Heartache

“She bought books because she wanted to buy books. What’s wrong with that?” Li Lan said matter-of-factly. “Buying books isn’t illegal. It’s practically a good deed.”

If Zhao Yun had only wanted to talk about this, then in Li Lan’s view there was no need to make such a fuss. “A hundred catties of books, not a hundred catties of cigarettes or liquor. If she likes them, I can buy another hundred catties. Buy one, get one free.”

At Li Lan’s rich-lady attitude, Zhao Yun’s eyelid twitched. “I haven’t finished yet.”

Zhu Qing said anxiously, “Then hurry up and say it. Why stop halfway? Building suspense?”

Zhao Yun: …

“The little kid who borrowed the books didn’t want to return them, so she pinned it on Xiaobao. Xiaobao was smarter and didn’t go along with her story just to prove she was innocent. She fought back on the spot and said the other girl was a thief who peeked at other people’s books; if you borrow books, of course you have to return them. Only thieves don’t return books. The other girl got mad after being scolded by Xiaobao, and then she fought with Xiaobao.”

Zhu Qing applauded. “Nice comeback!”

As expected of the child she’d raised. When kids argued, there was only one rule: if you could out-cuss the other side, you won.

Zhao Yun and Li Lan both looked at Zhu Qing. Zhu Qing’s clapping hand froze midair; she quickly rearranged her expression and said solemnly, “How can you fight?”

Xiaobao shrank her neck and muttered indignantly, “She hit me first.”

Li Lan frowned, her tone severe. “Did you win?”

Xiaobao nodded.

Zhao Yun said, “She kicked the other girl in the chest. The other girl hadn’t even gotten close before she was sent flying.”

Li Lan’s stern expression instantly relaxed, and she nodded in satisfaction. “Good.”

Good? What was good about that?!

Zhao Yun was speechless for a long time. “I see.” So that was how Yan Xiaobao’s bossy streak had been raised.

Li Lan looked at Zhao Yun, clearly puzzled. “That’s all? It’s just two little grade-schoolers pecking at each other. Xiaobao was in the right and didn’t suffer any loss. What’s the problem?”

Li Lan was obviously only concerned with whether Xiaobao had won; Zhu Qing was a little more normal and worriedly asked, “Is the other child okay?”

Zhao Yun looked at Zhu Qing with satisfaction. “She was taken to the hospital for a checkup. There was no problem, but her parents were a bit unreasonable. I’ve already handled it.”

Zhu Qing said gratefully, “Sorry to trouble you, Teacher Zhao.”

After saying that, she gave the same look as well, an obvious question: anything else?

“You’re not concerned about why Xiaobao wanted to send books to the welfare institution?!” Zhao Yun was shocked.

Zhu Qing touched her chin. “A charitable act?”

Li Lan said flatly, “It doesn’t matter.”

Zhao Yun was faintly on the verge of collapse. In disbelief, she said, “How did a five-year-old child get in touch with the welfare institution? There are orphans there, disabled people, and a lot of mentally ill kids. Was Xiaobao there by chance, or was she influenced by someone? Did anyone approach Xiaobao? What did those people want from her? Aren’t you worried about any of that?”

Li Lan stood up at once. “I’m going to the restroom.”

Zhu Qing also got up, topped off Zhao Yun’s tea, and soothed her. “Don’t get worked up yet. Of course we’re worried, but did you ask Xiaobao about any of this?”

Zhao Yun nearly broke down. “If I could get it out of her, I wouldn’t have come to you! Xiaobao refuses to say!”

“Then there you go,” Zhu Qing said, spreading her hands. “Xiaobao has her own little secrets and doesn’t want to share them. As adults, we can’t panic first.”

Zhao Yun simply stopped speaking. She looked thoroughly exasperated, like someone thinking, I’d like to see just how absurd you two can get, which made Zhu Qing feel extremely guilty.

Zhu Qing coughed lightly and pulled Xiaobao closer, saying gently, “What exactly happened?”

