·

The falling ribbons and the deep, pressing night blurred together and obscured his features, making them impossible to see clearly. Li Kuiyi only knew that he was smiling — languid and self-satisfied, with a kind of guileless, wild charm.

She was briefly stunned. Unable to tell whether this was a prank or something else entirely, her thoughts drifted for a moment, and she found herself wondering: he does not actually like me, does he?

He walked toward her. The smile gradually faded, leaving only a light, casual curl at the corners of his lips. His eyes dropped to meet hers. Then, without warning, he reached out and plucked a ribbon that had stuck to her scarf, and before she could react, he had already bent down to collect the ribbons scattered across the ground, bundling them into a ball and lobbing it at a trash can from a distance. It went in with a clean thwack.

He turned to look at her again, eyes particularly bright, wearing the expression of a small dog waiting to be praised.

Li Kuiyi could not decide whether she ought to commend him for caring about the environment or for his aim. A thousand possible words tangled with a certain puzzlement, and in the end everything condensed into two: “What for?”

He Youyuan understood she was asking why he had set off party ribbons aimed at her. He answered lightly: “New Year’s Eve.”

Right — in a few more hours it would be a new year. Li Kuiyi quietly let out a breath of relief. Good — it was for New Year’s Eve, not because he liked her. Which made sense, really — how would he like her? Whenever they met, they ended up bickering; either he was making her unhappy or she was making him unhappy. They were nothing but a pair of old adversaries.

Fine — it was New Year’s, and he could do whatever he liked. Li Kuiyi could not be bothered to argue with him anymore. She offered a simple: “Well then — happy new year.”

She turned to go, but he called after her again: “Hey — do your notes come with after-sales service?”

“After-sales service?” She turned back, puzzled.

He said, completely matter-of-fact: “What if there are parts I don’t understand?”

He’s quite hopeless, Li Kuiyi thought.

In principle, that should not happen — she had written the notes as clearly and in as much detail as possible precisely because she intended to sell them. But she also could not tell him there was no after-sales service — if he went around telling people, her notes would be impossible to sell.

“If there’s anything you genuinely don’t understand, take a photo and message me on the messaging app.”

He seemed quite satisfied with this. He nodded. “Alright, fair enough.”

As she walked away, she thought she heard, faintly behind her, the words “happy new year” — low-voiced enough that she almost thought it was her imagination. Her step hesitated for just a fraction of a second, but she did not turn around. She walked straight on.

It was not until New Year’s Day evening that Li Kuiyi brought her arts-sciences preference form out for Li Jianye to sign. Xu Manhua was not home — after dinner she had taken her younger brother to the plaza outside the compound to play. Li Kuiyi had deliberately chosen this moment. The reason was simple: she did not know how her parents would feel about her choosing the humanities stream, and there was every chance they would disapprove. But if Li Jianye disapproved, he would not argue with her — whereas Xu Manhua would.

Li Jianye would certainly not argue with her, because there was simply too much distance between them. When they were left alone in the same space together, Li Kuiyi could feel a faint, diffuse awkwardness hanging in the air between them.

As for how to explain things to Xu Manhua when she returned — well, that would be Li Jianye’s problem to sort out.

Li Jianye studied the form for quite a while before looking up, an expression of some uncertainty on his face. “You’re choosing humanities?”

Li Kuiyi gave a quiet yes.

He seemed as though he wanted to say something, but nothing came out. Instead he just scratched his chin, his gaze dropping back to the form, reading the words on it from beginning to end once more. After a long pause, he nodded and said, half to himself: “Humanities is fine too. A girl — come back and become a teacher, or take the civil service exam, both are stable options.”

Li Kuiyi inwardly scoffed. She had nothing against teachers or civil servants as career choices — what she resented was the assumption that a girl ought to aim for something safe and settled. And besides, she had no intention of coming back here. But she said nothing, only extended her arm and held out the pen. Li Jianye took it — with a brief hesitation — and signed his name in the parent signature field.

Done. Task complete.

She went to bed early that evening — to be frank, she simply did not want to face Xu Manhua. To her surprise, when Xu Manhua came home, she did not come to speak to Li Kuiyi about the arts-sciences choice at all.

Li Kuiyi speculated: perhaps Li Jianye’s “girls should have stability” theory had been enough to sway Xu Manhua; perhaps Xu Manhua did not care what stream she chose; or perhaps Li Jianye had not yet told Xu Manhua anything.

