Once May passed, the city heated up in an instant.
The leaves of the plane trees lining the roads had shed the pale yellow of early spring, turning a deep, dark green.
The cicadas had yet to emerge from the soil en masse, but you could occasionally hear a few tentative chirps during the hottest part of the afternoon.
In the Sunshine Family Courtyard, the shade from the trees was deep.
After returning from the Provincial City, having taken first place in the province-wide competition, Chen Zhuo’s life didn’t seem to have changed much.
The large red banner at school hung for two weeks. Its color had been bleached slightly by the sun, and after a few days of overcast, rainy weather, the dean’s office took it down and put it away in storage.
Life went on as usual.
In the classroom of first-year Class 1, Chen Zhuo still sat in his exclusive spot.
When classes let out, the hallways were as noisy as ever.
Boys chased each other to the bathroom, roughhousing as they ran, while girls gathered by the hallway railings to kick a shuttlecock.
The only difference was that now, when students from other classes passed the windows of first-year Class 1, they would, deliberately or not, slow their pace to steal a few glances at the small, spectacled boy in the middle of the front row.
Chen Zhuo paid them no mind.
He couldn’t even be bothered to look up.
He had more important things to do.
The calendar on his desk was covered in circles drawn with a red pen.
In mid-May, he had to go to the Provincial City for the provincial physics team’s training camp.
After his exams in early June, the provincial math team’s training camp would follow immediately in mid-June.
His schedule was packed without a single break.
But his biggest worry right now wasn’t the complicated, university-level physics equipment for the provincial team.
It was the fat kid sitting across from him.
「Saturday afternoon.」
「Zhang Qiang’s house.」
Zhang Qiang lived in a newly built residential complex in the city called Brocade Garden.
In 2002, this complex was considered high-end for the city. It had uniformed security guards stationed at the gate and large, manicured lawns at the foot of the buildings.
The apartment was huge—over 140 square meters, with four bedrooms and two living areas.
The living room floor was laid with polished marble, so smooth you could see your reflection in it.
In the center of the room sat a black, genuine leather sofa set that looked expensive.
Opposite it was a massive entertainment center, which housed a large Sony color television.
Zhang Qiang was hunched over the coffee table.
He was fat, his body round and pudgy.
Sitting on the carpet, he looked like a ball of proofing dough.
A floor-standing air conditioner was running in the room.
The vents WHOOSHED, blasting out cold air, but sweat still dripped relentlessly from Zhang Qiang’s forehead.
SLAP!
Zhang Qiang threw the chewed-up, eraser-topped pencil in his hand onto the coffee table.
The pencil rolled a couple of times across the table before stopping at the edge of a stack of test papers.
"I’m not doing this anymore."
Zhang Qiang threw himself back, his entire body sinking into the leather sofa.
The leather sofa let out a muffled GROAN.
"What is this bullshit word problem? Car A leaves from East Village, Car B leaves from West Village, and halfway through they have to fucking stop to fix the car for half an hour..."
Zhang Qiang irritably ruffled his short, spiky hair.
"Are these two drivers nuts?"
"What year is it? Can’t they just call each other? Why do they have to meet on the road?"
"And who fixes a car mid-trip? If your car’s a piece of junk, don’t drive it out here and embarrass yourself!"
He panted, his chest heaving dramatically.
He was about four-foot-eleven, but weighed nearly one hundred forty pounds.
Among sixth-graders, he was an absolute Giant.
Chen Zhuo sat at the other end of the sofa.
He wasn’t sitting on the carpet, but was seated properly on the leather sofa.
In his hands, he held a thick copy of Theoretical Mechanics.
At the sound of Zhang Qiang throwing down his pencil, Chen Zhuo looked up from his book.
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
He glanced at the paper on the coffee table: a past entrance exam for City No.1 Middle School’s junior high program.
"That question is worth twelve points."
Chen Zhuo’s voice was flat.
There was no accusation in it, no angry inflection.
Nor did it hold the frustrated severity of a teacher chiding an underachieving student.
He might as well have been stating a simple fact, like that the weather was hot.
Zhang Qiang grunted twice.
"Twelve points, so what,"
he mumbled.
