Wild Fire Bids Farewell To Summer Chapter 1

Awakening of Insects

March 5, 2025, 6:47 AM.

The voice-activated light went out just as Wei Zhiheng stepped onto the second stair. He stopped in the darkness, his left hand tightening around the leather buckle of his art box while his right hand fumbled along the wall. The limestone wall tiles were damp with moisture, and a frost-like white powder rubbed off onto his fingertips. The plastic switch panel was cracked, layered with years of dust that felt like sandpaper to the touch.

When the light flickered on, it emitted a hum of electrical overload. The vibrating tungsten filament stretched and then flattened his shadow against the terrazzo wall. A piece of graffiti left by a former student was pasted there: “457 days until the Gaokao.” The final stroke of the number “7” had pierced through the paper, carving a shallow, soot-filled groove into the wall.

Inside the art box were a 4-cut drawing board, a set of Marie’s paints, and a mineral water bottle filled with turpentine. The turpentine sloshed inside the box, its scent settling at knee height like a layer of heavy air. His right hand was wrapped in a band-aid—a cut from sharpening a pencil three days ago. It had split while he was washing his hands, and beads of blood had seeped through the waterproof adhesive, forming a dark red scab at his fingertip. This forced him to avoid using his index finger when gripping the handle, twisting his wrist at an awkward angle. The canvas strap bit into his shoulder, pressing a red mark beneath his collarbone.

As he reached the seventh step, he heard footsteps coming from below.

It was the composite sound of rubber soles and metal studs—track spikes. The steel spikes on the forefoot struck the terrazzo with a crisp clatter like a machine tool drilling, while the rubber heel pads absorbed the impact with a dull thud. The two sounds rose through the stairwell in alternating rhythm, fast-paced and wide-strided, accompanied by heavy breathing.

Wei Zhiheng pressed himself against the wall to make way. The sharp corner of the art box dug into his hip bone. The turpentine bottle tilted inside the box, the liquid reaching the cap. The scent suddenly grew pungent.

Huang Jinye appeared around the corner, lugging a high jump mat. The folded foam mat was slung over his right shoulder, his school uniform stained dark with sweat. In his left hand, he carried a magnesium powder box—a red plastic container with its sealing tape half-torn, revealing the snow-white powder inside.

Their eyes met. Huang Jinye’s gaze shot out from beneath the edge of the mat, the whites of his eyes laced with thin red capillaries. Wei Zhiheng’s gaze passed over the top of his art box, landing on a bead of sweat rolling down the other boy’s collarbone. The droplet hung there, stretching, its surface reflecting the light of the voice-activated lamp before finally plunging into the opening of the magnesium powder jar. It struck the snow-white powder, creating a tiny crater that was instantly absorbed, leaving behind a small, dark damp spot.

Without warning, the canvas corner of the high jump mat caught on the leather buckle of the art box.

Wei Zhiheng felt a downward yank. His fingers instinctively tightened, his nails digging into the wooden frame. A splinter pierced the quick of his nail, a needle-like sting. But the momentum of the high jump mat was greater; Huang Jinye’s upward surge tore the art box away from the wall. The turpentine bottle flipped inside the box, the cap popping off, leaving a trace of transparent liquid clinging to the screw threads.

The sound of the bottle hitting the floor was heavy and dull.

The plastic deformed, cracks radiating from the bottom. The turpentine didn’t gush out instantly; instead, it formed a transparent hemisphere, maintaining a brief tension against the dust on the floor before collapsing. The liquid spread, forming branching streams within the scratches of the terrazzo floor.

A right spiked shoe stepped into the liquid. Seven steel spikes pierced the surface. The turpentine moistened the texture of the rubber sole, pulling thin liquid bridges as the shoe lifted. The bridges snapped, dripping onto Huang Jinye’s canvas sneakers and forming dark spots. The canvas absorbed the liquid, turning from off-white to a dingy yellow.

Huang Jinye set the high jump mat down. The foam mat hit the floor, compressing the air inside with a wheezing sound. He knelt on one knee, his kneecap pressing against the edge of the spreading turpentine. The fabric of his athletic shorts immediately soaked up the liquid, clinging to his knee with a cold touch.

“Don’t move,” Wei Zhiheng said.

His voice reflected multiple times in the stairwell, striking the terrazzo walls, the mildew spots on the ceiling, and a bag of clumped cement, creating three echoes. The first was clear, the second was mixed with electrical hum, and the third had decayed into a sigh-like disturbance of air.

Huang Jinye’s fingers hovered over the magnesium powder jar. This pause lasted only a moment. His gaze shifted from the liquid to Wei Zhiheng’s face, then to the edge of the puddle—where a pencil was floating. The pencil rotated slightly on the surface of the liquid, its red lacquer half-peeled to reveal the wood grain beneath.

