Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Shanghai Reunion (Part Two)

"Did he move out?"

Yu Manyi had imagined countless scenarios, but she never expected this one. The landlady continued with a few more words, and Yu Manyi immediately asked, "When did he leave? Where did he move to?"

"He left last winter," the landlady said. "Where he moved to, I don't know. He didn't report it to me. Young lady, are you his..."

She looked Yu Manyi up and down again, and Yu Manyi once again realized the indescribable relationship between her and Song Qi. Yu Manyi took two steps back, shook her head, avoided her question, and turned to leave the alley.

Song Qi had moved out... Why hadn't she thought of this possibility? This place wasn't his home, she had seen that the last time she was here. This was at most a place he used to stay, and it seemed more like a location he used for running his newspaper...

Running a newspaper? The newspaper had the addresses of readers.

Yu Manyi suddenly raised her head and quickened her pace. At the intersection, there was another newspaper office, much larger than the one she had seen outside the town's post office. She ran to the list of newspapers on display and raised her voice to ask the boss:

"Boss, is Cheng Bao still around?"

She was glad she wasn't like the first time she bought a newspaper, where she didn't know the name and had to awkwardly describe it, identifying one paper at a time. When she did the illustrations, she had learned the name of Song Qi's paper, but she hadn’t known it when she bought it last time, and now that she knew, she couldn’t find the paper.

"Cheng Bao?" The boss looked up and confirmed, "You mean that student-run newspaper? It’s discontinued. It stopped publishing last winter."

Discontinued, last winter...

It was all last winter, the newspaper stopped, and Song Qi had also moved from his previous place. Yu Manyi didn't know what happened last winter that caused such a big change in his life.

She stood at the newsstand for a long time until pedestrians who came to buy newspapers pushed her aside, feeling that she was in the way. The watch on her wrist ticked, reminding her that she hadn’t fully utilized the four hours on the train.She had only thought about coming to Shanghai to see Song Qi, but hadn’t considered what she would do if she couldn’t find him.

Yu Manyi wasn’t entirely without thoughts of possibilities. She could try going to Song Qi’s school, where there would be plenty of people coming and going. With his group of four, if she waited a few days, she’d probably be able to see one of them. But she also felt that searching for him like this would seem too deliberate, and it would make it look like she was “relying” on him for something.

The landlady's gaze had already carried a certain weight. If she rashly appeared at the school gate, what would Song Qi's classmates think? She subconsciously resisted those imagined gazes. She had already tasted the feeling of being labeled a “feudal relic” by her cousin. Would those progressive students in Shanghai also describe her in the same way? What would they say about Song Qi?

The street was bustling, with people coming and going, all in a hurry. By the time Yu Manyi arrived in Shanghai, it was already afternoon, and after walking for a long time, the sky had started to darken.

She looked up at the sky, and in her mind, the image of the thick fog being blown away in the night sky and the spreading flames resurfaced. Setting the fire wasn’t just burning down the Yu family; it also burned her own retreat. Now, she could only move forward.

“What’s so great about it?” Suddenly, Yu Manyi remembered the catchphrase of the little sidekick who worked with Principal Jiang Yu, the one who ran the drawing studio. She realized that this was actually quite an uplifting saying.

She muttered the phrase a few times to herself, then turned back and walked to the newsstand.

"Boss," she said, reaching for her money pouch, "I don’t want Cheng Bao anymore. Give me Shen Bao, and also give me a map of Shanghai."

...

The Shen Bao reporter, Huo Shiwen, had told Yu Manyi that everything in Shanghai was so expensive.

At that time, it had just been a simple statement to her. But now, as she was actually in Shanghai, those words had become a sword hanging over her head every time she opened her eyes.

Hotels were expensive, food was expensive, even riding the trolley and taking a rickshaw were costly. Yu Manyi was glad she came in the spring-summer transition; otherwise, she wouldn’t even have enough money for warm clothes. Now she could only rotate between two pieces of clothing, and so much so that the innkeeper saw her as a girl in a pleated skirt today, but tomorrow she’d be a little feudal lady in a purple dress. She’d never seen a girl with such contrasting styles.

Finding work was much harder than she had imagined. Shanghai lacked workers, but they didn’t lack jobs for women. Office positions favored higher education, and although there were spots for service staff and female workers, they still required connections and experience. Yu Manyi couldn’t even find one of these jobs.When Yu Manyi went for interviews wearing a pleated skirt and student uniform, people found it amusing that someone educated would do such work. When she wore a dress and skirt, people thought she was a woman who had run away from home, surely clumsy and awkward.

