chapter 1
I was seventeen that year, a junior in high school.
After years of a broken marriage, my parents finally decided to divorce. Neither of them wanted me, yet each jabbed a finger at the other and screamed that they were unfit to be a parent.
After several rounds of arguing—and even fighting—they finally reached an agreement. Mom would support me until I turned eighteen. The moment I came of age, I would go live with Dad.
A few months later, I moved into my stepfather’s house with Mom.
He had been her high school classmate. He was rich and unfailingly polite, but distant with me.
The day Tang He arrived, our final-exam scores had just come out.
I had failed physics again.
I was still worrying over how to explain the grade to Mom when the front door opened from inside. One of my stepfather’s cousins was heading out to buy fireworks. When she saw me, she smiled and pulled me in.
“Uncle Tang, let me introduce you. This is Auntie’s daughter, Ningyi.”
Then she turned to me. “And this is the youngest uncle in our family. He’s doing a PhD in physics at ETH Zurich. Ningyi, I’ve told you about him before, haven’t I?”
She probably had. I vaguely remembered hearing that he was brilliant and had a terrible temper.
But this was the first time I had seen him in person.
I stared blankly at the stranger surrounded by cousins. He was tall and lean, dressed in a silk shirt, with beautiful eyes and a straight nose. There was something languid and aloof about him.
Perhaps the room was too warm. He had undone two buttons, exposing the clean line of his collarbones.
He looked nothing like the physics teachers at school who paired sneakers with suits.
He looked more like one of those polished, dangerously charming villains from a television drama.
When I stood there without speaking, he raised an eyebrow and greeted me first. “Hello, Ningyi. I’m Tang He.”
Realizing I had been staring, I hurriedly said, “Hello, Uncle Tang.”
My sharp-eyed cousin snatched the paper from my hand. “What’s this?”
It was too late to grab it back.
The glaring red 47 appeared in full view at the family gathering—in my stepfather’s home, of all places.
Mom had warned me again and again not to embarrass her here.
My cousin looked awkward too. She coughed, handed the paper back, and forced a laugh. “Oh. A physics test.”
Mom’s face darkened. She shot me a vicious glare.
Mortified, I could not lift my head.
Then I heard Tang He say, “I’ve scored that mark before too.”
I looked up in surprise. Everyone around us exclaimed in disbelief.
Tang He remained perfectly composed. “When I first started high school, I once got a 47 in politics.”
One of the younger cousins cried, “Uncle Tang, you actually have a past like that?”
He shrugged. “See? Heaven is fair to everyone.”
The conversation soon shifted to whether sciences or humanities were harder. No one paid attention to my awful grade anymore. Mom’s expression eased, and I secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Tang He did not look my way again, but I found myself remembering what my cousin had said about him.
Maybe his temper was not that bad after all.
After dinner, I slipped into the kitchen to help Mom wash the dishes.
My cousin returned with bags of fireworks and invited me outside. I waved her off. “That’s okay. You guys go.”
From the sink, I could hear my cousins laughing and catch flashes of fireworks through the window.
After drying the last bowl, I turned to put it on the shelf and nearly walked into someone.
Tang He caught me with one arm and steadied the bowl with the other.
“Thank goodness it didn’t break,” I murmured.
Mom had told me the dishes in my stepfather’s house were expensive and that every piece was different. If one broke, the whole set would be ruined.
But Tang He said, “If it broke, the shards could cut your hand. That would hurt.”
His deep, textured voice sounded directly above my head.
Only then did I realize I was still in his arms.
He carried the faint smell of gunpowder, edged with the sharp chill of the winter wind.
My cheeks warmed.
Tang He quickly released me. “Why didn’t you go set off fireworks?”
Noticing the bowl in my hand, he thought for a moment. “I remember this house has a cleaner every day.”
“She usually comes during the day, but Mom doesn’t like dishes sitting in the kitchen.”
“Are you finished now?”
I nodded.
“Then go have fun. Sisi saved some sparklers for you.”
Sisi was the talkative cousin.
An inexplicable lightness rose in me. I put on my coat and followed him downstairs.
Sisi and the others were still in the courtyard, laughing and jumping around the colorful firecrackers.
Tang He called, “Tang Sisi.”
The moment she saw him, Sisi pulled a bundle of sparklers from a large bag and hurried over.
