Chapter 17

Chapter 17

School Observations (IV)

Yu Manyi was angry at Song Qi again.

If he had just gone straight back to his own room earlier, she would probably already be asleep by now. But he didn’t. He insisted on going to that Yu family cellar—which, to her, held a different significance. What was he doing there? Why wasn’t he sleeping? Why did it take him three whole days to return? Curiosity tormented Yu Manyi, making her toss and turn in bed. She forced herself to close her eyes and sleep, but in the darkness, all she could see was the image of his somewhat lonely back.

In the end, she still got up from bed, lit a candle, put on the dark clothes she only wore last autumn when she went to find him in the cellar, and tiptoed out of the room.

A small flicker of fire glowed in the darkness—it was the candlelight in Yu Manyi’s hands. The whole Yu household was asleep; only she and Song Qi were still awake, just like so many nights last year. But they were no longer the same. He was now a guest of the Yu family, and she was the educated daughter of the household. And the beginning of all this could be traced back to that autumn night when she led him into the cellar.

The wooden stairs were so steep that even a light step made a creaking sound. Yu Manyi guessed the house had aged a little more than it had last year, and had grown more fragile. It had aged especially fast in the last two years. She tiptoed down the stairs, trying not to make more noise. When she finally reached the courtyard, Yu Manyi let out a quiet sigh of relief.

The moonlight was bright enough. She blew out the candle and followed the familiar path toward the cellar to find Song Qi.

Her appearance caught Song Qi off guard while he was busy.

The cellar door above his head opened with a “ka-la,” and Song Qi assumed it was a night patrol from the household hearing some sound from underground. But the one who jumped down wasn’t a servant—it was Yu Manyi. She was noticeably taller than last year, and this difference was especially apparent in the low-ceilinged cellar.

He watched as she walked to his side, peering curiously at what he was working on. At that moment, Yu Manyi looked very much like a little bird to Song Qi. She had flown in from the cellar door, landed by his desk, her gaze flitting over his wrist, making him momentarily afraid to make any extra movements. This little bird studied what he was working on for quite some time before finally looking up and asking, “What are you doing?”

After asking that, she shifted her gaze further, surveying the cellar, and asked in an even more surprised tone, “Where did you get this desk and chair?”

Her memory of the cellar was stuck at its last damp and gloomy impression—the night she had thrown the kite at him, demanding he fix it. He had left the very next night. She never expected to come back to this place again, let alone to find that it now contained a writing desk and a mold-stained old chair.

A candle was lit on the table, with a stack of manuscript paper laid out. Song Qi calmly flipped the stack over and said, “Saw some unused furniture in your storage room, so I brought it in.”

“Don’t you have a desk in your own room too?”“Yes, there is one,” Song Qi said, “but I thought, it might not be convenient for you to paint in your own room.”

Yu Manyi’s mind took several turns before she understood what Song Qi meant.

He had lent her money to sign up for the class, so of course he knew she would need a place to practice painting. Her room couldn’t even hide a few sheets of newspaper, let alone the paper, brushes, and paints she’d need—whereas this abandoned cellar that had once hidden him last year, could now easily hide Yu Manyi this year.

Once she understood, Yu Manyi found herself a little overwhelmed by everything in front of her. But Song Qi didn’t seem to treat it as anything significant. He lowered his head and continued explaining, “I originally planned to just come take a quick look tonight, but once I got here, I remembered I hadn’t finished writing the content for the next issue of the paper. Since I’d just go to sleep if I returned to my room anyway, and there’s paper and ink here, I figured, might as well...”

The candle flickered, and Song Qi paused mid-sentence, suddenly realizing that Yu Manyi had leaned in toward him. After traveling day and night, his body was still cold—but just then, a patch of warmth pressed onto the back of his hand. It was Yu Manyi’s palm.

She picked up his hand from the table and held it between her own, warming it for a while. The heat slowly transferred through the touch of skin to his body. This was all that Yu Manyi, who had nothing else, could think of to thank him. She passed her body’s warmth to Song Qi—this was a gift, a pure and wordless expression of gratitude.

Once their hands reached the same temperature, Yu Manyi gently placed his hand back on the table. She then relit the candle in her own hand using the flame from the one on the table, and quickly turned around and left the cellar.

...

With her curiosity satisfied and the issue of a secret place to paint solved, Yu Manyi slept dreamlessly and woke up the next morning feeling refreshed. When she opened the window, she realized it had rained in the second half of the night—no wonder it had been so hot yesterday. She leaned her arm on the windowsill and looked down. In the distance, several students were coming out of their rooms and heading to the front hall for breakfast. Song Qi was among them.

