Chapter 6 (1/2)

Quietly Advancing and Retreating (1)

Today was Friday.

After this weekend, there were nine weeks remaining. Sixty-three days.

The entire week, it had been raining on and off, and the cla.s.srooms were damp and chilly.

She clasped her hands together to warm herself and then started to copy down Gu Pingsheng’s notes on the blackboard.

Gu Pingsheng had very beautiful blackboard writing. When she was in primary school, she had intensely practiced her calligraphy, and she recognized that he was writing in slender gold script[1] style. At the time, she had only felt that this particular script was free and unrestrained and carried its own type of charm.

“Those who like to write with this type of script are usually people who tend to display their abilities ostentatiously.” Her calligraphy teacher had once stated this.

But in no way could he be a.s.sociated with the idea of “displaying his abilities ostentatiously.”

At this moment, his right hand was in the pocket of his trousers and his left hand was loosely grasping the white chalk, fluidly writing out a row of Chinese characters while using English to give the introduction for today’s cla.s.s.

Gu Pingsheng was the only teacher this semester willing to teach his course as a bilingual one. Even those teachers who had returned from j.a.pan still persisted in writing their blackboard notes in their out-of-practice English.

In fact, when the university was enrolling students after their college entrance examinations, specific attention and importance had been placed upon their grades in English. At the end of her second year, there were only three people in their cla.s.s who had not yet pa.s.sed their CET-6 English tests yet. He did not at all have to go to such trouble for so few people. But, in these small, insignificant details, he still always put careful thought and consideration.

“Liu Yi.” After finis.h.i.+ng the introductory words for today’s cla.s.s, he turned around to look at the cla.s.s prefect. “Where’s Shen Yao?”

The cla.s.s prefect choked on a response for a long while and turned his eyes to Tong Yan. Those girls in Tong Yan’s dormitory room were all experts at playing hooky. Most Fridays, they were not around. Who knew where they had gone today?

“Teacher Gu, Shen Yao’s rehearsing with the school orchestra and requested a leave of absence from today’s cla.s.s,” Tong Yan braced herself and fibbed.

“What about w.a.n.g Xiaoru?” Gu Pingsheng’s voice was very neutral.

“w.a.n.g Xiaoru … had something suddenly crop up in her family and also got a leave of absence.”

His eyes scanned over the cla.s.sroom once, quickly distinguis.h.i.+ng between those who were simply sitting in to listen and those who truly belonged to this cla.s.s.

“Wen Jingjing did not come either?” His gaze was on her again. This time, even the students who were simply sitting in on the cla.s.s were starting to whisperingly discuss this.

Tong Yan gripped her pen, not even able to avoid his gaze. She was the only one from her dorm room who had come to cla.s.s, yet she was the one who had become the target of attack …

She could feel that her cheeks had grown a little hot. “Wen Jingjing is sick.” She really wanted to stress that this one was the truth and she was genuinely sick.

“Next Monday, have the three of them head over to Administration and go to my office.” His tone remained unperturbed.

Tong Yan’s heart dropped. Oh man, they were in trouble this time.

After cla.s.s, the cla.s.s prefect, who had also broken out in a cold sweat of fright, walked over and said to Tong Yan, “Even a rabbit will bite when it’s cornered. Teacher Gu can already be considered to be really good-tempered, and your dorm still managed to force his anger out.”

Cla.s.s Prefect was brandis.h.i.+ng a textbook in his hand and nearly hit Gu Pingsheng, who was walking by.

Gu Pingsheng merely raised his arm slightly to block the incoming book, but Cla.s.s Prefect’s temper was in the midst of flaring and he immediately whipped his head around and barked, “Cla.s.s meeting, now!” And then, the cla.s.sroom fell into total silence.

Those who had only been sitting in on the cla.s.s froze in shock before quickly grabbing their books and leaving.

Gu Pingsheng was also slightly taken aback, and in a soliciting tone, he asked him, “Need me to partic.i.p.ate?”

“N-n-no.” Cla.s.s Prefect immediately shut down his firepower.

With head lowered, Tong Yan packed up her own books. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walk past her desk and then out of the cla.s.sroom.

She went to the library to study and did not return to her dormitory until the sky was dark.

This morning, as she walked out the room, the curtains had been pulled shut, and now, they were still as they had been when she left. She called out “Jingjing” once, but n.o.body made a sound in response. Feeling slightly concerned, she removed her shoes and climbed onto Wen Jingjing’s bed, only to discover that she was still asleep with her covers pulled up completely over her.

She stretched out her hand to touch Wen Jingjing’s forehead. Burning hot.

