Mao Xiaoshu had slept the whole night, and his hair, pressed flat by the pillow, wasn’t sticking up now, but the ears on his head stood straight up, glaringly obvious, visible at a single glance.
For a rare instant Qin Ziheng’s mind went blank, and his expression couldn’t help but shift. Amid the thundering of his heart, he reached out and touched one, it was warm. Mao Xiaoshu, probably feeling it tickle, gave another indistinct “mm,” and his ear twitched.
!!!!
Qin Ziheng’s gaze contracted. His eyes moved down and took in the outfit Mao Xiaoshu wore, and together with what he’d seen on waking in the mountains, he understood the situation he was now in. He couldn’t quite gather his wits, there was an absurd, surreal quality to it. He’d always considered his capacity to accept things fairly strong, but at this moment his palms had gone cold, a breath lodged in his throat neither up nor down, his throat suddenly dry and itchy, and he broke into a violent cough.
Mao Xiaoshu got a huge fright and shot upright on the stone bed. Not yet fully awake, he looked around blankly with bleary eyes, and when he saw Qin Ziheng covering his mouth and coughing, his eyes instantly went bright and shining.
“Ah! You’re awake.”
His tone was both excited and delighted, the words spilling out cheerfully. He was eighteen or nineteen, thin and scrawny, still with a childish cast to his face, his eyes big and black and clean, when he smiled the outer corners drooped slightly, like a puppy’s. His nose was small and neat, not exactly handsome, but a thoroughly endearing face.
Qin Ziheng looked at him and, after a while, gave a nod.
Getting a response, Mao Xiaoshu broke into a smile at once. Kneeling on the stone bed, he looked at Qin Ziheng in obvious delight, and as if anxious to please, all but danced as he spoke: “Are you hungry? Xiaoshu has fruit, lots and lots.”
Without waiting for Qin Ziheng to answer, he scrambled down off the stone bed and ran to the corner to fetch the pucker-fruit.
There was still plenty. He rolled up his too-short hide garment, gathered the whole pile of pucker-fruit into the front of it, then ran back to the stone bed and opened it up eagerly. “Look, Xiaoshu has this many, all for you to eat.”
He was like a child with a beloved toy anxious to show it off, and also like a lonely child, cautiously trying to curry favor with the leader of the pack, wanting someone to play with him. His eyes were terribly bright, brimming with joy and unease he couldn’t hide.
“Do… do you want some?”
Qin Ziheng’s head was still a bit blank. He’d slept a whole day and had no strength, and with that strange taste filling his mouth, he had no appetite. On top of that, he’d just gotten up, hadn’t brushed his teeth or washed his face, and he wasn’t used to eating anything before brushing. But faced with Mao Xiaoshu so anxious to please, he felt sure that if he shook his head the other would be crushed, might even shed tears.
Qin Ziheng gave a slight smile, took one, and said, “Thank you.”
Mao Xiaoshu’s breath quickened, he was even happier, the ears on his head twitching merrily, wagging this way and that. He pushed the whole heap of pucker-fruit over next to Qin Ziheng. “Pucker-fruit is tasty, it’s all for you.”
As though something had tickled the very tip of his heart, Qin Ziheng found it rather funny. “One is enough for me. If you give them all to me, aren’t you going to eat any?” Mao Xiaoshu had such a hungry look, glancing at the pucker-fruit now and then, clearly wanting some himself.
But the moment the words left Qin Ziheng’s mouth, Mao Xiaoshu shook his head and pushed the pucker-fruit closer to Qin Ziheng, not even daring to look at them anymore, turning his head aside. “I won’t eat any. They’re all for you.”
“Thank you,” Qin Ziheng said.
Mao Xiaoshu cocked his head and looked at him, then glanced at the pucker-fruit he’d heaped up in a jumble, and suddenly ran outside.
Qin Ziheng didn’t know where he was going and didn’t call out. He leaned against the stone wall and quietly took stock of the cave before him.
The cave wasn’t big, he took it all in in almost two glances.
Apart from the stone bed and the big scallop shell across from it, there was next to nothing inside.
The cave was very small too, half again smaller than the guest room of the house he’d bought in the capital.
Qin Ziheng was no fool. From the moment he’d woken in the mountains and seen those trees and that rabbit, he’d sensed something was off.
He’d had his accident in the village, and Tang Juan had witnessed the whole thing with her own eyes. Over the years Tang Juan had sought him out several times and often called him, invariably with the same lines.
—Saying she missed him, asking whether she could come see him, or whether he could go back to see her.
Sometimes it was a roundabout way of angling for money, or wanting him to arrange jobs for her two children at his company.
Qin Ziheng had never given a cent, never gone to see her, would even hang up before two sentences were out, and had certainly never arranged work for those two half-siblings of his.
It wasn’t that he was heartless. Back when he’d needed money, when Grandpa genuinely couldn’t scrape together the tuition and lay awake, anxious, he had in fact swallowed his pride and gone to Tang Juan.
But Tang Juan hadn’t given him anything then, weeping and wailing that her own life was hard too, that his little brother and sister were still small and needed money everywhere, that her husband’s wages weren’t high either, asking him to understand her.
Tang Juan was also afraid that subsidizing her ex-husband’s son would make her husband unhappy.
Some things she didn’t say aloud, but Qin Ziheng had read them all in her evasive expression.
