Yang Zhao hung up and made another call.
The person who picked up had the voice of a young man.
”HELLO?”
“Are you Liu Yuan?” Yang Zhao asked.
The din at the other end of the line was incredible. The young man yelled at the top of his lungs. “WHAT? WHAT DID YOU SAY?”
“Are you Liu Yuan?”
Yang Zhao drew in a deep breath and raised her voice a notch.
“Are you Liu Yuan?”
This time, he finally heard her. “UH-HUH. WHO ARE YOU?”
”Is Yang Jintian with you?”
That voice broke off. Yang Zhao heard the background noises grow softer, as if the person had gone into another room. Then the young man called Liu Yuan spoke to someone else. ”HEY YANG JINTIAN, YOU’RE WANTED.”
There was another moment of silence, then someone else answered the phone.
“Hello? Who’s speaking?”
Yang Zhao breathed out a sigh of relief at the sound of the voice. “It’s me.”
“Sis?”
Yang Zhao heard the background noises over the other end of the line fade again. Yang Jintian probably went into a restroom. She lowered her voice accordingly. “Where are you?”
“Why do you have Liu Yuan’s number?”
“Where are you?”
Yang Jintian sounded impatient. “Outside.”
Yang Zhao punctuated her words firmly, “I said, where are you?”
Yang Jintian grumbled. “I told you, outside. I’ll be home soon.”
“Have you been skipping your classes?”
Yang Jintian was silent for a moment. “I’m hanging up,” he muttered.
“Xiao-Tian!” Yang Zhao raised her voice uncharacteristically.
Yang Jintian would have hung up, had it not been for the considerable amount of fear he held for his sister. He stayed on the line and gave a grunt of acknowledgment.
“Where are you? I’ll go pick you up right now.”
”Yang Jintian could tell that he’d really ticked her off this time. Uneasy, he finally admitted, “Ledi karaoke hall, near the school’s entrance.”
Yang Zhao hung up, started her car and drove off.
When she opened the door to the karaoke hall, Yang Jintian was already standing by the entrance. Upon spotting her car’s approach, he went over to her without prompting.
Zhao cranked down the windows and said simply, “Get on.”
Yang Jintian opened the car door and sat in the backseat.
Yang Zhao glanced at him through the rearview mirror, and said drily, “Seat belts.”
Yang Jintian strapped in dutifully, and Yang Zhao started to drive.
After driving for some time, Yang Zhao turned to Yang Jintian. “Where’s your school bag?”
Yang Jintian propped his face on a palm and stared out the window.
“In school.”
Yang Zhao stopped speaking.
She drove him home and called for takeout. After hanging up, she turned to see Yang Jintian sitting on the sofa with his head covered.
The apartment was strangely quiet.
Yang Zhao stood by the phone for a brief moment, then went beside Yang Jintian and sat opposite him.
“Why did you cut classes?” Yang Zhao questioned.
Yang Jintian kept his head lowered. “Didn’t feel like going,” he whispered.
“Why didn’t you?”
Yang Jintian remained silent.
“Well I guess that isn’t too surprising: kids that enjoy going to school probably number in the minority.”
Yang Jintian curled his lips, paused, then whispered, “I had an exam today.”
“What kind?”
“Finals.”
“You didn’t want to take it?”
“I took it, but came out halfway,” He said, paused, then added, “Couldn’t do the questions.”
Yang Zhao lightly exhaled and watched Yang Jintian’s bowed head.
“That’s a problem you have to work out yourself. I don’t think you should hang out with this Liu Yuan again.”
The mention of Liu Yuan prompted Yang Jintian to look up. He frowned and glanced at Yang Zhao. “How’d you get a hold of Liu Yuan’s number anyway?”
“That’s not something you need to concern yourself with. This person’s character is suspect. It’d be in your interests to stay away from him.”
Yang Jintian shut his mouth and bowed his head again.
Watching Yang Jintian sink into silence, Yang Zhao followed suit.
She could tell that Yang Jintian did not take her words to heart. She was not good at doling out advice, let alone criticism, and Yang Jintian’s silence was a wall she was powerless to breach.
When the takeout arrived, Yang Zhao let Yang Jintian eat first. Meanwhile, she went to the study and called home, to let her parents know that she’d found Yang Jintian.
“Let him stay over at my place today,” said Yang Zhao. “I’ll send him to school tomorrow,”
The next day, Yang Zhao drove Yang Jintian to school and watched him enter the school gates. Instead of leaving, she parked the car and walked inside the campus herself.
