E ⋆ Chapter 4

It all began in the summer when Yu Zhinian was fourteen years old. The sweltering heat of early July, the transition from second to third year of junior middle school.

When his homeroom teacher called to notify him of the Yang Zhongyin scholarship award, Yu Zhinian was sitting beside the dining table, tutoring his sixth-grade cousin on summer math homework.

The phone rang without warning. His aunt dropped the half-finished sweater she’d been knitting and hurried into the bedroom to answer. When she emerged, she told Yu Zhinian: “You got some kind of scholarship. It says if your grades meet the standard, you can get twenty thousand yuan per semester for living expenses, and in a few days you’ll get to go visit Ning City.”

The next day, Yu Zhinian went to the principal’s office to collect the scholarship letter for this special-needs award he’d never heard of before, brought the envelope home, and handed it to his aunt.

Yu Zhinian’s aunt wasn’t particularly close to his mother. She worked as an accountant at a small factory, didn’t earn much, had divorced her husband early on, and she and Yu Zhinian’s cousin depended on each other. Half a year ago, after Yu Zhinian’s parents died one after another, she couldn’t bear to see him go to a welfare home with poor conditions, so she’d brought him into her own household.

Earlier, to pay for his grandfather’s medical treatment, Yu Zhinian’s parents had sold their house, and their savings had long since dwindled to almost nothing. Then came the accidents—one a car crash, one late-stage cancer—and they were gone not long after diagnosis, leaving him with almost nothing. He understood clearly that living with his aunt was no small burden for her. He did most of the housework, tutored his cousin, and was always trying to ease her financial strain.

His aunt looked at Yu Zhinian’s hand with hesitation in her eyes. Yu Zhinian pushed it toward her again and explained that he didn’t spend money normally, that this could be used for groceries. She finally accepted it.

A week later, Yu Zhinian and the instructor his scholarship program had assigned him traveled five hours by high-speed rail to Ning City, arriving first at the rooftop auditorium of Ning University Library to attend the opening ceremony of the study tour.

The study tour had over eighty students, from all over the country, all sponsored by Yang Zhongyin. Most were high school students; there were very few close to Yu Zhinian’s age.

Yu Zhinian asked the high school student sitting beside him and learned that before receiving their awards and being admitted to the program, they’d all gone through applications and layers of evaluation at their schools.

“The study tour is selected from people who got scholarships. The scholarship is easy to get but the study tour is hard to get into,” the high school student said with a puzzled expression after hearing Yu Zhinian’s story. “Out of forty students in our city who got scholarships, only one was selected. Are junior high students different?”

Yu Zhinian had no answer. His unease only deepened.

His grades were indeed excellent—he’d placed first in the municipal unified exam for junior high schools in his prefecture-level city at the end of last semester. But when he’d gotten the scholarship, his homeroom teacher had walked out of the principal’s office with him and, with some confusion, mentioned that he’d asked a colleague who taught at a provincial key school, and learned that this scholarship had fairly high requirements for students. Yu Zhinian’s grades, placed against the province’s standards, weren’t particularly outstanding, and his family situation didn’t qualify as the most impoverished category either.

For some reason, it was Yu Zhinian who had caught the eye of the scholarship review committee.

At one o’clock in the afternoon, the opening ceremony began. The host announced the ceremony schedule and invited Yang Zhongyin, chairman of the Zhongqin Group and the scholarship provider, to come speak.

Yang Zhongyin wore a suit, had a tall frame, and carried himself with refined and cultured bearing.

Before coming, Yu Zhinian had searched for Yang Zhongyin’s name online. According to the encyclopedia, Yang Zhongyin was already seventy-eight years old, but Yu Zhinian thought he looked much younger in person—at most in his early sixties.

Yang Zhongyin spoke of his humble origins and troubled fate, saying that fortunately he’d always encountered kind people willing to help him, which allowed him to navigate dangers and eventually complete his doctoral studies.

After establishing himself in business, once he had the means, he wanted to give back to society, just as others had once helped him, making contributions to students in need.

Chairman Yang’s speech wasn’t long—it ended in ten minutes.

Next came the vice principal of Ning University. Before the principal had spoken long, Yu Zhinian’s instructor suddenly appeared at his side, bent down, and quietly told him: “Zhinian, come outside with me for a moment.”

Yu Zhinian followed the instructor out of the auditorium in some confusion.

“Here’s the thing,” the instructor told him once they were in the hallway. “There was a problem with the hotel booking for the study tour. You were left off the list, and we’re one room short. The hotel is fully booked now. We were thinking of finding a larger room and adding a bed, but Chairman Yang heard about it and offered to take you back to his home to stay.”

