Wild Fire Bids Farewell To Summer Chapter 2
byBefore the Spring Equinox
That drop of blood stayed on the seventh step for seven days.
For the first three days, it was reddish-brown, its edges turning black from oxidation—flat and irregularly circular. On the fourth day, the humid southern winds arrived, and the moisture caused the salt in the bloodstain to resurface, forming a layer of white frost that felt rough to the touch. On the afternoon of the sixth day, a janitor wiped it with a mop soaked in 84 Disinfectant, yet faint pink traces remained in the crevices of the terrazzo surface, spreading in an irregular, branch-like network. By the morning of the seventh day, March 12, 2025, when Wei Zhiheng stepped over that stair again, the bloodstain had completely vanished. All that remained was a shallow scratch—left by the limestone specimen that had fallen in Chapter 1—crossing the spot where the blood had been, forming a crucifix.
When Wei Zhiheng reached the third-floor landing of the Changgu Building, the voice-activated lights had not yet flickered on. He paused in the shadows, his left hand gripping the leather strap of his art box while his right hand fumbled along the wall. The limestone wall tiles were damp with condensation, and his fingertips brushed off a layer of white frost, the dry powder embedding itself under his fingernails. The plastic switch panel was cracked, layered with years of accumulated dust. He pressed the switch, and the light hummed with an electrical overload as it flicked on. The vibrating tungsten filament stretched and flattened his shadow, casting it against the terrazzo wall.
The corridor faced south, with light cutting in at a forty-five-degree angle. The shadows of the security bars fell across the floor in stripes. Wei Zhiheng walked forward with his art box on his back, the metal corners of the box clinking against the terrazzo with a crisp, vibrating ring. Classrooms lined both sides of the hallway, most of their doors open, spilling out various sounds.
Muffled splashes of sloshing water came from Class 5 of the sophomore grade. Lin Xiao stood by the window, the handle of a green plastic bucket digging into her palm and leaving a red mark. She bent over to pour the murky brush-washing water onto the floor. The water fanned out in an irregular arc, extending about forty centimeters to the base of the wall. Flecks of ultramarine and rose gray pigment floated in the water before settling as colored dots on the floor, their hues deepening as they soaked into the pores of the terrazzo. She set the bucket down, the bottom meeting the wet floor with a hollow thud. Suction caused the bucket to stick to the ground, making a faint tearing sound when she lifted it. She adjusted its position, using her toe to nudge the bucket ten centimeters away from the wall to keep the path clear.
The crisp snap of breaking charcoal echoed from Class 8. A boy was clutching a dark brown charcoal stick, hatching lines forcefully onto his paper. He pressed too hard, and the core snapped, sending black shards flying onto his school uniform trousers. He cursed in the Guiliu dialect, his tone rising at the end: “Screw your granddaddy turtle!” He dropped the broken tip and crushed it under his foot, the charcoal powder forming a black smudge on the floor. He took a new stick from his pencil case and sharpened it with a utility knife. The blade scraped against the charcoal core with a rustling sound, and black powder piled up like a miniature mountain on the desk.
The door to Class 2 was tightly shut, but the sound of an English listening exercise drifted through the window. A mechanical female voice read out multiple-choice options: “A. The man is a doctor. B. The man is a teacher…” The sound became muffled as it passed through the glass, losing its high frequencies and retaining only the low ones, creating a murky resonance.
Wei Zhiheng stopped in front of the third classroom. The sign read “Art Classroom (3),” but the metal lettering was missing a stroke; the final dot of the character for “Art” had fallen off, leaving a hollow, rust-rimmed hole of reddish-brown. He fished a brass key from his pocket, its teeth worn smooth and tied with a faded red string.
He inserted the key into the lock and turned it clockwise. It met resistance on the first turn—the bolt was rusted, and the metal ground together with a dry, grating sound. The second turn was smoother, and the bolt retracted with a click. The sound echoed through the empty corridor, bouncing off the opposite wall in a brief reverberation.
Wei Zhiheng pushed the door open. The corner of his art box scraped against the doorframe, wood rubbing against paint to leave a shallow mark that exposed the grain beneath. He stepped into the classroom and pulled the door shut behind him but left it slightly ajar. The gap was just wide enough for a sliver of hallway light to cut across the floor in a bright, thin line, slicing through the darkness of the room with sharp edges and a clear boundary between light and shadow.
