Jealousy

The art studio was small and somewhat dim. Only after Luo Bofu drew back the curtains did sunlight stream in, falling on the rather dusty floor. He frowned but showed no intention of asking anyone to clean it...

He only came once a week, so there was no need to care too much. He did, however, remember to tell a student from Class 68 to keep the dust off his oil paintings...

An oil painting of a nude young married woman, a still life, a landscape, and a pen sketch-one of his proud works hung on each wall...

Qin An collected a drawing board, carried over a stool, and settled beside Ye Zhulan...

Sunlight passed beside her, making Ye Zhulan's delicate skin seem translucent. Her clean cheeks glowed faintly, and beneath her long lashes, a restrained shyness lay in her clear eyes. Sensing Qin An's gaze, she unconsciously pouted, leaving a little moisture between her lips...

The comparison was a little trite, but in Qin An's eyes, Ye Zhulan was just like a flower, not quite half-open, dazzling enough to make him dizzy with just a touch of light amid the morning dew...

"You have no shame, staring at that embarrassing painting..." Listening to Luo Bofu recount stories of famous painters before they became known, Ye Zhulan lowered her head and spoke to Qin An while looking at her drawing board...

"Mr. Luo hung it up himself. How does that make it an embarrassing painting? This is art..." Qin An said with perfect seriousness. "Art should be appreciated openly. Sneaking looks at it is what's embarrassing..."

Several boys nearby blushed at Qin An's words. They, too, raised their heads and took a few hard looks at the nude painting, then assumed an air of easy composure, as though they were simply appreciating art...

Unable to find a rebuttal, Ye Zhulan dropped the subject and carefully sharpened her pencil. "Class only lasts the morning. Where are we going to have fun this afternoon?"

"Daqing Mountain... I made a slingshot yesterday. Maybe we can shoot a pheasant or something..." Qin An tossed his pencil to Ye Zhulan. "Sharpen mine while you're at it..."

Ye Zhulan sharpened the pencil to a fine point. Qin An took the sharpener and blunted both his pencil and hers a little. "We're learning basic sketching, so we'll start by practicing lines. If you can't control the pressure, the tip breaks easily..."

Ye Zhulan's mind was elsewhere. A little excited, she rummaged through Qin An's schoolbag but found no sign of the slingshot. "What if we run into a wild boar?"

Daqing Mountain was little more than a bare mountain of dirt and rock, though there were plenty of bushes. Pheasants and rabbits were still fairly plentiful at this time, but wild boars were entirely out of the question...

"Don't worry. I'll always protect you..."

Hearing Qin An's voice grow a little low, Ye Zhulan looked into his eyes. There was actually a gleam in them that made her heart beat faster-or perhaps it could be called tender care-as though he were telling her that whatever danger there might be, he would protect her...

"Mm..."

Ye Zhulan murmured her answer, her heart softening with a faint, inexplicable feeling. She did not know what it meant, but she was simply filled with joy...

For the art class's very first lesson, Luo Bofu did indeed teach dots and lines. Judging by his arrangements, the entire morning would be spent telling the students how to sharpen pencils and explaining the differences between the HB, 2B, and 4B markings...

Ye Zhulan practiced diligently. She did have some interest in drawing...

Qin An knew, however, that Ye Zhulan's interest in drawing would not last. She was careless about many things and got through them with little effort. That part of her personality probably only changed after she graduated from high school...

Qin An had already seen that Luo Bofu's main purpose in teaching this art class was to collect tuition and gradually sell art supplies and paints. He had little intention of actually teaching anything useful, so Qin An was not particularly interested. Watching Ye Zhulan cover a sheet of white paper in black and gray was not very interesting either, so he began drawing on his own beside her...

"What's this? It looks pretty interesting..."

Qin An was absorbed in his drawing, and several nearby boys who also found practicing lines boring gathered around to watch him draw...

Qin An paused. He was drawing a character from the manga Bleach. He had started following it very early on, but after a few years, he could no longer stand the update pace of a dozen or so pages a week and finally gave up. Still, its story structure and worldbuilding had left a fairly deep impression on him. Naruto and One Piece ran during the same period, and together they were known as the "big three migrant-worker manga"...

Qin An had never understood what "migrant-worker manga" meant, but there were many animated shows that had left him with deep memories, filling him with warmth and making him smile whenever he recalled them...

Ikkyu, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Doraemon, Shuke and Beita, Saint Seiya, Sailor Moon, Calabash Brothers, Denver, the Last Dinosaur, Haier Brothers-there were countless classic animated shows. Qin An even remembered how both his father and grandfather had praised Where Is Mama. Its use of Chinese ink-wash painting techniques had even won the animated film numerous international awards...

A decade or so later, these animated shows had all but vanished from television. By then, it was the domain of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf. Although Qin An always felt it was a shame that children in the future would have so few chances to see those classic shows, he had no intention of watching them all again...

Luo Bofu had gone to the music class next door to watch Liao Yu teach staff notation, looking every bit the harmonious married couple. With no more reservations, Qin An gave the boys gathered around him a brief account of Bleach's story...

Only when Luo Bofu came in and announced a break did the boys crowded around him disperse. Hot-blooded, novel stories filled with combat and power were always hard for boys to forget, and once class let out, they surrounded Qin An again...

Qin An found an excuse to send them away and ran to the classroom next door. He saw that the music class was overwhelmingly girls. Sun Sun sat in a corner, leafing through her lyric notebook, apparently still practicing "Lightly Painted Eyebrows"...

"What are you doing here?"

After using the restroom, Ye Zhulan crossed the corridor and saw Qin An peering into the classroom. She eyed him suspiciously...

"Nothing..." Of course Qin An could not admit in front of Ye Zhulan that he was looking at Sun Sun. Jealousy was in a girl's nature. Even though she had told Qin An not to say anything that crossed the line, their close relationship was a fact. Ye Zhulan would never be happy to see Qin An show any unusual feelings toward another girl...

"Your new deskmate was quite somebody at the town middle school. Pretty, and good at her studies too..." Ye Zhulan chatted casually with Qin An as she always did...

Qin An, however, caught that faint hint of jealousy and was delighted. Smiling, he asked, "Are you jealous?"

"Of course not!" Ye Zhulan blushed. Qin An had been very bold with his words these past few days, though compared with what she herself had said that day about being able to marry him in the future, he probably had not been quite that bold...

Ye Zhulan regretted it terribly. How could she have said something like that? Although it was something far, far in the future, she knew that it really was what she thought...