The high school was the best in the city, and the security guard, ever diligent in his duties, stopped her immediately upon seeing her unfamiliar face.
“I’m a guardian,” Yang Zhao informed the security guard. “I’m here to meet a teacher.”
“Which teacher are you looking for?” asked the security guard. Only when Yang Zhao reported the class and the teacher’s surname did the security guard let her through.
Located in the very heart of the city, the high school was a large campus whose interior was lined with many trees. Yang Zhao once came here during the summer.
On that day, the winds were terribly strong, and the trees in the campus were flowering. Swept off their branches by the winds, the petals fluttered magnificently like curtains of pearls, a breathtaking sight.
This gorgeous scenery was a rarity in the downtown area. That was why Yang Zhao very fond of this place. When she looked at the coming and going students, they seemed to glow with hope and vitality.
She found the teachers’ office and knocked on the door.
“Excuse me, is Ms Sun in?”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, a woman in her 30s rose to her feet in the innermost corner of the office. It was Yang Jintian’s form teacher, Sun Yanhua.
Ms Sun paused at the sight of Yang Zhao. “And you are…?” she asked.
“Yang Jintian’s elder sister,” Yang Zhao replied.
“Ah, I see. Nice to meet you.” Ms Sun led Yang Zhao to the corridor and began to speak beside a window.
“I was going to invite you here if you didn’t pay a visit soon.” Ms Sun obviously had much to say to Yang Zhao. “Yang Jintian has been playing truant for the past couple of days, as you must already know.”
Yang zhao nodded. “Yes. I brought him back yesterday.”
Ms Sun’s brows, framed by her thin rimmed glasses, wrinkled slightly, and her expression took on a concerned cast.
“I am well aware of this child’s… difficult circumstances, but he cannot be allowed to carry on in this manner any longer. As a third year, he will have the college entrance exams to contend with next year. His current grades, however…” Ms Sun left her words hanging and let out a sigh.
“How far behind is he in his studies?” asked Yang Zhao.
“He has barely covered the second year syllabus. Not to mention, he failed three subjects in his end of term exams. Please excuse me, I’ll be right back.” Ms Sun disappeared into the office and presently reemerged with a stack of papers in her hands.
“Here, have a look for yourself.” Ms Sun placed the stack of papers on the marble window ledge and spread them out. Yang Zhao looked at them. They’re Yang Jintian’s exam papers. She held a few up. They held either slews of red crosses or blank, white spaces.
“These are his papers from the second half of his sophomore year. Other students would bring their papers home, but he would leave them in school. Had I not kept them on his behalf, he would probably have thrown them away.”
Ms Sun pushed up the slender frames of her glasses, then said to Yang Zhao, “Yesterday, he took off halfway through his exam. I’ve already called his home.”
Looking at the stacks of exam papers on the window, Yang Zhao’s first impulse was to smoke, but she did not act on it.
“Given Xiao-Tian’s current grades, Ms Sun, can he still make it to college?”
Ms Sun was a slightly plump woman who was shorter than Yang Zhao by half a head. Her eyebrows crumpled into a deep frown as she regarded Yang Zhao. “Merely meeting the minimum college entry requirements will not cut it,” she declared urgently. “When he was in junior high school, he had the second highest scores in his class and gained entry into our experimental middle school by dint of his excellent grades. You cannot set the goal as just to ‘make it to college’. Nowadays, universities are a dime in a dozen, and diploma mills are only too happy to crank out degrees so long as you throw enough money at it. But what good will that do? You’ll only ruin the child’s future! “
Yang Zhao was too stunned to put a word in. Ms Sun ploughed on. “Right now, this child is stuck in a psychological impasse. Considering the tragedy that had befallen his family, us educators are not immune to his plight, but at the end of the day, one must always look forward. Nearly two years has passed, yet he has not managed to overcome it. The onus is on his family members and you to do something about it. Keep this up and the child is done for. Don’t even get me started on his grades. If he gets corrupted by bad influences on top of that, whatever will you do?”
After wrapping up her talk with Ms Sun, Yang Zhao entered the ladies washroom and smoked three whole cigarettes before coming out. She was itching to check on Yang Jintian’s class, but she suppressed the urge.
Yang Zhao returned to her car. Right before she left, she had told Ms Sun:
“Xiao-Tian’s a good kid. My family members and I accept full responsibility for his current state. But Ms Sun, no matter what happens, please don’t give up on him.”
