chapter 3

On the way back from the hot springs, Liang Qian and Chen Song said they needed a ride from Tang He.

He looked surprised. “Neither of you drove?”

“I wanted to,” Chen Song said, “but Liang Qian insisted on taking a cab—”

Liang Qian pinched him, cutting him off abruptly. Then she gave Tang He a charming smile. “We’re going the same way. You can drop us off, can’t you?”

As she spoke, she opened the front passenger door and climbed in. I quietly went around and sat in the back.

Several times during the drive, Liang Qian started conversations that somehow led back to stories from their high-school days. Tang He seemed uninterested and barely spoke. Chen Song, by contrast, answered her cheerfully and kept the atmosphere from becoming too awkward.

When we were nearing the city, Tang He asked, “Where do you two live?”

Chen Song gave him an address.

“I’m still in the same house,” Liang Qian said. “It hasn’t changed.”

“I don’t remember where it is,” Tang He replied.

The mood inside the car chilled at once. Liang Qian stared at him, eyes reddening, while he kept his attention on the road and said nothing.

In the end, Chen Song smoothed things over by giving him the name of Liang Qian’s residential complex.

When the car stopped, Liang Qian made no move to get out. She turned toward Tang He. “Don’t you have anything you want to say to me?”

“No,” he said evenly.

She flung the door open, climbed out, and slammed it behind her.

Tang He still showed no reaction. He pressed the accelerator and drove on.

Chen Song began nagging him. “How can you be so heartless? Don’t you know what she means? When she invited you drinking, she was already trying to get back together with you.”

“That’s impossible,” Tang He said tersely.

“Honestly, when you’re cold, you’re really cold.”

Was Tang He coldhearted?

Chen Song turned around as he spoke, saw me, and grinned. “What’s that look for? You don’t believe me? Back in school, your uncle was ice-cold to girls. Do you know how many brought him water after basketball games? He never accepted a single bottle. He just walked away.”

I frowned in confusion. “Then how did he ever date anyone in high school?”

Chen Song laughed. “Because your uncle was too handsome. No matter how bad his temper was, girls kept lining up to try their luck. That Sister Liang Qian who just got out? She was the most persistent of them all.”

Uncle Tang. Sister Liang Qian. The forms of address made our supposed generations sound hopelessly tangled.

In truth, Tang He only looked like an older brother.

Chen Song seemed utterly oblivious. As he went on, he started laughing to himself.

“Of course you don’t think your uncle is cold. He treats you like a little kid. When you fell asleep just now, we invited him out for drinks, but he refused because he had to keep an eye on you. If our old high-school crowd found out, they’d be stunned senseless.”

My heartbeat slowly quickened, and I couldn’t help looking at Tang He.

Had he stayed beside me and watched over me while I slept?

I could hardly imagine what that scene had looked like.

Tang He acted as though he had heard nothing. He merely shot Chen Song a warning glance. “That’s enough.”

Chen Song raised his hands in surrender. “All right, all right. I’ll stop.”

We happened to reach his destination then. Chen Song grabbed his bag and jumped out. Before leaving, he smiled at me. “Goodbye, niece.”

Even after Chen Song was gone, Tang He made no move to start the car.

He looked at me through the rearview mirror. “Come sit in front.”

I did not understand at first. “Huh?”

“Don’t you get carsick?” Tang He asked.

Then I remembered mentioning, when we went shopping for clothes, that I was prone to motion sickness.

I had not expected him to remember.

Without a word, I picked up my bags and moved into the front passenger seat.

The car eased back onto the road. Tang He said nothing more. As though worried I might be bored, he casually turned on the radio.

The program was about love, and the female host was reading a listener’s letter.

“Young love is always reckless—passionate and impossible to forget…”

Tang He frowned and switched off the radio.

When he noticed me looking at him, he said, “What? Did you want to listen? That’s not something you should be hearing at your age.”

I protested softly, “When you were my age, you’d already had your first love.”

He glanced at me in surprise, then smiled. “All right, then. Tell me what love is.”

Without thinking, I answered, “Love is wanting to be with someone all the time. It’s wanting to know everything about him. It’s always blushing and feeling your heart race in front of him, and finding it easy to show him your vulnerable side. It’s…”

My voice stopped abruptly.

The night wind streamed in through the window, while the glow of passing streetlights came and went.

At that moment, I realized with horror that everything I had described seemed to point to one particular person.

