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Chapter 26: To Be Dependent on Someone Else’s Grace
Yue Zhishi had been very eager for winter break, but as a year three student soon to face the high school entrance examinations, his actual holiday was pitifully short at only seventeen days. He spent three days catching up on sleep at the very start of the break, and one fifth of his holiday disappeared. The few days celebrating Lunar New Year also flew by very quickly, and in the blink of an eye, only half of his break remained.
This feeling was almost exactly how it felt to chase after manga chapter updates — new chapters were eagerly, keenly opened, but before you felt like you’ve read enough, there was no more and you could no longer continue.
Holidays never lasted long enough.
Song Yu went back to school one week earlier than he did, and Yue Zhishi lonesomely worked on his homework by himself. The night before starting school again, he grabbed the homework questions he couldn’t do and went to Song Yu’s room. Song Yu was in the shower, so Yue Zhishi held his notebook and spun in circles where he stood, the new rug on the floor soft and comfortable underneath his feet. When he sat on it, he no longer felt the cold floor.
He saw Song Yu’s schoolbag on the floor, still yet to be packed away, and unintentionally glanced inside to see a few pouches of cat food.
Why was gege bringing cat food to school? To give to friends?
Yue Zhishi was too lazy to think too much about it. Since Song Yu wasn’t in the room, he pulled out a raspberry flavoured lollipop from his pyjama pockets and threw it into his bag.
Everyone started to feel the pressure of the upcoming high school entrance examinations after school resumed, and the study atmosphere around the school thickened heavily compared to before. The first round of mock exams arrived after only one week of classes. Yue Zhishi’s results weren’t too bad: he took first place in English, and his other scores were all in the upper ranges of his class. Even though his grades weren’t at the very top, they were always very consistent, and he should have no problems entering Peiya high school’s advanced classes. Lin Rong and Song Jin had also never truly required certain results from Song Yu and Yue Zhishi, so the two of them had a healthy mindset and weren’t too nervous about their entrance examinations.
Yue Zhishi was someone who was very clear about when to play and when to study. He would always finish his homework during the evening self-study sessions, his efficiency and focus at their very highest while he waited for gege to finish class. As long as he finished all of his work, he would be able to bike home together with Song Yu and might even be able to eat some late night snacks together — it was an unparalleled incentive.
“I’m so jealous. It’s not like you don’t play around at all, and yet your scores are still so good.” Jiang Yufan was completing his flower bed cleaning duties for this week and was holding a broom higher than his head. He didn’t pay attention to where he was sweeping, and accidentally swung the broom at Yue Zhishi. “Your brother must’ve given you some private attention over the winter break.”
Yue Zhishi took the broom with a move like one of those martial artists in a television drama before he cleanly confessed, “He didn’t, he didn’t have time to tutor me.”
“What was he so busy doing over the break?”
“Sleeping.” Yue Zhishi dropped the broom down and went to rescue the packaging of an instant noodle packet. It’d been blown away by the wind just after being swept over. “He slept for over ten hours every day, and after he woke up, he stayed in his room to watch movies or documentaries. Stuff like Earthflight or Voyage of the Continents.”
“How do you know?”
“I watched them with him after I finished my homework.” But he’d lost focus more often than not and ended up falling asleep in Song Yu’s bed.
A girl who was on cleaning duty with them interjected, “It must be nice to have an older brother at home. I want an older brother too.”
Yue Zhishi completely agreed with her and even wanted to share his wonderful experiences of having a gege with her, but another girl spoke before he did. “What’s so good about having an older brother? Mine annoys and bullies me every day. I always wanted someone to take him away when I was younger.”
She placed her iron dustpan on the floor after speaking, her face mysterious and yet slightly happy. “But I’ll soon escape from my days of suffering.”
Jiang Yufan was very curious. “What do you mean?”
“My mom agreed to let me go overseas for high school, and I just happen to have an aunt in Australia.” She then shared how she spent the winter break choosing high schools and preparing for the IELTS. Yue Zhishi focused on sweeping the instant noodle packaging into the iron dustpan and searched for his next target.
“You’re leaving for overseas already?”
“I think it’s pretty normal. A lot of students in the high school department aren’t taking the college entrance examinations either,” the girl said.