Maybe Tang Juan really had no money, or maybe she had it, but had already come to see him as a burden. This was a child she’d already cast off and abandoned, so she didn’t want to spend another cent on him, whether out of this consideration or that, her daughter and son were still small and needed money.
—Her husband would be unhappy if he found out.
She’d weighed a great many things, the only one she’d never weighed was Qin Ziheng.
She never wondered how the child had gotten by all these years, where his tuition came from, whether he was truly so short of money that he’d had to come to her.
She thought of a great deal, but she never once thought of Qin Ziheng.
After that time, Qin Ziheng never sought her out again.
Now, when Tang Juan came looking for money, he didn’t want to give her a cent.
Over time, Tang Juan had actually come to resent him. Once or twice she couldn’t help cursing him over the phone, saying he was ungrateful, saying without her where would he even have come from? Now that he had money he refused to acknowledge his own mother, just like his father, not even human.
This accident, however much Tang Juan hated him, she couldn’t possibly have dragged him out of the car and dumped him on a mountain.
The car had rolled onto its side then, the door pinned against the ground. He was tall, and Tang Juan was small, she couldn’t have lifted him.
So barring something extraordinary, he ought to be in a hospital, there was no way he’d be in the mountains.
And the youth just now who called himself Xiaoshu had ears on his head…
What kind of person has ears on their head? And wearing clothes like that, even the poorest mountain village wouldn’t dress that way, people hadn’t worn animal hides since ancient times.
Qin Ziheng’s forehead throbbed. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed he was still in his earlier clothes, a touch confirmed they’d all been dried out against his own body.
“…”
To have survived was truly a matter of great luck.
Mao Xiaoshu had gone off to do who-knew-what, and before long came running back in, drenched in sweat again.
Seeing Qin Ziheng looking at him, he gave a bashful little smile, then hurriedly scooped up the pot and ran back outside. In no time Qin Ziheng heard a clatter, followed by Mao Xiaoshu’s cry of dismay.
Qin Ziheng set down the persimmon in his hand and went to the cave mouth. He found Mao Xiaoshu crouched to the left of the entrance, face crestfallen, looking terribly upset. A puddle of water spread beneath his feet, the meat that had been in the scallop shell had “fallen” onto the ground, and Mao Xiaoshu was picking it up.
Qin Ziheng saw the several big stones beside him, then looked at the… thing that must be the pot, and after a dazed moment understood what he was trying to do.
That scallop shell the size of a pot had to be the pot, and a pot couldn’t be set straight on the ground to cook, it had to be propped up, which meant building a firewood stove.
“Are you trying to cook meat?” Qin Ziheng asked, crouching down to help Mao Xiaoshu gather the scraps.
Mao Xiaoshu sniffled, sorrow in his voice. “Mm. But no matter how Xiaoshu stacks these stones they won’t stay steady, and the pot fell, clatter.” He even imitated the sound.
Qin Ziheng laughed. “How were you stacking them?”
“I did like this, and this.” Not even bothering to gather the meat anymore, Mao Xiaoshu immediately stacked the stones to demonstrate for Qin Ziheng. He’d run to the riverbank and picked up those stones, big ones, several of them, but far from level, some faces bumpy and uneven. Qin Ziheng said nothing, he gathered the meat and watched him.
Mao Xiaoshu had no experience, and stacked the stones any which way, so of course they wouldn’t hold, teetering on the verge of collapse, never mind setting a pot on top. Once he’d gathered up the meat, Qin Ziheng said, “That’s not how you build a stone stove.”
He’d grown up in the village. As a boy, when Grandpa went off cutting rice for pay, it was Qin Ziheng who took the ox out to graze. Sometimes he went far and it wasn’t convenient to come back for lunch, when there were buns he brought buns, and when there weren’t he’d bring a bit of noodles. Grandpa had a little pot stashed in the hills, and oil and salt too, he’d bring the noodles along, and when he got hungry at midday he’d cook something up in the mountains to tide himself over. So Qin Ziheng knew how to build a firewood stove.
“Huh?” Mao Xiaoshu looked at him, utterly at sea.
The stone caves and houses the tribe’s beasts lived in were all very small, and had no windows, because the snow season was cold, and windows let in drafts, and Woo-Woo Beasts could easily dart through a window into the house.
With no windows, the caves were very dim inside and had no ventilation, and burning firewood made a lot of smoke, so the beasts usually built a firewood stove outside the house. That stove was very crude, just a few stones set in a ring, enough to hold a pot steady. When the snow season came, or during a heavy downpour, everyone would move the stove into the house or cave.
Mao Xiaoshu had seen other female beasts build one, it was done just this way, but when he did it, the stones fell down. These stones were picking on him.
“Look at this one, it’s flat on one side and a bit raised on the other, see?” Qin Ziheng asked.
Mao Xiaoshu glanced at the two stones he pointed to and nodded.
Qin Ziheng said, “This one’s fairly flat on both sides, so it should go on the bottom, and then you put this less-flat one on top. See, isn’t it much steadier this way?”
Just now Mao Xiaoshu had heedlessly put the stone that was flat on one side and raised on the other down at the bottom, raised side up, stacking more stones on top of that could only be unsteady.
Mao Xiaoshu touched the stones Qin Ziheng had stacked and found no sign of them wobbling or about to fall. His eyes instantly lit up, his mouth falling open, as though he’d witnessed something extraordinary.
Amused by the sight of him, Qin Ziheng softened his voice despite himself and pointed to the few stones nearby. “Come, did you learn it just now? Do you want to try it yourself, the way I did?”