The alumni gathering that evening was, in essence, a small, private get-together.

About twenty people, only five or six of whom were Penn alumni.

“TK, China is so much better. Friendly black hair and black eyes everywhere, and the beautiful, nuanced Chinese language,” Luo Zihao slung an arm around Gu Pingsheng’s shoulder. ” Nong hao~ Lai sai va? (Shanghainese dialect for “Hello, are you coming?”)

“Sorry, I didn’t understand the second half,” Gu Pingsheng sat on a sofa near the terrace.

Luo Zihao had been his close friend since childhood. He had gotten into Yale after high school but dropped out less than a year later. At the time, Yale was about to expel a Chinese female student on the grounds that her English wasn’t as good as a native speaker’s. As a passionate patriot, Luo Zihao joined the protests. After the student was finally allowed to transfer to another department and continue her doctoral studies, he, however, left Yale, transferring to Penn and eventually staying on as faculty.

Then, he met Zhao Yin, got engaged, and then, fell for someone else. He claimed he didn’t want to return to China, but it was guilt. He only dared to come back after Zhao Yin got married. But he was also skilled at smoothing things over, managing to reconcile with her and remain friends.

The rain outside was still heavy, but there were figures on the terrace.

From here, through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the Waibaidu Bridge shimmered below. The figures on the terrace were a couple, sometimes embracing, sometimes apart. He suddenly remembered those eyes from the taxi that afternoon.

“I’m asking you, why aren’t you two together yet? I miss our great motherland, the water and clouds of home. I’m waiting for you two to tie the knot and return home in glory.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Zhao Yin, of course,” Luo Zihao offered him a drink. Seeing him shake his head, he immediately called for a glass of ice water. “Didn’t I tell you? She had a crush on you first. Then she settled for me, the blind fool. But we broke up. As her ex-boyfriend, I can responsibly tell you, she’s been single for the past three or four years.”

Luo Zihao, whose parents were from northern China, spoke quickly.

He managed to keep up, then smiled without answering.

“Don’t just smile,” Luo Zihao, his free hand still on Gu Pingsheng’s shoulder, saw him turn to look at him and continued, “You came back to China, and to Shanghai, isn’t that a sign of your intentions?”

“Have you ever seen me ‘playing hard to get’?” he ignored the rest of Luo Zihao’s rambling.

Luo Zihao pulled out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and mumbled, “I’m filled with guilt. You two are a match made in heaven.”

Gu Pingsheng didn’t want to discuss this with him in the dim light where expressions and words were difficult to discern. Before dropping out of Penn, he had tried to discuss relationships with Luo Zihao. The memory was unpleasant.

One’s environment shaped one’s views, especially on relationships and marriage.

Luo Zihao started expressing his deep homesickness, chattering incessantly like a woman.

Gu Pingsheng leaned back on the sofa, watching him for a while, then turned to look at the night view. The couple on the terrace was gone.

Luo Zihao, bored, patted his arm. As soon as Gu Pingsheng turned to him, he started chattering again.

“Are the children of our motherland easy to teach these days?” he asked, grasping for a topic.

“They’re quite good.”

“Any… aesthetically pleasing ones?”

There it was again… Within three sentences, he was back on topic.

Gu Pingsheng felt his interest wane.

“Of all the women in the world, Chinese women are the most beautiful. They’re like delicate ink paintings, not with overly high noses, or overly large mouths, or eyes like skeletons, so deep they look like ghosts in the night.” Luo Zihao’s patriotism flared up again. “You know, no, you should know, I’ve told you about my ideal woman. Her eyes should be the kind where the black and white aren’t clearly defined, here,” he pointed to the inner corner of his eye with his unlit cigarette, “deep-set, and when she smiles, her eyes curve into crescents. Exquisite.”

Tong Yan.

He could only think of her. She seemed to fit Luo Zihao’s description.

“Have you ever had a crush on one of your students?” he suddenly asked.

“Of course. Irresistible, you know?” Luo Zihao was about to elaborate when Gu Pingsheng stood up.