That’s right. Yue Zhishi paused and leaned against the broom, nodding his head inside his mind. He thought of Song Yu as he listened to the girls talk uneasily about Peiya’s examinations. Song Yu should be taking the college entrance examinations, but this was only a faint belief in Yue Zhishi’s mind. He wasn’t actually sure.
Coincidentally, after they got home that night, Yue Zhishi was heading downstairs after his shower to grab his cell phone on the sofa. He just happened to hear Father Song talking very casually with Song Yu about various things happening at school. He walked up the stairs and heard Uncle Song say, “Honestly, there are pros and cons for studying in country or going overseas. I think you already know what you want to do, and I’ll support you no matter what you choose.”
“Mn.”
Yue Zhishi’s footsteps suddenly stopped as he heard those words, and his thoughts were thrown into disarray.
“Yue Zhishi.” Song Yu abruptly called his name. Yue Zhishi froze and turned his head to look at him.
Song Yu stared at him and said after a little while, “Sleep early. Come with me to school tomorrow.”
He’d thought gege had found the lollipop in his bag.
“Okay, I understand.” Yue Zhishi went back upstairs into his room.
He thought again about what that female classmate had said earlier that day.
Song Yu should be going overseas for college, right?
Even though he’d promised to sleep early, Yue Zhishi was unable to fall asleep all night. He climbed out of bed, opened his notebook and went online with questions like ‘how to apply for high school overseas’. However, for every question he typed in, the most information he would find were advertisements for overseas education agencies, and he found the general process utterly confusing. The only substantial information he obtained was that studying overseas required a lot of money — a lot more than he’d initially expected.
So then he spent a long amount of time calculating how much allowance money he’d managed to save over the last few years.
Yue Zhishi was ridiculously sleepy the next day. He forced himself out of bed and was completely dazed the entire way to school. He knew he would fall asleep, so he very purposefully chose to stand up when memorising his Chinese classics and stood for the entire morning self-study.
He realised, as long as he’d never paid attention to something before, it wasn’t really all that important — but once he noticed it, that something would appear in front of him often enough that it was almost scary.
For example — the advertisement for an overseas education agency plastered in front of the cafeteria entrance, the list of students going on an overseas study exchange on the notice board, or even a teacher randomly mentioning older students who were now studying in Ivy Leagues during class.
During the Chinese literature class that afternoon, the teacher was talking about past papers from previous high school entrance examinations. Yue Zhishi’s Chinese literature grades have never been especially good, particularly in reading comprehension. He’d always felt he understood what the passages were talking about, and it was just that his way of thinking was different from the person creating the answers.
It was always possible even the authors themselves had no idea their writing could be read that way.
“Next, let’s look at the section on the Classics. This past exam chose to focus on Dream of the Red Chamber,” the Chinese literature teacher said as he pushed up his glasses. “The first question. Characters in literature are often multi-faceted. Lin Daiyu in Dream of the Red Chamber is undoubtedly a very classic female example in literature. Using examples from the book, please briefly explain her personality characteristics and how those characteristics originated.”
Personality characteristics. Yue Zhishi leaned his chin against his desk. His first thought was that she was literarily talented since she was very good at writing poems, but he suspected that didn’t quite count as part of her personality.
The teacher fortunately didn’t pick him to answer and chose another student instead. That student stood up, and the first thing he said was, “Always worried and anxious.”
“Okay, then can you now explain why she’s like that?”
The student loudly said, “Because she had to depend on others for a roof over her head.” Questions for Dream of the Red Chamber should all be very similar, constantly linking Lin Daiyu with her dependence on someone else’s grace and causing students to automatically blurt out that answer without too much thought.
“Give us a bit more details. Explain how her personality was affected by needing to live in someone else’s house and rely on other people’s generosity,” the teacher directed.
He thought for a while. “Since her parents both died when she was young, she needed to go to someone else’s place to live.”
The Yue Zhishi who had been seriously listening suddenly felt a bit strange. He self-consciously sat up straight and fiddled with the pen on top of his desk.
“And then she definitely couldn’t act the same way in someone’s else home like she could in her own. She’d be scared of saying some things and wouldn’t dare do other things, and even the money she used belonged to other people.” The other students in the class were all amused by this student’s simple and straightforward explanation, and yet Yue Zhishi didn’t find it funny at all.
