Grudge poison

The Sparrow Spirit, a regular at Wen Ning's shop, had been acting very strangely lately.

In all the time Wen Ning had known the little sparrow, this was the first time he had seen him perched silently on the electric fan. At first, Wen Ning thought his blind date with the hwamei hadn't gone well.

But watching the Sparrow Spirit, he noticed his wing occasionally brushing the oriole's beside him, followed by a furtive glance.

That gooey look almost made Wen Ning drop the cucumber in his hand.

"What's going on with you two?"

Wen Ning leaned against the doorframe and pointed his cucumber at the two birds on the fan.

"Weren't you learning to sing? How did singing lessons turn into making eyes at each other? Where's the hwamei?"

Wen Ning's shout startled the Sparrow Spirit so badly that he nearly fell off the fan. He flapped his wings twice before regaining his balance.

He glanced guiltily at the oriole, then at Wen Ning, and stammered out the whole story.

As it turned out, the hwamei thought his singing was so awful that she hadn't even given him a chance at a date. She had broken things off right there on the branch.

For a while after that, he had spent every day sitting in his nest in a daze.

His singing teacher, the oriole, couldn't bear to watch, so she kept him company, chatting with him and cheering him up.

Eventually, the Sparrow Spirit had come around: the hwamei didn't like him, but the oriole thought he was rather cute.

The oriole said that although he sang off-key, he took his lessons very seriously, coming to the branch before dawn every day to practice.

He was much more diligent than the crow next door, who had spent three