Please don’t give up on him…
Yang Zhao had a splitting headache. Never had she had to deal with something like this. She recalled her senior high days. Back then she was an honors student who lived a highly disciplined lifestyle in which studying and sleeping hours followed a fixed, structured routine. Of course, she didn’t strictly live by the book—whenever an interesting film was showing in town, she was not above cutting classes in favor of the cinema. Her parents knew, or perhaps they did not; either way they never made an issue of it.
But skipping the occasional lessons like she did back in the day could not be spoken of in the same breath as Yang Jintian’s truancy. It was different, completely different.
Suppose she stood by and did nothing, she knew rather abstractly that it would only be a matter of time before Yang Jintian landed himself in serious trouble. She took out her phone, but did not know who to call.
Dad? Or Mum?
Even with her eyes closed Yang Zhao could tell what her parents would do to counsel Yang Jintian: summon him to the living room, brew a pot of tea, have Yang Jintian talk through his difficulties, then offer some well-meaning platitudes—in short, they would offer the same sort of parental guidance they gave to Yang Zhao when she was younger.
Yang Zhao wasn’t pooh-poohing the use of this method; it simply did not seem like something that would be effective with Yang Jintian.
Yang Zhao sat in the car for over two hours, racking her brains over possible solutions and possible ways to engage on this matter with him, with nothing to show for it save a beleaguered sigh.
Just as she had finished off a pack of cigarettes, her phone rang.
Yang Zhao fished it out and glanced at it. It’s a stranger.
Looking at the string of unfamiliar numbers on her phone’s screen, she slowly straightened up.
A hunch seized her.
She answered the phone. From the other end of the line came a deep, mellow voice.
“Hi, is this Ms Yang? This is Chen Mingsheng.”
Yang Zhao gave a “mm” in response. Chen Mingsheng continued, “Have you got some free time? I’m thinking of heading over to collect my stuff.”
Yang Zhao peered at her watch. It was noon. “Yes, I have.”
“Okay then, I’ll be over in about half an hour’s time.”
”Wait.”
“Yeah?” That soft “yeah” seemed to cut a direct path through Yang Zhao’s phone and straight through her chest, and her heart began to throb. She didn’t know what had gotten into her.
“Since it’s noon,” she said to Chen Mingsheng. “How about having a meal together?” She waited for Chen Mingsheng to reject her. This time, Chen Mingsheng said nothing for a few seconds, then answered with a soft “all right”.
Yang Zhao hung up and made another call.
The person who picked up had the voice of a young man.
”HELLO?”
“Are you Liu Yuan?” Yang Zhao asked.
The din at the other end of the line was incredible. The young man yelled at the top of his lungs. “WHAT? WHAT DID YOU SAY?”
“Are you Liu Yuan?”
Yang Zhao drew in a deep breath and raised her voice a notch.
“Are you Liu Yuan?”
This time, he finally heard her. “UH-HUH. WHO ARE YOU?”
”Is Yang Jintian with you?”
That voice broke off. Yang Zhao heard the background noises grow softer, as if the person had gone into another room. Then the young man called Liu Yuan spoke to someone else. ”HEY YANG JINTIAN, YOU’RE WANTED.”
There was another moment of silence, then someone else answered the phone.
“Hello? Who’s speaking?”
Yang Zhao breathed out a sigh of relief at the sound of the voice. “It’s me.”
“Sis?”
Yang Zhao heard the background noises over the other end of the line fade again. Yang Jintian probably went into a restroom. She lowered her voice accordingly. “Where are you?”
“Why do you have Liu Yuan’s number?”
“Where are you?”
Yang Jintian sounded impatient. “Outside.”
Yang Zhao punctuated her words firmly, “I said, where are you?”
Yang Jintian grumbled. “I told you, outside. I’ll be home soon.”
“Have you been skipping your classes?”
Yang Jintian was silent for a moment. “I’m hanging up,” he muttered.
“Xiao-Tian!” Yang Zhao raised her voice uncharacteristically.
Yang Jintian would have hung up, had it not been for the considerable amount of fear he held for his sister. He stayed on the line and gave a grunt of acknowledgment.
“Where are you? I’ll go pick you up right now.”
”Yang Jintian could tell that he’d really ticked her off this time. Uneasy, he finally admitted, “Ledi karaoke hall, near the school’s entrance.”
Yang Zhao hung up, started her car and drove off.
When she opened the door to the karaoke hall, Yang Jintian was already standing by the entrance. Upon spotting her car’s approach, he went over to her without prompting.
Zhao cranked down the windows and said simply, “Get on.”
Yang Jintian opened the car door and sat in the backseat.
Yang Zhao glanced at him through the rearview mirror, and said drily, “Seat belts.”