Xiaobao pressed her lips together and refused to speak.

Zhu Qing kept her usual gentleness. “Buying books wasn’t wrong, and Xiaobao didn’t do anything wrong either. I know you just wanted to help them. You were doing a good deed, and Mommy and I won’t stop you. What we’re worried about is your safety. You’re only five now, and it’s easy for you to get hurt. Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

At first Zhu Qing hadn’t thought much of it either, but after hearing Zhao Yun’s explanation, she realized it really did need to be handled more carefully. Xiaobao’s concern for the welfare institution had to have a reason behind it; children’s matters weren’t small matters, and they all needed careful attention.

Xiaobao lowered her head and counted her toes, still saying nothing.

When Li Lan came back, Zhu Qing was still patiently explaining the pros and cons to Xiaobao over and over. “Did you decide on your own to donate to them? Did a teacher at kindergarten mention it, or did someone else tell you? How did you know they didn’t have books to read?”

Xiaobao stared straight ahead, maintaining an impressively stubborn silence through Zhu Qing’s endless questioning.

By the time Zhu Qing’s throat was dry, she was about to take a sip of water when, turning her head, she found a cup already held to her lips.

Li Lan placed the water in her hand, then braced both hands on her shoulders and made her stand up.

The gentle look on Li Lan’s face changed immediately after that.

“Yanqiu,” Li Lan said, standing in front of Xiaobao and lowering her head slightly, her face expressionless. “I’m counting to three.”

At that moment, Li Lan looked like a storm-dark sky; clouds pressed low, ominous and heavy. Even her tone was threatening, like a final ultimatum.

Zhu Qing suspected that Li Lan might lash out at any second.

She hurriedly looked at Zhao Yun, only to find Zhao Yun sitting there with perfect composure, not worried at all.

Zhu Qing could only move a little closer and watch the exchange closely. With Xiaobao’s stubborn personality, Li Lan had already run out of patience; if the two of them collided over this, wouldn’t the conflict just snowball?

Li Lan said, “One.”

Xiaobao’s whole body tensed.

Li Lan: “Two.”

Xiaobao clenched her fists tightly.

Li Lan looked at her for two seconds, then nodded. “Fine. After I finish counting, I’ll take Zhu Qing away.”

Zhu Qing: Hm?

What did that have to do with her?

Xiaobao immediately shouted, “You’re not allowed to take Zhu Zhu away!”

“Didn’t she just spend all this time worrying about you? Can’t you see that?” Li Lan’s voice was cold. “If you treat her words like air, then there’s no need for us to keep living with you.”

“I didn’t treat her like air. Mommy, don’t take Zhu Zhu away!”

Xiaobao was so anxious she kept stomping her feet. Her face flushed red; she looked like a bristling little hedgehog, breathing so fast it seemed she might cry any second.

But she forced herself to hold it in, as if determined not to cry in front of Li Lan. Her face burning, she looked toward Zhu Qing, her voice carrying a barely contained grievance. “Zhu Zhu, don’t go.”

Zhu Qing’s heart melted completely. How could she possibly stay angry at Xiaobao? She was just about to say she wouldn’t go when she caught Li Lan’s look out of the corner of her eye.

Zhu Qing slowly stopped and didn’t respond to Xiaobao.

This time Xiaobao was truly anxious; tears welled in her eyes and looked ready to fall.

Li Lan narrowed her eyes and watched for two seconds, then suddenly asked, “Did you promise someone you couldn’t say?”

Xiaobao pouted; after several seconds, she mumbled, “Mm.”

“Was that person a child or an adult?” Li Lan pressed.

Xiaobao whispered, “A child.”

Li Lan continued, “Did you run into them while playing in the kindergarten’s backyard?”

Xiaobao admitted it with her eyes.

“Got it,” Li Lan said calmly, then looked at Zhao Yun. “She’s safe.”

Zhao Yun had watched all this for half a day. Finally, after Li Lan had forced Xiaobao to speak, she’d only gotten a few scraps of information before stopping; and that counted as safe?

