Chapter 22
Chapter 22
Perfect Coordination (One)
Halfway back to her room, Song Qi ended up accompanying Yu Manyi as she detoured toward the ancestral hall.
There were only a few paths inside the Yu family residence, and Song Qi was now, surprisingly, more familiar with how they looked at night than during the day. In the daylight, he might not have been able to find them so quickly. The two of them stood in front of the tightly locked doors of the ancestral hall for a moment. Song Qi picked up a discarded piece of wire from the ground and turned it in the keyhole a few times.
In the quiet night, with a soft click, the ancestral hall doors were unlocked for the second time by him. Yu Manyi turned her head and realized that he hadn’t even damaged the lock; they could lock it again on the way out. He really was a veteran at breaking and entering.
"Why are you so good at picking locks?" she asked, crouching low to enter the ancestral hall. She saw Song Qi closing the door behind them. He hung the oil lamp on a hook in the wall for light and replied to Yu Manyi, "I’ve trained since I was a kid—so that nothing could ever keep me in."
He really was hard to lock up. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to escape from the You family back then. This was the first time Yu Manyi had ever heard Song Qi mention anything about himself, though it was only this one line. He then helped her lift down the spirit tablets of her parents from a high shelf and placed them in front of where she knelt. Using the oil lamp as the fire source, he lit a candle for the ancestral rites. The wax quickly melted, dripping down and solidifying as it rolled along the candle. The flame atop flickered with the movement of the newspaper Yu Manyi leaned forward with, devouring the illustration she had drawn and turning it, bit by bit, into ash.
As she burned the pages, Yu Manyi softly spoke to her parents about everything that had happened recently. Song Qi stood silently beside her, watching the flickering firelight cast shadows across Yu Manyi’s face, lighting and darkening it by turns. To others, she wasn’t someone particularly talkative—but to Song Qi and to her parents, she seemed endlessly chatty. What a wonderful night this was: the three people willing to listen to her chatter were all right here with her.
By the time she reached the final page of the newspaper, Yu Manyi finally looked toward Song Qi, who stood silently nearby.
With her parents’ spirit tablets placed above, Song Qi wasn’t sure if he should kneel beside her. But kneeling didn’t feel quite appropriate either—he had no formal ties or standing. Luckily, Yu Manyi saw his hesitation and quickly waved her hand, saying, “You don’t have to kneel. Come sit with me instead.”
With that, she shifted from kneeling to sitting sideways on her knees, knees together. Song Qi finally found a comfortable position to sit beside her: one leg bent up, the other folded across. The candle, dripping wax, sat between them. Song Qi cupped his hand briefly around the flame, then helped Yu Manyi light the last page of the newspaper.
“I didn’t know you were going to burn it for them,” Song Qi said. “I’ll buy you another copy when I go to town next week.”
“Okay,” Yu Manyi smiled and turned toward the spirit tablets. “Mom, this is Song Qi. You and Dad, remember his face. He’s reckless when he does things, always running into danger. Mom, Dad, please protect him—don’t let him get into danger again.”
“Why don’t you say something nice about me?” Song Qi muttered, looking up at Yu Manyi’s parents’ spirit tablets. He suddenly felt a bit awkward and turned his gaze away. Using his hand, he smoothed the newspaper ashes on the ground and swept them under the mat, thoroughly “destroying the evidence” of their visit to the ancestral hall.
“Let your parents take a look,” Song Qi added, his tone unusually serious. “I’m really very careful with things, you know.”So, Yu Manyi could only let him show off for a bit.
She had originally come just to burn the newspaper, but once it was done, neither of them seemed in a hurry to leave. Yu Manyi told Song Qi about everything that had happened at the school in the past few days. When it came to Miss You, she hesitated a little, but in the end, still shared that the two of them had gone to learn painting together, and that Miss You had fallen in love with Teacher Su.
Song Qi had only met that Teacher Su once. He thought about their appearances and nodded. “They do seem well matched. But would the You family be willing?”
“Who knows,” Yu Manyi hugged her knees and shook her head. “Free love is like that—total chaos.”
