Chapter 6

For a long time, Yu Min and Zhou Jin kept to the same strict routine every day: the tutoring center during the day, and Lin Baixin’s place at night.

Even after Aunt and the others came back from their business trip, it was still the same. Compared with her own mother’s constant nagging and lecturing, Zhou Jin still found Lin Baixin’s supervision easier to accept. At the very least, Lin Baixin didn’t drone on and on; she knew how to balance work and rest, and she often made time for the two of them to relax and catch their breath.

Whenever Yu Min had nothing to do, she would run over next door. Lin Baixin was a homebody and stayed in most days. Every time Yu Min went over, she was either upstairs or in the back garden painting.

Lin Baixin was very good at painting. Once her easel was set up, she could sit there for hours without moving. She really did hate being disturbed and didn’t like noise, but that only applied to Zhou Jin and the others. Yu Min was different; Lin Baixin never found her annoying. Sometimes she even took the initiative to help wash Lin Baixin’s brushes or lend a hand with small tasks.

Lin Baixin had given her the house password. Yu Min was the only one who had it, and even Uncle Xiao didn’t get that kind of treatment.

Yu Min kept quiet about it and didn’t let Zhou Jin know. She also never asked Lin Baixin why.

Yu Min could borrow books from there too, as long as she didn’t damage them; it didn’t matter how long she kept them.

“No need to tell me every time,” Lin Baixin said. “Don’t make such a fuss. It’s nothing, really. No big deal.”

Yu Min read fairly quickly. She could finish a book in three to five days. There was a single armchair in the study; after a few days, once she’d grown used to it, she moved from the corner to the chair by the window. The upstairs light was bright and the view was wide open, so reading didn’t strain her eyes.

In return, the following week, when Aunt’s family suddenly got the idea to make baked cookies, Yu Min baked a separate batch by herself and carefully wrapped them up to send over the next day.

There were two batches of cookies in all; the other one was for Aunt to send over. Yu Min put the two batches together and, without any special explanation, vaguely said, “Teacher Lin, these are Aunt’s cookies for you.”

She changed the way she addressed Lin Baixin. At first, she had followed Zhou Jin and called her that too, but with that layer of distance between them, calling her “older sister” felt awkward. Yu Min switched to calling her “Teacher Lin.”

To some extent, Lin Baixin was now half a tutor to her, so that title was perfectly reasonable.

“You and Zhou Jin go to the same school?” Lin Baixin asked suddenly.

Yu Min nodded. “Same class too.”

“Both at No. 1 Middle School.”

“Mm.”

“I have a friend who works at your school. She should be teaching your grade next semester,” Lin Baixin said. “But she hasn’t officially started yet.”

Yu Min looked up and asked a few more questions. Lin Baixin’s friend taught math; when school started, she definitely wouldn’t be teaching Yu Min’s class, because their current math teacher was still doing fine and hadn’t been replaced.

Lin Baixin gave a name: Lu An. “If you run into any trouble later, you can find her.”

Yu Min paused, a little slow to catch on. It took her a couple of beats before she finally understood.

In another week or two, school would start. Lin Baixin had to go back to Kyoto for graduate school, and she needed to leave a few days early. No one knew when she’d be back in Siping County next.

Yu Min didn’t ask what day Lin Baixin’s ticket was for. Zhou Jin said it was the 23rd, and that Lin Baixin’s advisor required her to arrive at school at least a week early. She was already leaving at the last possible moment; if she delayed any longer, she’d be late and miss it.

“Some of her classmates didn’t even get a vacation,” Zhou Jin said, worried Yu Min might not understand. “They stayed at school the whole time. They’re not like us; when we’re on break, we can just leave. It depends on the advisor’s requirements. A lot of grad students don’t even get long holidays. Sigh, my mom still wants me to follow my sister’s example. What’s the point of studying if you don’t even get a vacation? There’s no hope in that at all. I don’t want that. Better to graduate early and get out there; that’d be so much freer.”

The box of hard fruit candies was tucked away in the bedside drawer and hidden.

Lying flat on the bed, Yu Min tossed and turned and had a little trouble sleeping.

Time did not follow anyone’s wishes. It passed day by day; whether one liked it or not, reality had to be accepted.

Lin Baixin never brought up that she was about to go back to school. It was her own business; there was no point in telling someone unrelated to it. It had nothing to do with Yu Min.