“Yan Xiaobao, didn’t I tell you that if you make friends with someone, you have to tell me right away?” Zhao Yun said anxiously. “Especially children from the welfare institution. They don’t have adults taking care of them, and they can barely manage themselves. They run into all sorts of trouble all the time. Why would you want to be friends with them?”

Zhu Qing felt that Zhao Yun’s worldview was a little skewed and couldn’t help saying, “You don’t need to put it like that. They’re all kids. How many bad people can there be?”

“Miss Zhu must have lived in a relatively stable environment for a long time, so she doesn’t know much about this,” Zhao Yun said very seriously this time, enunciating each word. “Children in the welfare institution are very different from normal children. That isn’t meant as an insult, nor as praise; it’s just an objective fact.”

Zhu Qing frowned, about to argue, but Li Lan interrupted her.

“Teacher Zhao, I understand your concerns. I’ll solve this problem,” Li Lan said in a low voice. “Tomorrow I’ll give you an answer.”

The worry on Zhao Yun’s face didn’t ease, but she still stood up and nodded to the two parents. “All right. Then I’ll come pick Xiaobao up tomorrow morning.”

Xiaobao, who had been pretending to be mute, finally spoke to Zhao Yun, her voice soft. “See you tomorrow, Teacher.”

Zhao Yun sighed and answered gently, “See you tomorrow.”

That night, Li Lan took care of Xiaobao’s washing up and bedtime routine. Xiaobao was flattered beyond belief; while brushing her teeth, she froze again and again, and the electric toothbrush jabbed her chin several times. Li Lan couldn’t stand it and ended up brushing her teeth for her personally.

When Xiaobao lay in bed, Zhu Qing was there too, reading a storybook with Li Lan. Xiaobao held one finger from each of them in her hands, excited for a long time before finally falling asleep.

By then it was already ten at night.

Zhu Qing closed Xiaobao’s bedroom door and walked quietly over to Li Lan’s side. “She finally fell asleep.”

Li Lan curved her lips and said warmly, “You worked hard. Her sleep used to be very good; she’d fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. She must have been too excited today.”

Zhu Qing felt a little scared in hindsight and said softly, “You looked so scary when you questioned her. Xiaobao almost cried.”

Li Lan tilted her head in confusion. “Did I?”

Zhu Qing nodded several times in a row. “Mm-hm. You did.”

Li Lan thought about it for two seconds, but still felt she hadn’t spoken harshly at all. “I didn’t.”

Zhu Qing shot her a reproachful look. Li Lan avoided her gaze, walked over to the sofa, and sat down, patting the spot beside her. “Come sit.”

Zhu Qing went over and asked curiously, “How are you going to solve this? Xiaobao just wanted to help her friend as much as she could, right? And it was only donating books; I don’t feel like that’s such a big problem.”

Xiaobao had met the children at the welfare institution by chance, become friends with them, and after learning they didn’t have books, spent her own money to buy some for them. However you looked at it, it was just a sweet, innocent friendship between children. Zhu Qing didn’t understand why Zhao Yun had reacted as if they were facing a major crisis.

Xiaobao was young, yes, but she also deserved some space to make friends. They shouldn’t interfere too much.

Li Lan was silent for longer than before; so long that the expression on her face faded away, leaving only a restrained heaviness beneath the lamp’s light in the dark.

It was as if she had many experiences, many past events, many realizations, but because of all kinds of reasons, she could only compress them into a few rough sentences in reply.

“Society had already started having fewer children in the earlier years.”

Li Lan began with the social background, and Zhu Qing was startled before quickly sitting up to listen carefully.

“Children in the welfare institution who are normal are adopted very quickly. In the welfare institutions of big cities, there are also a lot of foreigners who come; they’re more willing to adopt children with genetic illnesses that aren’t too severe, like cleft lip and palate or thalassemia.”

Zhu Qing listened quietly, her eyes fixed on her.

Li Lan paused, her expression drifting into memory.