The teacher looked like he was satisfied with that answer and cited the original text. “That’s right. She needed to be careful about every single one of her movements, always paying attention to everything she did. She couldn’t say a single extra word or walk just one extra step, for fear of being sneered at by others.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.” That student continued, “Besides, the other family treated her so well despite not being actually blood-related. So she was even more anxious and sensitive and would always think a lot about things.”
Yue Zhishi blinked and stared at the paper. He covered up his own answer of ‘overflowing with literary talent’ with some correction tape and wrote ‘always worried and anxious’. But after he looked at those words for two seconds, he covered it up again, this time with slightly impatient movements. Not only was he not able to cover up those words, the corner of the correction tape dispenser even tore a piece off the previous piece of tape he’d laid down and revealed two words: ‘literary talent’.
“To be dependent on someone else’s grace — well done.”
The teacher gave that evaluation to his answer.
–
Yue Zhishi had been very obedient as of late.
As soon as he reached the monthly break, he ran to help Lin Rong as soon as he finished with his homework. Lin Rong was afraid he’d be too tired so didn’t let him do anything, but Yue Zhishi worked in spite of her words anyway, wiping down tables, washing the dishes or anything that needed to be done. Even the workers in the restaurant found his behaviour very strange.
As soon as the phone rang, Yue Zhishi was the first one to run over and pick up the phone call in place of the front desk lady who’d gone to the bathroom. “Hello, this is Yanghe Qizhe…”
“…what?” Yue Zhishi was immediately shocked upon hearing the other party’s words. He placed the phone down and ran to the break room. “Aunt Rong, is your cell phone off?”
Lin Rong was choosing the layout of the new menu. She reached for her phone and said, “Ah, it really is turned off.”
“Grandpa’s in the hospital,” Yue Zhishi said very urgently.
The grandpa Yue Zhishi referred to was Song Yu’s grandpa. He had two sons, and Song Jin was the younger of the two.
In earlier years, the Song family didn’t live in great economic conditions. Song Jin grew up in poverty and later started a business all by himself in order to gain his current economic freedom. Song Jin had always wanted to provide for his father, but his older brother had always refused to let him.
Older Uncle Song, as the oldest son in the family, believed he and his family should be the ones to take care of Grandpa Song. Song Jin could only compromise by sending over a large amount of money for support every month in order to let his father live a bit more comfortably. He didn’t expect his father to suddenly have an accident. Grandpa Song had been changing a light bulb while at home by himself and had accidentally slipped off his chair, breaking his right arm. Older Uncle Song hadn’t been able to find a hospital bed, so he had no choice but to come find his younger brother.
Lin Rong immediately went to find one of her friends and organised a VIP hospital room, while Song Jin also prepared to fly back to the country as early as possible. Since it happened to be the monthly break, Song Yu and Yue Zhishi also rushed to the hospital.
Yue Zhishi held a very deep affection towards Grandpa Song. He’d lived in his house for a little while when he’d been in elementary school. Grandpa had taught him how to play spinning tops in the park and had brought him to play on random exercise machines in their neighbourhood. During summer breaks, Grandpa had even lived with them occasionally and had cooked very yummy crayfish for him to eat.
So when he and Song Yu headed over, Yue Zhishi purchased a very large, very beautiful basket of fruit with his now extraordinarily precious allowance money. Song Yu scoffed at the heavy bag he was bringing to the hospital and even said only stupid people would buy fruit baskets from stores in front of the hospital, but Yue Zhishi thought it was money well spent as long as the fruits were still edible. Besides, it looked impressive to be carrying in a large fruit basket anyway.
Song Yu was too lazy to argue, but he did help take his heavy impressiveness from him.
The entrance to the VIP section of the hospital was very peaceful. Before they went inside, the two of them had thought they would see a very weak and fragile elderly person resting on the bed. But unexpectedly, Grandpa was brimming with as much energy and vigour as a dragon as he watched the Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils television drama, even almost getting off his bed once he saw his two grandchildren.
“Be careful, don’t move around for no reason.” Song Yu placed down the fruit basket. “Yue Zhishi bought this for you.”
“Aiyah, such a large basket. Too bad I don’t have any roommates to show it off to — single hospital rooms are too boring.”
Song Yu shook his head in his mind, thinking Yue Zhishi should be the actual blood-related grandchild. He went and told his grandpa about the things he needed to pay attention to after his orthopaedic surgery.