Wei Zhiheng set down his art box. The metal corners of the box struck the steps with a crisp vibration, sending ripples through the puddle on the stairs. He crouched down, reaching his right hand toward the pencil. As his fingers touched the liquid, the cold temperature of the turpentine stung the wound on his fingertip. The band-aid became transparent as it absorbed the fluid, and the scab underneath softened like soaked wood ear fungus, beginning to bleed again. Wisps of blood swirled into the water.

He pinched the middle of the pencil and lifted it. Liquid slid off the barrel and dripped back into the puddle with a sound like a sigh.

“Turpentine,” Huang Jinye said. His voice was raspy from the congestion of his vocal cords after exercise.

“Yeah.”

“Can it catch fire?”

“Not right now.”

Huang Jinye lifted his knee from the floor. The athletic shorts left a pale indentation on his knee that quickly faded as circulation returned. He opened the magnesium powder jar. The white powder poured out, the jar tilted at too sharp an angle. As the powder hit the turpentine, the two mixed into a grayish-white paste.

The paste emitted a pungent odor. It was no longer a simple citrus scent, but a mixture of sweat, rubber, and a certain alkaline tang. This scent formed a turbulence in the stairwell, heated by the warmth of the voice-activated light. It rose to touch the mildew on the ceiling; the mildew was stirred by the warm air current, then cooled and sank, landing on their hair.

Wei Zhiheng touched the paste with his fingertip. It felt greasy, like touching the surface of limestone underwater—that silky sensation formed after long-term erosion by groundwater. His fingerprint left spiral grooves in the surface of the paste, which were instantly leveled out again.

“Wipe your shoe,” he said.

Huang Jinye looked down at his right foot. The turpentine on his spiked shoe had already spread to the canvas upper, mixing with the magnesium powder to form a grayish-white ring.

He pulled off the spiked shoe. The movement was violent: his right hand gripped the heel while his left hand grabbed the toe, twisting in opposite directions. The leather groaned with the sound of breaking fibers, and the glue layer of the sole made a faint peeling sound under the stress. The shoe came off, revealing a white cotton sock with a hole at the tip. His big toe peeked through the hole, the nail showing traces of bruised blood.

Wei Zhiheng took the spiked shoe. This was the first exchange of an object between them, mediated by the mixture of turpentine and magnesium powder. The steel spikes on the sole left indentations in his palm—seven small dots arranged in the shape of a horseshoe. He turned the shoe upside down to let the remaining liquid drip out, then wrapped the spikes in a paper tissue. The tissue was immediately saturated with liquid, turning transparent.

“Limestone,” Huang Jinye said.

He pointed to Wei Zhiheng’s art box. During the collision, the latch of the box had popped open, and a limestone specimen had slid out of the side pocket. It was a fist-sized stone collected from Lucen Mountain, ivory white with gray chert bands. The bottom of the stone was flat, cut by Wei Zhiheng with an angle grinder to weigh down his drawing paper; the cut surface was smooth.

Now, the stone lay at the edge of the turpentine and magnesium mixture.

Wei Zhiheng bent down to pick it up. As his right hand reached for the stone, his fingers touched the liquid first. The lubricating effect of the turpentine caused his grip to fail. His fingers slipped, and the stone fell from his grasp, hitting the floor again. This second impact was at a different angle, with the sharp edge of the stone facing upward—the bevel left from the cutting.

When Wei Zhiheng reached for it again, the webbing of his left hand pressed against that edge.

A cut. His skin parted under the pressure. First came a white mark on the epidermis; after half a second, the capillaries burst, and beads of blood welled from the linear wound. There was no pain; turpentine has a local anesthetic effect. Wei Zhiheng felt a chill in the webbing of his hand, as if it had been touched by an ice cube. He blinked, his perception skewed: that drop of blood on the chert band of the stone looked like the reflection of turpentine, like the mirror surface of the puddle from before.

Blood dripped onto the limestone.

The first drop struck the surface of the stone, coiling into a red bead like a drop of turpentine hanging from a brush tip. Two seconds later, it collapsed, seeping into the grain of the stone. The outer edge turned brown first, like the charred edge of paper. The second drop hit the first and splattered. The third drop slid down the side of the stone, pulling a red thread. The stone began to feel heavy as the blood seeped into the micropores, its color changing from ivory white to pink.

The beads of blood fell in a steady rhythm across the surface of the stone.

