Рrоlogue
Тhe summer after the middle sсhоol еntranсе ехams sаw littlе rаin, thе skу a quiеt, white heat thаt burnеd without flаme.
That summеr, Jiang Du endеd up at thе роliсе stаtiоn. She was still а mоnth shy оf hеr fiftеenth birthdаy.
It stаrtеd simply еnоugh. She wаs taking a shortсut home on hеr biсуclе when she saw а grоuр of bоуs fighting in аn аllеу—or mоrе aсcurаtely, оne tаll bоу being gаngеd uр оn.
Jiang Du immediatеly remembered а scene frоm her eаrly сhildhоod аt Grandpa’s hometown, where she had seen a pack of stray dogs tearing into a single one.
The boy kicked out fiercely, and when someone tried to sneak up from behind, he slammed an elbow back, sending the attacker to the ground with a groan.
But the group gradually gained the upper hand anyway. Jiang Du watched, pale-faced, as one of them picked up half a brick and swung it at the boy’s head. He dodged slightly, and the brick grazed his temple. Blood, so red. Without knowing where the courage came from, Jiang Du shouted, “The police are here!”
If a story must have a beginning, then it wasn’t the blooming cloud in the sky, nor the rumbling electric fan in someone’s home, nor the cars on the street each heading to their own destinations. The start of everything was simply this: “The police are here!”
Unfortunately, the lie only made the fighting boys pause for a moment. Jiang Du didn’t know how they saw through it, but this mess ended up dragging her in. Her hairband was knocked off, her bike basket dented, and she was so terrified her crying sounded different from usual.
Later, the police really did arrive, and everyone was taken away.
At the station, the boys were giving their statements, with the officers’ stern reprimands echoing now and then. The boy who had been beaten, his face still bloody, tilted his head back. His voice floated on the summer heat, devoid of any emotion.
“Young lady, even when doing the right thing, you have to know your limits, understand?” The officer, seeing Jiang Du’s quiet, delicate appearance, spoke with a tone of helplessness.
Too embarrassed to keep crying, she bit her lip, tears in her eyes. A glance from the corner of her eye met a pair of eyes that held no gratitude at all.
The boys who had been fighting were vocational high school students, suspected of extortion.
Later, parents had to be called.
When asked about her parents, Jiang Du shyly pleaded with the officer in a soft voice. She could go home by herself—please, please don’t call Grandma and Grandpa.
Outside the window, a kind man was already fixing her damaged bicycle.
By the water tap in the courtyard, the boy was rinsing the wound on his temple under the running water. Bent over, he formed a slender arc.
Jiang Du watched him through the glass as if looking into another, clearer world. When he looked up and saw her, neither spoke a word. Jiang Du immediately averted her gaze, her palms stinging—in truth, her scraped skin hurt too.
She pulled a pack of tissues from her skirt pocket.
The paper was slightly damp from being clutched. As Jiang Du walked over, the boy straightened up. He was tall, his hair dripping with water droplets, and below that, a face with sharp features came into view.
Their eyes met unexpectedly, the summer heat burning at her heart.
“Here, for you.” She handed him the tissues, her voice soft, like a handful of tender grass in spring.
The boy didn’t take them. Instead, he lifted the hem of his shirt and wiped his face roughly, his gaze passing right over her to the figure approaching the entrance.Water stains rolled in his throat, shimmering with a fine luster under the sunlight. The boy stood motionless, his expression restrained, with un-wiped droplets still clinging to his dark eyebrows.
Jiang Du pressed her lips tightly together, her ears burning as she withdrew the tissue and stepped aside. Only after the equally tall man and the boy entered the police station did she slowly lift her head and glance around a few times.
What happened next completely exceeded Jiang Du’s expectations.
Outside the police station gate, she crouched down and slowly turned the pedal, feeling that the bike chain wasn’t quite right.