The art classroom was forty square meters, with eight drawing tables arranged in two rows. Each table was paired with a high stool made of plywood. The edges of the stools were indented from long-term use, the lacquer worn away to reveal the natural amber color of the wood, darkened by time. Wei Zhiheng walked to the third table by the window. The tabletop bore a circular indentation fifteen centimeters in diameter where a palette had sat for years. The wood grain there was saturated with turpentine, appearing a deeper amber than the surrounding area and feeling slightly tacky to the touch.
He set his art box on the floor and unbuckled the leather straps. Inside were a 4-cut drawing board, a paint box, a brush holder, and a mineral water bottle filled with turpentine. The bottle was transparent, its label torn off to leave a ring of sticky adhesive residue that had trapped dust and fibers, making it rough. The liquid sloshed inside, only a third of it remaining. It was a clear, pale yellow, though a sediment of brown pigment particles rested at the bottom, swirling upward when shaken.
Traces of others lingered in the room. On the table in front of him, an unfinished sketch was pinned to a board—a plaster geometric dodecahedron. Only half the lines had been hatched, leaving large areas of white space marred by gray smudges from finger-rubbing. Three pairs of sneakers sat on the windowsill to the right, their soles caked with red scraps from the plastic running track. They gave off the scent of heated rubber mixed with sweat, creating a warm, stale, and heavy atmosphere that seemed to press against the floor.
Wei Zhiheng sat down, and the high stool creaked. A screw had loosened, causing the stool to shift under his weight and tilt his body to the right. He extended his right hand. A piece of medical tape was wrapped around the webbing of his thumb, its edges peeling back to reveal a dark red scab beneath. The surface of the scab was rough, with white flakes of skin peeling off. It was itchy and felt hot to the touch. The area where the scab met the skin was slightly swollen, producing a dull ache when pressed.
He avoided using his right hand to squeeze the paint, using his left instead. His left pinky had been cut the previous week while sharpening a pencil. The wound was shallow, about a centimeter long, but it stung with a needle-like sharpness whenever it touched turpentine. He opened the paint box, and the smell of polyethylene rushed out—pungent, chemically sweet, and heavy, settling in the back of his nasal cavity. A piece of dried burnt sienna pigment was stuck to the inside of the lid, its surface cracked and dark brown, clicking sharply when tapped.
He squeezed out a tube of Titanium White, the paste piling up on the palette with a sharp peak and a glossy surface. Then he squeezed out some Ultramarine. The paste emerged from the tube with a faint hiss as the air was displaced. The two colors sat side by side: the white was a cold white with a hint of blue; the blue was a warm blue with a hint of violet. He dipped a weasel-hair brush into water. The bristles swelled as they absorbed the liquid, changing from a sharp cone to a soft hemisphere. A bead of water dripped from the belly of the brush, splashing onto the palette and sending tiny droplets onto the back of his left hand—cold, evaporating quickly, and leaving a damp sensation.
He began to mix the colors. As the Titanium White and Ultramarine blended, the initial hue was a murky, bluish gray. He continued to stir, his wrist rotating as the brush tip spun against the porcelain palette, producing a faint rasping sound of bristles against ceramic. The paint formed a vortex, revealing a hole in the center that showed the original blue floral pattern of the porcelain, though the design was blurred.
The color was still wrong. There was too much Ultramarine, making the grayish-blue look sickly and unrelated to the limestone on the still-life stand. The color was too deep, too cold, carrying an artificial, chemical feel.
The still-life stand sat in the center of the room, made of two desks pushed together. It was covered with a dark gray cloth—a cotton-linen blend with pilled fibers that caught the light at different angles, shining when lit from the front and darkening when backlit. Three objects sat on the cloth: a piece of limestone, an enamel cup, and an open copy of *Elements*.
The limestone was the piece from Chapter 1, ivory-white with gray chert bands. Its base was flat, marked by the cuts of an angle grinder. The surface bore scorched yellow patches and felt rough and sandy, making a faint sound when rubbed against a fingertip. A week ago, blood had dripped onto it. Now, the blood had dried into dark brown patches embedded in the stone’s pores, impossible to scrape away. It had merged with the material, appearing as a rust-colored stain deeper than the surrounding ivory.
