AOI 6

In the afternoon, Xu Minghai, “just recovered from a serious illness,” reappeared on the scene.

He ran over to Chen Lei’s room, knocked on the door, and the moment it opened, his eyes met Qiu Shi’s. Confronted with those peach-pit eyes that had been crying so hard, Xu Minghai froze in the doorway, unsure whether he should go in.

“Here to find Guozi?” Zhou Yingying looked weakly at yet another child who never gave anyone peace of mind.

“Yeah, Auntie,” Xu Minghai said. “I dug up a whole bunch of picture-story books. I want him to pick some.”

“Did your mom agree? Don’t keep making her worry and get all worked up over this,” Zhou Yingying sighed.

“Mom said from now on she doesn’t care who I play with,” Xu Minghai declared, thumping his chest with absolute conviction. “I’ve won a complete victory in phase one!”

Zhou Yingying glanced back at her son. The tightly pressed corners of Qiu Shi’s mouth were beginning to tilt upward just a little. She said with a touch of helplessness, “Guozi, go play with Xiaohai. Just… don’t forget what Mom said.”

Seeing that Zhou Yingying had relented, Xu Minghai hurried inside, grabbed Qiu Shi’s hand, and dragged him out. When they reached the southwest room, he shut the door, craned his neck to make sure no one was following, then turned and asked, “What were you crying about?”

“I wasn’t crying.” Qiu Shi turned those bright, rabbit-like eyes toward the bed.

That morning, the moment Li Yandong left, Military Advisor Qiu had immediately found himself under interrogation.

Li Yandong had been so anxious with concern that when she saw her own flesh and blood thrashing and convulsing on the ground, her three souls and seven spirits had vanished on the spot. It never even occurred to her that he was faking.

But Zhou Yingying had seen Ergou “have fits” in the village before. This thing wasn’t contagious—so how was it that Qiu Shi had only been here two days and Xu Minghai was suddenly the same? No matter how she asked, though, Qiu Shi put on the air of someone ready to leave his liver and gall behind at Kunlun, and even refused lunch out of spite. It made Zhou Yingying so angry she gave his palms several hard smacks.

In all the years Qiu Shi could remember, his own mother had never scolded him like that. And since Li Yandong was a “bad person,” everything he himself had done must have been righteous. How could a good person get yelled at? Qiu Shi felt terribly wronged. So the boy who almost never cried broke down and cried hard, letting out all the unease that had been building up inside him these past two days as well.

“No matter what, you can’t fake illness to trick grown-ups,” Zhou Yingying finally gave up trying to pry the truth out of him. “Do you know how much it hurts a parent’s heart to see that? Never do it again, understand?”

On the one hand she was waving her hands around hitting the child, and on the other she was talking about how much it hurt her heart. Qiu Shi found the adult world extremely hard to understand. Just when Zhou Yingying was about to make him promise never to tell lies or come up with rotten ideas to deceive people again, the rescue party arrived. Only then did he manage to escape with his life.

When Xu Minghai dragged him by the hand out of the room and into the yard, Qiu Shi drew a deep breath of the sharp, cold outdoor air. It felt like seeing the light of day again. He was right, he thought. Absolutely right.

Once inside, Xu Minghai urged Qiu Shi to take off his shoes, then pulled him straight onto the bed. All kinds of picture-story books were already laid out there, a dazzling assortment like a bookstall. Young Master Xu declared grandly, “Whatever you want to read, pick it yourself!”

The picture-story books in front of him made the places in Qiu Shi’s heart that had still been damp and moldy suddenly light up. He carefully lifted one of them. “I want this one.”

“The Legend of the Condor Heroes,” Xu Minghai said. “I really like this set too. Let’s read it together.”

The two of them hit it off at once. They sat side by side with their backs against the wall and leapt straight out of the tangled, unresolvable real world into a martial-arts utopia where loyalty and righteousness were hard to sever.

Although they still couldn’t recognize every character on the page, the general meaning, combined with the characters’ expressions and movements, was usually enough to guess. Besides, Xu Minghai had watched the Hong Kong TV series of the same name, so he always had to demonstrate every move and technique before he was satisfied. In this way he actually made Qiu Shi see three-dimensional effects in the flat pictures of the storybooks.

