“I am not without my delusions. In the occasional moments when our paths crossed. And in dreams.”

— Sherry Lab, The Ninth Year Past the Dream

On Friday afternoon, the first full run-through of The Xi’an Incident was held in a spare classroom borrowed from the old teaching block.

Because so many students were involved, the opening scene — the student march — was rehearsed first.

Xia Li had a part in this scene: a student, no lines to speak of, just joining in with the crowd as they chanted slogans.

After two run-throughs of the scene, once the timing and delivery had been worked out with the actor playing Zhang Xueliang, it was more or less approved. Most of the students were dismissed.

The remaining cast, with heavier roles, stayed on to work through the play scene by scene, identifying problems as they went.

Xia Li and Lin Qingxiao went to the canteen together, picked up dinner for Xu Ning, and then came back to help.

They were in the middle of rehearsing the scene where Yang Hucheng and Zhang Xueliang privately debate whether to stage a military intervention against Chiang Kai-shek, when the door opened and someone came in.

Xia Li was sitting by the classroom window, sharing a plate of stir-fried noodles with Lin Qingxiao — hungry enough to be eating rather quickly. She looked up at the sound.

And nearly choked.

Wang Chen, who was playing Song Ziwen, had made a fashionably late entrance. And walking in alongside him was Yan Sishi.

Wang Chen had been strong-armed into the role of Song Ziwen by Tao Shiyue — he also wore glasses, and with his fringe swept back in a slick style, he bore a passing resemblance to the historical figure.

Wang Chen looked around at the actor playing Tao Shiyue’s Song Meiling. “I haven’t missed my scene yet, have I?”

“No,” Tao Shiyue said absently — but her eyes had already slid toward Yan Sishi. She smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear, visibly delighted. “Yan Sishi, what are you doing here?”

“I asked him to come help me fix my pronunciation,” Wang Chen said.

The brief interruption settled, and the actors playing Yang Hucheng and Zhang Xueliang picked up where they had left off.

The boy playing Zhang Xueliang had terrible rhythm with his lines — flat and toneless, like reciting a text from memory. But there wasn’t much to be done about it: he was the best-looking and tallest of the seven boys in the class, the undisputed class heartthrob, chosen from among eleven candidates.

The boy playing Yang Hucheng was Xiao Yulong, who had campaigned tirelessly for the role, petitioning Xu Ning and Zhu Xuan repeatedly. He had even memorized all his lines in advance. Xu Ning had refused to play favorites and organized a formal audition — what she called a “casting session” — calling a few boys to try the part. In the end, Xiao Yulong genuinely had the best delivery, so the role was his.

Now the two were running lines. The late-arriving Wang Chen brought Yan Sishi over to a seat to one side.

For ease of rehearsal, the center of the classroom had been cleared, with chairs arranged in a row along the windows.

Wang Chen and Yan Sishi sat down — one empty chair between them and the girls.

Xia Li stole a quick glance sideways, then immediately set aside her earlier way of eating. Even though Yan Sishi couldn’t possibly be paying any attention to her, she found herself sitting up straighter without meaning to — lifting the noodles in small, delicate bites with her chopsticks, the very picture of someone who had completely lost her appetite.

She knew she was being a little ridiculous and pressed her lips into a small, self-deprecating smile.

Xu Ning had set a modest standard for this run-through — just being off-book would do — so she didn’t pick apart every detail. The next set of actors were called up.

Xiao Yulong drifted past Xia Li and Lin Qingxiao on his way by, and said brightly: “As the director’s assistants, what do you think? Was I okay?”

Xia Li was fairly certain the question was directed at her — he was looking at her. “Well… you had all your lines memorized, that came across really well.”

What she couldn’t say was that she had spent the entire scene watching Yan Sishi, two seats away, and had not absorbed a single word of the performance.

“Great, that’s a relief!” Xiao Yulong laughed and rubbed his nose, then wandered off to an empty seat nearby.

Several scenes later, it was the turn of Wang Chen’s Song Ziwen, Tao Shiyue’s Song Meiling, and “Chiang Kai-shek” — deliberating whether to enter negotiations with the Communist representatives.

Xia Li had finished her dinner by then. She used the break to toss her rubbish, then sat with the script in hand, making a show of watching the rehearsal attentively.

