Chapter7

Shaoxing First Meeting (Six)

When Master Yu's eldest son embraced Buddhism, and his wife Madam Liu fell into a coma that same year, a well-known village shamaness was brought into the Yu household. The critical point of that incident wasn’t that Madam Liu moved into the side courtyard of the Yu residence afterward to eat vegetarian and chant scriptures, but that the shamaness’s incantation ritual before the hearth left a deep impression on the young Yu Manyi.

Yu Manyi couldn’t make out the spells the woman chanted, but she remembered clearly that the moment the shamaness finished chanting, bowed to heaven and earth, and shouted “Go!”, the entire Yu residence fell into a dreadful, deathly silence.

Thus, Yu Manyi came to believe that spells were real—real because they stemmed from the fear in people's hearts. But what she didn’t expect was that her own question—“free love”—would also act as a spell. A spell that froze Sanma and even the passing servants on the spot.

For a brief moment, Yu Manyi thought time outside herself had stopped. Everyone else lost all continuity of movement and expression—even their breath. She was seized by a panic, as if the Yu residence was a stage meticulously constructed, and everyone within it was a shadow puppet manipulated by a script. Just now, she, Yu Manyi, had spoken a line that did not belong in the script. So the gongs and drums ceased, and the entire play was suspended, unable to continue.

In that fear, she took a sip of tea, then another, until finally the puppeteers seemed to react, and resumed control of the strings. Sanma’s arm, as if hoisted by invisible thread, rose and slammed the table fiercely. Her voice, thrown off from its usual rhythm as though unpracticed in this unscripted play, rang out:

“What nonsense are you spouting!”

Yu Manyi hadn’t expected her to be so furious. She hurriedly put the tea cup back on the table. The servants, too, jolted back to action under their puppeteers’ guidance, rushing to offer comfort and clean up the spilled cups and plates. Yu Manyi bowed her head, hearing Sanma’s voice grow even sharper, thick with a rage that clouded her mind.

“He’s my nephew from my natal family—our family has always been upright and proper! Since he accepted the engagement, how could he possibly go and, and with some foreign demoness in Europe—”

Those four words burned her tongue. Sanma couldn’t utter them, as if scalded. She kicked over her chair and rose again, continuing to scold.

“You’re his betrothed! How can you speculate like this about your future husband? Didn’t he write clearly in his letter—his studies are burdensome! Matters of romance between men and women aren’t something he has time to consider right now. Otherwise, how could he accomplish anything?”

Yu Manyi shrank her shoulders, folding her hands tightly over her knees. Strangely, though, she didn’t feel the usual fear she had when Sanma flew into a rage. She closed her eyes, and in the darkness she saw the crumbling, patchwork facade of the Yu household. The shrill scolding at her ears was no more than a puppet voice reciting lines from a script.

That puppet voice rose and fell, dragging with it the singsong ending of a comic opera. Yu Manyi couldn’t understand how just those four words could trigger such an overwhelming fury—enough to smash cups and plates, porcelain shards flying high.

Finally, as if the voice actor behind the puppet grew tired, the puppeteer had Sanma sit down again, letting her lean back in the chair to rest. Yet, after a few breaths, she suddenly rose once more, gripping Yu Manyi’s wrist tightly, yanking her up from her seat.Her palm was burning with rage, and Yu Manyi could no longer treat her like a shadow puppet.

“These past days, you’ve been given too much leeway!” she shouted sternly. “Go, go kneel in the ancestral hall for me!”

…

When the ancestral hall door slammed shut with a loud “clang,” Yu Manyi was seized by a moment of despair.

She regretted not eating more breakfast while she was still at the table. And this time, when she was locked in the ancestral hall, Third Aunt didn’t even tell her for how long. If it was just for the day, that would be fine—based on her years of experience, she could last until dinner. But if she wasn’t let out until tomorrow, then the one suffering hunger wouldn’t be her alone.

