For breakfast, Anqing had made sweet wheat-berry porridge, scallion-and-ham egg rolls, shrimp potstickers, and pan-fried buns stuffed with chives and glass noodles. It was quite a spread.
Xie Huaixia took a bite, narrowed her eyes, and smiled at Anqing. She managed to make a child’s innocent grin look downright fawning.
“Auntie, you look kind of pretty today.”
Anqing glanced at her. “If you’re happy, just say so. Don’t grin like you’ve been eating magic mushrooms.”
“Am I grinning?” Huaixia turned to Lu Yu, then answered her own question. “I’m not. But my aunt says there have always been wrongly condemned ghosts in every dynasty, so I’ll take her word for it.”
Lu Yu stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing at the little schemer’s response.
Xie Beibei, who’d come looking for Anqing, heard them from a distance and hurried into the back courtyard. “What’s so funny? Tell me so I can laugh, too.”
“Cold jokes don’t reheat well,” Anqing said.
“Why not?” Huaixia asked.
“Because then they’d be hot.”
Beibei stared at her. “…Aunt, please don’t ever tell jokes again. You don’t have the talent for it.”
She dragged over a chair and sat beside Anqing and Xie Yun. “Xiaoqing and I brought over all the paint, brushes, and supplies we’ll need. We’ll start with our group and aim to finish one mural every three days. We should be done in half a month.”
“Have you assigned the groups?”
“Yep. Shan Jia has the list.”
“Today’s the first day. The students don’t know the roads yet. Divide up the work so there’s one person responsible for each group. Make sure they get dropped off in the morning and picked up in the evening.”
“Okay.”
“And bring some medicine for the heat, water…”
Once the three of them got together, they could talk about work forever.
Halfway through the discussion, Beibei suddenly remembered Chen Li. She turned to her and said, “Teacher Chen, I’m not going to look after you. You can paint right in front of my aunt’s house. If you get tired or thirsty, help yourself. My aunt’s fridge has everything except garbage.”
Chen had finished breakfast a while ago and was leaning under the banyan tree to let her food settle. At Beibei’s words, she looked over, her gaze passing across Anqing’s turned profile.
“Will there be lunch?”
“Lunch will be made fresh at the village office. I’ll get my aunt to bring you some.”
“Then I’m all set.”
Beibei made an OK sign, then hurried off with Lu Yu and two others to meet the rest of the group. She was busy all morning, rushing from one thing to the next.
The village office had a cafeteria and a cook, Li Xianglan, who usually prepared meals for seven or eight people. With more than a dozen extra mouths to feed today, she couldn’t manage alone, so she called in everyone at the office who had a free moment to help.
Anqing wasn’t among them at first. She’d gone to town to hand in some paperwork, and only got roped in when she came back.
“Qing, mix me half a bowl of starch water. I’m making hot-and-sour soup. It’ll whet everyone’s appetite and cut through the grease,” Li Xianglan said.
Anqing answered, set down the half-filled bowl of rice she was carrying, and mixed the starch water. When she looked up, Li Xianglan had moved on to something else, so Anqing finished the soup herself and went to help pack the meals.
At eleven forty, all the food had been packed.
Anqing put one of the meals in Beibei’s electric bike basket. “I have paperwork to finish. I won’t be back in the village for lunch. Since you’re passing her house, take Teacher Chen’s meal over.”
Beibei reached out and, with a twist of her body, put the meal right back in Anqing’s hands.
“You don’t have paperwork to finish. I know you.”
Anqing never let work pile up; everyone knew that. Besides, “The group I’m responsible for isn’t on the way to your house.”
“Are you staging a rebellion?”
Beibei lifted a hand to fasten her helmet. “Everyone’s equal when it comes to work, Aunt. Please do your part. See you this afternoon.”
She twisted the throttle and sped away.
Anqing watched her go for a long moment, then turned and put the meal in her own bicycle basket.
There was also a new bulb in the basket to replace the one at Zhang Guifen’s house.
She’d have to go home to get her voltage tester.
There was no avoiding the trip.
A bicycle was slower than an electric scooter. By the time Anqing returned to the village, it was after noon and the day was sweltering. There were hardly any people out on the road, so Chen Li stood out in her fitted white sun shirt and pale khaki baseball cap. She held a tray of paint in one hand and a brush in the other. The outline of a landscape had already taken shape on the wall; the hills and river were nearly done, and the wheat field was taking form. A little of the field’s gold and the river’s blue had splashed onto her shirt.
At the sound of the brakes, Chen turned.
Anqing held the handlebars with one hand and carried the meal with the other as she walked toward the entrance. “Miss Chen, lunch is here.”
Chen answered, “I’ve put the bike away. Come help me move the paint. It’ll dry out if it sits in the sun too long.”
Anqing agreed, parked her bike in the shade, then came back to carry the paint buckets.
It was too hot to eat beneath the tree, so Anqing carried the food into the kitchen.
The kitchen was divided in two, with the cooking area on the west side and a dining room on the east. There was plenty of space.
After setting out the chopsticks, Anqing closed the door behind her and went back into the courtyard.