Out of the corner of her right eye, she watched Yan Sishi. He was sitting with a trace of casual ease, looking faintly tired. One leg crossed over the other, a script resting on his knee, a red ballpoint pen in hand — and whenever Wang Chen delivered a line, he’d make a small note on the page.

He was wearing a white down jacket today, with a white sweater underneath. The light from the room reflected off the pale fabric and cast a kind of clean, snowy brightness across his features.

The moment Wang Chen finished his scene, he went straight to Yan Sishi. “Were there any mistakes in my pronunciation just now?”

Yan Sishi pointed to a spot on the script. “This one — I emphasized it yesterday. You’re still putting the stress in the wrong place.”

“…I got it wrong again?” Wang Chen scratched his head.

“Anything else?”

“Every single ‘feel’ you read as ‘fill.'”

“…I honestly can’t hear the difference.”

“The vowels are different. It’s like this…” Yan Sishi marked the phonetic symbols on the paper, and Wang Chen leaned in to look.

When he was done annotating, Yan Sishi went on to explain the difference between the vowel sounds in the two words in more detail.

Bit by bit, this corner of the room turned into a small pronunciation clinic. Other students started to take notice. Xiao Yulong was the first to drift over. “Yan — could you listen to whether this sentence’s connected speech is right?”

With Xiao Yulong leading the way, more students gathered, one after another — asking about stress patterns, asking how to get the “th” consonant right, asking how to reduce their accent in the shortest possible time…

It genuinely surprised Xia Li.

Yan Sishi — who hadn’t bothered to act in the drama, who habitually stayed outside the noise, who had spent an entire KTV evening drifting apart from everyone else — when confronted with this sudden convergence of questions, showed not the slightest trace of impatience.

He wasn’t warm about it, and he certainly had nothing in common with the phrase “tireless in teaching.”

Only with Wang Chen, who was familiar to him, did he go into layer-by-layer analysis — getting into fine detail, following every thread.

But for everyone else who asked, he answered. Every time.

Xia Li stood holding her script, hesitating for a long time. The corner of the paper bent and crumpled between her fingers; a faint, damp warmth gathered in her palm.

In the end, she could not bring herself to go over and join the group.

It seemed to come from some delicate mixture of pride and embarrassment:

She didn’t want the person she liked to hear her imperfect English pronunciation.

The same way one might feel about scuffed white sneakers, or a fringe that had gone slightly oily after skipping a wash, or an accidental small belch after eating too much…

Small, private embarrassments — the kind you hid away when you were around a boy you liked.

Over the following rehearsals, Yan Sishi sometimes came with Wang Chen, and sometimes didn’t.

Whenever he did appear, everyone made sure to grab the chance to ask him to correct their lines.

It wasn’t possible to dramatically improve one’s spoken English in such a short time — but even the most tone-deaf person, if they imitated the sounds often enough, could get a handful of scripted lines to sound nearly right.

While rehearsals moved steadily forward, Lin Qingxiao and the arts committee were simultaneously sorting out the hair and makeup plans.

Xia Li positioned herself as a flexible resource — wherever Xu Ning and Lin Qingxiao needed an extra pair of hands, she’d go.

Before she knew it, December 29th had arrived — a Friday — the day of the New Year’s Eve gala.

The teachers, in an unusual display of generosity, gave up the last class of the afternoon to let everyone get ready for the evening.

The spare classroom where rehearsals had been held became the dressing room and backstage area.

Lin Qingxiao and the arts committee pushed three desks together, set up makeup mirrors, and started doing everyone’s makeup one by one.

In a spare moment, Lin Qingxiao called Xia Li over and asked her to check whether the students who had gone to collect the costumes had arrived.

The costumes had been reserved in advance from a rental shop.

Chucheng was a small city, and shops that rented period costumes were scarce. Lin Qingxiao and the arts committee had combed through what little there was to find, and even then barely managed to pull together a complete set. Republican-era military uniforms, however, were nowhere to be found for rent — in the end, class funds were pooled to buy a few sets online.

Xia Li called the student in charge of collecting the costumes and found that he had already arrived at the school gate.

“Then could you wait for the clothes and check them in once they arrive?” Lin Qingxiao asked. “I can’t trust anyone else with it.”

