Sanyou Bookstore

Pingyang Prefecture was an ancient town of a thousand years along the banks of the Fen River, and a key stronghold in southern Jin. The long history had accumulated rich resources for this land, and also deposited a profound cultural nourishment.

Over the past decade or so, with the development of underground resources, the ancient culture that had lain dormant in history gradually revived. Private schools, those antiques buried in piles of old papers, were once again embraced by people.

Sanyou Private School was one such refurbished old antique.

This private school was located in a bookstore on the street-level commercial space of Yunhua Residential Area.

The bookstore was called Sanyou Bookstore.

The teacher, who was also the bookstore owner, was surnamed Wu. He was short and plump, wore a pair of black-rimmed round glasses, and habitually greeted people with a cupped-fist salute. This earned him an inexplicable respect throughout the entire residential area, and he was known as "Mr. Wu."

Mr. Wu's private school was very small, with only one teacher and one student.

The teacher was Mr. Wu.

The student was a boy from a household in Yunhua Residential Area, named Zheng Qing.

Yunhua Residential Area was a model housing complex developed by the Pingyang City government in the 1990s. Although by today's standards the complex was indeed not large, with only nine residential buildings, its location was excellent.

To the east of the complex was a bustling commercial street. Across from the east gate, directly facing the city's largest supermarket. To the west of the complex was Pingyang Academy, the only institution of higher learning in Pingyang City. To the south was the province's key middle school, Pingyang Experimental Middle School. Next to the Experimental Middle School was the province's top private school, Jin'nan Middle School. Add to that the city's key primary school across the street, and an unlucky student from the complex could go from birth to college graduation without needing to walk more than two blocks.

Zheng Qing felt he was only one step away from that legendary kind of life.

Many of Zheng Qing's elders were school teachers. His grandfather was a professor at Pingyang Academy, his father taught at Jin'nan Middle School next to the complex, his mother taught at Pingyang First Primary School across the street, and his other uncles, aunts, and relatives were all active within those school buildings. As far back as he could remember, he had been listening to the harsh ringing of class bells in schools. When he got a little older, he ran wild across the playgrounds of several schools.

But no matter how he ran, his life seemed confined within those playgrounds and school buildings.

Confined.

Zheng Qing lifted the heavy brush and wrote this character on the snow-white rice paper.

"Focus! Don't forget what you're here for!" Mr. Wu's wooden ruler tapped lightly on the desk, making a chilling dong dong sound.

Zheng Qing took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, tried to empty his mind as much as possible, and diligently traced the copybook in front of him.

Actually, at the very beginning, Zheng Qing had practiced calligraphy with his grandfather. As an old-school intellectual, Professor Zheng not only wrote a beautiful hand himself but also had very strict demands on the younger generation.

Before he was six, it was memorizing ancient poems and texts, from the Three Character Classic, the Hundred Family Surnames, and the Thousand Character Classic, to the Three Hundred Tang Poems, and then to the ci, qu, and classical prose selected by the old professor himself. As he learned to speak, he began to learn to recognize characters and memorize classics. Zheng Qing, along with his other cousins and relatives, started their difficult, seemingly endless career of memorization under the old professor's discipline stick, sniffling and sobbing.

Day after day, no weekends, no winter or summer vacations.

At six, it was no longer just memorization; he had to start learning to write.

Starting with how to hold the brush, dot, horizontal stroke, left-falling stroke, right-falling stroke—the dotted lines of the squared paper were filled with Zheng Qing's monotonous childhood; the ink pool of the inkstone was steeped in Zheng Qing's bitter tears.

He was dragged out of bed at exactly six in the morning to practice morning calligraphy, finishing fifty large characters before breakfast. After breakfast came morning recitation, memorizing assigned passages by noon, then practicing a few more sheets of large characters. A short half-hour nap after lunch, then getting up to continue memorizing and practicing calligraphy. After dinner, it was still memorizing and practicing calligraphy. At nine sharp, he was sent to bed. Every day, from then until he fell asleep, was the happiest time for Zheng Qing.

Because he could let his mind wander freely, without practicing large characters or memorizing ancient texts.

But letting his mind wander was very draining.

Every time he fell asleep after letting his mind wander, Zheng Qing would enter a chaotic dream. Like a splashed-ink landscape painting, ethereal, abstract, impossible to grasp, yet relentlessly pursuing him.

Whenever he woke from such a dream, he would scream and shout, drenched in cold sweat, and often feel listless for a day or two. His family thought he was just having nightmares, so they took care of him and lightened his homework for a day or two.

For Zheng Qing, those days felt as happy as a vacation.

Days with nightmares were, after all, rare and hard to come by.

When he was younger, Zheng Qing had difficulty entering this dream, having a nightmare about once every six months. Perhaps driven by a strong inner desire, as he grew older, his nightmares became more frequent, and the situation gradually worsened.

At first, he just woke up screaming and shouting. Then gradually, he started sleepwalking. Sometimes, waking up in the morning, he would be horrified to find himself sleeping on top of the tall wardrobe, with no memory of how he got there. Sometimes, he would sleepwalk to the balcony, sing a nonsensical song, then silently crawl back into bed. Sometimes, he would even pick up his brush in the middle of the night and scratch out a large area of strange symbols.

Along with the worsening nightmares, Zheng Qing began to suffer from headaches.

At first, his family thought he was trying to shirk his duties and didn't pay much attention. But to be safe, they took him to a specialized hospital in the city for scans. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong and could only attribute it to too much pressure on the child, suggesting a balance of work and rest.

It wasn't until one day, when Zheng Qing started banging his head against the wall to relieve the pain, that his family became alarmed. Professor Zheng asked his old classmates to take Zheng Qing to the provincial capital, to the capital city. They visited all the famous hospitals, but nothing was found wrong, while Zheng Qing's headache symptoms worsened day by day.

Finally, on the advice of an old friend, Professor Zheng had Zheng Qing rest and cultivate his mood, using conservative methods to alleviate the condition. After returning from the capital, Zheng Qing no longer had to get up and go to bed on time, no longer had to memorize texts, no longer had to practice large characters.

But this complete relaxation didn't improve the situation; instead, it made his headaches more frequent.

At that time, Zheng Qing was eight years old.

It was also in the spring of that year that Mr. Wu, with his black-rimmed round glasses, came to Yunhua Residential Area and opened this antique-filled Sanyou Bookstore in the street-level commercial space of Building No. 3.

Professor Zheng was an old-school intellectual, and Mr. Wu of Sanyou Bookstore happened to be a learned and cultured man as well. Over time, the two old men became close friends in calligraphy and painting.

One weekend afternoon, Zheng Qing followed his grandfather to Sanyou Bookstore again. Professor Zheng and Mr. Wu brewed a pot of tea and discussed Zhang Zhongjing's Synopsis of the Golden Chamber, while Zheng Qing picked up a copy of Harry Potter and read it happily.

When he read about the lightning-shaped scar on Harry's forehead causing him severe headaches, Zheng Qing felt as if he could empathize, as if he himself had a headache, and his mood immediately soured. With a sigh, he closed the book and shook his head, only to realize that the seemingly illusory headache was real.

A violent headache struck abruptly. Zheng Qing only had time to groan "headache," then his eyes rolled back, and he fainted in front of the two old men, convulsing.