E ⋆ Chapter 43

Yang Ke woke before the sky had fully brightened.

Outside, sparse birdsong drifted through the air. The pale light of early morning filtered through the curtainless window into the room, and Yu Zhinian, wearing a white T-shirt that had been washed many times and grown thin, slept deeply with his back to Yang Ke.

The room and bedding smelled of clean soap.

Yu Zhinian had been busy these past few days and was exhausted. Last night they hadn't done much before falling asleep. Yu Zhinian was still sleeping heavily now. Yang Ke reached out from behind and held him, touching the back of his hand, but he didn't wake.

After a while, Yu Zhinian seemed to sense someone touching him. His hand gave a light brush, he rolled over and faced Yang Ke, resting his head against Yang Ke's chest.

Because he was asleep, Yang Ke couldn't tell if Yu Zhinian was happy or unhappy.

Yang Ke sometimes felt there were many things about Yu Zhinian he didn't understand.

For instance, when did Yu Zhinian start liking him? Was it during some period when they coexisted peacefully? If so, why didn't he say so earlier?

Why did he like Yang Ke? What did he like about him? How could someone so noisy and lively before become melancholic and quiet, and would he ever trust Yang Ke the way he used to? These were things Yang Ke cared about quite a lot.

Because Yu Zhinian actually had more options, if he was willing to choose them.

Yang Ke also understood clearly that among those Yu Zhinian could choose from, he was not the one who could bring Yu Zhinian the most happiness.

If Yu Zhinian had chosen someone else, perhaps he would be more cheerful now. But Yang Ke was simply not as selfless as Yu Zhinian. Yang Ke was very selfish. Since Yu Zhinian had already chosen Yang Ke, it would be very, very difficult for him to change.

Yang Ke touched Yu Zhinian's left hand again. Yu Zhinian suddenly lifted his head, opened his eyes, looked at Yang Ke, frowned slightly, remained dazed for a brief moment, and said, "Yang Ke."

Yang Ke hummed in response. Yu Zhinian leaned over very slowly, then pressed his face against Yang Ke's shoulder.

After lying together a moment longer, Yu Zhinian finally became fully awake. He rustled around in the bedding, checked his watch, and said, "I need to get up."

"The ceremony starts in the evening," he told Yang Ke. "It'll go on into the deep night."

Yu Zhinian got up first to wash. He opened the door and washed his face in the courtyard.

Yang Ke walked to the doorway and watched Yu Zhinian, holding an enamel cup, brush his teeth while wandering leisurely around the courtyard. The daylight fell from above the courtyard, and faint wall shadows lay on the ground.

The mountain air was fresh. Yang Ke's phone had had no signal the whole time, and there had been no new texts or calls for dozens of hours, giving him a sense of being cut off from the world together with Yu Zhinian.

Suddenly someone knocked on the courtyard gate. A clear, crisp girl's voice called out from outside: "Year-ge, Year-ge, are you up?"

Yu Zhinian suddenly turned to look at Yang Ke, quickly rinsed his mouth, set down the cup and toothbrush, walked over, and slid the gate bolt to one side, opening the door.

"Miao Miao," he said to the person outside, "so early."

He stepped back, and the girl outside followed him in. When she saw Yang Ke, she paused slightly.

The girl looked no more than seventeen or eighteen, with large eyes and slightly dark skin. She wore her hair in two braids and was dressed in an ethnic-style skirt, with silver bracelets hanging on both wrists.

She looked at Yang Ke with a puzzled expression, let out a small sound of surprise, and asked Yu Zhinian: "Year-ge, who is this?"

"This is Yang Ke," Yu Zhinian introduced them. "And this is Miao Miao, the village chief's daughter."

After speaking, he suddenly looked at Yang Ke with a faint, barely noticeable nervousness and guilt.

Yang Ke was not a petty person. He understood that in a village like this, his relationship with Yu Zhinian should remain just friendship, without any unnecessary complications.