She found herself feeling rather contradictory. On one hand, she did not want her parents interfering too much in her decisions. On the other hand, when they truly did not interfere, she could not help wondering: was it because there was no love, and so there were no expectations either?

It was like the question — “When you grow up, do you want to go to Tsinghua or Peking University?” — that she had never once been asked by her family, even though her grades were good enough that the neighbors all praised her as a natural candidate for either school.

The next day back at school, Li Kuiyi handed her preference form in to Xia Leyi.

“So Chen Guoming failed to persuade you,” Xia Leyi said with a smile. “After he took you away that day, we were all betting on whether he’d talk you back into the sciences — I won. I knew I wouldn’t be wrong about you. The last time I showed you your birth chart at the karaoke place, I said it already — your moon falls in Aquarius, and in the first house. People like that have the stubbornest ears in the world —”

Li Kuiyi watched her launch into a flowing discourse on birth charts and could not help smiling along, while thinking privately: but the birth time I gave you that day was something I made up on the spot.

“Are there any other students in our class who chose the humanities?” she asked, once Xia Leyi had finished.

“So far just you and Zhao Shilei.”

Zhao Shilei — the boy who had represented the class in the English speech competition alongside Xia Leyi. His entrance exam ranking had placed him in the middle of the class, though for some reason, his subsequent exams had not gone well. Still, his mathematics and English scores had held up consistently; if he chose humanities, those would serve as useful advantages.

Xia Leyi dropped her voice: “If he chose the sciences, he definitely wouldn’t get into the experimental class. That’s probably why he switched.”

That was right — everyone wanted the experimental class. Even the humanities experimental class, though not as prestigious as the sciences experimental class, still carried the name “experimental class,” and with it came a tilt of school resources: stronger teaching staff, more tutoring opportunities, more awards and honors nominations.

If you could not get into the experimental class, you were better off in the sciences — at least by Yi High School’s rules. That was exactly Fang Zhixiao’s reasoning: by grades alone, her humanities scores outperformed her sciences scores, and she despised mathematics with a passion. But her grades were not strong enough to get her into the humanities experimental class, while the regular humanities classes were too weak. So she had chosen the regular sciences class instead.

Preference form submitted, Li Kuiyi returned to her seat. She turned to look out the window. The small pond outside had a thin skin of ice across it, and a few patches of unmelted snow were tucked against the grass roots and the bases of the trees, like hems of white lace. Even though the garden had been planted mostly with plants that stayed green through all four seasons, in winter they lacked the vitality of other days — looking grey and still and somehow rigid.

From now on, she would no longer be able to hear the rustle and whisper of new leaves growing there.

Perhaps she should not feel so melancholy, but the moment of goodbye had arrived. Li Kuiyi glanced at Zhou Fanghua beside her. She sat in silence, eyes fixed straight ahead at her textbook but not reading aloud — on other mornings she was always the one reading during the early morning reading period.

How does one say goodbye?

In student life, the most common way of saying goodbye was to say nothing at all, and let the bond dissolve naturally. It did not even require graduation — a single reassignment of classes, a single change of seats, was enough to send two people who had walked the same path veering off in different directions. After that, when you met again, it would be a nod and a smile, and then you would pass each other by.

She and Zhou Fanghua had known each other less than half a year. Their friendship was not particularly deep, yet they had each spoken a few genuine words to the other. What had been invested with sincerity — though as fragile as a silk thread, easily snapped if you steeled yourself to break it — was also soft enough that you could not help wanting to shelter it a little longer.

Li Kuiyi did not know what to do, so she took out her Chinese textbook and began quietly reciting “Encountering Sorrow.”

Today happened to be her group’s turn for classroom duty.

Usually, it was Li Kuiyi and Zhou Fanghua who took out the trash together. They were happy to take on this task, since it meant a lap outside, some conversation, a quiet stroll. But Zhou Fanghua had left her chemistry workbook back at the dormitory — and the cantankerous little chemistry teacher had said he would go over problems from the workbook during the evening study session — so she had to rush back to the dormitory to retrieve it during dinner before the session started.

Qi Yu said: “I’ll go take the trash out with you then.”