Realizing this, Yu Manyi was nearly driven mad by the job market.

She went through all the recruitment ads in Shen Bao, cutting out one from each company she visited. By the end, the recruitment page was full of holes, and she still had nothing. Yu Manyi was heartbroken and spent the whole day lying in the inn, but the next day she forced herself to get up, go to the newsstand, and buy another copy of Shen Bao. She thought, "There's no end to a road, maybe today I'll be lucky," and she discovered a new advertisement in the newspaper for an assistant teacher position at Jiang Yu’s drawing school.

Returning to Jiansheng Road, Yu Manyi held high hopes for herself.

Her diploma was finally of use. She even spent a little more money to take a bath at the low-priced inn, where everything required an additional charge, rather than using the communal water room as she had in the past. She styled her hair the way the old woman had done for her, then put on her dried pleated skirt and went to meet Principal Jiang.

She had spent over half a month looking for a job, and Shanghai was already entering summer. It was around the same time that Song Qi had returned to Shaoxing last year. The two cities weren’t geographically very distant, and the weather during the same season was quite similar. She heard the faint sound of cicadas from the phoenix trees. Jiang Yu’s art school was hidden under a giant phoenix tree in a two-story red brick house, its elegant aura matching her own.

Yu Manyi admired the view for a while from outside the iron gate before she was led inside by the school secretary working on the first floor.

At first, things went smoothly. Especially after Yu Manyi painted a watercolor and handed it to the teacher in charge of the interview, the teacher’s eyes clearly lit up.

However, when he checked her diploma and saw the paper that read "Yue Ting Drawing Correspondence School," his brows immediately furrowed.

Yu Manyi immediately felt uneasy.

“You graduated from Lu Yue Ting’s school?” He raised his head, his tone laced with some sarcasm. “Then why didn’t you apply to be an assistant at Lu Yue Ting’s school?”

Principal Lu didn’t have a solution either.

But Yu Manyi at least didn’t say that out loud.

“From Shaoxing?” He glanced at the place of origin on her graduation certificate. “When did you come to Shanghai?”"This... this month..." she stammered.

"Just arrived?" The other person’s tone softened a bit. "Then maybe you haven’t heard about these things... You can go. Principal Jiang doesn't hire students from Lu Yue Ting's school."

"Why?" Yu Manyi immediately grew anxious. "You didn’t mention this rule in the newspaper..."

"This rule is in the hearts of everyone in Shanghai’s painting circle," the person stood up, intending to leave. "No one from Lu Yue Ting’s school would even apply. You don’t understand the rules."

Lu Yue Ting and Jiang Yu, the two art schools, seemed like two feuding noble families. Yu Manyi tried hard to recall, wondering if it was because of the previous issue of competing for students.

"Teacher, teacher," still in the mindset of a student, she got up and chased after the person. "I’ve talked to Principal Jiang before. Could you tell her something for me? My name is Yu Manyi, and she even praised me. Let her look at my painting and then decide—"

"Manyi?"

A woman’s voice, tinged with confusion, called from behind. Yu Manyi instinctively stopped in her tracks. When she turned around, a woman with straight long black hair and gold-rimmed glasses stood on the dark green carpet, her head slightly tilted to one side, looking at her in surprise.

When the teacher saw Yu Manyi halt, she quickly picked up the pace and entered the office deeper in the corridor, slamming the door behind her. Yu Manyi, realizing the figure had completely disappeared, turned her body to face the woman who had called out to her.

The corridor was narrow, backlit. Yu Manyi focused her eyes and finally recognized the blurry figure.

"Sister..." It had been a long time since she had called anyone "sister," and she couldn’t help but think of You Xiaoqing. Yu Manyi shook her head, correcting herself, "Sister Huo?"

Both of them recognized each other. Huo Shiwen immediately walked over, grabbed her wrist, and asked, "You... came to Shanghai by yourself?"

...

It had been more than half a year since Yu Manyi last came to Shanghai. It wasn’t until now that she belatedly realized that day, when she saw a woman drinking Chinese medicine through a glass, the woman hadn’t been drinking Chinese medicine at all. It was coffee."Jiang Yu is quite famous now. The editor-in-chief asked me to interview her, but she’s not at the school today, so I’ve only scheduled a time with the manager for the next opportunity," Huo Shiwen said, lowering her head to push the ice cubes in her coffee aside with a spoon. She then softly asked, "Do you need me to ask her about your situation?"