“The children who are left behind mostly have obvious physical problems. One teacher has dozens of children to look after; the rule they follow is that whoever cries can’t be comforted. The only thing those children get is a small, average, thin scattering of attention.”

A trace of pain flickered through Zhu Qing’s eyes. She remembered that Li Lan was an orphan.

But Li Lan’s tone was faintly cold. “They develop the instinct to compete with their own kind very early. They’re extremely good at reading people’s expressions, completely unlike children raised in normal families; they all look like little social climbers. Simplicity and innocence are absolutely the most unreasonable things in a welfare institution. There’s no soil here for childish purity to grow. Some children become gloomy, some become tough, some become small and withdrawn, but most live in silence, and in the end they leave in silence too.”

Li Lan drew a soft breath and turned to look at Zhu Qing. “The danger in Xiaobao befriending them is that human nature is selective in how it shows itself. It’s complicated and changeable. Xiaobao’s existence itself represents normality and privilege. Zhao Yun is afraid someone will be jealous of Xiaobao, afraid someone will use Xiaobao, and even more afraid that they’ll genuinely become friends at first, only to realize in the end how far apart they are and grow resentful over it. That’s why Zhao Yun thinks these friendships shouldn’t exist from the start.”

With Li Lan’s explanation, image after image unfolded in Zhu Qing’s mind.

Children in dirty, disheveled clothes; a flash of hope in their faces, followed by the disappointment of hope collapsing; after countless disappointments piled up, their young faces were left only with numbness, dullness, indifference, and repression.

Heavy, sticky air; if you wanted to reach in and pull someone out, all you would feel was deep helplessness.

For a moment, Zhu Qing couldn’t say anything.

Li Lan didn’t want to lecture her; she simply chose enough to make the reasoning clear. Seeing that Zhu Qing had been moved by it, her purpose had been achieved. She stood up, raised a hand halfway as if hesitating, then gently rested it on top of Zhu Qing’s head and ruffled her fluffy hair. “Don’t think about it. I’ll go to the kindergarten tomorrow. It’s a small matter, nothing to worry about. Go to sleep.”

Her tone was casual and loose, as if the person who had just been speaking so heavily about the past were only a passing shadow.

Zhu Qing said softly, “I’m not going.”

Li Lan smiled faintly; a hint of helpless indulgence appeared in her brows and eyes. “Be good.”

Her lover was sentimental and clear about good and evil; someone like that lived very purely, and Li Lan liked Zhu Qing’s purity. But Zhu Qing also couldn’t tolerate even a grain of sand in her eyes; any little bad thing would weigh on her, so there were many things Li Lan didn’t want her to know too clearly.

Zhu Qing raised her head and met Li Lan’s gaze without blinking.

She saw those exquisite, beautiful eyes of Li Lan’s, saw the restrained and gentle things surging within them, and suddenly reached out and hugged Li Lan around the waist.

She buried her head deep in Li Lan’s embrace, pressing herself close in a rather forceful, determined way.

Li Lan was utterly startled. She lifted a hand in a daze; only after a while, when she came back to her senses from Zhu Qing’s gradually tightening grip, did her voice turn unsteady. “What’s wrong?”

Had she said too much and made Zhu Qing unable to accept it?

Li Lan suddenly didn’t know what to do.

She was glad that Zhu Qing had taken the initiative to draw close, but even more worried about Zhu Qing’s unusual state.

Li Lan moved her arm and softly comforted her, “Zhu Qing, what’s wrong? Are you scared? Don’t be afraid. If anything happens, you can tell me…”

Zhu Qing tightened her hold again overbearingly; her cheek rubbed against Li Lan’s soft lower abdomen. Her voice was muffled, but calm and gentle.

“Don’t move.”

“...I just suddenly really wanted to hug you.”

————————

Li Lan, carefully forcing out a smile: Which sentence did I say too harshly that made you throw yourself into my arms?

Zhu Qing, aching so much her heart kept twisting: Shut up... let me hold you.