A bright corner

After the start of winter, the days seemed to be driven onward by the cold wind.

Before they knew it, it was early December. The plane trees in the alley had shed all their leaves, leaving only bare branches reaching toward the gray sky.

The repair shop became the place where Pu Yu spent most of her time after school.

With the weather turning cold, Xu Suiran only came over on weekends and holidays, bundled up from head to toe to join in the fun. Most of the time, it was just Pu Yu and Yuan Su.

Under the warm yellow light, the boy bent his head over an assortment of parts, while the girl beside him worked diligently through her exercises.

When things got too busy, Pu Yu occasionally helped collect payments or handed customers simple parts.

Every time she stood up, Yuan Su would look over with a frown and snap, "Who told you to touch those?"

"I'm just helping you get something. Your hands are covered in oil, aren't they?"

"I still don't need you to do it."

Looking at her dust-stained fingers, Yuan Su snatched the old motherboard that needed repairing from her hands. "Go wash your hands and do your homework."

Pu Yu answered softly, "Okay."

Beneath those sharp refusals lay a stubborn division.

He kept the grease, the parts, and the rough edges of making a living on his side, while keeping her, along with her clean pen and exercise books, safely on the other.

He would rather seem unkind than let her leave that bright corner.

After a while, Pu Yu grew used to it.

She knew how kind Yuan Su was and understood his awkward way of showing it.

Just as he told her not to go to the hospital, yet awkwardly added a little stool to Lu Zhen's ward, placing it beside the window where the light was best.

When Lu Zhen saw it, she even whispered to Nurse Yao, "That's for Yu. No one else is allowed to touch it!"

"Su brought it over, especially for Yu!"

Pu Yu visited the hospital once or twice a week. Sometimes she brought her homework, and sometimes she simply kept Lu Zhen company and chatted with her. Gradually, Lu Zhen's condition improved a great deal.

Enough that she even began "supervising" Yuan Su's schoolwork.

Whenever Pu Yu opened her exercise book, Lu Zhen immediately turned to Yuan Su, her eyes shining. "You should do yours too, Su. Yu is doing hers."

Yuan Su: "..."

Every time he was forced to grind out the required word count in the ward, irritation was written all over his stern face, yet he had no way to fight back.

Once Lu Zhen dug her heels in, no one could talk her out of it.

For an eight-hundred-word essay, she would even count every single word.

Only after she finished counting and confirmed that he had written enough would she let Yuan Su leave.

On the walk back to the alley, the wind was bitterly cold.

Yuan Su said expressionlessly, "Don't bring your schoolbag next time."

"Why?" Pu Yu asked, though she knew perfectly well.

"The hospital is too noisy. It gets in the way of your studying."

Pu Yu turned to look at him, unable to hold back a smile. "What does you not wanting to write essays have to do with my schoolbag?"

With his thoughts laid bare, the boy grew even more irritated. "I'd be better off fixing a couple more appliances than wasting time squeezing out all that flowery nonsense."

"But your mom really likes watching you write."

Pu Yu stopped walking, her breath dispersing in the cold wind. "Haven't you noticed? Her mood has been much more stable lately. She used to resist taking her medicine, but now she watches the clock on the wall and remembers when it's time."

Yuan Su's steps faltered.

"And," Pu Yu continued, her voice softening, "just now, when she watched you frowning over your essay, she kept smiling."

"That smile... I could tell she was really, really happy."

Yuan Su fell silent.

Of course he had noticed too.

Ever since Pu Yu began appearing regularly in the ward, that world so often filled with screams and hallucinations seemed to have become normal again.

A few days earlier, Lu Zhen had even been chatting to him about their old neighbors in the alley.

Though her memories were jumbled and she mixed up many of the people, she clearly remembered Grandma Li, who lived across from them, and the bad son Grandma Li had adopted.

While keeping her company, Yuan Su had casually asked:

"What else do you remember?"

Lu Zhen hesitated, then shook her head and said, "I remember... a secret!"

Yuan Su had assumed his mother was simply saying whatever came to mind and hadn't taken it to heart.

Later, when Pu Yu arrived, all of Lu Zhen's attention shifted to her. She was even more enthusiastic toward Pu Yu than she was toward Yuan Su.

"Next time she keeps you chatting, just tell her you need to get back to school. That way, she won't keep you so long."

"But I really like talking to your mom," Pu Yu said honestly.

Yuan Su frowned slightly, unable to understand what there was to like about it.

When he turned and met Pu Yu's clear, stubborn gaze, he strangely averted his eyes and didn't bring it up again.

Before they knew it, the two of them had reached Wind Chime Alley.

Before they even entered the courtyard, they heard Li Suhua's anxious voice from inside.

"This wretched machine! Of all the times it could break down, it had to pick now!"

Pu Yu hurried inside and saw her grandmother crouching in front of the sewing machine in the courtyard, with tangled scraps of thread scattered across the ground.

"Grandma, what's wrong?"

Li Suhua straightened and pounded her aching lower back, beside herself with worry. "The boss needs to collect that batch of embroidered pillowcases at the end of the month, and now the machine's pedal suddenly won't budge!"

"If I have to sew the rest by hand, I could wear my eyes out and still not finish!"

Hearing the commotion, Yuan Su followed Pu Yu inside. "Let me take a look."

He crouched down, deftly tipped back the machine head, then removed the base plate to inspect the parts inside.

"A gear inside has broken and jammed the shaft."

"Can you fix it?" Li Suhua asked urgently.

"It just needs a new gear." Yuan Su looked up. "But this model is so old it's long since been discontinued. The hardware shops in town and the county seat definitely won't have one. We'd have to try our luck at the secondhand market in the city."

"The city?" Li Suhua looked troubled at once. "Is it that much trouble? I'll make a trip tomorrow, then. Draw me a picture, and I'll use it to find one."

"You can't, Grandma!"

Pu Yu immediately objected. "The city is too far away. Just getting there takes several hours, and you'd have to change buses several times going there and back. I wouldn't feel comfortable letting you go alone. What if you missed a bus or got lost?"

"I'll go."

Yuan Su stood up and wiped the grease from his hands, his tone matter-of-fact. "I'm short of a few imported capacitors anyway. I need to go to the city to hunt down some stock."

Pu Yu pressed her lips together, then finally gathered the courage to say:

"Then... then I'll go with you!"