Xia Li gave an “okay” sign. “Focus on the makeup. I’ve got this.”

When the students returned with the costumes, Xia Li went to help count them — and found they were six Republican-era female student uniforms short.

She asked what had happened. The student in charge explained: “The shop owner said some girls from the vocational school rented those six the day before yesterday to take photos. She said they’d be returned by noon today, but they still haven’t brought them back.”

One of the boys beside him added: “We had a whole argument with the shop owner — how can she rent things out that are already reserved for us? That’s completely irresponsible…”

Xia Li cut off his venting, which was accomplishing nothing right now. “Do you have the shop owner’s number?”

The student in charge rubbed the back of his head.

“…Which shop are the missing ones from?” Xia Li asked, exasperated.

“Rain Lattice.”

Xia Li handed over the costume check-in list to a classmate known for her careful attention to detail, then went to find Lin Qingxiao to get the Rain Lattice shop owner’s number.

She called the owner, got the phone number the vocational school girls had registered under, and reached them.

The vocational school girls weren’t willing to bring the costumes over — they said they were about to head out together to see a film.

After a fair amount of back-and-forth, the most they agreed to was leaving the six sets of clothing with the dormitory supervisor, for Xia Li to come and pick up herself.

Rather than interrupt Lin Qingxiao, Xia Li went quietly to find the class president, Zhu Xuan, to explain the situation.

Zhu Xuan checked the time. “…Are you going to take a taxi? Traffic will be terrible right now. Can you make it back in time?”

“I’ll go check first,” Xia Li said, also checking the time. “If I genuinely can’t make it, we’ll just have to have six fewer people on stage.”

But she didn’t want that to happen.

This was likely the last big group memory they’d all share before senior year. The six girls who missed the stage would be so disappointed.

“All right then,” Zhu Xuan said. “Keep your phone on — if you can’t make it back, I’ll figure something else out.”

“Got it.”

Xia Li had been running around so much she was already sweaty. She went to the corner where their belongings were piled, grabbed her down jacket, threw it on, and ran for the door.

On the way down the stairs, she nearly collided with someone coming up.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said quickly, lurching to a stop — and then realized it was Yan Sishi, coming up alongside Wang Chen.

The jolt of recognition only made things more flustered. She said “sorry” twice more.

Yan Sishi had one hand on the stair railing. He looked at her. “What’s happened?”

He had clearly noticed that she was flushed and out of breath.

Xia Li gave a quick summary: “Six costumes are missing. I’m going to pick them up now…”

“Will you make it in time?”

“Not sure…” Even with Yan Sishi standing right in front of her, Xia Li had no time for pleasantries. She started moving down the stairs as she talked. “I have to go. Wang Chen, hurry upstairs and get into your costume…”

“Wait,” Yan Sishi said.

Xia Li stopped.

Yan Sishi took two steps down to stand on the same step as her.

“Is there no one from your class who can go with you?”

“They all need to be getting their makeup done and waiting for their cue… I’ll just go by myself, it won’t take long.”

Yan Sishi was quiet for a moment. “My family had someone come to drop something off — the car left not long ago. If you need, I can call and have them come back and drive you.”

The old teaching block. Above them, a single pale, dim bulb cast light with the quality of old film.

Because of the difference in height, Yan Sishi was looking at her with his head slightly lowered, his face half in shadow, the light falling soft and gray across his features.

This was the kind of scene that only happened in stories — the kind that pressed deep into the heart and stayed.

Xia Li could not easily describe what she felt in that moment. She had been trying her best to appear composed, not wanting to worry Lin Qingxiao — but inside she was both anxious and frightened.

Yan Sishi’s words were like warmth arriving in the middle of a snowstorm.

“…Then I’m sorry to trouble you.” She felt something catch faintly in her throat, a subtle tightening.

Yan Sishi took out his phone, turned slightly away, and made a call.

When he finished, he said to Wang Chen: “Go on up ahead.”

Wang Chen pushed up his glasses, nodded, and went upstairs.

Yan Sishi turned back to Xia Li. “Let’s go. I’ll come with you.”

The words were as calm as ever. But in that moment, Xia Li found them unbearably tender.

Which was almost cruel.