Yu Manyi slumped sideways onto the prayer mat in front of the ancestors’ tablets, feeling a trace of comfort in this sudden “shared hardship.” After a moment of thought, she concluded that Song Qi deserved to go hungry with her today. After all, if not for him, she wouldn’t have blurted out those rebellious four words and, after so long of improved circumstances, ended up locked in the ancestral hall again.

This person couldn’t be compared to her cousin at all. Her cousin’s presence had made her days increasingly better, but Song Qi? He’d grabbed her wrist, broken her kite, disturbed her sleep, and now even got her sent to kneel here.

Yu Manyi lifted her head and looked at the ancestral tablets. At the very bottom were her parents. She often felt ashamed for never truly missing them, but she had never spent time with them, and they had never fulfilled their duty to raise her. How could someone feel affection for people they’d never shared time with?

Just like her and Song Qi—though it had only been those brief ten days in the cellar, they’d spent time together, so a kind of bond had formed. It was that bond that made her feel a kind of joy in “shared hardship” at this moment. In contrast, her cousin… huh?

Yu Manyi sank into confusion once again. Her mind had been in a constant fog lately. She knelt on the prayer mat with her head lowered, the sunlight rising and filtering into the ancestral hall. Bathed in the autumn light, she felt increasingly drowsy and finally leaned to the side and fell asleep on the ground.

She was awakened by a sound like a mouse nibbling.

In her half-asleep state, she began to discern the sound—it was the soft tear of rice paper being slowly ripped apart. She realized she was no longer lying on cold stone tiles, but on a soft rug—a rug she knew very well.

She grasped the rug, then suddenly opened her eyes wide and sat upright from the floor.The ancestral hall door had been pried open, leaving a narrow gap that let the moonlight spill in. She sat in that sliver of light, holding in her arms the little blanket she had earlier taken to give Song Qi. And there was Song Qi, sitting nonchalantly on the other side of the light, working on a kite whose frame had already been fixed and was now being re-papered. Beside him was a tray of ancestral offerings from her household, half of which had already been eaten.

Yu Manyi’s scalp practically exploded at that moment.

She didn’t even have time to ask how he had dared leave the cellar. She scrambled on all fours toward him and snatched the offering tray back into her arms. Song Qi gave her flustered state a glance and chuckled, “They don’t even remember what they put in there.”

Clutching the tray tightly, Yu Manyi added another item to his growing list of offenses in her mind. Seeing her distrust, Song Qi sighed, stood up, and picked a few pieces from the remaining offering trays, then placed them back into the one in her arms. Yu Manyi looked at the tray with suspicion, then glanced at the ancestral table—and realized, indeed, she couldn’t tell the difference.

He arranged the snacks back into a proper offering shape, then held out one piece still in his hand, motioning for Yu Manyi to take it. She accepted it nervously. The moment the flaky crust crumbled in her fingers, her stomach let out a loud growl.

“Eat,” Song Qi said, his attention returning to the kite. “With the ancestors above, what they bless is for the descendants to never go hungry.”

That made far too much sense, and Yu Manyi was easily convinced.

Still, eating was one thing—the tray had to be returned to its original place. Yu Manyi climbed up and down to restore everything as it was. When she finally returned to Song Qi’s side, he was already down to reattaching the wings of the kite.

Only then did Yu Manyi remember to ask him, “How did you get out of the cellar?”

“You didn’t come all day, so I came out to take a look.”

“Then how did you know I was in the ancestral hall?”

“Your Third Aunt’s voice is really loud,” he raised his head and pointed to his ear, “I was nearly deafened underground.”

She understood, but then glanced again at the ancestral hall door, still confused.

“Then how did you open the lock—”“The lock broke,” he said.

Yu Manyi had nothing to say.

The paper began to stretch beyond the kite’s frame, and beneath his hands came that familiar rustling—like a mouse nibbling—though it was really just the sound of tearing xuan paper. Yu Manyi gathered the scraps into her palm and watched as Song Qi applied sticky glutinous rice paste to the frame again, tightly binding the bamboo strips and paper together.