Then the day before she was due to leave arrived, and Yu Min made one last trip next door. When she left, the stack of books she had borrowed was piled in her arms so high it nearly towered over her head.

Using the heavy pile of books as cover, Yu Min struggled to hold them. Lin Baixin wanted to help, but Yu Min refused, only saying in a muffled voice, “Teacher Lin, these books... when you come back next time, I’ll return them then.”

Actually, she had the password for this place. Even if Lin Baixin wasn’t there, she could still come over. Lin Baixin’s willingness to give her the password was tacit permission for her to come by on her own; but Yu Min didn’t seem to understand that, and she couldn’t quite grasp the meaning behind it.

Uncle Xiao took Lin Baixin to the airport, and Zhou Jin went along for the ride. Yu Min didn’t go.

“My sister doesn’t seem to have Mid-Autumn Festival off. National Day isn’t decided yet. The next time she comes back might be New Year’s,” Zhou Jin said. “It’s not that the school won’t give her leave. It seems like she still has things to finish over there and can’t get away.”

Yu Min went “oh” without any expression on her face, showing no real reaction.

The books she’d borrowed still couldn’t be finished in two months. School wasn’t as free as summer vacation. Once you got into third year of junior high, it became a crucial period second only to senior year. Middle school was already hard enough; assignments were piling up like a mountain, and there were major exams, minor quizzes, and all kinds of tests, none of them alike.

Yu Min’s class was Class 7 in third year of junior high, a key class. Their grade had indeed hired a new math teacher, but she taught neighboring Class 6.

On the first day of school, Yu Min ran into Teacher Lu An in the office of the grade-level math group. She was a very easygoing young woman, a local.

Lu An had never met Yu Min before, so naturally she didn’t recognize her. Yu Min greeted her politely first. “Hello, Teacher.”

“Hello, student.” Lu An was outgoing and cheerful, someone who could talk to anyone. At first, she didn’t know Yu Min was the girl she’d heard about and thought she was a student from Class 6 instead. In one motion, she handed Yu Min a stack of test papers. “Perfect. Help me hand these out. Tell them to turn them in tomorrow. No copying from each other. Write them yourselves. I’ll be grading them then; let’s see what level you’re at.”

On her way back to her own class, Yu Min passed the papers along to the math class representative of Class 6 and relayed Lu An’s exact words.

It turned into a huge misunderstanding. Lu An only realized two days later that Yu Min had been the one she’d given the papers to. She laughed. “Sorry about that, Yu classmate. I just started here and haven’t memorized everyone yet. Don’t take it to heart.”

Once Lu An made it clear that she had been Lin Baixin’s classmate, she got straight to the point and didn’t hide anything from Yu Min. As for taking care of her or looking after her, that would be too heavy a way to put it. Lin Baixin hadn’t said that much to Lu An either. She had simply mentioned Yu Min in passing whenever she talked to her. Lu An knew they were relatives and assumed the two of them were very close.

Young teachers were always a little carefree. Lu An opened a cabinet, tossed out two bags of chips, and handed them to Yu Min. She asked Yu Min a few questions and let her know that she and Lin Baixin had been middle school classmates; they had even been desk mates back then.

The friends Lin Baixin had met up with a few times when she went out also included Lu An.

“Next time your sister comes back, I’ll bring you out to have fun together,” Lu An said happily. “I heard from Teacher Qi that you’re in the top three in the grade. That’s amazing, just like your sister. Back then she was always solidly in the top three and often pushed us down to second or third place.”

Yu Min couldn’t quite keep up. She knew nothing about Lin Baixin’s past; when asked, she could answer nothing and had no idea at all.

From Mid-Autumn Festival to National Day, Lin Baixin really did not come back to Siping County. On the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, she called Uncle Xiao to send her greetings. At the time, Uncle Xiao was out shopping with Aunt, so Yu Min missed the call. As for what they talked about, Uncle Xiao didn’t go into detail; he only said Lin Baixin had mailed some local specialties back, and they’d arrive the next day.

“You’ve got some too. My sister asked about you,” Zhou Jin said mysteriously. “She prepared gifts for all of us. You’ve got one too.”

Yu Min was surprised and blinked blankly. “What did she get me?”

“Haven’t seen it yet. You’ll know when it arrives.”

