“I guessed,” Zhou Xubai replied as he picked up the broken crutch leaning against the wall. “You’ve been staring at it for the past few days.”
Shen Zhiyi felt her face grow warm.
“I… I wanted to give it a try. My father was a carpenter, and I’ve watched him make things before. Maybe… maybe I can make you a better one.”
Zhou Xubai fell silent for a moment before nodding.
“What tools do you need?”
Shen Zhiyi listed them one by one: a saw, a chisel, sandpaper, and tung oil.
Without another word, Zhou Xubai turned and went inside. From beneath the bed, he dragged out the dark green military duffel bag. Opening it, he searched through the very bottom until he found a small metal box. Inside was a set of military issued tools: a folding saw, a multi purpose knife, and a small roll of sandpaper.
“They were issued by the army.” He handed them to Shen Zhiyi. “Can you use these?”
Taking the tools, Shen Zhiyi’s eyes lit up.
“Yes!”
Over the next several days, Shen Zhiyi could always be found hard at work in the open space outside the tin shack.
There were moments when Zhou Xubai found himself in a daze.
Was the young woman bent over her work with such quiet concentration really the same girl from a month ago, the one who had been drenched from head to toe, clutching a hand plane and trembling with fear?
Seven days later, the rough shape of the crutch was finally complete.
It was a perfectly straight wooden cane, thicker at the top and tapering toward the bottom. The handle curved naturally, fitting snugly into the palm. Shen Zhiyi had polished it with increasingly fine sandpaper more than a dozen times until the surface was smooth enough to reflect a person’s face. The distinctive golden grain of the yellow rosewood shimmered beneath the sunlight, as though the glow of the setting sun had been sealed inside the wood itself.
Yet Shen Zhiyi still felt something was missing.
Holding the unfinished crutch, she tested it in her hands, imagining the way Zhou Xubai walked. One step. Two steps. Turn! Stop!
Then inspiration struck.
Self defense.
Although the island was generally peaceful, danger could appear without warning. Zhou Xubai’s injured leg left him at a disadvantage. If anything happened, the crutch would be his only support.
She stared at the top of the crutch for a long time before an idea formed.
She spent another two days designing a hidden mechanism inside the handle. On the outside, it looked like an ordinary wooden cap that could be twisted open. Inside was a hollow compartment, just large enough to conceal a dagger.
After asking Granny Lin, she learned that the island’s elderly fishermen all carried shark knives when they went out to sea. She asked someone traveling into town to bring back the smallest one available, which fit inside perfectly.
The evening she finished assembling everything, Shen Zhiyi carried the completed crutch over to Zhou Xubai.
He was sitting by the table organizing his weather records. Hearing her footsteps, he looked up.
“Try it,” she said, holding it out.
He accepted the crutch and pushed himself to his feet.
He took two steps, stopped, turned around, then walked again. The length was exactly right, and when the tip touched the ground, it made a solid sound instead of slipping the way the old rubber tip had. The curved grip fit comfortably against his palm, while the section beneath his thumb and forefinger had been made slightly thicker so it wouldn’t hurt even after being held for a long time.
“Here.” Shen Zhiyi pointed to the top of the handle. “It twists open. Inside… I put a knife in it.”
Zhou Xubai’s movements froze.
He looked at the handle, then cautiously twisted it. The wooden cap came off with a soft click, revealing the gleaming dagger hidden inside. The blade wasn’t long, but it was razor sharp, and the handle had been wrapped with a rough hemp cord to keep it from slipping.
He remained silent for a very long time.
So long that Shen Zhiyi began to feel uneasy.
So long that even the sound of the waves outside seemed unbearably loud.
“You…” Zhou Xubai finally spoke, his voice slightly hoarse. “Why did you make this?”
Shen Zhiyi blinked. “Because your crutch was broken.”
“I mean…” Zhou Xubai lifted his eyes to meet hers. “The knife.”
Shen Zhiyi bit her lip.
“The island… isn’t completely safe. Your leg makes it hard to move around. If… if something ever happened, at least you’d have something to defend yourself with.”