The enamel cup belonged to Wei’s father—white with a blue rim. The rim was chipped in three places, exposing sharp-edged black iron that had once sliced Wei Zhiheng’s finger. The cut had healed, leaving a pale scar. The cup was half-filled with tap water, its surface still, reflecting the ceiling fan in a distorted, arc-shaped silhouette.
The ceiling fan was spinning. Its three iron blades were painted white, with reddish-brown rust spots along the edges. The bearings lacked oil, emitting a creak with every rotation, roughly every three seconds. The blades sliced through the light, casting a rotating shadow over the still-life stand. The shadow moved in sync with the blades, sweeping across the limestone and causing its texture to shift between bright white and dull gray.
Wei Zhiheng held the brush in his left hand, his wrist suspended in the air and his elbow braced against the edge of the table as a fulcrum. The brush tip touched the paper—a sheet of 4-cut sketching paper with a grainy surface that resisted his touch. He began to block in the shape, outlining the limestone. His lines trembled—his hand was unsteady, his blood was thin, and his muscles lacked strength. Control was failing him. The lines meandered across the paper in irregular waves, failing to match the straight, cut edges of the stone. The brush tip pressed into the paper, leaving indentations in the fibers where the pigment pooled into dark grooves.
He stopped and stared at the erroneous line. The stroke had created an unnecessary shadow on the left side of the stone, ruining the sense of volume and making the rock look as if a piece were missing. He didn’t use an eraser. There was one in his brush holder, but he didn’t want it. The mistake was part of the record, physical evidence of his hand’s condition.
He continued, using a lighter touch. He braced his left pinky against the paper as a support. The wound stung as it touched the paper dust—a fine, persistent prickling that spread along his nerve endings. He ignored the pain, focusing on the chert bands of the limestone. Gray lines extended across the ivory-white base. He tried to capture the texture of the stratification, but the brush tip wouldn’t obey. The lines were uneven in thickness, breaking in some places and overlapping in others to form black clusters of pigment.
As the ceiling fan completed its fifth rotation, the door was pushed open.
Huang Jinye stood in the doorway, his right shoulder leaning against the frame. He wore his school uniform jacket unzipped halfway, revealing a black athletic tank top underneath. The words “Guixi No. 2 High School” were printed on the tank top, the lettering cracked and fraying into white threads. In his left hand, he carried a broken canvas shoe—the one from Chapter 1. The vulcanized rubber sole was split, the deep treads exposing white fibers. A grayish-white crust remained on the upper, a hardened compound of dried turpentine and magnesium powder, rough and riddled with deep cracks.
He walked with a limp. His left knee had been injured during high jump training; fluid sloshed inside the joint, creating a dull ache whenever he bent it. Something inside felt squeezed, making a muffled squelching sound as it moved. His center of gravity shifted to the right as he walked, his right foot landing heavily with a dull thud while his left foot barely touched the ground, making only a faint scraping sound. This asymmetrical rhythm echoed through the classroom—heavy right, light left, heavy right, light left.
“Skipping class?” Wei Zhiheng asked. He didn’t look up. His brush tip continued to move across the paper, trying to correct the errant line, but the more he fixed it, the messier it became, turning into a smudge of varying grays.
“Training was canceled.” Huang Jinye entered the room and kicked the door shut. The door hit the frame with a thud, rattling the windowpanes in a low-frequency hum. “The coach went to a meeting. Said he was worried about students getting heatstroke, so he changed the afternoon to a theory session.”
“Then you should be in the classroom for the theory session.”
“It’s in the gym on the second floor, listening to track and field history.” Huang Jinye walked to the still-life stand and set the broken shoe on the floor. The grayish-white powder from the sole left a trail on the terrazzo, a broken line of pale dust extending from the door to the stand, contrasting with the gray floor. “I jumped out the window. Second floor. There’s a green belt below. I landed in the hollies; didn’t make a sound. The holly leaves are thick and springy. You sink in and then they pop back up, scraping your legs and leaving green streaks on your pants.”
He stepped behind Wei Zhiheng and stood there watching. His breathing was heavy and coarse, with a raspy tremor from a congested throat. He smelled of sweat—not fresh sweat, but the stale, sour scent of training that had dried and dampened again, mixed with the rubbery smell of the plastic track. It was a warm, heavy scent that hung over Wei Zhiheng’s head, settling in the air.