"I'm Yu Zhinian's friend," Yang Ke introduced himself proactively. "I was passing through Xiping and came to see him."

"Hello! Year-ge, your friend from outside is so handsome. He's much more handsome than Qi-ge," Miao Miao said with a laugh, then turned to Yu Zhinian. "Year-ge, my aunt is cooking the leaf herbs for this afternoon, the ones you asked about last time. Do you want to come see?"

"Cooking leaf herbs…" Yu Zhinian didn't immediately agree. He looked at Yang Ke again, as if seeking his permission.

Yang Ke saw him wanting to go but not daring to leave right away, and found it amusing. "Go ahead," he said. "I'll stay here."

Yu Zhinian rinsed the cup and quickly went out.

After Yu Zhinian left, Yang Ke walked around Yu Zhinian's room.

The room was at most twenty square meters, with no partitions inside.

Near the entrance was a small round table with three chairs. A cup sat on the table.

The bed was against the north wall, with Yu Zhinian's suitcase at the foot of it.

Along the south wall were two old tables of different styles. One was piled with paper, pens, and books, serving as Yu Zhinian's work desk for writing and recording. The other held a laptop with its power cord plugged in.

Yang Ke walked over and looked at the books on the table. Some were ones he had brought for Yu Zhinian, and some he had never seen before.

Among them were Yu Zhinian's own ethnographic course notes from long ago. Yang Ke had looked through this notebook many times, back when Yu Zhinian returned home last year to work on his project.

Yang Ke felt that Yu Zhinian had talent in certain areas. At least when Yang Ke read through this notebook, he had never felt drowsy the way he did reading Yu Zhinian's textbooks.

On top was the field notebook Yu Zhinian had written since arriving in Dang Village. Yang Ke picked it up and flipped through it, discovering that the notebook was purely a rough draft, unorganized, written in a chaotic jumble, yet meticulous in every detail.

Everything that happened to Yu Zhinian in Dang Village in a day, every word he spoke, was recorded in it.

Flipping to the middle of the notebook, Yang Ke saw Yu Zhinian had recorded a conversation with an elderly man from the village. The time recorded was last week, at half past midnight.

The old man was the village priest's brother. He had spoken of the sea in the mythology passed down through the village, with Xiao Chang translating, saying a great deal about the relationship between the sea deity and the rain deity.

Turning past this page, Yu Zhinian had suddenly written a tangential remark.

He wrote that he had bought tobacco that Professor Zhao had recommended to him and given it to the old man, who had been delighted, praising Yu Zhinian repeatedly for understanding his heart.

After that, Yu Zhinian had written "Reminder: Thank Professor Zhao Sibei for teaching me fieldwork experience without reservation, saving me from many detours," and drew two horizontal lines beneath the reminder.

For some reason, he then wrote "Yang Ke" below that, writing it twice in a row, followed by a short, common love poem.

This was exactly the sort of thing Yu Zhinian would do, finishing his work in the middle of the night and then letting his mind wander. His ethnographic notebook reviews were full of such rambling thoughts too. He could write four lines of reflection just because it started raining halfway through a library study session.

Compared to the other characters on the page, Yu Zhinian had written Yang Ke's name very neatly, as if writing slowly. Yang Ke bent over the notebook, silently reading the short love poem, and for a long time did not turn the page.

Yang Ke stood by the table for a moment when Miao Miao suddenly swept in like the wind: "Ge, breakfast is ready!"

She had added some metal hair ornaments to her head, and when she smiled her white teeth showed. She looked healthy and pretty.

Yang Ke followed Miao Miao out of Yu Zhinian's small flat, passing through a bamboo grove. Miao Miao slowed her pace and leaned in, asking Yang Ke curiously: "Ge, you and Year-ge are very close, aren't you?"

"Pretty much," Yang Ke told her.

"Can you tell me, does Year-ge have a girlfriend outside?" Miao Miao asked again. "Xiao Chang is so annoying. He says he doesn't know and tells me not to ask so many questions, that it's rude."