Huang Jinye pulled something from his pocket. A eucalyptus candy in a green-striped tin foil wrapper. He tore the wrapper with his teeth, the foil making a ripping sound. The candy was exposed to the air, emitting a strong scent of eucalyptol.

“Hold it in your mouth.”

This was the second intervention of an object. Huang Jinye’s fingers held the candy, reaching toward Wei Zhiheng’s lips. His fingertips touched the vermilion border of the lower lip; the sensation was dry, with peeling skin. The candy was pushed into his mouth. The moment it touched his tongue, the pungency of the eucalyptol stimulated his taste buds, and tears instantly welled in Wei Zhiheng’s eyes. His tongue pushed the candy against his palate. The sweetness unfolded slowly—first a menthol-like coolness, then the sugary sweetness of sucrose.

His left hand was still clutching the stone. Blood flowed down his wrist toward his sleeve, as hot as boiling water.

“Hand,” Huang Jinye said.

Wei Zhiheng held out his left hand. The wound was at the webbing, a horizontal cut intersecting his palm lines. The blood had already traveled past his wrist, forming a dark stain on his cuff. Huang Jinye used the tissue he had used for the spiked shoe to press against the wound. The tissue was already saturated with turpentine, making a squelching sound like a squeezed sponge. The paper turned red instantly, the blood and oil mixing into an amber hue. The blood continued to seep, overflowing from the edges of the paper and flowing down his palm lines into his sleeve.

Huang Jinye tore at his school uniform pocket. The aging stitching gave way with a snapping sound. He took out a second item: a roll of medical tape—transparent, narrow, with only one loop left. A few curly hairs were stuck to the inner ring. He tore one end of the tape with his teeth, pulled out a length, and wrapped it around the webbing of Wei Zhiheng’s hand.

He wound it three times. The blood soaked through the tape and paper, turning a dark blackish-red, still blooming outward.

Wei Zhiheng picked up the piece of limestone with his right hand. The bloodstains on the stone’s surface had already dried, turning a brownish-red like rust. He rubbed it with his thumb; powder fell away, revealing the natural white of the stone beneath.

“I’m going up,” he said.

“Mm.”

“My drawing board is still up there.”

Huang Jinye bent down to pick up the art box. He had to avoid the mixture of turpentine and magnesium powder on the floor, his kneecap making that slight grinding sound again. He straightened the box; the turpentine bottle rolled inside with a hollow echo.

Wei Zhiheng took the box. During the handoff, their wrists touched beneath the handle. Huang’s wrist was hot, as if he had just been holding a hot water bottle. Wei’s wrist was cold; all the blood had flowed onto the stone.

“Limestone,” Huang Jinye said again. He pointed to the stone in Wei Zhiheng’s left hand. “Still bleeding.”

Wei Zhiheng looked down. The blood had bypassed the tape, trickling down the inner side of his wrist and along his palm lines before dripping from the tip of his index finger. It dripped slowly, but it wouldn’t stop.

“I know.”

He turned and continued upward. The art box bumped against his hip with a thudding sound, its rhythm synchronized with his heartbeat. The stone grew heavy in his left hand, soaked through with blood, turning from cold to warm. Drops of blood fell onto the steps behind him—one drop, then another, a startling red, leaving an intermittent trail of red markers.

Huang Jinye stood still. He watched Wei Zhiheng turn the corner of the fourth floor and disappear. He bent down to pick up his spiked shoe. The sole was caked with dried magnesium powder, grayish-white. He scraped off a piece and crushed it between his fingers. The powder took flight, drifting for a moment in the light.

He slung the high jump mat over his shoulder and headed down. The magnesium jar rattled in his left hand with a rustling sound. At the second-floor landing, he stepped on a dried drop of blood—left by Wei Zhiheng. It was an irregular circle with jagged, serrated edges.

He stopped. The weight of the mat pulled his right shoulder down, causing his spine to curve to the left. He stared at that drop of blood for a long time.

Then he lifted his right foot and placed the steel spikes of his shoe over the bloodstain.

Twist. Grind.

Blood dust squeezed out from between the spikes, splattering onto the adjacent step. He moved his foot away; all that remained were seven small dots arranged in a horseshoe shape and a faint, brownish halo.

He continued downward. His footsteps echoed in the stairwell, forming a counterpoint to the faint sound of an art box being opened above. The scent of turpentine was still rising, mixing with the steam from the cafeteria on the basement level.

When he reached the first floor, the voice-activated light went out.

The darkness lasted for about three seconds. Then it was startled awake by the sound of a drawing board being struck from above. When the light flickered back on, the area was empty. Only a single fresh drop of blood was slowly spreading across the terrazzo floor, its hemoglobin oxidizing, its color turning from bright red to dark brown.