Yu Qiao, Du Shang, and a group of others were downstairs, taking advantage of free activity time to launch a new “raid” on the principal’s office. Lin Qile stood on Yu Qiao and Du Shang’s hands, wobbling as she told them that yesterday she learned the meaning of Jiang Qiaoxi’s name, which came from a poem. But she couldn’t remember the exact verse: “It’s a particularly beautiful poem!”
Lin Qile’s small hands stretched upward, barely reaching the windowsill of the principal’s office.
Suddenly, the window opened slightly from the inside. No one except Lin Qile noticed the change.
Du Shang was still muttering below: “Beautiful? Even if it is, it’s still like ours, just picked up—”
Jiang Qiaoxi pushed the window open, looking down. His gaze first met Lin Qile’s large eyes, still red from crying, then moved downward to see Cai Fangyuan, Yu Qiao, and Du Shang.
Cai Fangyuan blinked in disbelief. Du Shang, supporting Lin Qile’s shoe, had just been speaking ill of Jiang Qiaoxi. Seeing Jiang Qiaoxi appear ghost-like from above, he instinctively stepped back: “I… I didn’t…”
Lin Qile, perched so high on their hands, was already unsteady. Her body suddenly tipped backward. “Ah!” Her eyes widened in shock.
She thought she was going to fall from the second floor to the first, breaking her leg, cracking her head, and turning into a pink mess. But just as she began to fall, a force from above grabbed the hand that had been touching the window sill.
Lin Qile felt a pain in her arm. She looked up with effort to see Jiang Qiaoxi bracing his left hand on the balcony, leaning out his upper body to grab her with his right hand. Jiang Qiaoxi furrowed his brow, staring at her face as if trying to understand—
Lin Qile had just fought with Qin Yeyun, scratching Qin Yeyun’s face while Qin Yeyun had left bloody marks on her neck.
Her two pigtails were askew. As Cai Fangyuan would say, Lin Qile was just an idiot.
“She can’t even tie her hair!” Cai Fangyuan had told Jiang Qiaoxi. “Look at her every time she fights at school, her two braids are crooked, completely asymmetrical. Even Yu Qiao can braid her hair more symmetrically than she can! You think she’s a girl?”
The old principal had intended to return midway to check on Jiang Qiaoxi’s math test progress. They said he was the top math prodigy in the province, and the principal, having worked at the small Qunshan Power Plant Primary School his whole life, had indeed never seen such a student. He pushed open the door to the principal’s office, not even entering the inner room when he heard a commotion outside the window.
The window suddenly opened wide. The old principal didn’t even look towards it, his eyes fixed on those below.
Cai Fangyuan and Du Shang still stood stupidly at the base of the wall. Yu Qiao, who had his hands raised doing who-knows-what, suddenly lowered them and stepped back.
“It’s you lot again!” The old principal wanted to shout but, mindful of Jiang Qiaoxi still taking the test inside, he gritted his teeth and lowered his voice, “Stand still right there.”
Yu Qiao cursed under his breath, turned, and darted away along the path, disappearing. Cai Fangyuan, seeing the principal vanish from the window and likely heading downstairs, quickly ran off too.
Only Du Shang stood helplessly, stopping a few steps away, afraid the old principal would come down to catch him, yet feeling it wasn’t right to leave Lin Qile dangling trembling from the second floor.
“Cherry!” he called out fearfully, “Jump down!”
Lin Qile hung in midair, her brows slightly furrowed, kicking her cloth shoes: “You… don’t run away! Wait for me!”
She wasn’t tall, and her feet were still a considerable distance from the ground floor. Falling would at least result in a hard landing on her bottom.
Jiang Qiaoxi was already straining to hold Lin Qile like this and couldn’t possibly pull her into the window.
Moreover, the old principal hadn’t left. He was making a phone call in the outer room, probably to the Dean of Studies, and could come in at any moment.
Lin Qile looked up pitifully at Jiang Qiaoxi. Jiang Qiaoxi first looked at her, then at the path outside, then at how high the principal’s office was.
Jiang Qiaoxi gripped the window frame tightly with his other hand and suddenly stepped onto the windowsill using the radiator.
Just like when Lin Qile had suddenly flown in from outside the window before.
Lin Qile didn’t see anything. She only felt a moment of darkness as she fell, falling for less than a second before a hand pressed against the back of her head, and then she landed softly.
The distance from the second floor to the first was too short; they landed almost immediately, leaving no time for wings to grow from Lin Qile’s back during the fall.
When Lin Qile closed her eyes, it was all black. When she opened them, it was still black. Looking closer, she realized it wasn’t ordinary darkness, but the black of Jiang Qiaoxi’s jacket.
Du Shang stood a few steps away, staring wide-eyed at Jiang Qiaoxi, the transfer student, in a dumbfounded state.
