A small village with plenty of lunatics

Zhao Pengfei strode down the dirt road. The evening breeze blew into his collar, chilly against his skin, but his palms kept sweating.

Halfway there, he spotted a figure on the dirt slope ahead.

Backlit by the last rays of the setting sun, the figure crouched on the slope with a foxtail grass stem between his lips, drawing little animals in the dirt with a twig.

Zhao Pengfei stopped dead, his gaze settling on that fluffy head of hair dyed deep gold by the sunset.

Hearing him, Jiang Xun looked up and curled his lips in a lazy grin. "Well, if it isn't the village chief's precious son. What are you standing there for, a road sign? If you've got something to say, spit it out. If you've got a fart, let it rip."

Zhao Pengfei swallowed. The paper in his pocket burned through the fabric until his thigh felt numb.

He had cornered at least thirty people in this village, if not fifty. He had always gone straight in swearing and swinging, and had never imagined that opening his mouth could be this difficult.

"Who-who the fuck said I wanted anything with you!" He stiffened his neck, but the tips of his ears were red enough to bleed. "I'm just passing by!"

"Then why are you stuttering?" Jiang Xun tilted his head at him, the curve of his smile just enough to reveal those two dimples.

Zhao Pengfei hemmed and hawed for ages without finding a suitable excuse. His language system had completely crashed. He simply threw caution to the wind, pulled the paper from his pocket, and hurled it at Jiang Xun's feet.

"Here!"

The paper ball rolled twice over the yellow dirt and stopped beside Jiang Xun's shoe.

Jiang Xun glanced down. Rather than pick it up, he prodded it with his twig.

"What's this? A declaration of war? You finally learned to write?"

Zhao Pengfei was red all the way down to the base of his neck. He turned and left, his steps so hurried and heavy that he looked ready to stamp holes in the dirt.

After only a few steps, he tripped over a clod of earth and nearly fell flat on his face. Without so much as looking back, he scrambled upright and ran even faster.

Jiang Xun watched that bedraggled figure disappear at the end of the dirt road, raised an eyebrow, then picked up the paper ball and unfolded it.

A few crooked lines were scrawled across it, the pencil strokes varying between faint and dark, with several corrections in the middle.

One character had been written wrong three times. The final stroke stretched out so far that it had torn through the paper.

[Jiang Xun, even though you're really annoying, you look good when you beat people up.]

[Those two dents in your face look good when you smile, too.]

[If Shen Wangjing's family starves you to death, you can come eat at my house.]

The final line had been written with particular force, the pencil tip nearly puncturing the paper.

Jiang Xun: "..."

He crumpled the paper into a ball, the corner of his mouth twitching involuntarily.

The village was small, but it really did have plenty of lunatics.

Dinner was the usual three bowls of wild vegetable porridge and corn. Jiang Xun wolfed down his share and climbed straight into bed while Shen Wangjing was still feeding his grandfather.

The bruises on his back hurt less after being rubbed with ointment, but lately, he had been forcing himself to fall asleep early so he would not get too hungry to sleep later in the night.

After feeding his grandfather the last spoonful of porridge, Shen Wangjing carried the bowls and chopsticks into the kitchen.

The well water was icy cold, splashing noisily over the coarse ceramic bowls. After washing the dishes, he swept the courtyard, stacked the chopped firewood neatly, blocked the chicken coop's entrance securely with a plank, and covered the wok in the kitchen to keep the rats out.

Only after finishing all the chores did he enter the main room. Jiang Xun was already sprawled out asleep on the bed, one leg dangling over the edge and most of the quilt kicked off.

Shen Wangjing walked over, picked up the quilt, and covered him again.

Jiang Xun mumbled something in his sleep and rolled over, gathering the quilt back into his arms and rubbing his face against its corner.

Shen Wangjing turned to empty the kitchen rubbish. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something white beside the rubbish bin near the stove, particularly conspicuous in the moonlight.

Only when he bent down and picked it up did he see that it was a crumpled ball of paper. He read it expressionlessly, crumpled it back up, and casually tossed it into the embers inside the stove.

Flames instantly licked up around it. The white sheet of exercise paper curled and blackened in an instant, turning into a pinch of ash that the wind swept into the flue.

Meanwhile, Zhao Pengfei lay on his wooden bed at home, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.

How would Jiang Xun react after reading the letter?

Zhao Pengfei stared at the ceiling, going over those few lines again and again in his head.

His palms had been drenched in sweat as he wrote it, and he had nearly chewed the pencil to pieces. He had wasted several sheets before finally squeezing out those few lines.

Though the wording was hardly elegant, its logic was rigorous and its structure clear. It could certainly be called a work of sincerity.

He had already found out from his father that Jiang Xun was a young master from the city whose stepmother had dumped him in this godforsaken mountain backwater, where he had too little to eat, too little to keep warm, and had to look at Shen Wangjing's cold face every day.

Suddenly receiving a friendly letter when he was so isolated and helpless-any normal person would be very, very, very touched, right?

The more Zhao Pengfei thought about it, the more brilliant he found his move. He buried his face in his pillow and let out a muffled laugh.

The next day was Saturday, and the school did not provide breakfast, but Jiang Xun was woken by rustling sounds before it was fully light.

Rubbing his eyes, he sat up on the hard plank bed. Shen Wangjing was gathering things by the kitchen door.

Two bulging woven plastic sacks stood against the wall. The old steelyard balance on the stove had been wiped clean, its counterweight resting in the pan, with a coil of hemp rope for tying the sacks beside it.

Jiang Xun stared at the two sacks of corn for three seconds, then suddenly jolted alert. Grandpa Shen seemed to have mentioned going to the market yesterday.

He scrambled out of bed. "I'm coming too!"

Shen Wangjing did not even turn around. "You can't."

Jiang Xun had just slapped the towel against his face and wiped it haphazardly a couple of times. Water dripped from his chin.

He draped the towel over the washbasin stand and hurried after him indignantly. "Why can't I? If you can go to the market, why can't I?"

Shen Wangjing did not stop. With the two big sacks of corn over his shoulders, he had already reached the courtyard gate.

"It's twenty li to town along mountain roads."

"So what if it's twenty li? My legs aren't broken." Jiang Xun stared warily at Shen Wangjing, utterly self-assured.

"Don't even think about ditching me and running off on your own. I'm telling you, I can run faster than a dog!"