"My dad said, worst-case scenario, we’ll just pay the thirty-thousand-yuan ’construction fee.’"
"For thirty thousand yuan, he can buy my way into City No.1."
"These stupid problems are gonna be the death of me. My head starts hurting the second I see all this ’A, B, and C’ stuff."
The sliding door to the kitchen slid open.
Zhang Qiang’s mother came out carrying a huge glass fruit platter.
Mrs. Zhang had a stylish perm and was dressed in a silk loungewear set.
A vibrant green jade bracelet on her wrist clinked softly as she walked.
"What nonsense are you spouting!"
Mrs. Zhang placed the fruit platter on the glass coffee table.
It held half a sliced watermelon, garnished with washed purple grapes and a few pieces of cantaloupe.
The watermelon had just been taken out of the refrigerator, and a layer of white condensation beaded on the rim of the glass platter.
Mrs. Zhang grabbed a pack of tissues from the table, pulled one out, and haphazardly wiped her son’s sweaty forehead.
"A ’construction fee’?"
Mrs. Zhang shot her son a glare and poked him on the forehead.
"Can’t your father save that money for when you get married? You have to throw it at the school?"
"Just look at Xiaozhuo."
She turned to Chen Zhuo, who was sitting quietly beside him, her expression instantly melting into the warmth of a spring day.
"Xiaozhuo is so much less trouble. He got in when he was only nine, and as the top student in the entire city, no less."
"And now he’s gone and taken first in the province, too. That big red banner was hanging over the school gate; I saw it on my way to the market."
"Qiangzi, you and Xiaozhuo are together all day long. You’re practically conjoined twins."
"How has none of his brilliance rubbed off on you?"
Chen Zhuo closed his copy of Theoretical Mechanics.
"Hello, Mrs. Zhang,"
he said.
"Oh, hello, dear."
Mrs. Zhang’s eyes crinkled as she beamed.
She picked up a small, white porcelain bowl and a long-handled spoon from the fruit platter.
"Xiaozhuo, put your book down and take a break. Have some watermelon. I picked this one out special—it’s a Black Beauty. The flesh is nice and grainy, and it’s super sweet."
"Mom, stop, we can get it ourselves,"
Zhang Qiang said, sitting up and snatching the spoon and bowl from his mother’s hands.
"Alright, alright, I’ll leave you to it. Go on and eat. Qiangzi, you focus on your homework, and don’t you dare bully Xiaozhuo."
Mrs. Zhang rattled on as she turned and went back to her room, sliding the door shut behind her.
The living room was quiet again, save for the hum of the air conditioner.
Zhang Qiang held the spoon.
He looked at the huge, bright red, chilled half-watermelon before him.
It was a clean, even cut.
The very center—seedless and the deepest shade of red—was visibly grainy with sweetness.
It was the sweetest, crispest, and all-around best part of the entire watermelon.
Zhang Qiang swallowed.
He held the spoon, hovering it over the edge of the watermelon for a moment.
Then, with a flick of his wrist, he plunged the spoon directly into the heart of the watermelon.
He scooped hard.
A huge, glistening red chunk of watermelon, without a single black seed, came out.
Zhang Qiang placed the large piece from the watermelon’s heart into the white porcelain bowl.
He casually added a couple of purple grapes to the bowl as well.
He pushed the bowl in front of Chen Zhuo.
"Eat this. It’s seedless. And sweet."
Zhang Qiang looked at Chen Zhuo, his tone matter-of-fact.
Having done this, Zhang Qiang took the spoon for himself and began to casually scoop out bites from the seedy edges of the watermelon.
He spat the seeds out as he ate.
PTUI. PTUI. He spat them into the trash can under the coffee table.
Chen Zhuo looked at the bowl that had been pushed in front of him.
A bit of watermelon juice clung to its rim.
The large piece from the watermelon’s heart lay quietly inside.
Chen Zhuo picked up a small metal fork from the coffee table, speared the piece of watermelon, and took a bite.
It was cold.
And very sweet.
The grainy texture dissolved in his mouth, washing away most of the oppressive heat of early summer.

Comments

Loading...