As he spoke, he led Yu Zhinian to the end of the long corridor, knocked, and entered a rest room.

The rest room was spacious, brightly lit, with gray carpet on the floor and paintings on the walls. There was a set of pale white sofas.

Chairman Yang Zhongyin, who had just been speaking on stage, was sitting on one of the sofas, with several men in suits standing or sitting nearby.

When Yang Zhongyin saw Yu Zhinian come in, he broke into a very warm smile and said: “So you’re Zhinian. Hello.”

Though Yu Zhinian was mature for his age, he was still only fourteen. Meeting an important figure for the first time, his heart raced, and he didn’t know what to do with his hands and feet. The instructor gently pushed him to sit on the sofa beside Yang Zhongyin, and he chatted awkwardly with Yang Zhongyin for a while.

Compared to the successful entrepreneur in the news releases, the real Yang Zhongyin was like a benevolent elder. He didn’t have that imposing air; his tone was very kind, and he spoke slowly.

He asked about Yu Zhinian’s life situation, told him that he also had a grandson about Yu Zhinian’s age, though the boy had been spoiled by tutors and nannies, didn’t have grades as good as Yu Zhinian’s, and wasn’t as thoughtful either. Then he invited Yu Zhinian to stay at his home for a few days, which could also set a good example for his grandson Yang Ke, letting him experience how other children lived.

Yu Zhinian was young, but he’d experienced much of the warmth and coldness of human relations and was sensitive to such matters. Yang Zhongyin’s words seemed to make sense at first hearing, but Yu Zhinian still felt something was subtly off.

Yet Yang Zhongyin was a socially prominent wealthy businessman, while Yu Zhinian was just an ordinary middle school student. After thinking hard for a long time, he couldn’t find anything about himself that Yang Zhongyin might want.

The two sat chatting a while longer. The instructor who’d left came back and said Yu Zhinian’s luggage had already been put in Chairman Yang’s car.

Yang Zhongyin glanced at his watch and said: “Then let’s go, Zhinian.”

They took the elevator beside the rest room down to the underground parking garage of the library.

Yu Zhinian nervously got into a long black sedan with Yang Zhongyin. The car moved forward, exiting the underground garage. The bright sunny sky that had been hanging overhead was nowhere to be seen; gray rain clouds and the oppressive low pressure before a storm had taken its place.

Soft instrumental music played in the car. Yang Zhongyin made several work calls without hesitation, while Yu Zhinian watched the scenery outside the window.

Several times, Yu Zhinian felt Yang Zhongyin’s gaze fixed on him, but when he turned around, he found that Yang Zhongyin seemed to be merely lost in thought.

Yang Zhongyin’s mansion was on the south side of Ning City, occupying a large area.

High stone walls enclosed the courtyard, and the iron gates slowly slid open on both sides. The car continued forward, passing stretches of lawn, and stopped before a low building at the front of the connecting corridor.

“My grandson likes swimming,” Yang Zhongyin told Yu Zhinian, “so I had a swimming facility built for him at home.”

The driver opened the door for Yu Zhinian. He got out and noticed the air pressure outside was even lower, with faint thunder rumbling in the distance.

But the swimming facility had air conditioning and wasn’t stuffy.

He followed Yang Zhongyin inside and heard the sound of water in the spacious facility. A person who looked like a coach stood at the edge of the pool with a stopwatch, apparently timing.

The first time Yu Zhinian saw Yang Ke, Yang Ke was immersed in the water, looking up at Yang Zhongyin, casually calling out “Grandpa.”

Yang Ke was less than a year older than Yu Zhinian, but his build was noticeably larger, water dripping from his black hair down onto the muscles of his shoulders.

He looked relaxed and at ease, accustomed to enjoying wealth, like the kind of person Yu Zhinian would see on the television shows his cousin liked to watch—someone who lived in a big house, who would drive a brightly colored convertible as an adult, go to parties everywhere, without a care in the world.

Yu Zhinian suddenly wanted to touch the two thousand yuan his aunt had put in the inner pocket of his backpack.

Since he could remember, Yu Zhinian had never had a privileged material life. He’d often struggled with money, but seeing others have it, he felt neither inferior nor desirous. Until the afternoon he saw Yang Ke, he experienced a desire he’d never felt before—vague and unsettling.

He didn’t know where it came from. He almost felt panic.

When he recalled this day as an adult, he seemed finally to understand where desire came from.

That fourteen-year-old Yu Zhinian, in the empty swimming facility, gained a new experience, opened a new chapter of life whose value was difficult to judge, met Yang Ke, with whom he would live for nearly ten years, but also lost a part of his original self.