As she retracted her hand, it brushed against the pillow. Why was it so wet? Had she sweat that much?

Tong Yan patted Wen Jingjing awake, helped her change her clothes, and got her off the bed.

Finally, after an arduous bicycle ride, she brought Wen Jingjing to a hospital off the university campus. This was one of the university’s designated hospitals, and because it was not in the core of the city, there were very few people there at night.

The doctor on duty was very young but very attentive, and at the end, when Wen Jingjing started her intravenous treatment, that doctor even specifically came over to check on her and ask a few questions about her condition. As Tong Yan watched him, she suddenly wondered, if Teacher Gu had not changed careers, would he have been like this as well?

Inside the intravenous treatment room, there was only a mother and son pair — a forty plus year old son with his old and feeble mother.

If Grandmother suddenly fell ill in Beijing, what should she do?

She all of a sudden felt a sense of unease. Every so often, this type of unsettled feeling would arise in her, and she would not be able to shake it off.

“Yan Yan, thanks.”

She pulled her attention back. In her arms was a small bag of mandarin oranges she had bought outside the entrance to the hospital. Pulling out a larger one, she peeled it and stuffed it into Wen Jingjing’s hand. “You had such a high temperature. Why didn’t you text me?”

Wen Jingjing held onto the orange and after some time, finally said, “Yan Yan, Jia Le broke up with me.”

Tong Yan paused in surprise. “Haven’t you guys been together for six years?”

She remembered that boy. Very plain and una.s.suming, and when he smiled, he looked a little shy.

“He’s in his fourth year of university this year and looking for a job. He’s really stressed out, and we were always fighting.” Wen Jingjing told her, “Yesterday, he was quarrelling with me over the phone again, and then he said my family doesn’t have much money and I still have a pair of twin younger brothers in high school waiting for us to provide for them …”

She did not finish and Tong Yan did not press further. Tong Yan had more or less discerned the situation in Jingjing’s family. Thinking that this topic had come to a close, she lowered her head and continued peeling oranges.

“I feel like life is particularly unfair.” Wen Jingjing spoke up unexpectedly. “My English isn’t good. I finally was approved for doing a double major with the second major in j.a.panese, but I couldn’t even pa.s.s my midterms. But just look at Xiaoru. She never goes to cla.s.s but can still effortlessly get first-cla.s.s scholars.h.i.+ps. Yao Yao’s the same. In the entire cla.s.s, she’s the only specially recruited literature and art student, but she does even better than me in all the academic courses.”

Tong Yan raised her head to look at her.

“And then there’s you, Yan Yan. Every time I see you emceeing or singing, I’m so envious.” Wen Jingjing’s complexion was showing the paleness that comes after a fever has subsided. “Even Teacher Gu treats you so well. I would always see him in his office browsing through physics teaching materials, and then I found out later that he was tutoring you in physics.

“Yan Yan, where I’m from, I was the only one who got into a top-ranked university. But now, my old cla.s.smates are all starting to apply to master’s programs abroad while I’m still here struggling to get through my undergrad. I have two younger brothers who are going to be taking their college entrance exams soon. They’re actually not very mature or sensible, and their grades are really bad … Yan Yan, when I think about all this, I feel like even if I continue with my studies, it won’t change anything. Even if I endure all the way to the end, the result will still be the same. Where I came from is where I’ll still have to go back to.”

The intravenous treatment room was very quiet. Wen Jingjing was not speaking loudly, and her tone could not get any flatter than it already was.

Tong Yan split apart her mandarin orange and ate a segment. Due to the cold weather, the orange was ice-cold inside the mouth when eaten. It was sour and icy and really could not be considered tasty.

She had never once poured out her heart like Jingjing was doing to anyone before, nor had she ever dared to. The pain and sorrow that had been acc.u.mulating since she graduated from primary school, that feeling that she had completely lost her dignity and self-respect, and that family that caused her heart to quiver in pain simply from thinking about it — how could she possibly speak out about these?

“My ex-boyfriend’s parents are both high school teachers. Because he was pampered on and spoiled, he never put any efforts into school and was extremely rebellious. But, he was especially good to me. One winter, there was a day where my stomach hurt so badly I couldn’t even walk. Without saying a word, he ran out and bought me a bowl of noodles from somewhere by the front of the school and forced the person to sell him the bowl that the noodles came in, too. That day, it was really cold, and just like that, he walked with a bowl of noodles in his hands from the front gate of the school all the way to the door of my cla.s.sroom. I’m guessing he probably had been walking really hurriedly because the soup had sloshed out and his hands were covered in it. But no matter how good our relations.h.i.+p had been, we still ended up breaking up.”

