thinking?” Qin Yeyun demanded over the phone, inexplicably embarrassed and angry despite it not being her affair. “Now his whole class is passing around your letter. How many pages did you write? Du Shang even snatched one—”
Lin Qile replied, “I didn’t write a love letter…”
“You didn’t write a love letter?” Qin Yeyun shouted. “I heard in Class 4 that you and Jiang Qiaoxi have a daughter named ‘Jiang Chunlu’ at the work site. Did you write that, Jiang Chunlu? How could you—”
Lin Qile was stunned.
The children, just entering puberty, were expressing an infinite longing for the adult world through every pore, along with their newly budding, fragile self-esteem and sense of shame. As Qin Yeyun continued berating Lin Qile, she suddenly asked, “What about Jiang Qiaoxi?”
“What about Jiang Qiaoxi?”
“I wrote the letter to him,” Lin Qile said.
Qin Yeyun angrily replied, “How should I know? I went to their class to look for him, but they just teased me and wouldn’t tell me where Jiang Qiaoxi was!”
Her parents returned from work. After dinner, Lin Qile sat on her small bed, hugging her Bobbi elf doll. She repeatedly recalled Qin Yeyun’s words, still not quite understanding. She considered calling Du Shang to ask what exactly had happened at their school.
Everything happening in the provincial city seemed intimately connected to Lin Qile’s concerns, yet completely beyond her imagination.
Just then, the living room phone rang.
Her mother answered, surprised: “It’s Manager Cai!”
The small fantasy in Lin Qile’s mind burst like a soap bubble, leaving no trace.
“Yingtao? Yingtao’s at home… What’s wrong?”
Her mother asked a few questions, then handed the receiver to her father. The call lasted over twenty minutes. Lin Qile sat in her mosquito net, hugging her knees, when suddenly her father pushed open the door.
“Yingtao,” he said softly, “have you finished your homework?”
Her father had never asked such a question before. Lin Qile answered, “Not yet.”
Her father smiled, “Come out for some fruit your mother cut when you’re done.”
The door closed, with no other unusual occurrences.
That night, Lin Qile tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. She had some secrets she only wanted to tell Jiang Qiaoxi, things she couldn’t say to Yu Qiao and the others. Yu Qiao always teased her about her various thoughts, but only Jiang Qiaoxi was kind to her. Things between her and Jiang Qiaoxi were supposed to be different.
Qin Yeyun had said on the phone, “Jiang Qiaoxi now acts like he doesn’t know us when he sees us at school. Do you think he still remembers you?”
As Qunshan’s sky darkened, Lin Qile sat up in her bed, looking at the evergreen plant on the windowsill. A Barbie doll in an elegant evening gown sat carefully dressed at her bedside.
Before her parents woke up, Lin Qile, still in her nightgown, went to the backyard. She walked to the empty, cold rabbit hutch and sat on the steps.
Lin Qile looked up at the gloomy sky.
As time passed, the sky began to brighten. Lin Qile combed her hair into two ponytails, ate the breakfast her mother made, put on her school uniform, and shouldered her backpack. She boarded the bus heading to Qunshan Middle School, which also went to Qunshan City’s long-distance bus station. Lin Qile clutched her New Year’s money, having made up her mind.
The long-distance bus bumped along the road from Qunshan City to the provincial capital, a journey of nearly seven hours. Lin Qile had bought a window seat ticket and sat alone by the window, hugging her backpack. She gazed at the late autumn fields outside, her mind filled with Qin Yeyun’s phone call from yesterday and everything that had happened around her in the year since she’d been separated from everyone.
She felt lonely, with nowhere to go except school.
The unfamiliar term “provincial city” seemed to unconsciously draw away all the good things around Lin Qile. From Chen Minghao, and Zheng Xiaochen… to Jiang Qiaoxi, Yu Qiao, Du Shang, Cai Fangyuan… Whatever she liked, the “provincial city” would take away.
The long-distance bus departed from Qunshan at 8 AM. When buying her ticket, Lin Qile had told a little lie to the ticket seller, saying her father was behind her and hadn’t arrived yet, but she wanted to buy the ticket and board first.
At 5 PM, the bus arrived at the provincial city’s main station. Lin Qile followed a man from the bus, pretending to be his daughter as she alighted. She waved goodbye to the ticket seller.
In the past, no matter how many times she had “adventured” in Qunshan, venturing deep into the mountains and forests with her friends, Lin Qile had never come to the distant provincial city alone.
She walked through the crowds with her backpack, observing the congested flow of people and the skyscrapers towering to the sky on all sides. Lin Qile stood at a bus stop, looking up at the map.
Holding her change, she boarded a bus heading to the Provincial Experimental Affiliated Middle School.