Yang Ke, seeing such a naive young girl, found her full of vitality and couldn't bring himself to be displeased just because she had feelings for Yu Zhinian. "Have you asked Yu Zhinian himself?" he said.

"No," Miao Miao became shy. "How could I ask him something like that?"

"But…" Miao Miao hesitated again and said, "I saw him with a ring."

Yang Ke looked at her and asked casually, "Is that so?"

"Yes," she said. "One night I went to bring him wontons my aunt had made, and he was holding it and looking at it, but he wasn't wearing it."

For some reason, she lowered her head to look, paused slightly, then raised her head and blinked a few times. She pointed at Yang Ke's hand and said to him, "It looks just like yours, a silver circle, all shiny and bright."

"What does it mean to wear it on that finger, ge?" She had a curious, eager-to-learn expression.

Yang Ke looked at her and explained: "I'm married."

Miao Miao let out a "wow," but before she could offer any comment, Xiao Chang came running over from nearby: "Why did you take so long?"

He greeted Yang Ke and said everyone had almost finished breakfast and they needed to hurry.

The village chief's house was very close to Yu Zhinian's. They passed through the bamboo grove and arrived.

For the evening ceremony, many villagers came to the village chief's house for breakfast, then began a day of busyness. The men cut wooden sticks into shapes more suitable for kindling and split firewood. The women dressed those who would participate in the rain-praying ceremony in full attire and applied purple liquid extracted from plants.

Yu Zhinian was busy recording. He had been given permission to photograph some of the scene.

Yang Ke had nothing to do, so he worked alongside Xiao Chang doing physical labor. He picked it up quickly, and before long had split quite a lot of wood. Several villagers came over to watch.

The day passed quickly. By noon, Mei Qi had also appeared. They were busy until evening, when the rain-praying ceremony began.

The rain-praying ceremony was to descend from the highest point of Dang Village. Villagers dressed as various gods and beasts carried torches, beat gongs and drums, circled the village once, then went to the altar by the village well at the village entrance to perform the final ceremony.

In the darkness, the torches looked like a long river. The sound of drums startled mountain sparrows.

Yang Ke and Mei Qi walked together, following behind the crowd, watching the commotion ahead. Yu Zhinian had long since disappeared somewhere.

Mei Qi leaned close and chatted: "Yang-ge, I used to think you people in economics had no interest in folk customs. The finance department at our unit really hates reimbursing my mountain travel expenses."

Yang Ke smiled at him. Mei Qi asked again: "Yang-ge, how did you become so close with Zhinian?"

"Were you university classmates?" he asked.

"We were classmates in high school," Yang Ke said. "And at the same university too."

"That long," Mei Qi said in surprise. "No wonder you're so close."

The villagers ahead reached the altar and stopped, gathering around the altar square and lighting the central bonfire.

"I think people like Zhinian are rare these days," Mei Qi suddenly reflected. "Not many of us who left Sanwen as kids are willing to come back. Who would find these old things in the mountains interesting? And he went so far away. I just don't know when he'll settle down and start a family."

"I always feel like Zhinian doesn't have much interest in romantic relationships," Mei Qi said. "We tease him about it, but he never says anything. Maybe he's too ambitious, with only academics on his mind, everything else unimportant. Being free like that, with nothing to bind him, seems pretty good too."

Yang Ke said nothing. They went around the torches and saw Yu Zhinian holding a camera, standing on a stone brick taking photos.

As if sensing something, the moment Yang Ke and Mei Qi approached, he suddenly lowered the camera and looked back.

Yang Ke saw Yu Zhinian's eyes looking at him brightly. Yu Zhinian jumped down from the stone brick, walked closer to Yang Ke, and said with some worry: "Yang Ke, my camera and phone are both almost dead."

"Do you have your phone with you?" he asked for help.

Yang Ke handed him his phone. Yu Zhinian took it, opened the camera, and walked away again.