Jiang Xun, wake up!

The inside of the vehicle fell pitch-black. Only when lightning flashed could they make out the contours of one another's faces.

Duan Qizhao looked terrified. "Holy shit, is this thing about to fall apart?!"

Before he had finished speaking, a beam of light appeared in front of the vehicle.

The beam swayed wildly in the torrential rain, but it steadily illuminated the stretch of dirt road ahead, left unrecognizable by the mudslide.

Shen Wangjing walked ahead of the vehicle with a flashlight clenched between his teeth, bending down to drag away a broken branch as thick as the mouth of a rice bowl that blocked the road.

The rain had soaked him through. When he straightened, the flashlight beam swept across the vehicle's interior and paused on Jiang Xun's face for an instant before he turned and continued leading the way.

However cramped the vehicle was, there was still room to squeeze in one more person, but he had never intended to get in.

He had walked this road countless times. He knew which stretches had loose roadbeds, which drainage ditches would get clogged with dead branches, and which bends were most likely to accumulate loose rocks.

The production crew's driver was an outsider. Driving a mountain road in weather like this without someone guiding him from the front, he could send the vehicle off the roadbed with a single press of the accelerator.

The vehicle drove through the mud for nearly forty minutes before reaching the Village Committee.

The director was the first to jump out, counting heads with her shoes covered in mud.

Duan Qizhao clambered out of the back seat with the sodden military coat in his arms, cursing that if the rain did not stop soon, he would have to swim back to Capital City.

Jiang Xun had drifted off halfway through the drive. Now his head rested at an angle against the window beside him, and he was fast asleep.

"Jiang Xun! We're here! Get out!" Duan Qizhao poked his shoulder.

No response.

"You sleep almost as soundly as a hibernating bear." Duan Qizhao rolled his eyes, wrapped the military coat around his neck, and went around to open the door on the other side.

Jiang Xun slumped toward the opening door. Duan Qizhao reacted quickly and caught him, wrapping an arm around his waist and hauling him out of the seat.

Jiang Xun's arm flopped limply over his shoulder, his face burying itself in the crook of his neck. The scorching heat against his skin made Duan Qizhao jolt.

"Holy shit, why are you so hot?!"

Duan Qizhao hitched him higher on his back, yelling as he headed inside, "Director! Jiang Xun's burning up like a furnace! Does he have a fever?!"

Hearing this, the director abandoned her head count and rushed inside.

Duan Qizhao laid Jiang Xun on a bench against the wall.

Duan Qizhao balled up his military coat and tucked it under Jiang Xun's head, then took off his jacket and covered him with it. He crouched beside him, helplessly patting his face.

"Jiang Xun? Jiang Xun, wake up. Don't scare me!"

Jiang Xun's face was flushed scarlet, but his lips were abnormally pale. His breathing was shallow and rapid, and his eyelashes trembled now and then, as though he were trapped in a nightmare.

The director reached out to check him, and the heat against her palm made her heart sink.

This was no low fever. It had to be at least thirty-eight degrees.

"Where's the first aid kit? Did anyone bring one?"

The production assistants looked at one another. The evacuation had been utter chaos. They had not even managed to move all the equipment, let alone remembered the first aid kit.

One of the sound guys did rummage through his backpack and produce two cooling patches. The director took them and looked-they were for children, with cartoon bears printed on the packaging.

"...Put one on him for now." It was better than nothing.

"Is this going to fry his brain?" Duan Qizhao frowned, staring at the little bear stuck to Jiang Xun's forehead. "My dad told me there was a kid next door when we were little whose brain got damaged by a high fever, and afterward-"

"Shut up." Distraught, the director pulled out her phone.

There was only one bar of reception left, cutting in and out amid the mountain wind and heavy rain. She circled the room three times with her phone raised before finally finding a corner where she could just manage to make a call.

The township clinic was nearly fifteen kilometers from Shiban Village along mountain roads. Even normally, the drive took over an hour. Now the village road had been washed out in several places, and no vehicle could get through.