Huang Jinye reached out and pulled a 2B pencil from Wei Zhiheng’s holder. The barrel was covered in crescent-shaped tooth marks where Wei Zhiheng had bitten it while thinking, exposing the wood grain. Huang Jinye picked off a splinter with his fingernail and leaned over to draw a line on the edge of Wei Zhiheng’s scratch paper. It wasn’t a still life, but a geometric shape—a triangle with a horizontal base and a peak at the top.
“The parabola of a high jump,” he said. “The takeoff point, the center of gravity, the point over the bar. You have to pull your lines like this—straight and steady. Don’t let your wrist hang in the air. Find a support. Press your elbow against the table.”
The pencil rasped against the paper. White stone powder was trapped under his fingernails, picked up from the stone samples his mother, Wei Meihua, had sent. As the pencil moved, the powder fell onto the paper and mixed with the graphite, creating a gray, coarse texture that felt grainy and made a faint sound against his fingertips.
Wei Zhiheng stared at the parabola. The line was fluid, without a hint of trembling. It had been drawn with the right hand, the pressure leaving a deep indentation in the paper that bulged on the reverse side. Huang Jinye was an athlete, yet when he drew with his right hand, his wrist was stable and his knuckles were strong.
Huang Jinye set the pencil down and pointed at the mineral water bottle on the table. A ring of white stone powder was visible on his cuff, embedded in the blue polyester fibers like a rough, encrusted scab.
Wei Zhiheng leaned over and pulled the bottle of turpentine from the side pocket of his art box. The bottle was clear, with only a third of the liquid left. He unscrewed the cap, the plastic threads grating with a dry, weary sound. The scent of turpentine flooded out—a mix of citrus and pungent resin, heavier than the plastic smell of the watercolors. It sank to the floor, forming a low-lying current at knee height that stung the throat when inhaled.
Huang Jinye walked to the still-life stand and looked at the half-cup of water in the enamel mug. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked it up and splashed the water onto the floor. The water hit the terrazzo and formed a dark stain that was quickly absorbed by the pores of the stone, leaving only a damp, grayish-black outline like ink bleeding into paper. As the water spread, it met the grayish-white powder from before, mixing into a dark gray sludge.
He poured the turpentine into the enamel cup. The clear liquid sloshed against the white porcelain, filling a third of the cup and forming an oily film on the walls that reflected light in shifting colors of violet, green, and red. When the liquid settled, it was convex—high in the center and low at the edges.
“That was my drinking water,” Wei Zhiheng said. His voice was dry, his throat tight, his vocal cords rasping together.
“I’ll buy you a new one.” Huang Jinye fished a one-yuan coin from his pocket and set it on the table. The metal hit the wood with a crisp ring, rolled twice, and flopped over. It landed heads up, showing the chrysanthemum pattern, its metallic luster reflecting the light.
Huang Jinye picked up Wei Zhiheng’s palette—a white porcelain plate with rings of stubborn brown stains from previous colors. He carried it to the still-life stand and poured the turpentine into the mixing well. The clear liquid hit the failed grayish-blue pigment with a faint hiss. Bubbles formed and popped with tiny, explosive sounds.
The dilution began.
The turpentine floated on the surface of the pigment, forming an oily film. The film reflected the light from the window, shimmering with rainbow-like interference patterns that shifted with the angle. Huang Jinye stirred it with his index finger, the stone powder from his fingernails mixing into the liquid as suspended particles. The particles swirled and sank, bonding with the pigment molecules. The originally murky grayish-blue gradually cleared, transforming from the texture of cement slurry to the transparency of glass, revealing the blue floral pattern on the bottom of the plate.
Wei Zhiheng watched the palette. He picked up his brush and dipped it into the diluted paint, testing the color on his scratch paper. The strokes went from dark to light, creating a gradient. The volatility of the turpentine caused the paint to dry quickly, leaving sharp edges. Unlike water, which bled, it formed hard edges as clean as a knife cut. As it dried, the pigment contracted, forming a network of fine, web-like cracks.
“It’ll do,” he said. His voice was even drier now, tinged with hoarseness.