Yang Jintian strapped in dutifully, and Yang Zhao started to drive.
After driving for some time, Yang Zhao turned to Yang Jintian. “Where’s your school bag?”
Yang Jintian propped his face on a palm and stared out the window.
“In school.”
Yang Zhao stopped speaking.
She drove him home and called for takeout. After hanging up, she turned to see Yang Jintian sitting on the sofa with his head covered.
The apartment was strangely quiet.
Yang Zhao stood by the phone for a brief moment, then went beside Yang Jintian and sat opposite him.
“Why did you cut classes?” Yang Zhao questioned.
Yang Jintian kept his head lowered. “Didn’t feel like going,” he whispered.
“Why didn’t you?”
Yang Jintian remained silent.
“Well I guess that isn’t too surprising: kids that enjoy going to school probably number in the minority.”
Yang Jintian curled his lips, paused, then whispered, “I had an exam today.”
“What kind?”
“Finals.”
“You didn’t want to take it?”
“I took it, but came out halfway,” He said, paused, then added, “Couldn’t do the questions.”
Yang Zhao lightly exhaled and watched Yang Jintian’s bowed head.
“That’s a problem you have to work out yourself. I don’t think you should hang out with this Liu Yuan again.”
The mention of Liu Yuan prompted Yang Jintian to look up. He frowned and glanced at Yang Zhao. “How’d you get a hold of Liu Yuan’s number anyway?”
“That’s not something you need to concern yourself with. This person’s character is suspect. It’d be in your interests to stay away from him.”
Yang Jintian shut his mouth and bowed his head again.
Watching Yang Jintian sink into silence, Yang Zhao followed suit.
She could tell that Yang Jintian did not take her words to heart. She was not good at doling out advice, let alone criticism, and Yang Jintian’s silence was a wall she was powerless to breach.
When the takeout arrived, Yang Zhao let Yang Jintian eat first. Meanwhile, she went to the study and called home, to let her parents know that she’d found Yang Jintian.
“Let him stay over at my place today,” said Yang Zhao. “I’ll send him to school tomorrow,”
The next day, Yang Zhao drove Yang Jintian to school and watched him enter the school gates. Instead of leaving, she parked the car and walked inside the campus herself.
The high school was the best in the city, and the security guard, ever diligent in his duties, stopped her immediately upon seeing her unfamiliar face.
“I’m a guardian,” Yang Zhao informed the security guard. “I’m here to meet a teacher.”
“Which teacher are you looking for?” asked the security guard. Only when Yang Zhao reported the class and the teacher’s surname did the security guard let her through.
Located in the very heart of the city, the high school was a large campus whose interior was lined with many trees. Yang Zhao once came here during the summer.
On that day, the winds were terribly strong, and the trees in the campus were flowering. Swept off their branches by the winds, the petals fluttered magnificently like curtains of pearls, a breathtaking sight.
This gorgeous scenery was a rarity in the downtown area. That was why Yang Zhao very fond of this place. When she looked at the coming and going students, they seemed to glow with hope and vitality.
She found the teachers’ office and knocked on the door.
“Excuse me, is Ms Sun in?”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, a woman in her 30s rose to her feet in the innermost corner of the office. It was Yang Jintian’s form teacher, Sun Yanhua.
Ms Sun paused at the sight of Yang Zhao. “And you are…?” she asked.
“Yang Jintian’s elder sister,” Yang Zhao replied.
“Ah, I see. Nice to meet you.” Ms Sun led Yang Zhao to the corridor and began to speak beside a window.
“I was going to invite you here if you didn’t pay a visit soon.” Ms Sun obviously had much to say to Yang Zhao. “Yang Jintian has been playing truant for the past couple of days, as you must already know.”
Yang zhao nodded. “Yes. I brought him back yesterday.”
Ms Sun’s brows, framed by her thin rimmed glasses, wrinkled slightly, and her expression took on a concerned cast.
“I am well aware of this child’s… difficult circumstances, but he cannot be allowed to carry on in this manner any longer. As a third year, he will have the college entrance exams to contend with next year. His current grades, however…” Ms Sun left her words hanging and let out a sigh.
“How far behind is he in his studies?” asked Yang Zhao.
“He has barely covered the second year syllabus. Not to mention, he failed three subjects in his end of term exams. Please excuse me, I’ll be right back.” Ms Sun disappeared into the office and presently reemerged with a stack of papers in her hands.