When they reached the part describing the Nine-Flower Jade Dew Pills that Huang Yaoshi had made—fragrant, refreshing, and pure—Qiu Shi, who hadn’t eaten lunch, unconsciously licked his lips. Xu Minghai noticed, got up, took the bag of Maltisu that Li Yandong had bought from the desk where he did homework, tore it open, poured some into his hand, and offered them to Qiu Shi like a treasure.

Qiu Shi sniffed. A sweet scent rushed into his nose. “What’s this?” he asked.

“You’ve never had it?” Seeing Qiu Shi shake his head, Xu Minghai started bragging. “It’s the thing drawn in the book—immortal pills! They can prolong life and bring the dead back to life.”

“Liar.” Qiu Shi wasn’t falling for it.

“I’m not lying, it’s true.” As he spoke, Xu Minghai picked up one and stuffed it into Qiu Shi’s mouth.

The chocolate melted in Qiu Shi’s mouth first, followed by a rich milky fragrance, like the taste of malted milk extract. Malted milk extract was a rare treat in the village, so Qiu Shi carefully rolled the “immortal pill” around with the tip of his tongue, deliberately slowing its melting until the last bit of sweetness dissolved in his mouth.

Seeing the solemn, serious expression on Qiu Shi’s face—comparable to watching the national flag being raised in the square—Xu Minghai laughed so hard the dimples in his cheeks became even more pronounced. He immediately stuffed another one in and directed, “It’s better chewed than sucked! Try it?”

At that moment all was silent. The entire alleyway seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep on this cold winter afternoon. The whole world contained only Qiu Shi, continuously making crisp chewing sounds, and Xu Minghai, continuously feeding him immortal pills.

Without either of them noticing, the whole bag of Maltisu was gone. In the end Xu Minghai sucked the melted cocoa butter from his fingers and teased, “With that serious look on your face, anyone who didn’t know better would think you were eating ginseng fruit!”

Qiu Shi felt as if he was being laughed at, but instead of being upset, he actually wanted to volunteer something.

“At my house…” Qiu Shi paused, then corrected himself. “We don’t have this in the village.”

“What’s the village like?” Xu Minghai asked curiously. “What do you guys usually play?”

“It’s pretty big,” Qiu Shi tried hard to describe it for him. “In summer we play out on the grasslands. There are dumb roe deer—scare them and they run really far. Sometimes you even run into wolf cubs. They’re actually just like little dogs. There are flower-faced mushrooms on the grasslands; if you pick them you can take them home and cook them. But you have to be careful. The grown-ups say you mustn’t go where the grass is short—that’s ghost swamp…”

As Qiu Shi spoke, it was as if the rolling green waves appeared before his eyes, stretching all the way to the horizon. Beyond the horizon were clouds, and hovering in mid-air, beating their wings, were birds called “tianzi,” whose calls were especially beautiful. He couldn’t help wondering: where exactly counted as home?

It was the first time Xu Minghai had heard a kid talk this much in one go. He asked again, “So do you have any snacks to eat?”

“Dried sweet potatoes, puffed-rice candy, sanzi, stove cakes, ground cherries, frozen pears…” Qiu Shi listed them like treasures. “They’re pretty tasty too.”

“We can roast sweet potatoes here too!”

At that, Xu Minghai jumped off the bed, shuffled outside in his slippers, grabbed two slender sweet potatoes from under the window, and came back in. Then he set the sweet potatoes on top of the stove.

Before dinner, when Li Yandong went out to get Chinese cabbage, she glanced sideways into Xu Minghai’s room and saw this scene: the two children each holding half a charred, oily sweet potato, sitting properly on the bed reading. Both of them looked like model children who wouldn’t cause grown-ups any trouble.

She stared for a while at her son, whose hyperactivity seemed to have been completely cured, then looked at Qiu Shi, whose face looked as if it had been carved from the same mold as Zhou Yingying’s. Somehow she began remembering things from when she was small.

Back then there had been plenty of children in the courtyard, but Chen Lei had only ever been nice to Zhou Yingying, taking her all over the place to play. She herself could only pretend not to care while secretly watching them from the side—wasn’t it almost exactly like the scene in front of her now?

Li Yandong sighed and shook her head, as if trying to fling the inexplicable thoughts out of her mind. Peeling off the frozen outer leaves of the big Chinese cabbage, she walked toward the kitchen, thinking: Everything was fine—why did she have to come back?