Li Kuiyi felt a little awkward. Qi Yu was technically also in their group, but he had already swept the floor; and besides, after what He Youyuan had said about liking and not liking, things between her and Qi Yu had become somewhat uneasy.

“…Thank you.” She could hardly say no.

They each held one handle of the large blue trash can and made their way slowly toward the disposal area. All along the way, neither spoke. Li Kuiyi could not understand what was happening — it was one thing for her to be quiet, but why was Qi Yu quiet too? Had He Youyuan told him what she had said? Could Qi Yu actually be misunderstanding something?

But her instincts told her that He Youyuan was not the sort to have a loose tongue.

Once the trash was emptied, they made their way back to the base of the school building and went to rinse their hands at the sinks. The winter water was bitterly cold. Li Kuiyi washed her hands, dried them with a paper towel, and could not help raising them to her mouth and breathing warm air onto them. At that moment, she heard Qi Yu say quietly: “Can’t you choose the sciences?”

“What?” She looked up at him, startled, not quite following the meaning behind his words.

“Never mind.” He offered no explanation.

He had not looked at her the whole time. After speaking, he only lowered his eyes, picked up the empty trash can, and walked back to the classroom alone.

Li Kuiyi turned his words over carefully in her mind. Why did he want her to choose the sciences? If she switched to humanities, he would be the top sciences student — surely that was a good thing.

Unless — he did not want a first place that had been handed to him. He wanted to defeat her fair and square.

Li Kuiyi thought it was entirely possible. She herself was competitive. If she put herself in his position and imagined that the rival who had always been ahead of her had suddenly switched to a different track — she would resent them for it.

Goodness — Qi Yu resented her. No wonder he did not want to talk to her.

Something in Li Kuiyi’s competitive spirit flared immediately. The end-of-term exams were coming. This would be their last chance to test themselves against each other. Even if he resented her for it, she would not let him surpass her.

She bore down with a single-minded drive and worked harder than usual.

It was then that she discovered the benefit of having so carefully organized her notes — reviewing them was almost effortless, and her efficiency soared. After some thought, she had a full set of notes printed out — Chinese, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry, and biology — and gave them to Zhou Fanghua. She was not sure whether it could count as a gift. She just said: “I think they work pretty well.”

Zhou Fanghua accepted them, and smiled at her — the same shy smile as the first time they had met.

Time moves quickly in busy days. More than ten days went by in the blink of an eye. Everyone was quietly working away; the only disruption was He Youyuan pestering her on the messaging app from time to time, asking about this and that.

At least his questions were all related to studying, and Li Kuiyi answered them patiently.

But sometimes she got genuinely annoyed — when the problems he asked about were too easy — and she told him so.

Li Kuiyi: He Youyuan, you’re in Year One already. Have you not yet developed the instinct to move all the unknowns to one side of the equation?!

He Youyuan: [image]

He Youyuan: What do you mean I haven’t? Look, didn’t I move them to one side? Then what?

Li Kuiyi: Then take the logarithm of both sides simultaneously, obviously! Isn’t it obvious?!

He Youyuan: Where is it obvious?

She was done. Li Kuiyi was fairly sure she could have worked that out with her toes.

The end-of-term exams lasted three days. Once they were over, they had one day off, and then students were called back to school for supplementary lessons. This made the whole thing feel oddly unreal — as if it had been nothing more than a slightly longer weekly test.

New Year was drawing closer by the day.

These days the New Year felt less festive than when she was small, but it was still something to look forward to — if nothing else, it meant a few days of rest after a year of busyness. Li Jianye closed up the glasses shop on the twenty-second day of the twelfth lunar month and headed back to Wenxi County with Xu Manhua and her younger brother, planning to be home for the “small new year” festival.

On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth lunar month, after one final day of lessons and the distribution of nine volumes of Holiday Training workbooks, the students were at last released for the winter holiday.

Li Kuiyi stopped by the office to collect everyone’s weekly journal notebooks. Liu Xinzhao chatted with her for quite a while — still on the topic of humanities versus sciences — not arguing against her choice, but mentioning that if she was studying humanities, she should be careful not to fall into intuitionism or related pitfalls.

As she went on, she stopped herself with a smile. “It seems I’m saying too much. High school humanities is still fairly surface-level — these considerations are premature.”

