Eight

The summer after she graduated from middle school marked the greatest upheaval in Astragalus’s life. She moved from an ordinary rural school to Lanling No. 1 High School, the best in the city, and her whole family relocated from their small town to settle in the city. It was as if a sparrow had turned into a phoenix, and everyone marveled at their good fortune.

But after the initial rush of excitement faded, she couldn’t help but think of Xiaoying again and again. He, too, had experienced the most earth-shattering change of his life—plummeting from the clouds to the depths below.

She’d heard the reputation of Vocational School No. 3. The very name was always associated with fights, brawls, robbery, delinquents, and abortions. Allegedly, their high school division had a graduation rate on par with a few of the city’s average schools, only because so many failing students were expelled before graduating. She could not imagine how quiet, gentle Xiaoying would survive there; he’d never fought with other boys, not even in play.

Sometimes she even wished she could trade places with Xiaoying. She was the formidable Lord Huang of the city, skilled in martial arts and gifted with the family’s secret techniques for attacking pressure points, passed down from her grandfather; she still held an undefeated record of five-to-one. As a girl, neither too pretty nor plain, she attracted little trouble. Having grown up among the local street ruffians, she understood their psychology well. She was confident she could adapt to the environment of Vocational School No. 3.

But Xiaoying had none of these advantages. He was born to sit in the top class of Lanling No. 1, in bright, orderly classrooms, surrounded by dedicated teachers and hardworking students, a campus as pure and crystalline as a glass tower.

Whenever she grew weary from her homework and lifted her head to rest her eyes, she would involuntarily glance toward the spot behind her right where Xiaoying used to sit, picturing the faces of classmates bent over their desks, lost in concentration—and among them, one should have been Xiaoying. She imagined him, as before, sensing her gaze, lifting his head and giving her a gentle smile.

She wanted to write him a letter but didn’t know which class he was in. After the new term began, one afternoon the health check let school out early, and she took the bus across the city to find him at Vocational School No. 3. She arrived just as two gangs of toughs were brawling at the gates, broken glass and blood everywhere, with police and ambulances on the scene. Astragalus watched as paramedics carried a bloodied boy with a head wound onto a stretcher.

The entire campus was sealed off; of course, she did not see Xiaoying. When she came again on the weekend, the school was deserted, save for an old gatekeeper who knew nothing.

She missed Xiaoying dearly. It had been months since she’d last seen him; she’d never spent so long apart from him in her life.

During holidays, she often returned with her parents to visit her grandparents in their hometown. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the greatest changes in the rural south. Each time Astragalus went back, the scenery along the way had transformed again. A newly built provincial road now passed through Huangsha Town, cutting the drive from the city to less than an hour. The old tiled houses were rare now, replaced by new buildings springing up everywhere. Several nearby towns had begun cultivating flowers and other cash crops, which brought in higher income, so fewer people grew grain. From the speeding car, she saw nothing but lush, dense green. Back home, her grandmother would cling to her hand, chattering about everything, asking if she was used to life in their new home, remarking that the town now had everything the city did. Huangsha Middle School had been named a district key school, with plans to merge other local schools into it. Universities were expanding enrollment; last year, Lanling No. 1’s college entrance rate reached ninety percent, so going to university was no longer such a rarity...

So much good news, so much prosperity—everyone’s life was improving. Only Xiaoying was left to endure hardships he never should have faced. She wondered if his aunt and uncle treated him well. She wondered how he was faring at Vocational School No. 3. Was he bullied? Was he beaten? If so, what could he do? Without Lord Huang by his side to protect him, what then?

She had promised to protect him, yet at his loneliest, most helpless moment, she was not there.

After settling into their new house, Astragalus called Sasa as promised and learned that Xiaoying’s grandmother had died of heart failure despite resuscitation. Though she had refused to forgive Teacher Zhou for years, she had always treated Xiaoying well, insisting he stay with her in the provincial capital every winter and summer holiday.

When Sasa told her, she repeatedly promised that once Xiaoying returned after the funeral, she would comfort him and help him through his grief, urging Astragalus not to worry. This gave Astragalus a measure of comfort—thank goodness for Sasa, her thoughtful and caring cousin. At least Xiaoying still had someone who cared for and warmed him.

After enduring the hell of ninth grade, the start of high school was even more demanding—nothing like the pressure at Huangsha Middle School. Her classmates at No. 1 High came from all over the city, mainly from the urban area. Especially in the honors class, where more than half had been promoted from the city’s best junior high schools—they all knew each other and formed cliques as a matter of course. Even someone as bold as Lord Huang grew a little cautious and reserved after moving from the countryside to the city. It took a month or two before she became acquainted with her classmates, but the brash confidence she’d shown in junior high was much subdued.