Chen was in the bathroom, washing her hands. She was nearly done. She was tall, but the basin wasn’t at a comfortable height for her, so she had to bend over to rinse off the soap.
The trash can stood on the floor beside her. It was hard to miss when she bent down.
Chen glanced at it, pulled out a soft cotton towel—one she’d brought herself—and wiped her hands as she walked out. At the same time, Anqing was at the basin, turning off the tap.
Her hands were wet, droplets clinging to her fingertips. She must have just washed them. The skin on the back of her hand…
The bruised patch had been rubbed red.
Chen stopped wiping and leaned against the wall behind her.
Anqing noticed her watching and looked up.
Chen asked, “You don’t like flowers, and you don’t like dogs. Secretary Xie, what do you like?”
The flower was the petal that had landed on Anqing’s shoulder that morning. The dog was the one on the bandage Anqing had thrown away.
Anqing had made it clear before going inside that morning that she didn’t like flowers.
As for the dog, Anqing was sure Chen would notice the bathroom trash can if she paid even the slightest attention. So she’d deliberately left the trash behind when she went out and put the bandage on top. Now she’d rubbed the bruised spot on her hand red, just to remind Chen twice over.
What was the point?
She didn’t believe that someone born into privilege, who’d become famous as soon as she debuted and had always been surrounded by people eager to please her, would keep ignoring one rejection after another.
Even if Chen still felt interested, her pride might not let her keep trying.
“Nothing,” Anqing said. “All I care about is work. I’m not much fun.”
Chen leaned against the wall without a word. The air between them filled with a quiet, intense tension. After a moment, Chen lowered her eyes first. She crushed the damp towel into a ball, dropped it into the sorting bin beneath the covered walkway, and went into the kitchen.
Click.
As the door shut, Anqing’s hand tightened briefly at her side. She took out her phone and answered the call.
“Beibei.”
“Aunt, Yanyan didn’t get the college entrance exam score she wanted, so she can’t get into her target program. Now she’s stuck between repeating the year and just choosing a low-score program and figuring things out later. It’s a big decision, and Auntie Ding Lan can’t decide for her. I don’t know enough to help, either. Can you come by when you have a moment?”
“Now,” Anqing said.
She ended the call and left in a hurry.
In the kitchen, Chen picked at the food, which was as ordinary in appearance as it was in flavor. She turned on speakerphone and listened as her talent manager laid into her.
“When are you coming back?!”
“In a month and twenty-five days.”
“Don’t even think about it! I’ll give you two more days, tops. If you’re not back by then, don’t contact me again.”
“Then you can delete my number right now.”
The talent manager fell silent.
After a long pause, the manager managed to hold back. “This is the hottest male actor in the country right now. His popularity is almost absurd. If you photograph him well, you could take your reputation up another level.”
“Should I photograph him kissing a minor fan? Or humping the air every time he dances?”
“…Stop. I just got my car washed. I don’t want to throw up.”
“You get sick after hearing two sentences. You want me to photograph him for hours?”
The manager tried a different tack. “What about Fan Ruman? She’s a woman. She can act, she’s a decent person, and she cares about charity. Surely you can photograph her?”
“No.”
The manager was growing agitated. “Why not this time?”
“I’ve already photographed another woman this quarter. I won’t photograph a second one.”
The manager said, “Oh.” The rule was familiar: Chen didn’t want to go completely commercial, so she photographed at most one celebrity each quarter. But there was one problem. “Who did you photograph? I don’t remember.”
Chen’s wrist drooped. Her fingers loosened, and her chopsticks fell into the bowl.
“You wouldn’t know her.”
“I’m your talent manager. How could I not know who you photographed? Chen Li, don’t tell me you mean that woman from…what’s it called?”
“Dongxie Village.”
Skreeech!
The manager slammed on the brakes and shouted into the phone, “You’re using one of your precious quarterly opportunities to photograph some completely unknown woman for no reason? Chen Li, what are you up to now?!”
Chen leaned back in her chair. After the conversation with W that morning, she had become remarkably practiced at this answer.
“I want to see what it looks like when someone so free of desire finally catches fire.”
The manager fell silent.
The call lasted nearly ten minutes. Chen looked through the glass at the branches and curtains stirring in the back courtyard, pushed her lunchbox aside, and reached for the soup to wash her throat.
She’d expected the soup to be as lackluster as the rest of the meal, nowhere near as good as what Anqing cooked. Instead, it was tangy, spicy, and savory, the perfect thing to cut through the heat.
Chen suddenly found herself hungry again.
At Aunt Ding Lan’s house, Beibei checked her phone for the fifth time.
“She said she’d be right over. It’s been twelve minutes. Why isn’t she here yet?”
“Maybe something came up,” Aunt Ding Lan said. “Don’t worry.”
Beibei nodded. Then she saw someone at the door.
“Aunt!”
She went out to meet her. “What took you so long?”
Anqing was holding an empty lightbulb box. “I helped replace a bulb.”
Beibei said, “Oh, right,” and went in with her.
Yanyan looked nervous. “Sister.”
Anqing gave her a quiet “Mm,” then got straight to the point. “What are you thinking right now? Tell me.”