She stumbled over her words, her cheeks flushing. It sounded as though she were wishing misfortune on him, but that wasn’t what she meant at all.
Zhou Xubai fell silent again, lowering his gaze to the crutch in his hands.
“The first time,” he suddenly said.
Shen Zhiyi looked up.
“What?”
“The first time anyone has ever made something especially for me. Not something issued by the army, not something distributed by the village, but something made just for me.”
He spoke slowly, each word carrying a weight that settled deep into Shen Zhiyi’s heart.
She parted her lips, wanting to say, It’s nothing, or It was only natural, but her throat tightened, leaving her unable to utter a single word.
She simply looked at him.
At the man who was only twenty eight years old yet carried the eyes of someone who had lived thirty eight years.
At the man whose empty trouser leg swayed lightly, who still stood perfectly straight despite leaning on a crutch.
At the man who had used that same broken crutch to retrieve her hand plane from between the rocks.
Something shimmered in his eyes.
Was it the moonlight?
Or was it something else?
“Thank you,” Zhou Xubai said at last.
Just those two words.
That night, Zhou Xubai didn’t sleep in the hammock.
Lying behind the cloth curtain on the bed, Shen Zhiyi listened to the faint rustling sounds outside and found herself unable to sleep as well.
The next morning, when Shen Zhiyi opened the door, she saw that Zhou Xubai was already standing at the edge of the cliff.
Leaning on his new crutch, his back was perfectly straight as he gazed at the clouds on the horizon. Hearing the door open, he turned around.
“Today, I’ll teach you how to read the clouds.”
Shen Zhiyi blinked in surprise before walking over to stand beside him.
Pointing toward a thick bank of clouds in the distance, Zhou Xubai said, “Those are cumulonimbus clouds. Look at the bottom. It’s dark, almost black, as if someone splashed ink across it. But the top is bright white, piled up like cotton.”
Shen Zhiyi followed the direction of his finger.
The cloud truly looked unusual. Its lower half was oppressively dark, while the upper half was dazzlingly white, standing out sharply against the gloomy sky.
“When the base of a cumulonimbus cloud is dark while the top remains bright white, it’s a sign that a heavy storm is coming,” Zhou Xubai explained. “Once this kind of cloud forms, heavy rain will arrive within half a day at the earliest, or within a day at the latest. If the cloud is moving quickly, it may also bring thunderstorms.”
He spoke slowly and patiently, explaining every detail. Shen Zhiyi listened with complete concentration, her eyes fixed on the cloud as she tried to memorize every one of its characteristics.
“Then… how can you tell exactly when the rain will come?” she asked.
“By looking at the cloud’s height and thickness.” He pointed toward another patch of clouds. “See those? Those are stratocumulus clouds. They form at lower altitudes with a fairly even thickness, so they usually bring only light rain. Cumulonimbus clouds are different. They develop vertically, stretching from just a few hundred meters above the ground all the way to more than ten thousand meters into the sky. The thicker the cloud mass, the heavier the rainfall and the longer it will last.”
As he spoke, he took out his weather record notebook, opened it to one of the pages, and showed it to her.
“These are my observations on cumulonimbus clouds. Every time they’ve appeared, rain has followed within twelve hours. The accuracy rate is ninety two percent.”
Shen Zhiyi accepted the notebook and stared at the densely packed numbers and charts covering the pages.
Dates. Times. Cloud height. Cloud thickness. Wind speed. Wind direction. Rainfall.
Every detail had been meticulously recorded.
“Why… Why are you teaching me all this?” she asked softly.
Zhou Xubai was quiet for a while before looking out toward the sea.
“The island needs someone who knows how to read the sky. I can’t stay here forever.”
Shen Zhiyi’s heart trembled.
I can’t stay here forever.
What did he mean? Was he leaving?
Where would he go?
She wanted to ask, but Zhou Xubai had already turned away, leaning on his new crutch as he headed back toward the house.
“That’s enough for today. We’ll continue tomorrow.”
Shen Zhiyi watched his retreating figure.
For the entire day afterward, she couldn’t concentrate on anything.