This seemed to be his final step. Yu Manyi squatted beside him, watching. As the rice paste dried, the paper gradually tightened, and at the points where it clung to the frame, the paper’s unique textures began to emerge. After waiting a little longer, Song Qi pulled from inside his clothes a roll of kite string—the same one that had once been buried underground with the kite. He looped it around the bamboo frame, tying a steady triangular knot, then looked at Yu Manyi.

The two of them were silent for a while. She finally understood the meaning in his eyes.

“It’s fixed?” she asked.

“Mm.”

The kite was now mended—only the birds and patterns on its surface remained to be restored. That would be Yu Manyi’s job. She lifted the kite, marveling at Song Qi’s speed and skill. But her joy didn’t last long. She suddenly noticed how unusually tidy Song Qi looked that day—his face washed clean, even his black school uniform had been wiped with water to remove the bloodstains.

He hadn’t left the cellar today just to find her.

Yu Manyi slowly lowered the kite, her gaze toward Song Qi now tinged with a kind of quiet sorrow. She had always known he would leave, but she hadn’t expected it to be so soon. What hurt even more was that his expression looked so relaxed, as if he didn’t see their parting as anything sad at all.

Of course—he was leaving. He had anxious teachers and classmates waiting for him, unfinished studies, and newspapers with many readers. And she was just a caged bird trapped in the attic. Even if she married one day, it would be into another attic. Everywhere she looked, all she could see were the high walls and deep courtyards she’d never escape.

“How are you going to leave?” she asked.

“Leaving through the main gate is a bit risky,” Song Qi replied. “Is there a wall that’s easy to climb?”

It was strange—he was asking Yu Manyi about climbing walls. Did she look like someone who could climb walls? But Yu Manyi paused, and then actually remembered: there really was a wall in the compound that could be climbed.She looked over Song Qi’s build and realized he was much taller than her. Even though the peak of that artificial hill had been knocked down, climbing up wouldn’t be difficult for him. So she nodded, slung the kite onto her back, and led Song Qi out of the ancestral hall.

The moon was exceptionally bright. Yu Manyi was very afraid they’d be discovered, but that night, the Yu family compound felt as if it were dead—perhaps even the ones controlling the shadow puppets were asleep. They walked openly to the wall Yu Manyi used to climb often as a child. She pointed to the flattened top of the artificial hill and asked Song Qi, “Can you make it?”

He’d escaped from the You family’s clutches even when tied up—of course he could.

Yu Manyi’s nose stung. She didn’t understand why she was feeling this way. When her older cousin left for overseas studies, she had only waved from the doorway. Song Qi estimated the height of the rockery and the wall with his eyes, then turned to her and said, “Yu Manyi, I’m leaving.”

“Don’t get caught by the You family,” she said. “I won’t be able to save you again.”

“One rescue is enough,” he smiled, then reached out and grabbed the protruding ridges of the Taihu rock. With a strong push of his arms, he climbed to the top with little effort. The wall was even higher. Just as he was about to reach up, a gust of wind suddenly blew.

Clouds swept over and blocked the moonlight. Yu Manyi could no longer see him.

She had to rely on her ears. She heard the sound of his foot hitting the wall—he nearly slipped—but he reacted quickly and managed to flip himself onto the wall. He walked along the top of the wall, a dark silhouette in even darker surroundings. Suddenly, she heard his voice from above her head: “Yu Manyi, hold the kite up.”

“For what?”

“Higher—you said it couldn’t fly inside the courtyard, didn’t you?”

She didn’t understand, but still followed his instructions, even going up on tiptoes. Then her hands suddenly felt lighter—he had bent down from the top of the wall and taken the kite from her.

Yu Manyi felt the spindle in her hand start to spin rapidly as the kite string was pulled out. She looked up, following the direction of the spinning spindle, and saw the silhouette in the dark raising the kite.

The wind picked up, and the cloud that had blocked the moon was blown away. In that moment of moonlight, Yu Manyi’s hand suddenly tightened. She hastily gripped the spindle, and saw the kite—once only capable of dragging along the ground—rise into the wind like a white bird, circling above the Yu family courtyard.

And atop the high wall, that figure leapt and vanished—leaving nothing behind.