It was during this brief pause that she saw the uncle who had come to pick up the boy suddenly change his expression, losing all the politeness he had shown to the police earlier. With a single slap, the boy staggered from the blow, leaving Jiang Du stunned.
The beating didn’t stop with that one slap. The man’s violence descended like a storm, and in the end, the boy, his mouth full of blood and clutching his abdomen, was shoved into a black car. It looked far more severe than the earlier gang fight.
Jiang Du was left speechless, her face flickering with indescribable shock and fear.
But before getting into the car, the boy clearly glanced in her direction—just once, impossible to tell whether it was unintentional or something more.
In that moment their eyes met, the boy’s gaze was indifferent yet clear. He was in a sorry state, yet he seemed not to care, as if being beaten was as natural as breathing—no resistance, no pain, just an unquestionable fact of life.
That summer, she often thought back to those eyes.
Her best friend, Wang Jingjing, would come over to sleep with Jiang Du whenever her parents were away on business. Wang Jingjing leaned close to her ear, exhaling warm breath, and said, “My mom bought me a bra, you know? I don’t wear those little undershirts anymore—it’s the kind adults wear. Do you have a bra?”
Jiang Du’s face burned in the darkness. Wang Jingjing took her hand and guided it, cautiously and tentatively, to rest on something soft. Her heart pounded wildly.
Wang Jingjing continued, “My mom says when girls develop to a certain point, they should start wearing one. Feel it, right? I’m not like you, Flat-Chest Jiang Du.”
As she spoke, she covered her mouth, snickering and mocking. Jiang Du’s face flushed even redder.
“Let me feel yours too, okay?” Wang Jingjing negotiated with her. Without waiting for a reply, she stealthily touched Jiang Du and then gasped, covering her mouth, her eyes wide. “When did you start developing too?”
Jiang Du pulled over the silk quilt her grandma had made in the countryside, covering her mouth as she mumbled, “I don’t know either.”
Wang Jingjing kept laughing, but because she was trying to do so quietly to avoid alerting the adults next door, her laughter was low and stifled, like a little hen struggling to breathe. Wang Jingjing was formidable—fierce and unyielding, keeping the boys in their class in check every day, especially her deskmate, a boy named Tan Kai. She would twist his ear to make him lend her his math homework to copy, acting utterly unreasonable. Yet, despite all her antics over three years, Wang Jingjing somehow managed to exceed expectations in the high school entrance exam and got into the best school, Mei Zhong, alongside Jiang Du.
Even Tan Kai didn’t score as well as she did. How strange—she copied his homework every day, yet outperformed him in the exam?
Some things in the world are just that unreasonable.
For instance, Wang Jingjing had started using sanitary pads back in seventh grade. Jiang Du’s birthday was even a few days earlier than hers, yet as she was about to start high school, she still hadn’t used anything like sanitary pads.Thankfully, after sharing a few nights of whispered secrets with Wang Jingjing, Jiang Du discovered a patch of red on her bedsheet one morning just before school started.
Wang Jingjing immediately gave her a crash course, took her to pick out sanitary pads, taught her how to use them, and reminded her not to catch a chill or eat ice cream… fussing over her like an old mother hen.
In the bathroom lingered the faint scent of a first period, along with the nameless melancholy that floods a young girl’s heart—a little embarrassing, like a finely textured piece of jade being turned over and over in the palm.
Around this time, the city began to rain, and it kept raining. Grandma glanced at the wastebasket and asked Jiang Du if she had gotten her first period. Jiang Du felt inexplicably ashamed. Outside the window, raindrops fell on leaves and branches. The days felt like a bronze mirror covered in green rust, damp and hazy, a stark contrast to the blazing sun of the earlier summer.
Jiang Du scrubbed hard at the bloodstains she had accidentally gotten on her underwear. She was prone to shyness, and the faint, stubborn marks on her white cotton panties were the very shape of that shyness.
That late summer, the girl Jiang Du truly stepped into the long and bewildering journey of adolescence.
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