What Zhou Jin called Lin Baixin asking about Yu Min was really just Uncle Xiao bringing Yu Min up first, and Lin Baixin talking with him for a bit and following the thread.

The gift for Yu Min was a fountain pen, identical to Zhou Jin’s. Lin Baixin treated the two children equally. Zhou Jin’s pen was black; Yu Min’s was silver.

She wasn’t special to anyone.

Zhou Jin was very good at this sort of thing. As soon as he received the fountain pen, he sent a message back at once, praising it extravagantly and giving very timely emotional feedback.

Yu Min couldn’t do that. Even if she wanted to imitate him, she couldn’t manage it. She didn’t have Lin Baixin’s WeChat, and she didn’t even know her phone number.

Third year of junior high came with much heavier academic demands than the previous two years, but Yu Min adapted quickly. Zhou Jin complained all day long. He often rushed through homework until the middle of the night and still couldn’t finish, while she could still make time for extracurricular hobbies and didn’t seem the slightest bit anxious.

The fountain pen Lin Baixin bought was very easy to use; it wrote smoothly and was light in the hand. Yu Min had originally been used to writing with gel pens, but after the new semester started, she switched to a fountain pen.

A fountain pen was cheaper than a gel pen. One bottle of ink could last a long time, so it suited her quite well.

After school started, Aunt gave them regular pocket money: two hundred a week, with other expenses counted separately.

On that point, she treated them fairly, showing no favoritism.

Zhou Jin hated the cafeteria and thought the school food was fit only for pigs, so Aunt had the helper deliver meals to the school on a schedule. Both children got food; neither was left out.

Yu Min didn’t spend recklessly. Unless it was necessary, she saved everything left over.

Things were different now. In the past, Zheng Qing and Yu Shengyu had been generous and given much more than this. Now the couple didn’t care about her anymore, so two hundred yuan felt like a fortune.

Zhou Jin didn’t know what hardship was. He looked down on Yu Min’s penny-pinching. His mom gave him two hundred a week in pocket money, but that wasn’t all she gave him; if he spent it, he could always ask for more. Yu Min was too miserly. She couldn’t even bear to buy a bottle of water at the little shop.

“You’re embarrassed to ask my mom, aren’t you? What’s the big deal? If you want to spend, just spend. If you run out, I’ll ask for more. We’ll split it fifty-fifty,” Zhou Jin said without thinking, blurting it out casually.

Living under someone else’s roof meant knowing your place and keeping yourself in line. Yu Min didn’t dare be clever and didn’t listen to Zhou Jin’s bad advice.

Lin Baixin didn’t come back for New Year’s either. Yu Min finished the borrowed books, but still she didn’t return them.

By then, though, Yu Min wasn’t in any mood to return books anyway. The day after the final exam ended, Zheng Qing secretly returned to Siping County and contacted her with a new number, telling her to come meet her outside.

Zheng Qing had been hiding out somewhere else all through the first half of the year. Her tug-of-war with Yu Shengyu was about to come to an end. Before the couple reached an agreement and the property division was settled to both sides’ satisfaction, divorce was absolutely impossible, but the two of them could no longer live together and had to separate.

Zheng Qing glossed over the important parts and said nothing about breaking her promise. She repeatedly assured Yu Min, “I’ll take you away. You know that, right? It’s just not possible yet. I can’t say too much, or your dad will use your custody to threaten me and force me to compromise... Don’t hate me. I’m doing this for our future. If I don’t fight for more, what will happen to you later? Are we supposed to just let that fox spirit get everything for nothing?”

Zheng Qing also said that the fox spirit was pregnant and desperate to get a proper title and move in. They couldn’t panic and throw themselves off balance. As long as that fox spirit dared to give birth to that bastard child, Zheng Qing would gather evidence and accuse Yu Shengyu of bigamy. That would be more favorable when it came time to divide the marital property...

It was almost New Year. The winter wind was biting, so cold it made one’s insides feel chilled through.

Lin Baixin came back at that very time. On the same day Zheng Qing appeared and then resolutely abandoned Yu Min, Yu Min was still sitting alone on that wooden chair, with nowhere to turn, lonely and desolate.

TL Note:

National Day (国庆) = China’s Oct. 1 national holiday.

get a proper title and move in (转正进门) = become the legitimate wife and officially join the household.