The tone of that first question startled Beibei. She quickly glanced at Anqing, feeling as if the person in front of her was nothing like the woman who’d accused her of staging a rebellion half an hour earlier.
That woman had simply been a little distant.
This one had no emotion at all.
No—that wasn’t quite right.
Beibei stared at Anqing and had the strange feeling she was like fermenting lees: her emotions were bubbling up somewhere deep inside.
At three in the afternoon, the sun blazed overhead. The leaves drooped in the still air.
Chen raised the hand holding her brush and pushed up the brim of her cap with her knuckle.
Only the figure that would bring the eastern wall to life remained to be painted.
Beibei had said Anqing would inspect the work when it was finished. Chen needed her approval before they’d sign off on the students’ project certificates.
Chen didn’t need a certificate. She only wanted to know what expression Anqing would wear when the mural was done.
Anqing seemed to be shrouded in a thin mist. At a glance, she was perfectly clear, but once Chen focused, even her most basic features became difficult to make sense of. Her actions were even harder to read.
Looking at the wall that was about to be transformed, Chen felt an unsettling loss of control. Her plans for Anqing seemed to be slipping away from her.
Clunk.
Chen tossed her brush into the bucket and went to get some water.
As she reached the entrance, she heard a few crackles of static in the air. She looked up toward the sound and saw four loudspeakers mounted on a utility pole, each aimed in a different direction. After a burst of static, Anqing’s voice came through.
“Attention, everyone. According to the latest forecast from the county weather station, a rainstorm will arrive in twenty minutes. Please bring in any grain or clothes you have drying outside, close your doors and windows, and stay away from the reservoir and riverbanks.”
“Attention, everyone…”
Anqing repeated the warning three times. She clearly took it seriously. Still…
Chen looked up at the endless blue sky and couldn’t imagine which direction the rain would come from.
“Teacher Chen, hurry and pack up. It’s going to rain soon!” Lu Yu hurried past with a bucket of paint and called to her.
Chen lifted her chin. “Okay.”
Lu Yu kept going and returned to the neighboring house.
Chen took her time. When she got back, she leaned against the table and took a few sips of water.
She had just set down her cup when a loud BOOM! split the sky.
Chen paused, then hurried into the back courtyard.
Only minutes earlier, the sun had been shining. Now a heavy black sky hung overhead, gathering itself for a downpour. Wind tore through the courtyard, drowning out the cicadas and birds until all that remained was its shrill, terrifying whistle.
Chen’s hair whipped across her face, stinging her skin. She instinctively turned away and squeezed her eyes shut. Then she opened them again and followed the last thing she’d glimpsed.
Anqing had washed her clothes before leaving that morning. They were still hanging on the line. She must have been used to strong winds, because she’d clipped them in several places. Now they only whipped high in the air; the wind hadn’t carried them away.
Chen watched for a few seconds. Before the first fat raindrops fell, she took out her phone and opened WeChat.
At the village office, Beibei finished calling home. She looked at Anqing, who was revising the workplace safety plan.
“Aunt, the rain came on so suddenly. Aren’t you going home to check on things?”
“No.”
Beibei glanced at her. Anqing had said she wasn’t going home without even thinking about it. Only now did Beibei realize that she’d been like this all afternoon. She answered every question, and every answer made sense, but something still seemed off.
What on earth had happened at lunchtime?
Beibei couldn’t figure it out. She walked toward the desk.
Before she sat down, Anqing’s phone buzzed. Beibei glanced at it instinctively. “Aunt, Teacher Chen sent you a WeChat message.”
Anqing’s index finger pressed down lightly on the mouse. Two seconds later, she moved the cursor and clicked the WeChat icon flashing in the bottom right corner of the monitor.
Chen Li: Secretary Xie, do you want me to bring in your clothes?
The wind howled outside, and the window rattled.
Anqing stared silently at the screen and let the storm carry the minutes away.
She was waiting for the rain.
It arrived quickly. In no time, the whole village was drenched.
Only then did Anqing open the message and reply.
Xie Anqing: No need, thank you.
Chen Li: Too late.
A moment later, a photo appeared on the screen.
Anqing opened it and saw her clothes hanging neatly from the doorknob in her bedroom. They weren’t dirty or wet, and the wind hadn’t wrinkled them.
Chen Li: You didn’t reply, so I brought them in while I was at it.
Was that really just while she was at it?
Or had Chen simply taken the opportunity?
Anqing closed WeChat, turned off the computer, and prepared to check the drains on the second floor. The village office was old, and the drainage wasn’t very good. During heavy rain, the water sometimes backed up into the corridors and rooms.
She passed Beibei’s desk, moving slowly. On the other side of the service counter, she stopped completely.
Beibei looked up.
“I want to ask you something.”
“Ask away. You don’t have to lead into it with me.”
Anqing’s left hand, rubbed raw beneath the tap, slipped into her pocket. She turned to look at Beibei.
“Do I look that cheap? That easy to get into bed?”
As she spoke, the door swung open. Xie Yun had hurried in, and the wind rushed in behind her, whipping the loose strands of Anqing’s hair across her face. Her shirt billowed, and her normally unreadable features turned cold and indistinct.
