Chapter 9
Curled up in the corner, Shen Quanquan was groggily drifting off to sleep when the door was suddenly pushed open from the outside. Squinting at the backlit silhouette, his mind was still a muddled haze, but he reflexively pushed aside the sheet of stiff cardboard draped over him and slowly sat up.
Ten minutes later, Shen Quanquan was seated at a small table in the cafeteria. Set before him was a bowl holding two steaming-hot mountain yams, accompanied by a bowl of radish soup.
—Not just clear, watery broth, either; three hefty chunks of real white radish were submerged in the bowl.
Using a small spoon in his right hand to scoop up the radish, Shen Quanquan continually fed bites of yam into his mouth with his left. The temperature inside the cafeteria was quite warm, and his body heat was gradually returning, though his frame still gave the occasional involuntary shiver out of habit.
Sitting across from him at the small table, Head Supervisor Chen asked, “Are the yams good?”
“Two of them! Two!” Shen Quanquan nodded vigorously. Setting down his spoon, he held up two fingers, urgently conveying his bubbling delight: “Two of them!”
Beaming an intensely grateful smile at Head Supervisor Chen, he offered some flattering praise: “Head Supervisor Chen, you are so nice.” Then, scrunching his neck with a couple of sneaky giggles, he added, “Can you catch me again tomorrow? Lock me up again, okay?”
Head Supervisor Chen let out a helpless sigh. “Drink some hot soup. Drink plenty of it, and stop talking.”
“Okay, drinking soup.”
It was only eight in the evening by the time he finished eating. When Shen Quanquan returned to the first-floor boys’ wing of the dormitories, he saw children scuttling back and forth along the corridor with washbasins. Some were sprinting stark naked into their dorm rooms, whooping and hollering, fresh from their baths.
A supervisor rapped a wooden ruler against the wall, his voice booming with absolute authority: “Everyone go take a bath! Inspections will be held shortly! Anyone who hasn’t washed gets three strikes of the ruler!”
Shen Quanquan walked into his dorm to find everyone stripping down. Tang Yuanyuan and the others were already buck naked, sprinting out the door with their washbasins.
“Shen Quanquan, you’re back?”
“Hurry up and strip! We’re taking baths, there’s hot water!”
“Shen Quanquan, move it! We get to take hot baths!”
Shen Quanquan gave a noncommittal hum. Waiting until the flurry of kids cleared the room, he trudged sluggishly over to his cot, turning his head to look at Lin Duozhi, who was sitting on the opposite bed pulling off his trousers. “Are you going to wash, too?”
Lin Duozhi’s movements were just as sluggish. “I don’t want to wash, but we’ll get beaten if we don’t.”
“Sigh… Bathing is the worst.”
“The supervisor said that now that there’s hot water, bathing is mandatory.”
Shen Quanquan grumbled gloomily, “Couldn’t the hot water just stay away? Why did it have to come back? Cold water was so good.”
Reluctantly, he peeled off his padded coat, carefully took off the necktie, and tucked it into his pocket. But when it came to pulling off his T-shirt, his head got hopelessly stuck in the collar again, forcing him to call out to Lin Duozhi for help.
“Lin Duozhi, help me take off my shirt.”
Already stripped stark naked, Lin Duozhi was squatting beside his cot. “Hold on a sec.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sniffing my black balls.”
Shen Quanquan waddled over and squatted down, peering beneath the bed with his head still trapped inside the shirt. Lin Duozhi threw out an arm to block him. “No looking.”
“Haven’t you eaten a single one yet?”
“I’m saving them to eat slowly later.” Lin Duozhi paused. “Right now, just sniffing them is enough.”
“I only have three left. I’m gonna eat mine slowly, too.”
Outside, the supervisor’s ruler cracked against the wall again in an urgent summons. Lin Duozhi hurriedly helped pull the shirt over Shen Quanquan’s head. Shivering in the draft, the two boys grabbed their washbasins and bolted toward the bathhouse.
In the middle of the dormitory corridor stood a heavy iron door dividing the floor into boys’ and girls’ wings. The communal bathhouse sat right beside the iron door. Within the cavernous room, a partition wall nearly two meters high had been erected down the center, splitting the bathhouse into male and female sections.
The boys’ side was thick with swirling steam, packed wall-to-wall with naked children. Upon entering, Shen Quanquan and Lin Duozhi headed straight for the drafty corner by the door—the least desirable spot—and sure enough, found the junior boys from their dorm huddled together. Squeezing in alongside them, they prepared to wash.
