“She had a little girl at her side, tucked close like a sparrow under a wing.”
Hearing that, Yexiaobai wore a smile like sunlight breaking through cloud—troubled at the edges, bright at the core—and headed for Teacher Xu’s office like a breeze down a hall.
Behind him, Zhaomingming watched his fading silhouette; the sunset bled through the window like diluted wine, her head slightly bowed, her eyes swallowed by shadow like a well.
Mu Xiaowei’s hand touched her shoulder, a ripple across still water, and her whisper—“What’s wrong?”—pulled Zhaomingming back like a kite tugged by string.
She looked at Mu Xiaowei, her gaze flowing like a river over stones, and it made Xiaowei’s skin prickle like frost.
“What’s wrong?”
“Xiaowei,” Zhaomingming said, her words a knot pulled tight, “you… be good to Xiaobai.”
“Wha—” Mu Xiaowei’s mind leapt back to that awkward, inexplicable blush with Xiaobai, her eyes dropping like a startled bird, “Why say that—out of nowhere?”
“Xiaowei, do you also think—” Zhaomingming drew her down, their hands linked like ivy; Zhaomingming sat in her own seat, Mu Xiaowei in Yexiaobai’s, “that life—fate—like a lake without waves—is best?”
“Jiaoming, you’re weird today, you know?” Mu Xiaowei blinked, then noticed beneath the long sleeve at her wrist a red line like a creeping vine, “Your wrist—ah! How can a cut be that long!”
She rolled the fabric back, worry rising like steam, and found not a little nick but three dark-red thorns, crooked and climbing from the wrist like scarlet worms nosing into sleeve-shadow.
“It’s nothing.” Zhaomingming glanced, and let the sleeve fall like a curtain, “I did it myself.”
“That—that’s fingernail scratches!” Mu Xiaowei’s words scattered like sparrows, “Jiaoming—did someone mess with you? They even laid hands on you—doesn’t it hurt? It’s too—”
“No one else!” Zhaomingming’s voice rose like a struck bell, then softened like ash, “It was me—[self]—I did it [self].” She kept pressing the word [self] like a thumb on a bruise, her unfocused gaze hazy like mist, as if trying to convince herself of some unspeakable [truth].
“Oh, oh.” Mu Xiaowei couldn’t imagine how someone could claw themselves into such wounds; Zhaomingming’s eyes were drifting like leaves on a pond, and words stuck in Xiaowei’s throat like thorns. The dark circles had always been clouds under her eyes, but today the weather felt worse; unease pooled like cold dew.
Silence sat between them like a stone, and even breezy Mu Xiaowei felt the air skew; she lowered her head and stared at her hands under the desk like pressed leaves.
At last, Zhaomingming spoke, her voice low, like wind through a shaft, coming from a place not quite here: “It shouldn’t be like this.”
“What?” The strangeness chilled Mu Xiaowei’s skin like a sheet of ice.
“There shouldn’t be so many roles—” Zhaomingming’s lids sank like heavy clouds, the light in her pupils dimming like embers, “Suzhiaoyao, fine—Yekong, fine—and that little girl—why are the roles multiplying?
This time fine, that time fine, the time before fine—start steady, end steady, start steady again—isn’t that good?
Isn’t plainness—like warm rice and tea—good?
It was supposed to be a plain romance comedy—why—”
Her voice started bright and jagged like shattered glass—so unlike the usual Zhaomingming—but then it shrank as if a hand closed over her mouth from behind, dwindling like a candle in wind, fading, thinning, until it was gone.
Vanished without a trace, like smoke.
Mu Xiaowei jerked her gaze to the girl beside her, her pupils pinning to needles, and in that instant she saw something terrible.
She saw branches outside swaying like arms in wind.
She saw leaves lifted by gusts, dancing under a blood-red sunset like embers.
—She saw it through Zhaomingming’s body, as if her body were glass.
…
…
“Ah. Looks like I botched it.” The words landed like a pebble in a pond.
“Botched what?” The question rose like a lift of wind.
“Mm, what is it?” The little girl’s smile curved like a crescent, unhurried as drifting cloud. “Probably this [World].”
“Peach is spouting weird stuff again.” The complaint fluttered like a sparrow.
The conversation was between Yexiaobai and a little girl, in the school office where dust drifted like pollen.
“Your mom really handed you off to me and just walked away?” His voice tilted like a lantern.
“What’s there to be afraid of?” She spun in the swivel chair like a spinning top; she stopped sharp, hair flying like silk, and smiled at Yexiaobai, “Harmless little Xiaobai.”
“Mm!” Yexiaobai had no retort, his tongue snagged like a hook.
The long-haired girl was named Taolin, a perfect inheritance of her mother—Teacher Xu, that “college girl”—and though she was only in grade school, you could already see a beauty budding like a closed flower.
Yet their bond wasn’t Teacher Xu, but a more dramatic encounter, a collision like two leaves caught by the same gust.
That encounter was so unlikely that Yexiaobai still found it unreal; why was it him who happened to see it, like dice thrown by wind? Perhaps fate is water you can’t hold.
“Xiaobai, you know?” The girl kicked off her little leather boots like acorns, lifted her legs, and sat cross-legged like a small monk.
For a heartbeat, Yexiaobai felt he’d seen this scene before, a déjà vu like a reflection on a lake.
“Being liked by you is very happy,” she said, light as a petal.
“Huh?” He came back to himself like a swimmer breaking the surface.
Taolin didn’t explain; she smiled with sly light, “—especially in this [World].”
Yexiaobai had learned to follow her wild skies; he asked, “How happy?”
“Mm. About like—” Her toes wriggled in white cotton socks like pale fish, “equal to being liked by the [World].”
“Uh, are you saying I’m the [World]?”
“No, no, no. How could you be the [World]?”
She paused, then smiled softly, a curve like moonlight.
“How could you be—such a fragile thing as the [World]?”
…
…
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
The girl with twin ponytails whispered, her tone flat as winter stone, and her hands tightened slowly like closing jaws.
Ka, ka, ka, ka—the sound of pressure, like ice cracking.
There was no struggle, no fight—only warmth and life ebbing like a tide, drawn from the girl beneath her until it was gone.
Ink-black pupils, glossy as oil, reflected a body thinning into air like ash.
She rose slowly, stood dazed for a long while like a statue, then seemed to recall something; she rolled up her sleeve, baring a sickly white arm like paper.
She set three fingers of her left hand on her wrist, a measure like counting raindrops.
“It will hurt,” she murmured, a frost-bite of words.
Blood spilled, wild as a cut river.
