Old Classmates
The familiar bout of dizziness faded, and Shen Jingchuan found himself standing in the two-bedroom apartment in the old residential complex. The wall clock had just struck nine.
He took a hot shower, then sat down at the table, rubbing his half-dry hair, his mind full of how to turn the rough stones into cash.
The batch ought to be worth quite a bit, but he had never set foot in the collectibles trade. If he rushed into an antique shop to sell them, he would definitely get ripped off.
His fingertips rubbed the cool surface of a stone without thinking, and a figure he had kept hidden in his heart for more than a decade slowly came to mind.
Meng Ke.
Shen Jingchuan had gone to the same middle school as her, where he had noticed the pretty girl. Later, they had become classmates in high school.
She was his first love, his white moonlight.
During those three years, she had always sat quietly by the window. She was gentle and spoke little.
Their classmates had all vaguely known that her family was well-off and dealt in antique collecting, but she rarely mentioned it herself and kept a very low profile.
At their farewell dinner after high school graduation, their classmates had clamored to add one another on WeChat and exchange contact details. The class group chat had been set up long ago, but he had worked up the nerve with the help of alcohol, gone up to her separately, and asked for her personal WeChat with a red face.
The moment she accepted him, his palms were covered in sweat, as though he were holding a scalding hot potato. He had been too embarrassed even to say, "Let's keep in touch."
Later, after the news passed through several classmates, he heard that Meng Ke had applied to Capital Normal University.
On an impulse, before the application system closed, he deleted the out-of-town, top-tier engineering university he had originally chosen and put down the same university as her.
He was too embarrassed to ask which department or major she had chosen, clinging only to a small, humble hope: if they were on the same campus, they were bound to run into each other a few times.
During their four years at university, they were in different departments and schools, yet they saw each other often. Most of those meetings, however, were "chance encounters" he had deliberately arranged after working out the timing and learning the routes she usually took.
When they ran into each other, he would smile and say hello, then exchange a few words about their high school teachers and classmates, speaking casually, like the most ordinary old classmates.
But every time they parted, his heart would race wildly for a long while afterward.
Her profile picture lay quietly in his WeChat contacts for four years.
He had scrolled through her Moments countless times, but never tapped a single heart. He typed messages, deleted them, and typed them again, but in the end never dared send her a message of his own accord.
After the second semester of their senior year, their paths crossed even less. Over those four years, he only sent her a proper "Happy holidays" on festive occasions, after spending ages choosing his words. She would politely return the same greeting, and that would be the end of it.
It wasn't that he didn't want to get closer; he didn't dare. He feared being too forward, feared rejection, feared even that faint little connection would be severed, shattering the hope he had carried for so many years.
But now, holding this batch of rough stones, whose origins were unusual and whose value was hard to determine, he went through everyone he knew in his contacts.
After thinking it over, Meng Ke was the only person he knew who came from a collecting family. She had grown up immersed in it and had majored in archaeology and appraisal at university. She surely knew the trade, and she was the only one who could help, as well as the person he trusted most.
Shen Jingchuan stared at the WeChat input box, his fingertip hovering over the screen for a long while as he silently bolstered his courage. He wasn't confessing his feelings; he was just asking an old classmate to look at something for him. This was legitimate business, nothing to panic about.
He took a deep breath, typed out a message, and sent it: Are you there?
In less than half a minute, a new message popped up. Beside Meng Ke's profile picture were the words, "I'm here, old classmate. What's up?" with a faint smiley face at the end.
It was just an ordinary emoji, but Shen Jingchuan felt tremendously encouraged, and his tense shoulders relaxed a little.
He weighed his words, deleting and revising them, before finally sending:
Here's the thing. I have a stone my family left me. It looks like it might be valuable, but I don't know anything about it. Sorry to trouble you, but could you take a look at it for me?
Meng Ke replied quickly: Sure. Come by my shop tomorrow, then. I start work at nine.
A location pin followed right after. Shen Jingchuan opened it and saw that it was on the famous antiques street in Xicheng District. The shop was marked "Jade-Nurturing Hall."
His fingertip trembling slightly, he replied: Okay, see you tomorrow.
Meng Ke: See you tomorrow. (Happy)
After putting down his phone, Shen Jingchuan leaned against the headboard, his heart still beating a little faster than usual. He couldn't say whether it was because he was about to turn the rough stones into cash or because he had finally spoken to the person he hadn't been in touch with for months.
