The porcelain girl

After the day's exams ended, Ye Zhulan's mother, Kuang Yongmei, picked her up. Qin An wandered around the Class 69 classroom for a while and saw that Sun Sun was still there, discussing the difficult questions on today's exams with several other girls...

For students with middling grades, Sun Sun's answers were the answer key. Whenever someone heard that her result differed from theirs, they would wail, "Another one wrong! I don't even know if I'll pass!"

The girls' cries were mostly rather exaggerated, especially those of Ye Xiaohua and the music class representative, Qian Linlin...

Qin An walked into the classroom. Ye Xiaohua and Qian Linlin were arguing over the answer to an English multiple-choice question, and even Sun Sun seemed uncertain...

"Ask him. I'm not sure either..." Sun Sun pointed at Qin An...

"Him?" Qian Linlin looked skeptical. "I'd rather ask Li Hao tomorrow..."

"Qin An, which answer did you pick?" Ye Xiaohua pushed the paper with the question on it toward him. She had seen how Qin An had humiliated Li Hao with his command of English...

"There's no correct answer to this question. Old Man Huang was so busy looking for questions in harder reference books that he didn't read it carefully..." Qin An glanced at it. He remembered correcting the faulty questions right on his exam paper, without sparing Old Man Huang's feelings at all...

"Oh, please!"

Qian Linlin was small and skinny, but she had a loud voice, and her scoff was especially resounding. She had never seen anyone declare with certainty that a teacher's question was wrong, much less one set by a veteran like Huang Yaohua...

Sun Sun and Ye Xiaohua were also dubious. They knew Qin An's English was good, but overturning their belief that "the teacher's answer is the correct answer, and teachers don't make mistakes" was still hardly possible...

"Why are you so disrespectful to teachers? I heard Mr. Huang even taught your dad..." Sun Sun was displeased with the way Qin An referred to Huang Yaohua...

"It'd be a miracle if he respected teachers. Do you know the new English teacher Class 70 had before? Sun Pao stuffed her desk drawer full of frogs and scared her so badly she refused to teach Class 70 ever again. Mr. Huang originally wasn't going to teach the third-year course after teaching Class 70 through their first two years, but now he has no choice but to keep teaching them. He's had it so hard..." Qian Linlin rolled her eyes at Qin An and spoke indignantly...

Qin An certainly wasn't going to take that eye roll from Qian Linlin. Did she think she was Sun Sun? Sun Sun's had a touch of coquettish charm; hers was plainly a dead-fish stare. "Sun Pao did that. What does it have to do with me? Besides, what's so scary about frogs? If it were me, I'd skin them, cook them, and eat them..."

"You two are famous for making trouble. You're never around when there's something good to be done, but neither of you ever misses a chance to do something bad. Are you saying you didn't help Sun Pao catch all those frogs?" Ye Xiaohua laughed...

Qin An hemmed and hawed. Knowing that arguing with a group of girls would end badly, he dropped the subject. "Sun Sun, shall we go home?"

"Ooh... ooh..."

Qian Linlin and Ye Xiaohua cried out, pointing back and forth between Sun Sun and Qin An, looking for all the world as though they had caught the two having a secret affair...

"We're leaving... we won't disturb you..." Ye Xiaohua dragged Qian Linlin out of the classroom, ignoring Sun Sun's shouts behind them...

"You... what are you doing? We don't even go the same way!" Sun Sun said angrily. It would have been better if Qin An had said, "Let's walk together," which would only have meant that he wanted to walk home from school with her. But the way he had put it was decidedly suggestive, as though they had already arranged it and Sun Sun had been waiting here for him. How could the thin-skinned Sun Sun bear that...?

"I have something to do at No. 2 Middle School..." Seeing Sun Sun run out of the classroom, Qin An hurried after her...

Sun Sun sulked, and Qin An did not tease her. He simply followed a short distance behind, gazing intently at the little braid that bobbed as she walked...

Sun Sun at this age had a young girl's bright joy and a young girl's sorrows and private worries. She was still only a porcelain blank newly painted with glaze. Who could have foreseen that, many years later, the woman fashioned into something as exquisite and beautiful as celadon would shatter like fallen porcelain, each broken shard as sharp as a knife, cutting Qin An's heart until it streamed with blood...

"Once there was a porcelain girl. She was very beautiful and very lovable, and what she loved most was singing. Whenever she stood onstage and sang, everyone praised her voice and her beauty... I asked the porcelain girl, 'Why do you like singing? Is it just to show off?' The porcelain girl said, 'No, I just love singing. It feels as though I can win everyone over with my voice, and I can wear clothes onstage that I wouldn't normally dare to wear or be allowed to wear. It's fun...

"I said, 'You could do that when you're alone, too...' The porcelain girl blinked, looking a little shy. She said, 'Some of my songs are for him, but how could I bring myself to sing them to him alone? So whenever I go onstage, I invite him to hear me sing. He doesn't know I'm singing especially for him, but I still accomplish what I wanted. I've sung to him, and isn't that enough?' When the porcelain girl said this, her beautiful, exquisite face, without a single flaw, was filled with happiness. I thought, The happiness she wants is actually so simple. What a lucky person he is..." Qin An turned his face aside so that Sun Sun, engrossed in the story, would not see the moisture in his eyes. "Do you know what happened to the porcelain girl in the end?"

"What happened to her...? Did she end up with the person she wanted to sing to? It sounds like a fairy tale. That's how fairy tales always end..." Sun Sun had not expected such a mischievous, troublemaking, so-called bad kid to tell such a delicate story, and to tell it so movingly, as though he really were the "I" in the story...

"The porcelain girl was too dazzling, too captivating. Many people wanted her all to themselves. Some even wanted to force her to become their private plaything. The porcelain girl didn't want that. She refused that kind of life. She fell from the stage and became a pile of lifeless fragments..." Qin An dug his nails into his palm, squeezing out traces of blood. There were so many things that, even if only a little memory remained, could not be stirred. Otherwise, they would turn into sharp, barbed hooks that easily tore away flesh and blood, leaving pain worse than death. "...Ah..." The clear light faded from Sun Sun's eyes, and her heart ached a little...

"Sun Sun, how do you think I should protect this porcelain girl?" Qin An could not force Sun Sun to change what she loved, but there were things he had to prevent, no matter the price...

"Build her a museum, a museum just for her. All the staff there would be responsible only for protecting her. Though she'd have a little less freedom, it would still be better than being shattered. Besides, she could still sing in the museum for the people who came to admire her. Couldn't the person she wanted to sing to come and see her too?" Sun Sun sighed. "She is a porcelain girl, after all. Anything made of porcelain can be broken. No amount of care in protecting her would be excessive, would it?"

Qin An thought for a moment, then smiled. "Then it's settled..."

"What?" Sun Sun blinked. Qin An was always so baffling, but somehow, the look in his eyes, the look of someone who had made up his mind and would achieve his goal at any cost, brought a little warmth to her heart...