Only Astragalus and Li Mingzhi from Huangsha Middle made it into No. 1 High—Li Mingzhi was in a regular class. Ever since his mother had made a scene with the homeroom teacher over changing seats, Astragalus had little desire to speak to him. When they passed in the hall, Li Mingzhi’s eyes were unfriendly, and she couldn’t even be bothered to greet him.

The good news was that Weiwei Yu had also done well and, after paying a sponsorship fee, entered the No. 1 High’s experimental branch, right next to the main school—they even shared the sports field for PE, so the two still saw each other often.

“They call it a branch, but it’s nothing like your official No. 1 High. It’s just a way to make money,” Weiwei complained every time she found Astragalus. “The teachers aren’t from the real No. 1 High, and the physics teacher is hopeless—nowhere near as good as our old Teacher Huang! There are seventy or eighty kids in a class, each teacher handles four or five classes at once, so they can’t possibly keep up, and nobody bothers to ask questions.”

Astragalus replied, “Come to me if you need help. Even if I can’t do it, I can ask my teachers—they’re all very patient.”

“Well, that’s because your class is special. Half the city’s top 100 students are in there, and all the best teachers have been assigned to you. Everyone’s aiming for elite universities,” Weiwei pouted, perching on the sports field rail. “If I’d known, I might as well have gone to an ordinary high school. It’s the same thing, and I wouldn’t have had to pay tens of thousands. The branch school is full of rich kids, and the atmosphere is awful. All they do is compete over whose clothes or shoes are most expensive, whose parents have the best jobs, the biggest houses, the fanciest cars. The girls just care about dating, getting their hair permed and wearing makeup, and the teachers don’t dare interfere! The boys just smoke, drink, play games, or chase girls. Nobody actually wants to study, so how can anyone do well? I have to spend all day with classmates like that! The teaching is poor, and I can’t keep up with math or physics. I think when we choose tracks next year, I’ll switch to liberal arts, but memorizing politics is a headache...”

Astragalus listened as Weiwei poured out her troubles. She too had her own worries: the fierce competition among honors students, the tricks some played to curry favor with teachers, the subtle exclusion of rural students, the struggle to catch up in competitions she’d never prepared for, the homeroom teacher’s obsession with grades and ever-changing rankings that kept everyone tense...

But those were just the common woes of high schoolers. At least they didn’t have to worry about getting beaten up on the way to school, or whether next year’s tuition could be paid, or how to survive in this world without the protection of parents.

Even Lord Huang, as tough as she was, dared not imagine how she would cope if her parents and grandparents were suddenly gone, leaving her to fend for herself. How much harder for Xiaoying, who’d been so meticulously cared for by Teacher Zhou and given a privileged life by Boss Sha. He was like a flower in a greenhouse—then suddenly the shelter collapsed, and he was left exposed to the raging storm. How could he possibly endure?

From high school to university, then on to graduate school and work, Astragalus faced many setbacks and pressures—plenty of troubles. But whenever she thought of Xiaoying, those things seemed trivial, surmountable.

She became stronger because of Xiaoying. Compared to the hardships of life, those worries meant nothing.

Three months after the term began, something happened that made all the students, long cooped up and buried in their books, cheer with delight. The director of discipline suddenly announced that all first-year students would suspend classes for three weeks to attend military training at the Huashan base.

In recent years, terrorist attacks had become frequent and international tensions were running high. Lanling was close to a military district, with several bases in the western mountains. The head of the education bureau decided this was an ideal time for patriotic education and ordered all new high school students in the city to be sent for closed military training at the base.

The Huashan base could accommodate students from two or three schools at once. By the numbers, No. 1 High was grouped with Vocational School No. 3.

Hearing this, many parents objected—how could the top students from No. 1 High be placed with the delinquents of Vocational School No. 3 for three weeks of closed training? Their children would either be bullied or corrupted, and some parents even refused to let their daughters attend.

But objections changed nothing—the education bureau’s plan would not be altered easily. Besides the grade director and the homeroom teachers, the schools specially assigned several strong, athletic PE teachers to supervise, just in case.

Weiwei, who dreaded PE above all, wailed in despair at the news. Astragalus, of course, was unfazed by military training or by the so-called bad boys from Vocational School No. 3—she almost wished they would relocate next to No. 1 High, because now, finally, she would get to see Xiaoying again.