He tossed and turned for quite a while before falling asleep with a touch of anticipation he couldn't quite explain.
Early the next morning, Shen Jingchuan got up just as the early-summer daylight filled the room.
He spent a long time tidying himself up in front of the mirror. He didn't have a proper suit, so he dug out the most expensive thing in his wardrobe: a lightweight navy-blue casual outdoor jacket. Its cut was neat without looking sloppy, making it the most "formal" outfit he could present himself in.
He slung on the large-capacity outdoor backpack he usually used to carry things.
There wasn't much left in his mobile payment account, but he didn't begrudge spending any of it now (he'd have money soon). He booked a car straight to Xicheng.
At a quarter past nine, the car stopped at the entrance to the antiques street. Shen Jingchuan followed the street numbers and soon spotted the sign for "Jade-Nurturing Hall."
The shop wasn't large. Its black-lacquered wooden door was fitted with brass rings, and several seals and various jade ornaments sat in the display window, giving it an antique charm.
Just as he stopped, he saw the wooden door pulled open from inside, and that familiar figure stepped out.
Shen Jingchuan's heart gave a sudden leap, and his breath caught for half a second.
Meng Ke saw him too. Her eyes curved, and she gave him a gentle smile.
That smile slowly overlapped with the one in his memories, and Shen Jingchuan instantly lost his composure. His face burned, and even the smile he forced out looked unnatural. He raised a hand in a stiff wave and walked over, his steps a little unsteady.
"You're here? Come in." Meng Ke spoke naturally, treating him like an ordinary old classmate. She stepped aside to usher him in, then walked straight through without stopping in the main hall. "Come this way. It's quieter."
The shop was fairly deep. Beyond the front hall, which was lined with display cases, was a small room of about ten square meters, furnished with a tea table and a tool rack. It was where she usually examined goods.
Meng Ke poured him a cup of tea, set it on the table, and sat down with a smile:
"Honestly, Shen Jingchuan, it's been so long, and you really haven't sent a word. What, you only remember this old classmate when you need something, and come knocking on my door?"
Her tone was teasing, with a hint of familiar reproach.
Shen Jingchuan's grip on his teacup tightened. His tongue seemed to tie itself in knots, and he stammered:
"Of course not... I was just afraid you were busy, so I didn't dare bother you out of the blue."
Even he thought the excuse sounded strained once he said it, and his face grew hotter. Eager to escape the awkwardness, he hurriedly put down his cup and reached for his backpack:
"I brought it with me. Take a look for me."
He pulled an object wrapped in soft velvet from the bag and pushed it to the middle of the table. When he opened the cloth, it revealed a seal blank that had been ground into a regular shape. It had a warm, lustrous color, an even, pure yellow, and was thicker than a thumb.
Meng Ke reached out and took it. The instant her fingertips touched the stone, her expression changed slightly.
Her fingertips rubbed the surface, and she picked up the magnifying glass beside the table and leaned in to examine its texture and grain closely. The longer she looked, the brighter her eyes grew. After a while, she put down the magnifying glass and looked up at Shen Jingchuan, her voice full of undisguised surprise:
"Not bad, old classmate. You really have been hiding your talents. This is top-grade Balin Fuhuang jelly stone."
She tapped the surface with a fingertip. "Look at this texture, translucent and clear as solidified honey. And yours has already been shaped into a seal blank, so it commands a much higher premium than ordinary rough stone. On the market right now, pieces in decent condition start at 2,000 yuan a gram. For jelly stone of this quality, especially a properly shaped blank, the price climbs even higher."
As she spoke, she got up and took a precision electronic jewelry scale with a glass draft shield from the tool rack. After calibrating it, she carefully placed the stone blank on it.
The numbers on the screen flickered twice, then settled.
"128 grams. Large pieces of jelly stone over a hundred grams are rare to begin with, and this one has been shaped so neatly. It's hard to come by."
She paused. Seeing the blank look on Shen Jingchuan's face, she knew he really didn't understand, so she gave it to him straight. "We're old classmates, so I'll tell you the truth. At the current market rate, a conservative estimate puts this piece at several hundred thousand yuan, toward the upper end. If you sent it to an auction house and a collector took a liking to it, it's not impossible for it to fetch a million."