Fang Qian was the first to look up and see Yu Manyi. She happily waved at her, then nudged Song Qi with her elbow. Reminded, he looked up blankly, and the moment his gaze met Yu Manyi’s, his expression suddenly became a little unnatural.

This awkwardness continued into the carriage on their way to the school. In the past, he would naturally sit next to Yu Manyi, never caring about the distance between them—sometimes even forcing her to lean slightly toward Fang Qian to avoid drawing attention. But today, after getting in the carriage, he first asked Yu Manyi, “Is it alright if I sit here?” before cautiously sitting down, taking care not to brush against her clothes.

Yet Fang Qian, for some reason, didn’t sit next to Yu Manyi today. She had rushed onto the carriage after breakfast and plopped herself down on Song Qi’s left, pushing him quite forcefully toward Yu Manyi’s right side.

Their shoulders ended up touching. Yu Manyi immediately noticed how unusually stiff Song Qi was today, completely unlike the casual, relaxed way he used to sit beside her.

Before she could say anything, Fang Qian blurted out, “Song Qi, why are you acting so weird since you came back?”“Out for three days—just a bit tired,” Song Qi said.

As he spoke, he shifted his posture, seemingly trying to put some distance between himself and Yu Manyi. But just then the carriage happened to roll over a dip in the road, jolting the vehicle and sending the slightly raised Song Qi back toward Yu Manyi. His hand fell to his side and completely covered Yu Manyi’s hand—just like the skin contact from the night before.

Yu Manyi noticed that Song Qi’s hand wasn’t cold anymore—if anything, it was warm. Maybe she’d passed on too much of her own body heat last night. She turned her head and saw Song Qi close his eyes for a moment, and then, when he opened them again, he simply got up and moved to a seat on the other side.

“You really do look a little sick,” Fang Qian commented without the slightest trace of sympathy.

Freed from having to sit beside Yu Manyi, Song Qi quickly returned to his usual not-quite-composed version of composure. He folded his arms, closed his eyes to rest, and shot back, “If you’d spent three days with Teacher Meng, you’d be even sicker than I am.”

“So what actually happened?” Fang Qian pressed. “If you two didn’t come back any later, we were about to report it to the school.”

With Song Qi no longer seated beside her, Fang Qian slid over to Yu Manyi’s side again. Yu Manyi turned her head to glance at her, confirming that the group of students clearly hadn’t been as relaxed about the explanation they gave to outsiders. Teacher Meng, like every other teacher, hadn’t shared a carriage with them, allowing Song Qi to speak more freely now.

“Of course, it was because Teacher Meng got into a heated argument with the local officials,” Song Qi said, eyes half-open, pausing to sigh faintly. “They wanted us to include official propaganda along with the literacy class materials. Teacher Meng sternly refused. I was worried they’d use it as an excuse to shut down the literacy program, so I tried to persuade him in private to compromise a little, and the result…”

“Teacher Meng definitely scolded you,” Fang Qian said knowingly.

“A proper tongue-lashing,” Song Qi shook his head helplessly. “He almost treated me like I was on the government’s side, like I was sent in to talk him into betraying his principles…”

“That’s just the kind of person Teacher Meng is,” Fang Qian said. “Never compromises. Otherwise, with his experience, he wouldn’t still just be a teacher after all these years.”

The other two students sighed at those words as well. They taught the afternoon literacy classes and didn’t interact much with Yu Manyi until recently, when she’d started working part-time as an illustrator and got to know a classmate whose drawings were famously terrible. Yu Manyi overheard that classmate saying to Song Qi, “Really, why did you say those compromise things in front of Teacher Meng? You really did sound like a government envoy. When we do things, we need to have a bottom line…”

Song Qi was too tired to reply, eyes still closed, saying nothing in his own defense. But Yu Manyi, who had quietly listened to everything, finally understood the whole sequence of the drama.

The county government had sent people to pressure Teacher Meng into adding propaganda to the literacy classes. But Teacher Meng insisted on only teaching knowledge and refused to have anything to do with outside agendas. When the first attempt failed, they summoned him again to the county seat. Still unmoved, he rejected them. Worried they’d cancel the literacy classes in retaliation, Song Qi tested the waters by suggesting a compromise—only to be harshly rebuked. No wonder he had stood alone for so long in deep thought after parting ways with the teacher last night.Yu Manyi didn’t think Teacher Meng was wrong, but she also didn’t believe Song Qi’s worries were misplaced. Still, when that classmate said Song Qi lacked principles in how he handled things, Yu Manyi felt a bit upset. That person probably meant no harm—just a devoted follower of Teacher Meng—but his words only deepened the weariness on Song Qi’s already exhausted face. And Song Qi was never one to explain his own helplessness.