The director hung up, her expression darker than the sky outside. "The clinic said the road's cut off. An ambulance can't get in."

Duan Qizhao shot to his feet. "Then what do we do? Just leave him burning up like this?"

Of course the director knew they could not leave him like this. A prolonged high fever could cause serious problems.

But she had no medicine, an ambulance could not get in, and among all these people, not one had any medical knowledge.

Shen Wangjing settled his grandfather in a wicker chair in the next room.

The old man had been frightened and had held his hand the entire way without letting go. Shen Wangjing crouched in front of the chair, pulled the blanket up a little higher, and murmured a few words of reassurance.

Only once the old man had calmed down did he stand and turn to leave, intending to get his grandfather a cup of hot water.

The corridor was packed with production crew members. Some were wringing water out of their clothes, some were making calls, and some were crouching by the wall, shouting into walkie-talkies.

He passed through the crowd, and no one noticed him.

Shen Wangjing had never liked getting involved in other people's business.

People born into poverty exhausted all their strength just keeping themselves and their families going. How could they have anything left to spare for whether anyone else lived or died?

After Shen Dayong died, he had chopped firewood, farmed, repaired the roof, looked after his grandfather, and put his younger brother through school all on his own.

Villagers quickened their steps when they passed his house. Occasionally, a child would peer inside, only to be yanked away by an adult.

Shen Wangjing never cared. Anything beyond his own little patch of land had nothing to do with him. Whatever the villagers gossiped about, however they went out of their way to avoid him, none of it had anything to do with him.

A boy who had shouldered an entire household since the age of fifteen had no strength left to care about anyone who had nothing to do with him.

He had braved the rain to lead the production crew's vehicle today because his grandfather was inside. The old man had been paralyzed for three years and could not withstand being jostled around.

It was also because Jiang Xun was inside.

At first, Shen Wangjing had only wanted to keep his distance from that young master from the city.

He would feed him for thirty days and keep him from starving. After thirty days, the production crew would leave, and life would go on as before.

This family was so poor that they had nothing left but four earthen walls. He had no strength to spare worrying about someone who was neither family nor kin.

But that young master from the city was not quite what he had imagined. He was not so pampered or so fragile. On the contrary, he was the only person who had thought of him and his grandfather when the storm came.

On the first day they met, the young master had drunk a bowl of thin rice porridge without a word of complaint. Shen Wangjing had expected someone from the city to grumble at least a little, but Jiang Xun had not even frowned.

Later, he had lain sunning himself on a field ridge, a stalk of foxtail grass between his lips, one leg crossed over the other and swinging idly, looking even more at ease than the villagers born and raised there.

His temper really was explosive, though. He never held back when he struck, and his tongue was even less forgiving, like a little chili pepper that would blow up at the slightest spark.

But whatever the case, once the thirty days were up, Jiang Xun would return to his Capital City, to that world that had absolutely nothing to do with Shen Wangjing.

And he would still have to stay here, chopping firewood, farming, looking after his grandfather and younger brother, continuing a life whose end he could already see.

So he still had to maintain the proper distance.

The Village Committee's kitchenette was small, with an old-fashioned water dispenser in the corner. Shen Wangjing had just placed his cup beneath the spout when someone slammed into his shoulder from behind.

It was the production crew's tall, thin sound guy, carrying an enamel basin with a towel soaking in it. He was moving so quickly that he nearly tripped over his own feet.

Hot water sloshed over the rim and spilled across the floor. The sound guy grimaced and shook his hand, words spilling out like machine-gun fire. "Hot, hot, hot-make way, make way!"

Shen Wangjing stepped aside, his gaze falling on the basin of hot water.

The sound guy set the basin on a nearby table, his brows knotted. Another production assistant poked his head in and urged him on. "Hurry up, hurry up! The director said any longer and it'll fry his brain!"

"I'd love to hurry, but this towel needs to soak in warm water. This just boiled-it's scalding-"

"Who has a fever?" Shen Wangjing cut him off, his voice low.