“Huh? Not listening anymore?”

Luo Zihao didn’t understand his own strange compulsion to talk about women with someone so cautious about relationships. He was certain Gu Pingsheng was attracted to women, but why was he so insistent on this topic with him?

It was Friday.

After the weekend, there would be nine weeks, sixty-three days, left.

Back in middle and high school, relationships were forbidden, yet she had fallen head over heels in love.

Now, in university, finally free to date openly, she found herself attracted to her teacher… Tong Yan, could you be any more pathetic?

It rained intermittently all week, and the classrooms were cold and damp.

Tong Yan, used to central heating in the north, always felt that rooms should be warm and cozy. After more than two years in Shanghai, she still couldn’t get used to bundling up in thick clothes, huddled in her seat during lectures.

She clasped her hands together, trying to warm them.

His handwriting on the blackboard was beautiful. She had practiced calligraphy diligently in elementary school and recognized it as shoujin style. Back then, she had simply found the style visually pleasing, with a unique elegance.

People who write in this style are often sharp and assertive, her calligraphy teacher had said.

But…

He wasn’t sharp or assertive at all.

He stood there, his right hand casually tucked into his pocket, his left hand holding a piece of white chalk as he smoothly wrote a line of Chinese characters, simultaneously explaining the day’s introduction in English. Gu Pingsheng was the only teacher this semester who taught in both languages. Even the professors who had returned from Japan insisted on writing on the blackboard in broken English.

The university emphasized English proficiency during admissions, and by the end of sophomore year, only three students in their class hadn’t passed CET-6. He didn’t need to go through the trouble of teaching in both languages for the sake of a few students.

But it was in these small details that his thoughtfulness shone through.

“Liu Yi,” he finished writing the introduction and turned to the class monitor. “Where’s Shen Yao?”

The monitor hesitated, then looked at Tong Yan.

The girls in Tong Yan’s dorm were notorious for skipping class. They were usually absent on Fridays. Who knew where they were today?

“Teacher Gu, Shen Yao has orchestra rehearsal. She’s excused,” Tong Yan said, bracing herself.

In reality, Shen Yao had skipped class and driven to Qiandao Lake with a group of friends for the weekend.

“And Wang Xiaoru?” Gu Pingsheng’s voice was calm.

“Wang Xiaoru… has a family emergency. She’s also excused.”

Wang Xiaoru had a new boyfriend outside of school and had supposedly gone to a party last night where she could see her idol, Xu Jinglei. She hadn’t returned yet.

His eyes scanned the classroom, quickly distinguishing between the auditing students and the enrolled students.

“Wen Jing Jing isn’t here either?”

He was looking at her again.

Even the auditing students started whispering.

Tong Yan gripped her pen, unable to avoid his gaze. She was the only one from her dorm who had attended class, yet she was the target of everyone’s attention… Her face burned. “Wen Jing Jing is sick.”

She wanted to emphasize that this time, it was a genuine illness.

“Have them come to the department office, to my office, next Monday,” he said calmly.

Tong Yan’s heart sank.

This was trouble.

After class, the monitor, drenched in cold sweat, walked over to Tong Yan. “Even rabbits bite when they’re cornered. Teacher Gu is usually good-natured, but your dorm is pushing him to his limit.”

The monitor waved his book in the air, almost hitting Gu Pingsheng, who was walking towards them.

Gu Pingsheng simply raised his arm slightly to block it. The monitor, his temper flaring, turned and shouted, “Class meeting!”

Then, the classroom fell silent.

The auditing students, stunned, quickly gathered their things and left.

Gu Pingsheng paused, then asked tentatively, “Do you need me to attend?”

“No, no need,” the monitor’s bravado instantly vanished.

Tong Yan lowered her head and gathered her books, seeing Gu Pingsheng walk past her desk and out of the classroom from the corner of her eye.

She stayed at the library until dark before returning to the dorm.

The curtains had been drawn when she left that morning, and they were still closed. She called out, “Jing Jing,” but there was no answer. Worried, she took off her shoes and climbed onto Wen Jing Jing’s bed, finding her still asleep under the covers.