She remembered, that bowl of noodles had cost something like six yuan. At the time, she had thought that was so expensive. But later, when she went to eat it again, it did not have that same taste anymore.

Quietly Advancing and Retreating (2)

“So, Jingjing,” she said, holding the last segment of orange up to Wen Jingjing’s lips, “there’s nothing about me worthy of your envy. I also lose in love, also get sick, and also have lots of secrets that I don’t want others to know about.”

She tilted her head upwards and took a glance. There was not much left in this bottle, but on the IV pole’s metal hook, there was still another full bottle that need to be finished tonight.

“I remember, one time when I was a kid, we needed to run eight hundred metres in gym cla.s.s. Someone stepped on my shoe from behind, and I took a huge tumble. There should have been about three or four cla.s.ses right then that were having gym out on that sports field, and they all saw. At the time, I felt so humiliated. How could I have such awful luck? So terrible, practically like the sky had fallen. But now that I think about it, it was just a fall, right?” She stood and was about to go find the on-duty nurse.

“You must have felt something like that before when you were a kid, like the sky was falling on you. Jingjing, five years from now, when you look back, it’ll also just simply be like you took a fall. Pull yourself back up, change into some clean clothes, and treat it like nothing ever happened. Family and background, natural talent — there’s so many things that you’re just born with. Just like anyone can be envious that Liu Xiang[1] won the World Champions.h.i.+ps, but it’s only just envying for a bit.”

That night when she went back, Tong Yan started to show signs that she had caught a cold. By Monday, it had completely turned into a bad case of the cold.

There were not many people at the on-campus medical clinic during noontime. After she was prescribed some cold medicine and was walking back down from the second floor, someone unexpectedly tapped her on her shoulder. Turning, she discovered it was that Shen, um… Cla.s.s Rep Shen. He was standing beside another boy. When Tong Yan turned around, that boy’s eyes immediately flickered away, and he beamed, “I’ll go out and wait for you.” After saying this, he gave a wicked grin and darted away.

Shen Heng unconsciously pushed up his gla.s.ses. “You’re sick? Is it serious?”

Tong Yan smiled, “It’s just a cold.”

“That night’s Anniversary Gala, I watched the live broadcast inside my dorm room.” Cla.s.s Rep Shen seemed to be searching for the right words, and he paused briefly before saying, “You did such a good job emceeing.”

“Thanks.”

If it were any other time, she would have said a few more casual words to help pa.s.s through the moment. However, the whole previous night, her nose had been stuffed up so she had not slept well, and now, she simply did not have any energy to talk.

Fortunately, this boy was quite shy, and he walked down the stairs with her in silence. At last, when they were standing by the doors of the university medical clinic, he finally hesitantly asked her, “You really don’t look so good. How about I take you back to your dorm?”

He spoke this in a very polite manner, with a slight sense of probing in his voice.

“No, it’s alright. I still have to wait here for my cla.s.smates.”

Putting on a look as if she was waiting for someone, Tong Yan watched as Shen Heng and his cla.s.smate left, and then she breathed out in relief. She felt in her pocket, pulled out a pile of neatly folded toilet paper, and began to wipe her nose …

All of a sudden, she received a text message.

She reckoned that it was likely from Shen Yao. Those three girls had left the dorm at the same time as her, and they should have been in Gu Pingsheng’s office just now receiving their chastis.e.m.e.nt. She had not expected that, when she pulled out her phone, it was actually a text message from Gu Pingsheng: You’re sick? Is it serious? TK

These exact same words, Shen Heng had asked just a moment earlier.

But now that it was him asking them, her lips unconsciously turned up in a smile.

Those three girls from her dormitory must have mentioned her when they were being reprimanded in order to try to change the topic. The last text message in her inbox was actually the one he had sent her three weeks ago.

Standing there at the doors of the medical clinic entrance, she hesitated for three seconds and then, for some reason, as if guided by a supernatural force, she wrote this message back: Mm-hmm … It’s a little serious. The school doc said it’s best if I go to a hospital off campus … But it’s so far. Don’t want to go.

When she sent it, her heart suddenly started thumping hard — thumping her straight into a fl.u.s.ter.

Every time Shen Yao was in a phase with a boy where she was wondering whether she should start a romantic relations.h.i.+p with him or not, she would always probe like this, trying to feel out, did he care about her? Would he get anxious for her? If the boy was all anxious and concerned, that meant there was room for them to progress the relations.h.i.+p further. If his reaction was calm and lukewarm, then she would act as if nothing had ever happened.

