Where was his dignity? His backbone?

It was Sunday, and the school cafeteria wasn't serving meals, so Shen Wangjing hadn't woken Jiang Xun before leaving.

There was food left in the pot anyway. He would eat when he woke up.

Jiang Xun didn't climb out of bed until nearly ten. With his hair a tangled mess, he wandered over to the water vat in the courtyard, scooped up a dipper of cold water and splashed his face twice, then squatted beneath the jujube tree with a toothbrush in his mouth and brushed his teeth for three minutes.

The entire time, he treated Duan Qizhao, who was squatting at the other end of the courtyard, as though he didn't exist.

As usual, two bowls of vegetable gruel and two cornmeal buns had been left in the iron pot on the stove, covered with an upside-down plate to keep them warm.

Jiang Xun carried a bowl over to the low table and sat down. He broke a cornmeal bun into small pieces and soaked them in the vegetable gruel, then lifted the bowl, swept his chopsticks through it, tilted his head back, and poured it into his mouth.

Duan Qizhao stared, dumbfounded.

How did this guy manage to eat a bowl of something that looked no different from pig feed as though it were an imperial banquet?

Jiang Xun ate with a focused expression, his cheeks bulging with each mouthful. A thin sheen of moisture clung to his lips, and the rosy tip of his tongue darted out to lick his lower lip.

Duan Qizhao's stomach let out an enormous rumble.

It was so loud that even the yellow dog lying beneath the low table waiting for scraps got a fright, tucked its tail, and backed away two steps.

Jiang Xun paused with his bowl in his hands and glanced up in Duan Qizhao's direction.

Duan Qizhao's face instantly turned the color of raw liver. He stiffened his neck and jerked his gaze away, but the tips of his ears were red enough to drip blood.

Jiang Xun looked away, raised his bowl of vegetable gruel, and drained it in one go before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

One bowl remained on the table-the one Shen Wangjing had left for Duan Qizhao before leaving. It had been sitting there since morning, and a thin skin had already formed over the gruel.

Jiang Xun reached for it.

Duan Qizhao's eyes instantly went round.

Refusing to eat it was one thing. Having someone snatch it away right in front of him was another.

Although he had just sworn to himself that he would rather starve than eat this pig feed, the sight of that bowl of gruel about to enter Jiang Xun's mouth made his body react before his brain did.

The instant Jiang Xun's fingers touched the rim, a blue blur charged over from beside the courtyard wall, stirring up a gust of wind. Like a starving tiger pouncing on food, he snatched up the bowl of vegetable gruel and poured it into his mouth.

He drank so fast that gruel spilled from the corners of his mouth and trickled down his chin. Without stopping to wipe it off, he emptied the bowl in a few gulps.

The empty bowl clunked heavily onto the low table. Duan Qizhao panted, his chest heaving, a greenish streak of gruel still hanging from the corner of his mouth.

He stared down at the empty bowl with an indescribable expression.

Where was his dignity? His backbone? What happened to that rather-die-than-surrender attitude?

Leaning against the table, Jiang Xun took a bite of the cornmeal bun in his hand and tilted his head to look at him.

"Didn't you say you weren't eating?"

Duan Qizhao coughed several times, trying to salvage a little dignity through sheer volume. "I wasn't eating! I was just thirsty!"

"Oh." Jiang Xun chewed his cornmeal bun leisurely. "Then do you want the cornmeal bun? If you don't-"

Before he could finish, Duan Qizhao had snatched the last cornmeal bun off the table at lightning speed.

He moved even faster than when he grabbed a keyboard at an internet café, clutching the cornmeal bun like a gold brick, terrified someone would take it back.

He squatted beneath the jujube tree with his back to Jiang Xun and gnawed on it, his shoulders slightly hunched. A dead leaf had landed in his blue hair at some point.

Meanwhile, the Village Chief's courtyard was quite lively.

Li Guizhi sat in the doorway of the main room peeling garlic, her fingernails leaving gouges in the cloves. The words spilling from her mouth were sharper than the smell of garlic. "You've been Village Chief for over a decade, and you can't even handle one little bastard from the city!"

"That wasn't what you told me when I married you. You said I'd live the good life with you, and what happened? I got pelted with jujubes in my hair, your son's food got stolen, and Gold Chain got hauled off to the police station-"

Village Chief Zhao Fugui squatted on the threshold, smoking in sullen silence. Smoke streamed from his nostrils and scattered in the wind amid Li Guizhi's garlic-scented assault. He didn't utter a word.

He had endured this kind of one-sided verbal onslaught for twenty years and had long since perfected an impenetrable defense of letting it go in one ear and out the other.

Li Guizhi grew even angrier. "Look at you, you spineless good-for-nothing! All you know how to do is hide at home. What standing does our family have left in the village? Who's going to take you seriously as Village Chief now?"

"Enough!" Zhao Fugui impatiently ground his cigarette butt against the ground. "Are you done yet? Don't you know what Shen Wangjing can do in a fight? Three years ago, he single-handedly beat seven or eight debt collectors out of the village. Now you want me to go looking for trouble with him? Are you trying to get these old bones of mine broken?"

Li Guizhi was about to say something else when the sound of a motorcycle starting suddenly came from the courtyard.

"Pengfei! Where are you going?!" Li Guizhi shouted at the top of her lungs.

The motorcycle had already shot out through the courtyard gate, leaving only a trail of bluish exhaust.

Zhao Pengfei twisted the throttle all the way, the motorcycle rattling as it bounced along the rutted dirt road.

His head was full of what he had just heard from the woman who ran the little shop at the village entrance-"Another city kid showed up at Shen Wangjing's place yesterday. Fair-skinned, with his hair dyed blue, dragging a suitcase. A yellow dog chased him down the road for half a li."

The motorcycle rounded the old locust tree at the village entrance, and Shen Wangjing's crooked wooden gate came into view in the distance.

Zhao Pengfei parked behind a persimmon tree beside the road. He had barely cut the engine when he heard laughter coming from the courtyard.

Jiang Xun's laughter.

He pressed up against the outside of the courtyard wall and craned his head to look inside.

Jiang Xun was leaning beneath the jujube tree in the courtyard, the corners of his mouth lifted high and his eyes curved into crescents as he laughed at a blue-haired boy squatting beneath the tree, gnawing on a cornmeal bun.

Zhao Pengfei dug his fingers into the persimmon bark. The little deer of love in his heart, never particularly well-behaved to begin with, had already rammed itself dead against a wall.

Another one from the city. Another pampered rich boy, dressed from head to toe in brands he'd never even seen.

Wasn't one Shen Wangjing following Jiang Xun around enough? Now there was another?

He'd known Jiang Xun for so many days. When had Jiang Xun ever smiled at him?

Every time they met, Jiang Xun either hit him or dumped a lunch box over his face. The only time he'd spoken to him first was to ask, "Hasn't your mom yelled at you enough yet?"

Now this blue-haired city boy had been here less than a day, and Jiang Xun was already smiling at him like that?

Zhao Pengfei was practically steaming with anger. He turned the motorcycle around, started it again, and twisted the throttle even harder than on the way over.

Li Guizhi was still ranting in the main room. Zhao Fugui had already retreated into the inner room, with the radio turned up deafeningly loud.

"Mom." Zhao Pengfei planted himself in front of her.

Li Guizhi's mouth had gone dry from all her ranting, and she had just lifted her enamel mug to drink. At the sight of her son's face, as black as the bottom of a pot, she nearly choked. "What's wrong? Who picked on you this time? That boy who just moved in with the Shens again?!"

"Mom," Zhao Pengfei said, his expression more serious than ever, "there's something I want you to help me with."