Li Kuiyi felt something was off. It was as if Liu Xinzhao was afraid she would never have a chance to teach her again, and was trying to pour everything out at once. She blinked nervously and asked: “Ms. Liu, will you be teaching the humanities classes next term?”

Liu Xinzhao shook her head. “I don’t know — that depends on how the school arranges things.”

Li Kuiyi’s heart settled halfway. She had thought for a moment that Liu Xinzhao was saying goodbye.

“Go on now — and happy new year in advance.” Liu Xinzhao gave her head another fond pat.

“Happy new year to you too, in advance.”

Li Kuiyi walked out of the office carrying the notebooks. As she passed by the window, she glanced sideways through the glass — and caught Liu Xinzhao looking back at her. Perhaps it was the layer of glass between them, but that gaze seemed unusually soft. It carried what felt like a kind of tenderness, and perhaps also the faintest trace of wistfulness.

She did not know where the tenderness and wistfulness came from. Only in the instant their eyes met through the glass, she turned her face toward the woman inside the office and broke into a brilliant smile.

Back in the classroom, Li Kuiyi handed out the journals, exchanged many rounds of “happy new year” and “see you after the break” with everyone, and then finally went home.

Though Li Jianye had asked her to take the bus back to the county as soon as supplementary lessons were over, Li Kuiyi ignored him. She had no desire to go back — there was no one there she could properly talk to, and she might well be subjected to things she had no wish to hear. How could that compare to the freedom of being by herself at home?

She spent a few happy, unrestrained days with Fang Zhixiao. It was not until the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month that she finally boarded the bus back to the county. Fang Zhixiao reminded her a thousand times over to gather intelligence on Su Jianlin and, if possible, to play matchmaker for the two of them.

Li Kuiyi said: “I’ll do my best.”

The bus rumbled and swayed its way to a stop at the old station. Li Kuiyi pushed through the crowd and climbed down from the bus, nearly stumbling as she went. When she looked up, she saw Su Jianlin leaning against a bicycle in that impassive way of his, watching her expressionlessly. She was fairly certain that if she had actually fallen, he would have stood there and watched with the same cold composure as he always had when they were small.

But she was not going to fall anymore.

She walked up to him and asked a question she already knew the answer to: “You’re here to pick me up?”

Because it was an obvious question, he did not bother answering. He simply took hold of his bicycle and said: “Get on.”

Li Kuiyi climbed onto the back seat without ceremony. Their down jackets rustled against each other with a soft, whispering sound. The small county had not changed — every visit brought the same streets, the same billboards, and even the same small stalls rooted in the same spots as though they had grown there.

Her second uncle’s family lived in a self-built house — a two-story building, one wall entirely covered in the bare, withered vines of Boston ivy. At the gate, Su Jianlin dropped the bicycle and walked straight inside. Perhaps she heard the sounds, for her second aunt came out to meet them — a round-faced woman in an apron, smiling warmly. “Little Kui is back?”

Few people called her that, and it took a moment to get used to. Li Kuiyi smiled back and greeted her second aunt. The woman was quite good to her in truth, only she had her own child and her own work to manage, and could not always look after her as well.

Her second aunt ushered her inside. “Cold, is it? Why did your school wait so long to let out? Supplementary lessons running that late. Oh — your parents and your second uncle have taken your two little brothers to the supermarket for New Year’s shopping. Your grandmother is in the living room watching television.”

Inside, sure enough, Li Kuiyi found her grandmother seated on the sofa, watching the agricultural channel at high volume, apparently unaware that anyone had come in. Her second aunt called out twice, but the old woman still did not hear; it was only when her second aunt walked over and waved a hand in front of her face that she finally turned her gaze from the screen.

“Mom, Little Kui is back.” Her second aunt pointed at Li Kuiyi.

The old woman finally deigned to look over at her — briefly — and still sitting with the solidity of a mountain, she gave a small nod and said: “Oh. You’re here.”

Li Kuiyi felt the urge to laugh.

“Oh my!” Her second aunt slapped herself on the side. “I’ve got a broth going on the stove, I can’t step away. Little Kui, help yourself to some hot water, and there are sunflower seeds and pistachios over there, help yourself.”

“You go ahead — don’t worry about me,” Li Kuiyi said quickly.

Her second aunt hurried off. Li Kuiyi set down her bag, dropped onto the sofa, leaving one seat’s worth of distance between herself and the old woman, and stared at the television screen too, cracking sunflower seeds one after another.