Shen Quanquan had originally intended to simply splash some water over himself and scurry right back, but the supervisor bellowed from the doorway: “Inspections will be held in a bit! You must wash clean before you’re allowed back to the dorms!”
“Sigh…” Shen Quanquan groaned.
There were only five communal bars of soap on the boys’ side. The junior-class boys had to wait until the seniors had lathered up from head to toe before they could get a turn. Huddled under the spray to rinse off, Shen Quanquan and his friends listened to the older boys laughing and roughhousing loudly.
Across the partition wall, the girls’ side was chattering away just as noisily. Without warning, and without anyone knowing quite how it started, the older kids on both sides erupted into an all-out shouting match.
“You smelly boys! Your stench is wafting all the way over here!”
“You’ve got the nerve to call us smelly?! How many of you shaved bald today? There’s gotta be a dozen of you! A bunch of Lice Queens!”
“Smelly boys!”
“Lice Queens!”
Suddenly, a basin of water came flying over the top of the wall, splashing down with a loud whoosh right over the heads of the nearest senior boys.
“The Lice Queens attacked!”
“Fire back!”
“Revenge!”
The older boys filled their washbasins from the taps and hurled water blindly over the partition. The girls refused to back down an inch, slinging basin after basin right back.
With the supervisors temporarily nowhere to be seen, both sides fought with mounting ferocity until a veritable waterfall cascaded over the central wall. The intermediate-class boys quickly joined the fray; while the seniors were responsible for launching the water, the intermediate kids scooped it from the taps and passed the basins up. Only the poor, collateral-damaged junior kids were left screaming, scattering to duck into whatever corners they could find.
Having been in the corner to begin with, Shen Quanquan and his crew ended up crouched facing the wall with their heads tucked low, wiping water from their eyes while blindly hollering at the top of their lungs: “Mental shield! Mental shield!”
The skirmish raged until the supervisors from both wings returned. Normally, someone would have caught a severe punishment, but perhaps sympathizing with how long the children had gone without hot water, the supervisors showed a rare touch of leniency, merely lining the older kids up and giving them a relatively mild scolding.
Having finished their baths, the junior-class boys filed out of the bathhouse, standing before the supervisor for inspection, waiting for a dismissive wave of the hand before scurrying off.
Shen Quanquan hadn’t washed his back. He felt reaching backwards with his arms was entirely too difficult. But seeing the supervisor making everyone turn in circles, he took the initiative to pipe up the moment his turn came: “If there was a junior-class kid—a different kid, not me—if he didn’t wash his back, would you be able to tell?”
The supervisor stared down at Shen Quanquan expressionlessly, then pointed a finger toward the bathhouse: “Go back and wash again. Scrub your back clean.”
“Oh.”
Late into the night, the lights in Shen Quanquan’s dormitory had been switched off, but the children remained wired, whispering back and forth about the great water fight.
“Just when… just when a splash of water was about to hit us, I deployed my mental shield and blocked all of it,” Tang Yuanyuan bragged.
“Mental shield!” Shen Quanquan threw both palms up before his chest. “I used it, too!”
Lin Duozhi whispered, “Mental shield!”
The other boys chimed in hushed tones, “Mental shield!”
Chen Hongliang whispered, “Mental shield!”
A supervisor’s voice boomed down the corridor: “Chen Hongliang in Room 16! Everyone else is quiet and you’re the only one still making a racket! That’s one strike on your name!”
Chen Hongliang clamped his mouth shut instantly, daring not utter another peep.
Lin Duozhi suddenly asked, “Shen Quanquan, you didn’t come to the cafeteria for dinner. Aren’t you starving?”
“Nope, I ate a whole bunch!” Shen Quanquan perked right up, holding up two fingers in the dark. “I ate two mountain yams! Two whole ones! And I drank radish soup with three huge chunks of radish… Look, chunks this big!”
“Whoa! Why did you get to eat two yams and three chunks of radish? We only got a single millet cake tonight, and it tasted awful.” The children who had been lying down propped their heads up, their eyes glowing like embers in the pitch-black room.
Shen Quanquan fell into deep contemplation. “Because I was being punished! I guess people being punished get to eat that much.”
The entire dormitory fell dead silent for a moment. Finally, one boy asked with burning envy, “How do I get myself locked up in there?”
“I want to get locked up, too.”
“Me too.”
Chen Hongliang chimed in, “Me too.”
“Chen Hongliang in Room 16! Not only are you refusing to sleep, you’re keeping everyone else awake! Get dressed and step out right now! Stand in the hallway for half an hour!” The supervisor’s stern voice cracked from outside once more.