Yu Manyi didn’t want to rashly join the students’ discussion—they had already excluded her before. But she was truly unhappy hearing someone speak of Song Qi that way. That discontent made her unable to hold back when the student opened his mouth again, saying, “If you compromise enough, you’ll eventually betray your original purpose.”

She immediately retorted, “Last year, when Song Qi helped rescue the concubine from the You family, you all said he was reckless. Now that he advises Teacher Meng to take a step back, you say he’s compromising…”

No one expected Yu Manyi to suddenly speak up—not even Song Qi, who opened his eyes in surprise.

Yu Manyi paused and saw that the gazes of all four students were now on her. She realized she’d probably spoken impulsively, but still braced herself to finish what she had started: “To accomplish something, sometimes you have to compromise, and sometimes you need to be reckless. Song Qi says and does these things because he wants to make things happen. People who do nothing don’t need to compromise—or be reckless…”

The student looked rather awkward. “Miss Yu, are you saying I haven’t done anything? I’ve done quite a bit too.”

“Of course you have,” Yu Manyi turned toward him and said, “Wasn’t it you and Song Qi who rescued that concubine from the You family together? At the train station, when Song Qi told you to take the others and leave, and he got caught himself—was that a compromise or recklessness? Then why do you say he has no principles? Your bottom line is refusing to include propaganda in class. Song Qi’s bottom line is making sure things get done. Why is your bottom line nobler than his?”

The more Yu Manyi spoke, the more agitated she became. She remembered his injuries in the cellar last year, and suddenly felt furious that he was being criticized. Fang Qian quickly wrapped an arm around her shoulders, patting her back to calm her down.

“Don’t get upset, don’t get upset,” Fang Qian said with a laugh. “We get what you mean. We’re just used to joking around, not watching our words. Hey, you—apologize for that pompous nonsense you just said.”

“Sorry, sorry—really sorry,” the classmate quickly bowed with his hands clasped.

“You weren’t even talking about me,” Yu Manyi, still held by Fang Qian, turned her head to the side. “I wasn’t asking you to apologize. I was talking about Song Qi…”

“I’m not upset,” Song Qi, who had been silently listening to her defend him, finally responded. He clarified right away that his silence when criticized earlier didn’t mean he was angry. From a young age, he’d never taken people’s words to heart and didn’t like explaining himself when misunderstood—but he hadn’t expected Yu Manyi to hear it this time and get so worked up. After saying that, he still didn’t feel reassured and got up in the rocking carriage to sit beside Yu Manyi again.

She wasn’t the type to argue with others. This was the first time Song Qi had ever seen her do so. For someone not used to arguing, speaking long sentences in defense—even when the other party apologized immediately—could still bring tears to the eyes. Song Qi looked at her face for a moment, then suddenly turned back to his classmate and said, “I really wasn’t angry before, but seeing you upset her like this… now I’m furious.”

“You might as well die and atone,” Fang Qian chimed in at once.

By the time the carriage arrived at the school, Yu Manyi—who had argued for the first time in her life—had finally calmed down. The student kept bowing and apologizing to her all the way there, making her feel a bit embarrassed. She repeatedly explained that she had only been expressing a personal opinion. As everyone got off the carriage one after another, Yu Manyi lifted the curtain—and saw Song Qi already standing there, waiting to help her down.He raised his hand, and she placed hers in it, using his strength to hop down from the carriage. She borrowed his strength very lightly—or perhaps it was because she was simply that light—Song Qi only felt like a small bird had briefly landed on his arm, then fluttered its wings and flew off again.

Song Qi followed behind Yu Manyi, escorting her into the literacy class. Since Miss You wasn’t coming that morning, the little postman would sit next to Yu Manyi and attend Fang Qian’s first English lesson with her. Song Qi lingered at the doorway for a moment, and when he turned back, he saw Fang Qian—holding the lesson plan—gazing at him.

He averted his gaze. As the two passed by each other, he heard Fang Qian murmur to herself in a tone that sounded like she was just thinking aloud: “If it were me, I’d already be falling for her.”

Song Qi didn’t want to respond. Without even glancing sideways, he returned to the prep room, sorted through the pile of math homework that had built up over the past few days, and finished marking them one by one before the second period began.

The students who usually failed—today, all of them passed.