The old woman seemed offended by her composure and shot her a sideways glare.

Li Kuiyi chose not to notice.

By lunchtime, her parents and her second uncle’s family finally returned. Though her second uncle was not a man of many words, some light conversation over the table was unavoidable — he asked how her grades were recently. Li Kuiyi said mildly that things were fine, that she was just barely holding on to first place. The old woman’s expression visibly soured, though she could hardly reproach her granddaughter for lack of modesty — after all, she had used the word “barely.” So the old woman could only keep piling food into the two boys’ bowls.

At that point, Xu Manhua set down her chopsticks with a sigh: “This child — all she does is bury her head in studying, it’ll be the death of me. She hardly speaks even at home. The last mid-term exam, she came first in the whole city again, and she never said a word to us. I had to hear it from one of her classmates. What are we going to do with her — all that studying and she’ll turn into a bookworm, how is she going to get by in the world?”

A speech at once critical and proud — everyone understood the true intent. Li Kuiyi understood best of all: these words were meant for the old woman’s ears.

This was what people meant by “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

That might be putting it strongly, but it neatly captured the triangular relationship between herself, Xu Manhua, and the old woman. Li Kuiyi knew that when she was born — a daughter rather than a son — Xu Manhua had endured a great deal of mistreatment from the old woman. Perhaps that was also why Xu Manhua resented her, resented her for being a girl.

Laughable, truly — mother and daughter, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, grandmother and granddaughter. Three generations of women, and the bonds between them all in fragments.

Who was to blame?

Li Kuiyi let her gaze sweep across the men at the table. They ate in silence, heads bowed, contributing nothing.

Only her second aunt smiled and joined in, while putting a piece of braised pork into Li Kuiyi’s bowl: “Little Kui is going to do well for herself. Why worry about her not being chatty enough — people judge you by your ability, and it’s the smooth-talking, slippery types who end up being a nuisance.”

Whether or not there was genuine warmth behind the words, Li Kuiyi was grateful to her second aunt. Even so, she found herself bored to the bone. She had no fondness whatsoever for these gatherings. She wanted to escape — to float away to somewhere no one knew her, like a dandelion seed lifted by the wind.

At last, New Year’s Eve arrived.

With fireworks and firecrackers now prohibited, the smell of gunpowder and festivity that used to hang in the air was somewhat diminished. Everything else remained the same as always: spring couplets pasted up, paper-cuts adorning the windows, her younger cousin and her little brother setting off small firecrackers in the courtyard to startle the dog, the adults bustling in the kitchen. When the Spring Festival Gala began, the dishes were carried out one by one. Auspicious words were exchanged, a few cups of baijiu were drunk, and the rituals of the New Year were more or less complete.

Li Kuiyi finished eating quickly, watched a little of the gala, found nothing of particular interest in it, and went off early to wash up and get into bed.

Her second uncle’s house, though with several rooms, was still not quite enough; Li Kuiyi had the misfortune of being assigned to share with her grandmother. That was precisely why she had gone to bed early — she had no desire to lie there staring at the old woman in the dark.

Listening to the voices and laughter from outside and the music from the television, Li Kuiyi played on her phone for a while. After sending early New Year’s greetings to Fang Zhixiao, Zhou Fanghua, and the others, she tucked her phone under her pillow, pulled the blanket over her head, and went to sleep.

She slept peacefully through the night, without dreams.

At five in the morning on New Year’s Day, the sky outside was still pitch-dark when Li Kuiyi woke up.

Beside her, her grandmother was snoring — not very loudly, but enough to make it impossible for her to fall asleep again. She reached under the pillow and felt for her phone. A small glow bloomed in the darkness of the room.

A great many unread messages.

She opened her messaging app. Red notification badges popped up one after another — all New Year’s greetings. Li Kuiyi read through them and replied to each one.

“Happy new year to you too!”

“Same to you!”

“Wishing you prosperity and success in your studies!”

The next message was from He Youyuan. Li Kuiyi paused, finger hovering over the screen, then tapped to open it.

He had sent two messages.

The first had been sent precisely on the hour — the timestamp read 00:00.

He Youyuan: Happy new year.

Then at 00:15, he had sent another.

He Youyuan: Group message. No need to reply.