The way she said this sounded so worldly, as if she had experienced countless affairs already. Meanwhile, Song Qi fell silent because he had thought of something related to Yu Manyi. As for Yu Manyi herself, she still lacked self-awareness about her own situation. It was as if she’d only grown a few inches taller but her mind hadn’t caught up yet. This assessment was confirmed when she, amidst Song Qi’s silence, pondered the incense flames again and then proposed an earth-shattering idea.
She said, “Song Qi, Sister You said today that I’ve only ever been engaged to my cousin, and I’ve never experienced free love. I thought about it, and I do feel it’s a bit of a pity.”
Song Qi glanced at her in surprise, almost looking nervous.
Yu Manyi went on, “So could you ask Qi Song for me to write a love story in the newspaper—one where the couple marries first, then falls in love freely afterward? That way, when my cousin comes back from studying abroad, I can use it as a reference.”
If Song Qi had fallen silent at first out of sympathy for Yu Manyi’s situation, and then out of nervousness, now—truly understanding the meaning of her words—he was rendered speechless purely by how ahead of her time she was.
…
Song Qi remained silent around Yu Manyi all the way into the next day on their way to school. When he got into the carriage, he didn’t even sit next to her. Fang Qian looked up and observed the two of them, confused, before shifting his gaze elsewhere. In the end, it was the “neither-this-nor-that” classmate who broke the silence. He took the initiative to mention the new edition of the newspaper. He’d spoken to the little postman who studied at the school, and the latter was willing to bring a copy to the Yu family residence, so they wouldn’t have to keep traveling into town.
Yu Manyi originally wanted to say that Song Qi had already shown it to her yesterday. But since Song Qi had spent the entire journey intently studying the roadside scenery, making her feel unsure of everything that had happened between them the night before, she said nothing to anyone.
The group finally arrived at the school gates just before the bell rang, but even from inside the carriage, Yu Manyi could hear that the front of the school was far noisier than usual today.“What’s going on? Why is it so noisy?” Fang Qian was the first to speak. He got up and stood by the window where Song Qi was sitting, lifting the hanging curtain. No one else could see what was happening outside, but after Song Qi and Fang Qian leaned forward for a look, their expressions almost simultaneously turned grim.
“Don’t get out of the carriage yet,” Song Qi said, then stood up and lifted the carriage curtain. Yu Manyi, used to following behind him, instinctively stood up as well—only to be firmly pressed back down onto the seat by Song Qi the moment he noticed.
Almost at the exact moment Yu Manyi was pressed back into her seat, a sharp and piercing scolding rang out from outside the carriage, at the entrance of the school:
“Who is it?! A bunch of illiterate beggars—who the hell had the guts to try and cling onto our You family’s high branch!!”
—It was someone from the You family!
Yu Manyi’s face turned as grim as Song Qi’s and Fang Qian’s.
No one in the carriage spoke. Song Qi looked steadily at Yu Manyi, as if silently warning her not to act impulsively. Outside, the commotion of bystanders watching the scene played out, but no sound could drown out that hoarse and shrill voice shouting curses.
“Whose painting is this? Who painted this?! Step out here now!”
“Damn it, what kind of literacy class is this! Teaching what nonsense all day, teaching an unmarried young lady to have an affair with a man—ptui!”
“If the one who painted this doesn’t come out, none of you are getting into the school! No one’s having class today, goddammit!”
“Song Qi,” another male student’s face also turned grim under the barrage of vulgar words, “I’ll go down with you. These You family people are here to stir up trouble. Teaching unmarried young ladies to have affairs? What shameful nonsense are they spouting?”
Indeed, it was extremely disgraceful. Anything that came out of the You family’s mouths became something filthy.
But…
Yu Manyi looked up amidst the You family’s relentless shouting, her gaze landing on Song Qi, who was crouched by the carriage door—
She suddenly realized that among all the people in the literacy class, both inside and outside the carriage, only Song Qi and herself truly understood… what exactly the You family was cursing about.