Lin Qile was about to scramble up and help Jiang Qiaoxi to his feet. But Jiang Qiaoxi pushed himself up and started running, tightly gripping Lin Qile’s hand as he did.
Jiang Qiaoxi knew that he wasn’t unique to anyone. Not to his parents, teachers, friends, or even to a small girl with limited worldly experience in Qunshan city.
It turned out Yu Qiao hadn’t run away. He and Cai Fangyuan had run out shouting, circling the playground, luring the Dean of Studies and the old principal far out onto the field to catch them.
Lin Qile was completely unscathed. When she encountered the Dean of Studies, she even received praise: “Lin Yingtao behaved well today! She didn’t follow Yu Qiao and Cai Fangyuan’s bad example.” She got a box of alcohol swabs from the school infirmary, though she wasn’t quite sure how to use them. Faced with the small scrape on the back of Jiang Qiaoxi’s head, she felt timid and flustered.
Jiang Qiaoxi hadn’t thought it was a big deal and it didn’t hurt much, but her dabbing made it ten times more painful.
“Don’t… don’t wipe it anymore,” Jiang Qiaoxi negotiated with her.
Du Shang watched them, still shaken. He opened his backpack and took out a band-aid; his bag was full of them. Du Shang walked up to Jiang Qiaoxi and said, “Last time I fell from a three-story high tree! Nothing happened to me!” He quickly tore open the band-aid and handed it to Jiang Qiaoxi, generously saying, “Here, put it on quick!”
Lin Qile sat at her desk with a dejected face, her pigtails still askew. PE class was over, but she still looked very remorseful.
When Yu Qiao and Cai Fangyuan returned from being scolded on the playground and saw her like that, they asked what was wrong. Lin Qile looked up at them, shook her head, and said nothing.
Yu Qiao found this strange; it was rare for Lin Qile to keep something to herself.
The old principal walked to the door of Class 1, Grade 4, and looked around inside: “Jiang Qiaoxi, how did you come out while taking the test?”
“I finished, Principal,” Jiang Qiaoxi said, putting down the book in his hand and standing up.
Cai Fangyuan watched as Jiang Qiaoxi followed the principal out the door, the two walking towards the principal’s office. Cai Fangyuan also snuck out, crouching at the corner of the stairwell.
Afraid of being discovered, yet unable to resist peeking frequently. The principal’s office was at the end of the corridor, and for Cai Fangyuan, that big door was just too difficult to enter.
Lin Qile also slowly came out of the classroom. She crouched beside Cai Fangyuan, hugging her knees and burying her head in them.
Her reaction confused Yu Qiao, who had come out to play ball, even more. Yu Qiao asked Du Shang, “What’s wrong with her now?”
The door to the principal’s office opened.
Cai Fangyuan watched as Jiang Qiaoxi came out.
A book, its cover wrapped in calendar pages, was tucked inconspicuously by Jiang Qiaoxi into his math test papers as he brought it out. Judging by Jiang Qiaoxi’s expression, he didn’t seem to fully understand what it was or think taking it was a big deal.
Cai Fangyuan and several boys from the class were red-faced with excitement, surrounding Jiang Qiaoxi. Lin Qile stood up too. She didn’t know when Cai Fangyuan had told Jiang Qiaoxi about this, how Jiang Qiaoxi had agreed, how he had so easily found the book, and even avoided the old principal.
To show gratitude, Cai Fangyuan wanted to lend Jiang Qiaoxi his beloved photo album of a female celebrity. He boasted, “Even kids in the provincial capital rarely have this! I bought it from Hong Kong! Original and authentic!”
Jiang Qiaoxi listened, thought for a moment, and then accepted it. He put the book into his square leather schoolbag, along with the latest sports newspaper Yu Qiao had given him.
This schoolbag, since coming into Jiang Qiaoxi’s possession, was carrying extracurricular books and newspapers for the first time. Even Jiang Qiaoxi himself felt a bit unaccustomed to it.
At lunchtime dismissal, Jiang Qiaoxi walked home with Yu Qiao and the other three. Lin Qile stood on tiptoe at the school gate’s small shop, buying ice cream. She turned back and asked, “Jiang Qiaoxi, do you want ice cream?”
At first, Jiang Qiaoxi didn’t realize she was asking him. Cai Fangyuan answered from the side, “Yes!”
Lin Qile turned back, her two crooked pigtails swinging on her shoulders.
“Hey, why didn’t you hear when I said I wanted some?” Cai Fangyuan asked, puzzled.
Lin Qile walked beside them, happily eating her small milk popsicle. Her cherry-like lips were smeared with milk, and she licked them herself, finding it very sweet. She said to Cai Fangyuan, “If you want to eat, can’t you buy it yourself!”