“Here, have a look for yourself.” Ms Sun placed the stack of papers on the marble window ledge and spread them out. Yang Zhao looked at them. They’re Yang Jintian’s exam papers. She held a few up. They held either slews of red crosses or blank, white spaces.
“These are his papers from the second half of his sophomore year. Other students would bring their papers home, but he would leave them in school. Had I not kept them on his behalf, he would probably have thrown them away.”
Ms Sun pushed up the slender frames of her glasses, then said to Yang Zhao, “Yesterday, he took off halfway through his exam. I’ve already called his home.”
Looking at the stacks of exam papers on the window, Yang Zhao’s first impulse was to smoke, but she did not act on it.
“Given Xiao-Tian’s current grades, Ms Sun, can he still make it to college?”
Ms Sun was a slightly plump woman who was shorter than Yang Zhao by half a head. Her eyebrows crumpled into a deep frown as she regarded Yang Zhao. “Merely meeting the minimum college entry requirements will not cut it,” she declared urgently. “When he was in junior high school, he had the second highest scores in his class and gained entry into our experimental middle school by dint of his excellent grades. You cannot set the goal as just to ‘make it to college’. Nowadays, universities are a dime in a dozen, and diploma mills are only too happy to crank out degrees so long as you throw enough money at it. But what good will that do? You’ll only ruin the child’s future! “
Yang Zhao was too stunned to put a word in. Ms Sun ploughed on. “Right now, this child is stuck in a psychological impasse. Considering the tragedy that had befallen his family, us educators are not immune to his plight, but at the end of the day, one must always look forward. Nearly two years has passed, yet he has not managed to overcome it. The onus is on his family members and you to do something about it. Keep this up and the child is done for. Don’t even get me started on his grades. If he gets corrupted by bad influences on top of that, whatever will you do?”
After wrapping up her talk with Ms Sun, Yang Zhao entered the ladies washroom and smoked three whole cigarettes before coming out. She was itching to check on Yang Jintian’s class, but she suppressed the urge.
Yang Zhao returned to her car. Right before she left, she had told Ms Sun:
“Xiao-Tian’s a good kid. My family members and I accept full responsibility for his current state. But Ms Sun, no matter what happens, please don’t give up on him.”
Please don’t give up on him…
Yang Zhao had a splitting headache. Never had she had to deal with something like this. She recalled her senior high days. Back then she was an honors student who lived a highly disciplined lifestyle in which studying and sleeping hours followed a fixed, structured routine. Of course, she didn’t strictly live by the book—whenever an interesting film was showing in town, she was not above cutting classes in favor of the cinema. Her parents knew, or perhaps they did not; either way they never made an issue of it.
But skipping the occasional lessons like she did back in the day could not be spoken of in the same breath as Yang Jintian’s truancy. It was different, completely different.
Suppose she stood by and did nothing, she knew rather abstractly that it would only be a matter of time before Yang Jintian landed himself in serious trouble. She took out her phone, but did not know who to call.
Dad? Or Mum?
Even with her eyes closed Yang Zhao could tell what her parents would do to counsel Yang Jintian: summon him to the living room, brew a pot of tea, have Yang Jintian talk through his difficulties, then offer some well-meaning platitudes—in short, they would offer the same sort of parental guidance they gave to Yang Zhao when she was younger.
Yang Zhao wasn’t pooh-poohing the use of this method; it simply did not seem like something that would be effective with Yang Jintian.
Yang Zhao sat in the car for over two hours, racking her brains over possible solutions and possible ways to engage on this matter with him, with nothing to show for it save a beleaguered sigh.
Just as she had finished off a pack of cigarettes, her phone rang.
Yang Zhao fished it out and glanced at it. It’s a stranger.
Looking at the string of unfamiliar numbers on her phone’s screen, she slowly straightened up.
A hunch seized her.
She answered the phone. From the other end of the line came a deep, mellow voice.
“Hi, is this Ms Yang? This is Chen Mingsheng.”
Yang Zhao gave a “mm” in response. Chen Mingsheng continued, “Have you got some free time? I’m thinking of heading over to collect my stuff.”
Yang Zhao peered at her watch. It was noon. “Yes, I have.”
“Okay then, I’ll be over in about half an hour’s time.”
”Wait.”
“Yeah?” That soft “yeah” seemed to cut a direct path through Yang Zhao’s phone and straight through her chest, and her heart began to throb. She didn’t know what had gotten into her.
“Since it’s noon,” she said to Chen Mingsheng. “How about having a meal together?” She waited for Chen Mingsheng to reject her. This time, Chen Mingsheng said nothing for a few seconds, then answered with a soft “all right”.
