Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Observations from the School (VII)

Anyone with eyes could see that Miss You was no longer the same as before.

She used to dress so plainly, never even wearing a hairpin, and her earrings were of the most modest style. But recently, her appearance had grown more poised and spirited. She must have negotiated something with the You family—Yu Manyi didn’t know what kind of lie she had come up with—in any case, she had started attending classes in the morning to study English and arithmetic, and in the afternoons, she would go with Yu Manyi to the art studio in the eastern part of the city. The little postboy, having lost both older sisters as study companions, made several attempts to chase them down and finally forced Yu Manyi to tell the truth.

And so, the little postboy became part of the cover operation for their painting lessons, while Yu Manyi took on another task: covering for the private correspondence between Miss You and Teacher Su.

Yu Manyi honestly found it hard to understand—

Miss You was already attending art lessons, it wasn’t like she couldn’t see Teacher Su. So why did she still trouble Yu Manyi to pass along letters to him? And Teacher Su was even more ridiculous—he only charged a quarter of the tuition, gave out paint for free, yet after drawing a portrait of Miss You, he didn’t dare hand it over directly. Instead, he waited until Miss You went to wash the paint trays before secretly slipping it to Yu Manyi—You people in “free love,” truly troublesome, tangled, and dramatic!

Anyway, after leaving the art studio that day, Yu Manyi had the portrait of Miss You tucked inside her clothes. Teacher Su had asked her to unroll it somewhere out of sight, so on the way back to the school, Yu Manyi took Miss You by the hand and searched for a good spot. Eventually, they hid beneath an old locust tree by the riverside.

It was a thick, ancient locust tree, with a hollow carved out at the base. Since the opening of the hollow faced the river, and the opposite riverbank had no windows—only a blank wall—it became an ideal hiding place. Yu Manyi led Miss You into the hollow, then held the top scroll of the painting in one hand and gently, very gently, unrolled the bottom with the other. And so, the Miss You who had stood on the bridge watching fallen petals that day gradually, little by little, reappeared before their eyes.

The tree hollow grew silent.

Yu Manyi observed the painting like a connoisseur—looking at the colors, the brushwork, the composition—while the Miss You beside her was clearly focused on something else. She could feel her companion's breath quickening, her body temperature rising. She heard a very faint sob, like crying, but also like laughing. She saw Miss You stretch out her hand, fingertips gently touching the woman’s face in the painting—that spot that had tormented her for years, the birthmark, had been transformed into a pale pink flower in the portrait.

Yu Manyi thought, what a beautiful flower. It wasn’t drawn casually. That tiny thing, even the veins of the petals had been delicately detailed in a lighter shade. She turned to explain how well the portrait had been done, how skilled Teacher Su was, but the moment she turned, she saw a tear hanging at the corner of Miss You’s eye—that wasn’t a face that welcomed interruption.

She stared at the painting for a long time, almost entranced. Yu Manyi, worried that the You family’s driver might already be waiting at the school gate, gently reminded, “Sister You, maybe you should…”

“Manyi.” Miss You suddenly called her, then grasped her hand. She held her hand and pressed Yu Manyi’s palm against her own chest, dazedly saying, “Feel this part of me.”

Yu Manyi was at a loss for words.When she was little, she had once picked up an injured bird in the Yu family courtyard, and held it in her hand while tending to its wounds. The bird’s body had clearly been so small, so delicate, yet when it flapped, it thudded with such force, its heartbeat so fast, it felt as if it were about to burst from her palm — that was exactly what Miss You’s heartbeat felt like now.

“You-jiejie,” Yu Manyi said, for the first time touching a heartbeat like this, utterly at a loss, “what’s wrong with you?”

Miss You still had tears on her face, but the corners of her lips were curved in a smile. Her voice, though, was choked with sobs: “I don’t know, I really don’t know, this is the first time I’ve felt this — am I dying?”

Her cheeks were flushing red again, and the birthmark that had been transformed into a flower in the painting now glowed a vivid crimson. Yu Manyi didn’t think Miss You was dying — how could someone on the verge of death have a smile on her face? She flattened her palm and gently stroked her chest, guiding Miss You to take deep breaths, finally coaxing her heartbeat to slow down.

The painting had been tossed to the bottom of the tree hollow in their panic. After Miss You calmed down for a bit, she bent down to pick it up. Yu Manyi watched her carefully roll the scroll back up, though her expression was still a mess and her words incoherent. After many rambling, meaningless phrases, Miss You finally threw herself into Yu Manyi’s arms and burst into tears.

“Xiao Manyi,” she said, “I’m done for. I’ve fallen for Su Wen!”

Yu Manyi was caught off guard by the sudden embrace and could only mentally sift through every serialized romance she’d read in the newspapers. In the end, she patted her back and, imitating the supporting characters from those novels, comforted her: “You-jiejie, why are you crying? Teacher Su is worth liking.”

Miss You couldn’t explain it to Yu Manyi. She couldn’t explain it at all. She only cried harder on her shoulder, saying, “Manyi, you’ve only ever been engaged — you’ve never really fallen for anyone. You don’t understand. I’m finished, I really am!”

…

Miss You said she was done for, and that Yu Manyi didn’t understand.

And Yu Manyi truly didn’t understand. That not understanding brewed in her heart, and by the time she was riding the carriage home to the Yu residence, it had fermented into a kind of displeasure. She was the one who had taken Miss You to the art studio, she was the one who had passed the secret letters between them, and it was she who had unrolled the painting in the tree hollow. She had run herself ragged for these two, and in the end what did she get? “You don’t understand.”