Huang Jinye set the palette down. The porcelain hit the wood with a sharp clink, creating a brief resonance. He pulled over a high stool and sat to Wei Zhiheng’s right. His knee joint made a faint rubbing sound as he bent it, the fluid moving under pressure with a muffled squelch. He kept his left leg straight and his right leg bent, shifting his weight to his right hip. He sat at a tilt, keeping a thirty-centimeter distance from Wei Zhiheng, his breathing heavy.
Wei Zhiheng began to paint. He used the diluted pigment to depict the base of the limestone, capturing the marks of the angle grinder. The turpentine allowed the paint to flow more smoothly, the brush strokes pausing at the turns to leave sharp edges. He painted the blue rim of the enamel cup, leaving white space where the chips were to represent the exposed iron. The white gaps were irregular and jagged, looking sharp enough to cut a hand.
Huang Jinye sat beside him, watching. He pulled a piece of eucalyptus candy from his pocket. The green-striped foil wrapper had softened from his body heat, making it sticky. He tore the wrapper with his teeth, the foil making a sharp, brief sound of metal fatigue. The candy was exposed, releasing a pungent, medicinal scent of eucalyptol that hung heavy in the air.
He sucked on the candy, his jaw moving as the hard sweet rolled in his mouth, clicking against his teeth. The sound was clear in the quiet classroom, forming a counterpoint to the creaking of the ceiling fan—one the sound of metal fatigue, the other of solid impact. Their rhythms clashed, creating a beat frequency.
A whistle blew outside. It was sharp and high-pitched, coming from the direction of Jiujiu Square. It was the physical education teacher’s brass whistle, its sound piercing the air and vibrating against the windowpanes in a low hum. Then came the sound of footsteps—countless rubber soles rubbing against the plastic track in a dense, persistent rustle that gradually faded in frequency.
There was also the sound of metal water bottles clanking against thighs. The aluminum bottles made crisp, high-frequency pings, while the plastic ones made dull, low-frequency thuds. Laughter and curses mixed together: “Screw your granddaddy turtle!” “Screw your mother!” and complaints in Mandarin: “I’m exhausted, damn it!” They merged into a wave of noise that surged through the window, growing louder.
Wei Zhiheng’s brush paused for a moment. He looked away from the paper and toward the window. His vision had been failing lately; he saw halos around lights, and the silhouettes of distant people seemed to bleed and blur. Their colors faded, their boundaries softened, and details were lost as color blocks merged. He wasn’t wearing glasses. His nearsightedness wasn’t severe, but his astigmatism was worsening, and hemorrhages on his retina were affecting his vision, causing black spots to drift across his field of view whenever he moved his eyes.
Outside, the branches of the camphor trees swayed. Above the canopy, figures moved along the red plastic track, forming a flow of blurred color blocks with indistinct edges, like ink bleeding into paper. The freshmen were in camouflage uniforms, marching in place to the teacher’s commands. Their footsteps were heavy and synchronized—thud, thud, thud—at a constant frequency that sent vibrations through the ground. The sophomores and juniors were scattered, some heading for the cafeteria and others for the teaching buildings. Their footsteps were disorganized, dragging and scraping at different speeds. Some ran with hurried steps and heavy breathing; others walked with a slow, sluggish gait; some crouched to tie their laces, paused, and groaned as they stood back up.
“Can’t see clearly?” Huang Jinye asked. He had noticed Wei Zhiheng’s hesitation. He spat out the candy, which rolled under the drawing table and stopped. The spicy, cool taste of eucalyptus lingered in his mouth, stimulating his saliva.
“The shadows are flickering,” Wei Zhiheng said. He squinted, trying to focus, but the distant figures remained blurred, their edges bleeding out like ink on wet paper.
“That’s because they’re running.” Huang Jinye stood up and walked to the window. He pushed it open. The aluminum frame was rusted in its tracks, letting out a piercing, high-frequency metallic shriek. The sounds from outside rushed in—footsteps, laughter, clanking bottles, and the mechanical female voice of the English listening exercise from the distant teaching building: “Question fifteen…”
On Jiujiu Square, the morning run was dispersing. The crowd surged from the track toward the exits, forming a human tide of uneven density. Huang Jinye’s gaze locked onto a figure in the crowd. It was Buzzcut, his teammate, wearing a red athletic tank top and walking toward the gymnasium. Buzzcut looked up, saw Huang Jinye at the third-floor window, and waved. His palm was open, fingers together, moving up and down. He mouthed the words “Brother Ye,” his movements exaggerated, but no sound reached the window, drowned out by the distance and the wind.