“Uncle Tang, I saved these for you.”
He did not take them. He gave her a sidelong look, almost smiling. “Didn’t you say they were for Ningyi?”
Sisi froze, then slapped her forehead. “Right, right. That’s what I said.”
She handed me the sparklers and said warmly, “Come on, Ningyi. Let’s go light them.”
She pulled me toward the crowd. Bright fireworks and lively laughter waited ahead, yet for some reason I could not help looking back.
In the quiet behind us, Tang He stood beneath the shadow of a tree. He lit a cigarette and held it between his fingers without taking a drag.
A few days later, Mom told me my stepfather planned to hire a physics tutor for me.
“Your physics is atrocious. Everyone in your Uncle Tang’s family graduated from an elite university. If you can’t even get into a decent college, you might as well go back to your father.”
She slammed my test paper onto the desk. “And if we hire a tutor and you still fail, don’t ever come through this door again!”
I lowered my head in silence.
I remembered my new homeroom teacher asking, baffled, why I had chosen the science track when I was so much stronger in the humanities.
I had answered quietly, “Mom said science majors can find better-paying jobs.”
He stared at me. “You’re already measuring your choices by salary at your age?”
I had only smiled awkwardly.
I needed money.
Desperately.
But the test marked 47 and Mom’s furious shouting seemed to remind me over and over that I did not deserve a high-paying job.
The door slammed shut.
The paper crumpled slowly in my grip. A tear fell onto one of the scarlet crosses.
I tipped my face up and whispered to myself, “Don’t cry. It’s all right. As long as you work hard, you’ll do better.”
The tears came faster. I slowly crouched down, crossed my arms around my shoulders, and patted myself gently.
If I closed my eyes, I could pretend it was Mom or Dad holding me.
I was not talking to myself. It was really them whispering encouragement in my ear.
…
The day arranged for my first tutoring session arrived.
When I opened the door, I froze.
The man outside remained perfectly calm. He glanced at my face. “Hot?”
Then he reached over and lowered the thermostat.
It was Tang He.
He wore a black hoodie and sweatpants, with a sports band around his forehead. Fresh and handsome, he looked as if he had just stepped off a court.
There was no sign that he was eight years older than me.
“Uncle Tang, how do you have time for this?” I blurted.
He shrugged. “I’m the only person in the family on vacation, so they volunteered me.”
That explained it.
He pulled out a chair, sat down, and casually picked up my physics paper. A hint of amusement touched his face. “Student Lan Ningyi, your foundation in physics is remarkably weak.”
I wanted to disappear. “I really did study. My teacher just goes too fast.”
I had transferred into the best science class after ranking first in the humanities track. The physics teacher was used to a much faster pace, and I could not keep up at all.
“I’ll go through it again from the beginning. Ask the moment you don’t understand something,” he said evenly.
He sounded so much like my physics teacher that I began to stammer. “O-okay.”
Tang He glanced at me and visibly softened his tone, as though coaxing a child. “If you can score above a hundred, I’ll give you a present. How about that?”
A hundred out of one hundred and twenty?
I pulled a miserable face. “I’ll try.”
Tang He truly was a good teacher.
He was extraordinarily intelligent. Sometimes I could not even explain the mistaken logic that had led me to an answer, yet he could pinpoint it in a sentence.
To repay his effort, I studied late every night, working problem after problem after problem.
The direct consequence was that one day, while he was teaching, I fell asleep without even realizing it.
When I woke, I was alone in the study, his coat draped over me.
Driven by some strange impulse, I gathered it into my arms and lowered my head to breathe in its scent.
Tang He’s scent.
A faint trace of tobacco mixed with the slightest hint of pine—the scent I noticed whenever he leaned over to explain a problem or flicked me on the forehead.
The door opened abruptly. Tang He walked in while speaking on the phone. “All right. I’m still tutoring my niece. Talk later.”
I hurriedly dropped his coat onto the desk.
As if he had not noticed my little movement, he merely asked, “Awake?”
I fidgeted. “Mm… Sorry.”
Tang He laughed. “I’m the one who should apologize. Ten straight days of lessons violates every principle of education. Let’s take today off. Want to go to an amusement park?”
His phone rang again, and he answered it.
Whatever the person on the other end said made him pause. He looked at me. “Or would you rather go to a hot spring?”