“Ah, Xiao Yu, how come you’re still like this? You’re even more boring than I am.” Grandpa gave Yue Zhishi a look. “Le Le, did you bring the thing I asked for?”
Yue Zhishi hummed in agreement and dropped his schoolbag onto the sofa, pulling it open. Song Yu only then found out why his bag was so heavy — the entire set of the Dragonball manga series was inside.
Song Yu sighed, “…Grandpa, you need to rest.”
“I know.” Grandpa put on his reading glasses and opened a volume. “There’s such a comfortable bed here, and I even have manga to read. There’s no rest better than this.”
Yue Zhishi introduced the overall storyline to Grandpa and tore open the plastic covering of the fruit basket. He grabbed an apple and prepared to wash it, but Grandpa told him the water faucet in the room was broken and yet to be fixed. He could only head outside to rinse the apple.
“Turn right, then walk straight down the corridor. Then turn left.”
“No problem.”
Yue Zhishi chose the largest apple he could see and followed Grandpa’s directions to the public toilet. He didn’t expect to meet his aunt and her new daughter-in-law, and they looked like they were buying some coffee. Yue Zhishi’s footsteps paused.
He needed time to think about what to call them.
The wife of his paternal aunt’s son is…
Let’s try again. If his paternal aunt’s son is older than him, then he was called tang ge. The wife of his tang ge is tang sao. Right.
After he managed to calculate the right names for everyone, Yue Zhishi suddenly felt a random spurt of pride. He was getting ready to walk closer to ask after his new cousin’s wife when the two people not too far away started talking about him.
“Mom, out of the two who just arrived, which one is our cousin?”
“You can’t recognise people from our own family?”
Her words were very clearly rebuking, and Yue Zhishi was momentarily stunned, no longer moving.
It felt like there were many small pins piercing into his face.
“Ah, I was about to say.” The new daughter-in-law smiled awkwardly. “That brown haired boy looked like he was mixed. You can immediately tell he doesn’t belong to our family. He must be the child uncle brought home?”
“That’s him.” His aunt sipped her coffee, sat down on a chair and released a long sigh. “If you think about it, he must’ve lived with them for at least ten years by now.”
It would be twelve years soon. Yue Zhishi silently retorted as he subconsciously retreated backwards until he was behind the corridor corner again.
She drank another sip of coffee and said, “The things he eats, where he lives, what he uses, the school he goes to — everything is exactly the same as his own son. They even take him along when they go overseas for holidays. It’s not like that boy is easy to take care of either. Who knows how many times he needed to stay in a hospital when he was younger? Plus hiring all those drivers to take him to and from school — they only relaxed a bit after he grew up.”
She appeared to remember something. “I heard your father say that boy is just like his blood father. That Yue Yi used to daily eat and live at the Song family’s house. Who would’ve expected his son to also be a parasite.”
Her new daughter-in-law also sat down. “Uncle truly is strange. He doesn’t care much for his own nephew, but he cares so much for someone else’s child.”
“Stop bringing it up. Your husband, my son, has never received much kindness from that side of the family. He missed entering Peiya by just a few points. We looked for your uncle for help, but he wasn’t willing to help us with such a simple thing.”
“That is a bit too stingy. I was just at the window earlier, and I saw that child carrying an especially large fruit basket before he gave it to cousin. It looks like that child doesn’t think about how much money he’s spending. He’s more delicate compared to cousin as well. Say, seeing how uncle is so willing to take care of someone else’s child, do you think… that child’s relationship with him isn’t so simple…”
Yue Zhishi’s fists clenched in anger, and he prepared to rush up there to clarify things. His father wasn’t ‘someone else’, his name was Yue Yi, and Uncle Song wasn’t the kind of person they were talking about.
But he wasn’t able to head out — someone caught his wrist.
Yue Zhishi turned around for a look and saw Song Yu with an extremely ugly look on his face.
Song Yu pulled Yue Zhishi behind him and walked out himself.
“What kind of relationship do you think it is?”
Carrying her paper cup of coffee, their cousin-in-law stood up with an awkward look on her face and looked like she didn’t know what to say.
Song Yu stared straight at her, his face icy enough to scare others.
“Cousin, do you recognise me? Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, you’re Xiao Yu, right? Just then, I was just concerned…”
Song Yu interrupted her words without a single care.
“Outsiders don’t need to worry about our family’s matters.”