Of course, she needed help, but at that moment, Yu Manyi was most concerned about something else. From what Huo Shiwen had said just now, with her experience, Yu Manyi couldn’t understand the subtle meaning behind her words. People who are well-educated always speak in such ambiguous terms. She even felt like she was looking at the content behind Song Qi’s newspaper—the ideologies, principles, freedom, democracy.

"Shiwen Jie," she called her in a way that Huo Shiwen was more accustomed to, "Can you be more specific, especially about those things related to Song Qi? Please don’t talk to me like you do with Fang Qian and the others... it’s hard for me to understand."

Huo Shiwen looked up at her and sighed. She leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice.

"I don’t explain it clearly because these things aren’t suitable to be discussed in public," she said. "Sit next to me, and I’ll speak quietly to you."

Yu Manyi immediately put down the coffee that she hadn’t touched and moved from across the table to sit next to Huo Shiwen. Huo Shiwen carried a small bag with her, from which she pulled out a palm-sized notebook, full of newspaper clippings. She turned to a particular page and placed it in front of Yu Manyi.

"This illustration was even used by me..." Yu Manyi remembered sending that large package of illustration samples to Song Qi.

"Yes, it’s Song Qi’s newspaper," Huo Shiwen said, signaling her to lower her voice even further. "Actually, this newspaper isn’t entirely funded by him. Part of the funding comes from another weekly that is very popular in Shanghai. The editor-in-chief of that weekly published an article last year, mocking someone..."

She paused, trying to think of how to explain it to Yu Manyi.

"In Shanghai, some land is part of the concessions, and there are many foreigners there. They have their own newspapers and groups," she continued. "This editor-in-chief wrote an article analyzing the royal family of a certain country, and that country’s newspaper in Shanghai said that the article was insulting, demanding action against this editor-in-chief."

"Why?" Yu Manyi said. "Why do they have to interfere so much in what I say in my own home?"

"They always interfere," Huo Shiwen replied. "But it’s their business if they interfere. What we didn’t expect was that the editor-in-chief was actually punished. Not only was the magazine shut down, but he was also arrested and sentenced to one year and two months."

"Why didn’t they protect their own people?"

"Because of weakness and fear," Huo Shiwen said. "After this incident, many newspapers in Shanghai couldn’t stand it and published articles, including Song Qi’s. Many people in the legal community were also angered and organized a legal rescue... the result was that many people were punished.""Then Song Qi also..." Yu Manyi recalled that repeatedly mentioned "winter."

"Actually, he could have escaped," Huo Shiwen said, suddenly glancing at Yu Manyi, and asked her, "How much do you know about Song Qi?"

Yu Manyi felt that she knew him quite well. He had promised her that he had no other secrets from her: "Isn’t he just a... student studying mechanical engineering? He also has a pen name, Qi Song."

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

Huo Shiwen, a former reporter, spoke with great precision. She realized that Song Qi always acted with his own considerations, and since he hadn't yet fully confided in Yu Manyi, she could only subtly say: "His family also had some issues. In the past, maybe someone could have helped him. But this time, not only did it fail, it even got him into trouble. Some people follow the rule of father’s debts being repaid by the son, causing trouble, and the police locked him up for a month before releasing him."

"A month?"

"Much luckier than that editor-in-chief," Huo Shiwen said. "After he got out, the police kept visiting him for a while. He moved to a new place and cut off contact with some of his close friends because he didn’t want to drag others into it. He doesn't go to school much now, and aside from his studies, he works as an engineer at a mechanical factory... This is what Fang Qian told me. I saw him once when I was visiting that concubine from the You family."

The coffee table was covered with a lace cloth, and Yu Manyi couldn't help but run her fingertip over the delicate patterns. She felt as if her heart was the same—one hole after another.

"You went to find him? Do you want his current address?"

Yu Manyi lowered her head and nodded lightly.

"But he may not let you stay too long. He’s very indifferent to everyone now; I don’t know what happened to him in prison," Huo Shiwen tore a blank page from her notebook and scribbled something on it. "By the way, you still haven’t told me how you ended up in Shanghai... Did your family really let you leave?"

Yu Manyi didn’t want to look up at Huo Shiwen. She was afraid that if she did, the moisture in her eyes would no longer be hidden. She pulled the piece of paper with Song Qi's address closer to her eyes using her pinky finger, and only managed to speak a few broken words: "Mm... they... let me go."When she spoke the last word, Huo Shiwen suddenly lowered her head and took a sip of coffee, pretending she hadn’t seen anything, and stopped asking further questions.

Yu Manyi couldn’t hide it anymore. A drop of water fell onto the piece of paper she had just moved, making a “plop” sound, and the ink from the pen blurred into a large smear.