Each time she saw Shen Yao beaming while she was text messaging with an amorous expression on her face, Tong Yan would find it very funny. But now, she, too, was waiting nervously for his response.

Several of the school doctors walked past her, chatting and smiling and looking as if they were going for lunch. When that group had exited the main doors and had walked far enough away that she could not even glimpse their shadows, her mobile phone still lay in silence. There was not a single reply. Feeling somewhat dejected, Tong Yan tucked her mobile phone into her schoolbag and walked back along the walkway by the medical clinic.

Lunchtime was the period when there was the most people out on campus. She hesitated over whether she should go have some lunch or head straight back to the dormitory and make a pack of instant noodles instead. All of a sudden, someone slapped her on the back from behind her.

Tong Yan turned around and looked up into Shen Yao’s grinning face. “And here I was saying that we should go back to the dorm to find you. Teacher Gu said he’s going to treat everyone in our dorm room to lunch. Why is your phone dead?”

Standing not far behind Shen Yao was w.a.n.g Xiaoru and Wen Jingjing, as well as … Gu Pingsheng.

There was no International Commercial Arbitration cla.s.s today, and so his attire was slightly more casual. Light blue jeans with faded white marks and a casual black top. Plain and simple. He did not look at all like he had come deliberately to give these three girls an admonishment.

Wen Jingjing was speaking to him right then. He gazed directly at Wen Jingjing until she finished speaking and then said something to her in response before turning his head to look in Tong Yan’s direction.

“Teacher Gu.”

He nodded in acknowledgement but did not speak. He was behaving as if he had never sent her the text message and never received anything either.

When Shen Yao brought up that Gu Pingsheng was treating them to lunch, her entire being was completely radiant. Tong Yan knew that she was thinking again how she could swindle an expensive meal out of Gu Pingsheng, and immediately, she grabbed Shen Yao by the arm. “Let’s just go eat in the east dining hall. My head’s all heavy and dizzy. I don’t want to go too far for lunch.”

Shen Yao let out an “ah,” but before she could say anything further, she was dragged directly into the university dining hall.

Originally, Shen Yao had wanted to order some feature dishes or a mini hot-pot or something along those lines, but Tong Yan expressed that she and Jingjing were still sick with colds. And as a result, she successfully managed to lower the cla.s.s of the meal by another level, such that it really was not all that different from what they would normally do, where everyone simply each ate their own food. The only difference was, Gu Pingsheng, the one who was like “sunny spring days and white snow[2]” [exceptionally handsome in a clean way], was with them.

Throughout the entire meal, Shen Yao was especially loquacious. Gu Pingsheng only managed to take a couple of bites at the very beginning, and then very soon, he set down his chopsticks and quietly watched them speak. In the end, Tong Yan could not stand watching this situation any longer. Tugging on Shen Yao’s arm, she reminded, “You’ve been talking the whole time. How is Teacher Gu supposed to eat?”

“Huh? Ah!” Shen Yao all of a sudden clued in. “Teacher Gu, go ahead, have more to eat. You don’t need to watch me talk the whole time.”

He told her that it was alright and then began drinking his water in large swallows.

Tong Yan scanned his meal that was in front of him. It practically had not even been touched it. She had eaten with Gu Pingsheng a few times now. Compared with other men, the amount he ate most certainly could not be considered a lot, but neither was he like some girls who would eat so little it was like a little kitten taking two or three nibbles.

Shen Yao wanted to say more, but after raising her wrist for a look, she yelped, “Only another five minutes until one o’clock. Time for cla.s.s! I’m doomed! Why am I always late when it comes to advanced math cla.s.s?”

She picked up her bag and started to run, taking two or three strides forward before doubling back to say, “Teacher Gu, ‘listening once to your wise words is more valuable than ten years of studying.[3]’ So now, I’ve finished the ‘studying’ part. It’s time to go do some math problems. Farewell, farewell.”

And after saying this, she hastily raced off.

With her departure, everyone else could only put down their chopsticks, contemplating how they could take their leave as well.

“You guys go first. I need to discuss some things with Tong Yan.” He finally set down his gla.s.s of water.

When everyone had left, Gu Pingsheng finally truly looked at her. “I’ll take you to the hospital this afternoon.”

So he had received the text? She continued to poke and stir at her noodles with her chopsticks. There were actually just a few strands left, mingled with some chopped scallions inside the soup.

“If you got the text, why didn’t you reply?” she murmured under her breath.

“Tong Yan?”

She raised her head. “It’s okay. I just went and filled a prescription for some medication. I’ll go back and take some, and I’ll be fine.”