If she didn’t understand, then just explain it to her! Why say she’s only been engaged, never moved emotionally? As if falling in love was some grand, awe-inspiring feat? Besides, just because she hadn’t tasted pork didn’t mean she hadn’t seen pigs run — she had read all of Qi Song’s serialized romance stories word by word!

When Yu Manyi was unhappy, she wouldn’t speak a single word. After returning home, she sat at the table with the rest of the Yu family for dinner, continuing her logical deduction in silence.

Before Miss You declared she had “fallen in love,” the first thing she did was place Yu Manyi’s hand on her own chest, letting her feel her heartbeat. From that, one could conclude: the faster the heartbeat, the deeper the feeling; heartbeat was a necessary condition for falling in love. If that was the case, then the first time Cousin applied medicine to the bruises on her arm in the back courtyard, she…Not right.

Yu Manyi swallowed a mouthful of rice and rejected her own thought.

That day, when her cousin’s fingertip rubbed her forearm, she first trembled, then her heartbeat gradually sped up—but that was because physical contact with the opposite sex was utterly improper. If Third Aunt had found out, the consequences would’ve been unthinkable. That heartbeat was from nervousness, completely different from Miss You’s flustered, flushed, and chaotic state today.

Halfway through her meal, Yu Manyi began to feel dejected, realizing she really had never been in love. A fast heartbeat wasn’t the same thing. Just like she couldn’t claim the little bird she once rescued had fallen for her.

While she was still sulking, Fang Qian suddenly looked up and asked another student beside her, “Where’s Song Qi?”

“He went to get the newspaper,” that student replied. “Our weekly edition was printed, and he went to town this afternoon to buy it.”

Fang Qian responded with an “oh” and continued eating. Yu Manyi lifted her head and stared at the now-empty seat for a while. Only then did she realize she hadn’t seen Song Qi all afternoon. He wasn’t there on the carriage ride back either. But at the time, her head had been full of Miss You’s “you don’t understand,” and she hadn’t noticed his absence at all.

This brief exchange about Song Qi’s whereabouts quickly ended, and Yu Manyi lowered her head again, continuing to wander through her own thoughts. Since she couldn’t come to a conclusion, her thoughts kept spiraling:

To be fair, Miss You hadn’t entirely failed to explain. After she’d finished crying in the tree hollow, she had urged Yu Manyi to return to the schoolhouse—the You family’s carriage was coming to pick her up, after all. The two of them briskly walked along the stone-paved path. As they walked, Miss You recalled:

“Actually, I should’ve known a few days ago, but it’s my first time falling for someone. I only just realized. I’ve met the two men I was engaged to before. I got so nervous when I saw them—couldn’t raise my head, couldn’t even look at them. But Su Wen… when I see him, I just want to smile. And when he sees me, he smiles too. If a student talks back to him, even if he doesn’t say anything, I still feel upset. When I’m not in class, I keep thinking about him. And when I think about him, not just my heart—this place too—”

She placed her hand over her abdomen. Yu Manyi, who was walking quickly toward the schoolhouse, glanced sideways at her and said skeptically, “Sister You, that’s your stomach. I get the heart part. But if your stomach is moving too, maybe you have worms?”

Yu Manyi said it out of concern for her physical health, but Miss You stopped talking. When Yu Manyi pressed her, she just repeated, “You’ve never fallen in love, you don’t understand.”

What’s with that? Just because I haven’t fallen in love, I’m somehow inferior?

Yu Manyi’s entire logical deduction finally concluded by the end of dinner. Her confusion during the return trip, her annoyance in the carriage, and her frustration while eating all came to a close along with the clattering of dishes being cleared away.

Her efficiency had been improving lately. She was finishing her assignments at school, had already submitted the illustrations for the newspaper, and was completing her studio homework promptly after class.

With nothing left to do, Yu Manyi returned to her room, feeling both light and weighed down with worry. She lay down on the bed, placed her palm over her chest, then slowly moved it downward to her stomach, trying to feel the rhythm of her body and the flow of her blood.

She didn’t extinguish the candle, nor had she washed up, but her eyelids kept involuntarily drooping. She tried to force herself to get up, but her consciousness stubbornly lingered in that narrow gap between waking and sleep, drifting uncontrollably toward a certain scene—

A pitch-black cellar, faint candlelight, someone covering her mouth, trapping her in their arms. Her heart pounded like it was going to leap out of her mouth. She struggled to resist, leaving scratch marks on their back with her fingernails. Outside the cellar, the footsteps of patrolling guards grew nearer and nearer, thudding heavily with every step…Yu Manyi struggled for a while before finally realizing that the “thud, thud” sound wasn’t part of a dream. She suddenly opened her eyes wide, then sat up in bed and, by the light of a nearly burned-out candle, went to open the window.

The moment she opened it, a pebble nearly grazed past her ear. Startled, she looked down angrily and saw Song Qi standing beneath the window, waving a freshly printed newspaper at her.

That face overlapped with the one from her dream just moments ago, and Yu Manyi suddenly felt something stirring violently in her stomach. Her eyes fixed on Song Qi standing below, her fingertip drew a circle on her stomach, and she thought:

Sister You… I’m doomed…

Could it be that I’ve also gotten worms?