She touched Jing Jing’s forehead. Burning hot.

As she withdrew her hand, she brushed against Jing Jing’s pillow. It was damp. Had she been sweating that much?

Tong Yan woke Jing Jing up, helped her change, and got her out of bed.

Then, struggling, she rode her bicycle, taking the feverish Wen Jing Jing to the campus clinic. They had barely sat down when the doctor wrote a referral slip. “Take her to the Fifth People’s Hospital. Her fever is too high.” So, she rode another twenty minutes, taking Jing Jing to the off-campus hospital.

It was the designated hospital for the university. Because it wasn’t in the city center, it wasn’t crowded at night.

The doctor on duty was young but attentive. After Jing Jing was finally hooked up to an IV drip, the doctor came back to check on her and ask a few questions. Looking at him, Tong Yan suddenly wondered if Gu Pingsheng would have been like this if he hadn’t changed careers.

There was only one other pair in the IV room, a mother and her forty-something-year-old son.

What if her grandmother suddenly fell ill in Beijing?

A wave of anxiety washed over her, a recurring feeling she couldn’t shake off.

“Yan Yan, thank you.”

She came back to her senses, holding a small bag of oranges she had bought at the hospital entrance. She peeled a large one and handed it to Jing Jing. “You had such a high fever. Why didn’t you text me?” Wen Jing Jing held the orange, then said after a moment, “Yan Yan, Jia Le broke up with me.” Tong Yan was stunned. “You two were together for six years! Since high school.”

She remembered the boy, unassuming, with a shy smile.

“He’s a senior this year, looking for a job. He’s stressed, and we’ve been arguing a lot,” Wen Jing Jing said. “Yesterday, we had another fight on the phone. He said my family is poor, and my twin brothers are still in high school, and we have to support them…”

She didn’t finish, and Tong Yan didn’t press her. She had some idea of Jing Jing’s family situation.

Thinking the topic was over, she continued peeling the oranges, head down.

“I feel like life is so unfair,” Jing Jing suddenly said. “I’m not good at English. I finally qualified for a second major in Japanese, but I can’t even pass the midterm. But look at Xiaoru, she never attends class but easily gets a first-class scholarship. And Yaoyao, the only art student in our class, but her grades are even better than mine…”

Tong Yan looked up at her.

“And you, Yan Yan, I envy you every time I see you hosting events, singing…” Jing Jing’s face was pale after the fever broke. “Even Teacher Gu is so nice to you. I often see him flipping through physics textbooks in his office. Later, I realized he’s tutoring you in physics.”

“Yan Yan, I’m the only one from my hometown who got into a key university. But now, my classmates are applying for master’s programs abroad, and I’m still struggling with my undergraduate studies. My two brothers are about to take the college entrance exam. They’re not very mature, and their grades are poor… Yan Yan, when I think about these things, I feel like even if I finish my degree, it won’t change anything. In the end, I’ll still be the same, returning to where I came from.”

The IV room was quiet.

Jing Jing’s voice was soft, her tone flat and emotionless.

Tong Yan broke open the orange and ate a segment.

Because of the cold, the orange was icy, sour and cold, not very palatable.

She had never, and never dared to, confide in anyone like Jing Jing. Never. The sadness she had accumulated since graduating elementary school, the feeling of utter loss of dignity, the thought of her family that brought a sharp pang to her heart, how could she possibly talk about it?

“My ex-boyfriend’s parents were both high school teachers. Because they spoiled him, he never studied seriously, always rebellious. But he was very good to me.

One winter, I had a stomachache so bad I could barely walk. He ran out without a word and bought me a bowl of noodles at the school gate. He even made them sell him the bowl. It was a very cold day, and he carried that bowl of noodles all the way from the school gate to our classroom. He must have been in a hurry because the soup spilled, and his hands were covered.

But no matter how good he was to me, we still broke up.”

She remembered the bowl of noodles cost six yuan.

It seemed so expensive back then. Later, when she tried it again, it didn’t taste the same.