Perhaps she would soon see Jiang Qiaoxi, as well as Yu Qiao, Du Shang, Cai Fangyuan, and even Qin Yeyun… Lin Qile sat by the window, watching the unfamiliar streets of the provincial city. This was where Jiang Qiaoxi had grown up, where Yu Qiao and the others were now living.
Lin Qile didn’t know when the Provincial Experimental Affiliated Middle School let out. When the bus reached its stop, she got off. Passing by a clothing store, Lin Qile paused to look at herself in the window. She wore the red and white uniform of Qunshan No. 1 Middle School, washed clean. She removed her strawberry hair tie and smoothed her long hair, then retied her two ponytails.
Lin Qile had grown taller since elementary school and had slimmed down. Her round face had thinned, revealing a small chin, and her eyes looked larger.
A group of students in blue and white uniforms walked past Lin Qile, holding magazines and chatting.
“Did Jiang Qiaoxi go to the countryside before? I heard he went to elementary school in Hong Kong, how did it become the countryside—”
“It’s not the countryside, it’s a small city called Qunshan.”
“Jiang Qiaoxi transferred from Hong Kong in first grade. Fei Linge from Class 1 was his classmate before, you can just ask him!”
“Does Fei Linge know about that girl called Lin something?”
“Of course not!”
“Jiang Qiaoxi is so unlucky, following his parents to study in the countryside and getting entangled with a country girl—”
Lin Qile stared at her reflection in the shop window, the words “Qunshan City No. 1 Middle School” printed on the chest of her red and white uniform.
As those students walked away, new ones kept coming.
It seemed the nearby middle schools had let out.
“Are Jiang Qiaoxi and Cen Xiaoman together or not?”
“I heard Cen Xiaoman has liked Jiang Qiaoxi for a long time, but he doesn’t like her.”
“No way, they go home together every day, they look so close.”
“Well, I see Jiang Qiaoxi doesn’t care about anyone, he doesn’t even smile at Cen Xiaoman.”
“Even if he smiles, he wouldn’t let you see it—”
Lin Qile walked against the flow of students heading home. Laughter occasionally brushed past her ears.
Countryside. Qunshan. Jiang Qiaoxi. Cen Xiaoman.
Only now did Lin Qile begin to understand why Qin Yeyun had called her so excitedly yesterday.
It seemed she had done something very wrong.
“The Class 1 homeroom teacher was so anxious about this, he called Jiang Qiaoxi to the office this morning—”
“I heard Cen Xiaoman crying in the girls’ bathroom during the break, several girls were comforting her. Could Jiang Qiaoxi have a daughter in the countryside?”
“You’re overthinking it. I just passed by Class 1 after school and saw Cen Xiaoman waiting for Jiang Qiaoxi to pack up and go home—”
…
At the gate of the Provincial Experimental Affiliated Middle School.
Lin Qile stood outside the school gate as students streamed out after classes. Some were joking and playing, others glanced at Lin Qile, noting her uniform, then indifferently walked away. Lin Qile peered into the campus, seeing a running track twice the size of Qunshan No. 1 Middle School’s, and public phone booths at the edge of the track—
“Yu Qiao! Wait for me!”
A boy rushed past Lin Qile, brushing her shoulder.
Hearing this voice, Lin Qile was startled. She turned to see the running boy, and though he wore an unfamiliar uniform, she recognized him instantly.
Du Shang didn’t notice Lin Qile. He ran breathlessly past everyone, heading towards a newsstand outside the school.
About a dozen tall boys were gathered around the newsstand, some buying water, others eating popsicles. Only one boy was using the public phone.
Seeing Du Shang approach, he extended his hand, and Du Shang gave him a handful of coins.
Lin Qile watched him.
It was Yu Qiao.
Perhaps because there were too many strangers around, and Yu Qiao and Du Shang wore the same uniforms as these strangers, Lin Qile wanted to walk over but found her feet rooted to the spot.
“Jiang Qiaoxi, the homeroom teacher didn’t say anything to you, did he?”
A boy’s voice suddenly came from right behind Lin Qile.
“He can’t give you trouble now, with the competition the day after tomorrow.”
“Teacher Liu didn’t give Jiang Qiaoxi any trouble,” came a girl’s soft, pleasant voice. “He just asked about that letter.”
“What’s there to ask about,” the first boy said. “That girl wrote nonsense in her letter, what does it have to do with Jiang Qiaoxi!”
A group of people walked past Lin Qile. She quietly raised her head to look.
Many people surrounded that boy, everyone talking, but he remained unusually quiet. He wore the same blue and white uniform as the others and had grown much taller than Lin Qile remembered, almost unrecognizable.
“Jiang Qiaoxi…” Lin Qile unconsciously called out his name.