Sneaking around

Qin An looked very cocky...

That was what Sun Sun thought. This boy with his somewhat cheeky grin did not seem quite as shameless and harmless as he appeared. When he showed his edge, he could cut people, without a single scruple or a shred of mercy...

That was Sun Sun's impression of Qin An at that moment...

Of course she knew how shamingly beautiful Qin An's English handwriting could be. Even Teacher Qin, with more than twenty years of experience teaching English, probably could not match it, let alone Li Hao, who had only practiced hard for a single summer...

Then Li Hao would suffer outright humiliation at Qin An's hands...

Sun Sun did not try to stop Li Hao. She was the class monitor, not a nanny. She had a responsibility to preserve friendships among her classmates, but Li Hao had provoked him first and had to be taught a lesson...

Ye Xiaohua's layout was simple and elegant. She had not refined it yet, merely divided it into sections...

Li Hao held the stub of chalk, brimming with confidence. He had attended an English tutoring class over the summer. He had already been the best English student in their class, scoring above 98 more often than even Sun Sun. The tutoring class had also included lessons on correcting English handwriting, and he had improved considerably...

Li Hao wrote "Saying Good bye to Cambridge Again," Yu Hongmin's translation of "Taking Leave of Cambridge Again." For middle school students their age, it was difficult to appreciate, through the English translation, the cadence and flowing rhythm of the second- and fourth-line rhymes in Xu Zhimo's seven-stanza poem, much less grasp its artistic beauty...

He simply thought it would demonstrate his taste... Li Hao only wrote the first twelve lines, since space was limited... When he finished, he dropped the chalk and looked at the varied gazes around him, feeling rather proud. He had practiced this especially to show Sun Sun his solid grounding in English calligraphy...

Now he had clearly achieved his aim. Sun Sun still wore that calm, unreadable expression. Perhaps she was regretting her suggestion to let Qin An have a turn. Ye Xiaohua, meanwhile, looked visibly surprised. This was not her first time watching Li Hao write on the class bulletin board, and his improvement was obvious. The spacing was compact without being crowded, the sizing and rises and falls of the letters were handled very well, and so were the hooks at the beginning and end of his strokes...

"Well? I've written mine... You can leave now. I won't laugh at you. After all, everyone knows what you're capable of..." Li Hao said with a smile, spreading his hands and glancing at the others as though this were only natural...

"What an embarrassing display, indeed..." Without even looking at Li Hao, Qin An picked up the board eraser and wiped away the first line...

"What are you doing!" Li Hao clearly had not expected Qin An to dare erase his writing...

Holding the chalk, Qin An glanced at Sun Sun. This time, he did not use the ornamental script, but an elegant, dignified Andorra style with an air of flowing grace...

"Self praise is no recommendation... Praising yourself is no recommendation..."

"They brag most who can do least... Those with the least ability boast the most..."

"Dog bark before they bite... Evil words precede evil deeds..."

"A cock is valiant on his own dunghill... Conceited in one's own little world..."

"Answer a fool according to his folly... Give him a taste of his own medicine..."

Qin An explained as he wrote, erasing Li Hao's handwriting line by line. Finally, he glanced at Li Hao's blood-red face and wrote the last sentence...

"As the tree falls,so shall it lie... You brought it on yourself..."

Dropping the chalk, Qin An left with his schoolbag on his back, hoping Ye Zhulan was still waiting for him...

Li Hao, Ye Xiaohua, and Sun Sun remained in the classroom, staring in astonishment at the writing Qin An had left behind...

Sun Sun had never expected this. She had thought it was remarkable enough that Qin An could write so beautifully in what he called ornamental script. Who knew he had mastered more than one style of English handwriting? This was the first time Sun Sun had ever seen English written with such artistry. It was practically like Chinese brush calligraphy...

Now Sun Sun no longer had any doubts about Qin An's English ability. That morning, she had thought he had specially memorized that prose poem. But the maxims he had just written were clearly on-the-spot mockery, outright humiliation aimed at Li Hao...

Li Hao's face turned livid and purple by turns. Without Qin An's explanations, he would not even have known what those sentences meant. Some of the English words were completely beyond anything middle school students would encounter...

"He really is Teacher Qin's son. Li Hao, you'll have to hand your top spot in English over to Qin An..." Ye Xiaohua clicked her tongue in admiration. "Move aside. I need to draw the illustrations..."

"You should go..." Sun Sun glanced at Li Hao and sighed, actually feeling a helpless sense of defeat. All along, Li Hao's English results could be said to have been slightly better than hers. But Sun Sun believed that if she were not doing her best to balance her study time and priorities, she could easily surpass Li Hao by focusing a little more on English...

Against the Qin An before her now, Sun Sun knew she had no chance at all. Perhaps she could get full marks on a simple English test without an essay section. But even if Qin An failed his English exam, could she say she was better at using English than he was? Impossible. Sun Sun felt that she could not catch up within three years, could not reach the level represented by Qin An's casually tossing out a few maxims to humiliate Li Hao...

Qin An left school and ran to the place where he often did homework with Ye Zhulan... The withered old tea trees still had tender new shoots, but these were no longer the early-spring crop, so tender that a little rubbing would squeeze out tea juice. The low, grayish-white, yellowing thatch had grown soft. A small black leather backpack lay carelessly on the ground, and the butterflies on the cotton socks inside a pair of white tennis shoes fluttered their wings with the movement of an ankle...

Ye Zhulan sat beneath a tea tree, her long lashes trembling gently. Her slender fingers twisted a few stems of foxtail grass as she muttered some complaint...

"I'm here..." Qin An dropped his schoolbag and sank down beside Ye Zhulan. He glanced at Qingshi Mountain ahead, already edged in dazzling gold, then turned to look at Ye Zhulan's delicate face... A blush crept up her neck and spread to her earlobes, still covered in fine, endearing down...

"The school's started an extra art class. It starts on Saturday, I think. Shall we both sign up?" Qin An asked...

"I wanted to talk to you about that too..." Ye Zhulan lowered her head, not daring to look at Qin An, her voice a little timid...

"We're not in the same class anymore, after all. If we still spend all day together, people will gossip. On Saturdays, we can paint together openly. I want to sit next to you..." Qin An lay back with a grass root between his lips and gazed at the sky. Blue sky, white clouds, so clean they dazzled his eyes. How many years of his memories had passed without seeing a scene like this...

"Are... are we sneaking around, then...? Why would I sneak around with you...? I'm not doing that!" Ye Zhulan seemed a little angry. "So you do know people will gossip!"

"Who's been gossiping about us? That's jealousy, pure, blatant jealousy..." Qin An said scornfully...

"Nobody has... But you said those things to me today..." Ye Zhulan shot Qin An a glare. The blush on her cheeks had yet to fade, and she looked especially fresh and enchanting...

Ye Zhulan was right beside him, her young, budding body giving off a gentle fragrance. The taste of the grass root mingled with that of the soil. Beneath the blue sky and white clouds, a boy and a girl lay back and sat, talking about the simple things on their minds. Qin An could not help losing himself in it, and gently took Ye Zhulan's hand... Ye Zhulan looked at him nervously, not merely surprised, but even more incredulous. What was he going to do?