That person remained completely unaware. He even teased me. “Oh? It sounds like someone is already living in your heart.”

I lowered my head and did not dare speak again.

Mom never told me she was pregnant, and I continued pretending I did not know.

But her veiled warnings became more frequent. She told me I was already fortunate to live in my stepfather’s home, that I should learn to be content, and that I must not covet things that did not belong to me.

Soon, this house would have a new little owner.

Many times, I wanted to ask her what, exactly, did not belong to me.

The only thing I had ever longed for was my parents’ love.

Yet I had never dared hope I would receive it.

She and my stepfather were constantly going to the hospital, so Tang He took charge not only of my studies but also of my daily life.

Tang He took me all over Nanjing. Even in the streets and alleys I had thought I knew well, I always discovered something new when I was with him.

A bouquet of flowers. A piece of graffiti. A story.

Sometimes he would become animated as he talked. His smile was like sunrise breaking through clouds, so beautiful I could hardly look away.

I was certain I had fallen for Tang He.

But I also knew I could never tell him. I could not reveal so much as a single word.

Otherwise, I would lose him. Even the companionship I had with him as his niece would disappear.

One day, he told me he had something to take care of and instructed me to work through a practice paper by myself.

I finished it carefully, then discovered that my deskmate had called me over and over.

I hurriedly called back and heard her tearful voice. “Ningyi, can you come get me out of here?”

I was so frantic on the way there that only after I arrived did I realize this was far beyond anything I could handle.

A woman had Xueqing pinned against a table by her hair. Behind them sat a middle-aged man, smoking one cigarette after another without saying a word.

The moment Xueqing saw me, she began to cry. She lifted her head, and only then did I see that her entire face bore signs of a beating.

Palm prints and nail scratches overlapped across her skin, leaving her normally pretty face a wretched sight.

“Ningyi,” she choked out, calling my name in a tiny voice.

I forced myself to step forward and summoned the courage to speak. “How can you hit someone like this?”

The woman laughed coldly. “Ask your classmate what she did.”

She slapped Xueqing again. “Too scared to call your parents now? You were bold enough when you slept with someone else’s husband!”

The implication in her words shocked me. I clenched my fingers. “Whatever happened, talk it through. Don’t hit her.”

The woman stared at me with a smile and, as if to demonstrate her power, slapped Xueqing several more times.

“You’re so eager to protect her. Are you the same kind of girl? Fine. Use the money you conned out of some old man to buy your little friend back.”

Xueqing whimpered and wept, looking at me pleadingly.

I asked, “How much do you want?”

The woman looked at me with contempt. “Fifty thousand.”

I did not have fifty thousand yuan. I did not even have five thousand.

“I don’t have that much money,” I said.

The woman released Xueqing, pulled a stack of photographs from her bag, and slapped them down in front of me.

One glance was enough to make me whip my head away.

They were nude photographs of Xueqing.

Xueqing threw herself forward and snatched them up. Clutching the humiliating photographs to her chest, she sobbed uncontrollably. “I know I was wrong. I know. We don’t have that much money, and he never gave me that much.”

The man remained seated on the sofa, lighting one cigarette after another, yet never once looked in our direction.

It was as though neither the person being beaten nor the person doing the beating had anything to do with him.

His wife came over and dug her long, pointed nails into Xueqing’s chin. “You don’t have it? You won’t pay? Tomorrow I’ll plaster these photographs all over your school and let everyone see what kind of trash you are!”

I had no idea where the courage came from, but I pried her hand away and pulled Xueqing into my arms.

“We can’t pay it all at once. Can we raise the money and give it to you in installments?”

She laughed. “Sure. Write an IOU. Here.”

She actually took paper and a pen from her bag and began drafting the note.

It was almost as if she had planned this from the beginning…

Xueqing would not stop trembling in my arms. She cried as though she might die.

I gripped my phone, hesitating over whether to call the police, but Xueqing shook her head at me pleadingly.

Just then, my phone rang.

I answered. “Uncle Tang.”

“Why aren’t you home?” Tang He asked. “I bought you some sugar-roasted chestnuts.”

I did not know why. I had managed to remain fairly calm until then, but the moment I heard his voice, I suddenly wanted to cry.

I fought back my tears and was about to tell him I would be home soon.

The woman who had been writing snatched the phone from my hand. “You’re her uncle, right? Her guardian? Your little girl is selling herself at school. Are you going to do anything about it?”

Her shrill voice seemed to go on echoing, like a slap across the face.