Worse yet, the weather was awful beyond words, with nonstop snowfall and days too cold for the snow to melt. The packed snow was a terrible thing, the reflected light inexplicably souring Wei’s mood. The light turned night into day, bringing everything out into the open: no secrets, no hints, and no suggestiveness. Even the normally dark grove was exposed and transparent. Flashlight in hand, Wei roamed aimlessly in the snow, feeling utterly bored. The nights were worse than the days, since there were no more dark corners where people could engage in unsavory acts. He sighed and headed home.
The campus came to life once the winter break ended. Nearly all of the students had put on weight; the boys were heavier than before, the girls even more so. Their faces were a size larger than they’d been only weeks earlier. Rosy, flushed faces told the experienced teachers that the girls had eaten and slept themselves into a fleeting plumpness that would disappear within days.
With the extra weight, the girls looked healthier, and the improved skin tones made them prettier than ever. But when they lost the excess weight, they’d no longer be the scrawny girls of before. Those days would be over. They say that a girl’s looks change at eighteen. That seemed to be the case at the school. But this could have been the sixteenth or seventeenth change on the road to the transformation from little girls into women. Their eyes and the way they carried themselves displayed a new temperament, and this made their metamorphosis complete.
But not Yuyang. She actually had lost weight, for she hadn’t eaten or slept well over the winter break. A movie played continuously in her head, one with unspeakable scenes. She kept feeling that her lower body was exposed and that a hand was stuck to it. She tried to blot it out of her mind, but the hand had the unerring ability to find her like a shadow that cannot be severed, not even with a knife. It found every opportunity to reach out and slither over her body like a snake. Back in the duty room, she hadn’t felt the humiliation, but shame reared its ugly head once the break began and she had returned home. Lacking the courage to discuss it with anyone, she could only bury it deep inside. But humiliation is a strange thing. The deeper you bury it, the smaller its teeth, and yet its bite is sharper.
Yuyang’s sense of humiliation brought her more than pain; she was consumed with outrage. The anger she felt toward the slanderer went beyond loathing. She racked her brains trying to ferret out the culprit. Over the three-week break, this thought consumed all her time and energy. Using logical deduction and imaginative power, she set her mind on finding the slanderer. First she made a list of all the students in Section Three of the class of ’82 and examined each of them whenever she could. Everyone was guilty, and everyone was innocent. When she finally settled on someone, she’d change her mind the next day. Who was it?
Who was it? Two days into the semester, Pang Fenghua tripped herself up and revealed her foxtail. She had developed the habit of skipping the last rung on the ladder to the upper bunk whenever she was in a hurry or in a good mood. That was what she did that morning, except that this time she let out a scream and fell into the lower bunk, where she rolled around. Startled, the other girls crowded around her but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Yuyang, thinking that she might have twisted an ankle, held up Fenghua’s feet to check and was greeted by a frightening sight. Two thumbtacks were stuck in one of her heels and the force from her jump had pushed them deep into her flesh. All Yuyang could do was hold Fenghua down and pull them out, which left two punctures in her heels that immediately began to bleed.
Her face contorted with pain, Fenghua slapped Yuyang.
“You put those in my shoes! You did it!” Her outrageous accusation was groundless, since everyone had been given a box of thumbtacks for a sketching class that semester.
What made Fenghua assume that it was Yuyang who had put the tacks in her shoes? Two of her own tacks could have fallen into her shoes. Covering her mouth with her hand, Yuyang felt tears well up. No one said a word; Fenghua’s wails were the only sounds in the room.
Everyone knew that Fenghua hadn’t really meant it, that pain and anger had made her lose her temper, but that was not what Yuyang was thinking. Through her teary eyes, she finally saw through Fenghua.
What made her assume that it was Yuyang? Why had she thought that Yuyang had sought revenge? She had something to hide, which meant that she had written the slanderous letter.
Yuyang managed to force back her tears as the corners of her mouth curved upward, almost as if she were smiling.
Very well, Pang Fenghua, very well, Yuyang thought to herself as she let go of Pang’s foot, turned, and left the room without a word.
Fenghua was frightened because she had slapped Yuyang for no justifiable reason. Yuyang might look like an open book and be easy to get along with, but it was hard to say whether or not she’d report her. Fenghua was also unsettled by the look in Yuyang’s eyes and her smirk, so she hobbled over to the homeroom teacher’s room that evening, where she burst out crying the moment she saw him.
After hearing her out, he sighed.
“It’s all my fault,” he said with a look of torment. “I’ve spoiled you.” Then he added, “How could you have done that?”
That effectively brought a halt to their conversation. With neither of them saying anything, the room was quiet except for the buzzing of the transformer in the fluorescent light. Fenghua kept her head lowered and picked at her fingernails. Her teacher was too fond of her to sit and watch her suffer, so he reached out for her hand, which he examined, front and back, before he said with a smile, “I didn’t realize you could be so ferocious.”
That stopped her tears; she retreated, pulled her hand back, and held it behind her. She swayed uneasily as she bit her lower lip and looked ashamed. With a stern look he said, “Don’t do that again. Don’t ever—or I’ll slap you.” He raised his hand threateningly, never expecting her to look up, take a step forward, cock her head, and push her face right up to him.
“Go ahead, slap me,” she said softly.
Caught off guard, he didn’t know what to do. His hand was suspended in midair.
“Do it.” Her eyes, only inches away, stared down at him. “You don’t dare. You don’t have the nerve, do you?”
His arm began to drop, but then he froze like a statue, and so did she. This was totally unexpected—for both of them—and it was torturous, for they both yearned for the next step though neither knew what that would be. They heard each other’s heavy breathing and felt the blood race through their veins as they breathed on each other like snorting horses.
What happened next took them both by surprise. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him; it looked impulsive, and yet it was completely natural. His lips fell on hers as she stumbled toward him, confused and not realizing what was happening. Neither had any experience doing this, so their kiss was awkward and rushed. It wasn’t anything like a real kiss; it was more like bumping lips together. They were frightened and yet dying to try it out, so after touching lips, they quickly separated.
But that touch was a lethal one—now there was no fear to stop them. They went ahead with the next kiss, a serious, proper one. Their lips seemed glued together, and before it was over, tears were streaming down the teacher’s face while Fenghua nearly fainted.
“My life is over,” he said, finally revealing what he’d been hiding in his heart.
Fenghua felt a sadness well up inside her, and she went limp. “Take me with you and we’ll die together,” she said with her eyes shut.