Frightened out of his wits, Chen Hongliang clamped his mouth shut, lying stiff as a board on his cot while clutching the iron bed rails for dear life.
“Go to sleep properly, and no more talking!” Not genuinely determined to drag him out into the cold, the supervisor merely issued a parting warning.
Tang Yuanyuan craned his neck to stare at him. “Chen Hongliang, maybe if you keep standing out there, the supervisor will take you to eat yams and radishes.”
With a sharp rustle, Chen Hongliang kicked off his quilt, scrambled upright, and began frantically pulling on his clothes.
Once Chen Hongliang had trotted out into the corridor full of hopeful anticipation to serve his punishment, the remaining boys in the room ceased their chatter, closing their eyes to drift off.
“What are you gonna think about to fall asleep tonight? I’m gonna think about a giant chicken drumstick,” Lin Duozhi’s voice came in a whisper so soft only Shen Quanquan could hear.
“I think I’ll think about big steamed buns.” Shen Quanquan rolled onto his side, then changed his mind: “No, I’m gonna think about my big brother… My brother definitely ate two huge mountain yams and giant steamed buns too, and now he’s already fast asleep.”
Lying in bed, Chu Ya stared up at the ceiling, the ticking of the wall clock’s second hand echoing through the quiet bedroom. He glanced sideways at the clock: it was already nine in the evening, yet his father, Chu Chengyu, had still not returned home.
He got out of bed and walked out of the room, cinching the belt of his bathrobe as he descended the stairs. He spotted his mother, Qin Qin, still seated on the living room sofa, winding yarn into balls.
Qin Qin was swiftly rolling a ball of wool, while the skein of yarn floating before her hovered in mid-air, as though held taut by an invisible set of hands.
“Has Father still not come home?” Chu Ya asked.
“Not yet. The meeting today must be quite important.” Qin Qin set down the ball of yarn. “Are you hungry? You barely touched your dinner; let me go warm it up for you.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Chu Ya walked over to the sofa, looped the hovering skein of yarn over his own wrists to hold it taut, and as he shifted his arms, a nearby armchair lifted smoothly off the floor, gliding through the air to settle right behind his knees.
Without even looking back, Chu Ya took his seat. Qin Qin resumed winding the yarn, mother and son exchanging quiet, idle conversation.
“Can you sense what your quantum beast might be yet?” Qin Qin asked softly.
Chu Ya gave a slight shake of his head. “Not yet.”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t see mine until the moment I broke through. During my differentiation period, I thought about raccoons every single day, so naturally my quantum beast turned out to be a raccoon. What kind of quantum beast do you want? Do you picture its shape every night before falling asleep?”
Chu Ya had never revealed to his parents what kind of quantum beast he wished for. Pressing his lips together, he merely murmured, “I picture it every day.”
“You really keep your lips sealed tight. It only makes me more curious,” Qin Qin said with a warm smile.
“What is your quantum beast doing?” Chu Ya asked, steering the topic away.
Qin Qin glanced beside him. “Pouring you a glass of water.”
Chu Ya took the glass floating down through the air, voiced a quiet word of thanks to the empty space, and added, “On my way home today, I was able to see the blurry silhouettes of other people’s quantum beasts. But I’ve never seen your raccoon, nor have I ever seen Father’s blue tiger.”
A gentle smile graced Qin Qin’s face. “It won’t be long before you can see them clearly.”
“Mm.”
A quiet lull fell over the room. Qin Qin checked the time on the clock, a subtle thread of restless unease creeping into her expression.
“Today must be an exceptionally critical meeting, which is why I haven’t dared to call your father. But I haven’t been able to reach Adjutant Yun or Gu Lin either.”
“They’re probably inside the conference hall as well,” Chu Ya offered comfortingly.
“True enough… but why does my heart feel so unsettled? I keep feeling as though something terrible is about to happen.” Setting the ball of yarn onto her lap, Qin Qin frowned. “Why is it so stifling in here? Is it going to rain?”
Chu Ya stood up. “I’ll go open the window to let some air in.”
Pushing open the window, Chu Ya felt not the slightest breath of wind. The air was laden with damp, suffocating heat, clinging to his skin and throat like thick glue—scarcely better than the stuffiness indoors.
A flash of lightning ripped across the sky, washing the entire sector in brilliant, blinding white. Watching the distant agricultural farming towers flicker in and out of the shadows, Chu Ya turned to Qin Qin and said, “There really is a fierce storm coming.”