Cai Fangyuan walked beside Jiang Qiaoxi, glaring at her.
As they reached the gate of the Qunshan construction site dormitory, someone on a bicycle came towards them, passing by Jiang Qiaoxi at high speed, nearly hitting Lin Qile behind him.
Lin Qile managed to dodge, but her half-eaten ice cream fell to the ground. Lin Qile couldn’t help but shout, “Don’t you watch where you’re going!”
Jiang Qiaoxi heard the commotion and turned around, just as the cyclist made a U-turn and rode back from outside the gate. This person had a thin, long face with prominent cheekbones and a rather large nose. Especially when he smiled, it seemed his face was full of angles in every direction.
A description suddenly popped into Jiang Qiaoxi’s mind: “A much uglier version of Andy Lau.”
Cai Fangyuan, who had been walking straight ahead, saw the man ride back and unconsciously hid behind Yu Qiao on Jiang Qiaoxi’s other side.
Yu Qiao looked up at Wei Yong on the bicycle.
Wei Yong circled, looking at the timid little chubby boy, then at Lin Qile who turned her head away ignoring him. Wei Yong also glanced at Jiang Qiaoxi, probably noticing this unfamiliar face. He then rode away.
Lin Qile ran home with her backpack, and the first thing she did was sit in front of the mirror, asking her mom to rebraid her pigtails. Lin’s mother, just off work, saw her daughter’s hair and asked, “Who did you fight with again?”
Lin Qile took out the broken amber from her dress pocket and matched the broken ends on her leg. She responded to her mother’s questioning with a coquettish tone: “The string on my amber broke…”
During lunch, Lin Qile, sporting two freshly braided pigtails, asked her father, “Why isn’t Jiang Qiaoxi coming for lunch?”
Lin’s father, chewing on a jujube steamed bun, replied, “He can’t come for every meal. He went to eat in the city with his father.”
During naptime, Lin Qile lay on her small bed.
She placed both hands beside her pillow, closed her eyes, and tried hard to sleep.
But she tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep.
When Jiang Qiaoxi first appeared, he seemed unwilling to say a word to Lin Qile. His skin was so white, too pure, like a character from a comic book—a drawn white, not a real white. No matter how Lin Qile imagined it, she couldn’t picture such skin getting scraped on the ground and bleeding.
Would characters bleed if a comic book was torn apart?
When Lin Qile first tried to hold Jiang Qiaoxi’s hand, his hand was a fist, unwilling to open for a long time. But when Jiang Qiaoxi reached out to grab Lin Qile, his hand opened, gripping her tightly, so tight it hurt her hand.
Lin Qile sat up in her small bed.
The bedroom was dark. Her parents were napping on the double bed on the other side of the large wardrobe.
No one knew what Lin Qile was thinking.
Lin Qile lifted the curtain beside her bed, squinting at the bright sunlight outside.
Lin Qile, wearing a red scarf around her neck and her hair rebraided by her now-awake mother, shouldered her small backpack and walked aimlessly along the walls of the Qunshan construction site dormitories.
School wouldn’t start until 2 PM, and now at 1 PM, in the scorching midday sun, everyone else was hiding indoors. Only Lin Qile was willing to face the burning heat. The streets were empty; standing at an intersection and looking north, south, east, and west, Lin Qile was the only person in sight.
This was her “kingdom.”
Lin Qile walked along the walls, wandering alone through the Qunshan construction site like a king inspecting their city and territory. She passed rows of clotheslines full of men’s tank tops and work clothes, walked past the construction site library with a sign reading “Three new sets of ‘Complete Works of Lu Xun’ available, workers welcome to borrow,” and arrived at the abandoned, weed-covered construction site fountain.
Lin Qile crouched by the fountain, carefully observing the water striders skimming across the surface.
She circled to the back of someone else’s yard, standing on tiptoe to see how many sunflower seeds this year’s sunflowers had produced.
One, two, three…
Was it more or less than last year?
Lin Qile walked past Jiang Qiaoxi’s house, looking around, but Jiang Qiaoxi was still eating in the city, not back yet.
Lin Qile couldn’t understand why, no matter where she went, she always ended up in front of Jiang Qiaoxi’s house, unable to resist looking up at it.
Why did she feel unhappy just because she hadn’t seen Jiang Qiaoxi at lunch?
These questions were too profound for Lin Qile to figure out.
Du Shang, having overslept from his nap, was preparing to go to school. He shuffled out of his house in slippers to take out the trash.
Looking up, he saw Lin Qile sitting alone on the steps in front of the Workers’ Club, lost in thought.
Lin Qile was a peculiar little girl. Duchamp found her “strange” because he could never quite figure out what was going on in her mind. It was genuinely difficult to guess.