A tall boy stood next to Buzzcut, wiping sweat with the hem of his gray shirt. The fabric was soaked, turning a dark, almost black color. As he wiped, he revealed bronzed skin and the outline of abdominal muscles. He said something to Buzzcut, his mouth forming the shape of “Who’s that?” Buzzcut replied, “From Class 3.” Both looked up at the third floor, their eyes lingering on Huang Jinye.
Huang Jinye didn’t wave back. He stared at Buzzcut for two seconds, then shut the window, cutting off the outside noise. The frame hit with a thud, and the glass rattled. The classroom returned to the creaking of the fan, the scratching of Wei Zhiheng’s brush, and the sound of their breathing—Wei’s shallow, Huang’s deep. Huang Jinye walked back to the table, his gait still uneven—heavy right, light left.
“Aren’t you going to training?” Wei Zhiheng asked. He had made a mistake; the turpentine was too diluted, and the color was too pale, creating a ghostly patch in the shadow of the limestone. It was a blotch that ruined the overall tonal relationship, clashing with the surrounding dark tones.
“If the coach notices I’m gone, he’ll just think I went to the infirmary.” Huang Jinye sat down again, the stool groaning as the wood and metal joints shifted. He picked up the 2B pencil and continued drawing his parabolas on the scratch paper. He drew a second line that intersected with the first, forming a sharp angle—a structural support. “I have fluid in my knee. I really should be at the infirmary.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
“If I go, I’ll be benched for a week.” Huang Jinye’s pencil point poked through the paper, leaving a small hole about two millimeters wide with frayed fibers splaying outward. He stared at the hole and pressed it with his finger, indenting the front and bulging the back. “There’s a selection trial next week. Coaches from the city are coming. If I get picked, I get sixty extra points on the college entrance exam. You know how many people sixty points can put you ahead of.”
Wei Zhiheng put down his brush. He reached out with his right hand and pressed his left wrist. A vein was throbbing there, clearly visible through the thin skin. It was a bluish-purple vessel fluttering with his heartbeat—fast and light. As the blood flowed, the pulse traveled to his palm. His fingertips felt cold.
Huang Jinye pointed at the palette. The turpentine was evaporating, and the paint at the edges was starting to dry, forming a thin film that hardened and curled at the edges, its color deepening and its texture turning rough.
Wei Zhiheng picked up his brush again. He didn’t fix the mistake. Instead, he painted a deeper gray next to it, partially overlapping the error. The layers stacked, and the transparency of the turpentine allowed the pale underlayer to show through, creating a murky, uneven texture of purplish-brown—the color of a subcutaneous hemorrhage.
“A mistake is a mistake,” Huang Jinye said. He watched the overlapping colors, then set the pencil down. It rolled to the edge of the table and was stopped by the rim. “Layer upon layer. That’s how the earth’s strata are formed.”
Wei Zhiheng’s brush scraped against the paper, making a harsh sound as it kicked up fibers and created a fuzzy texture.
Huang Jinye picked up the enamel cup and poured the remaining turpentine back into the mineral water bottle. The liquid flowed with a steady, low-frequency gurgle. An oily film remained on the cup’s walls, shimmering with a violet-to-green rainbow in the light. He set the cup back on the still-life stand. The base hit the table with a muffled thud, sending a slight vibration through the terrazzo and making the dust on the table jump.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor. It was the sound of leather heels clicking against the terrazzo—crisp, rhythmic, and measured: tap-tap-tap, pause, tap-tap. It was the gait of Li Min, the head teacher. She wore two-inch heels and walked with her weight shifted forward, her pace hurried and frequent. The sound came from the stairwell, passed the art classroom, and paused for a moment. The sound of a pointer striking the railing rang out—metal on metal—a crisp *ting*.
Wei Zhiheng and Huang Jinye both looked toward the door. Through the gap, they could see a shadow moving in the hallway—the hem of a qipao, blue with white floral patterns. The fabric fluttered, sweeping the floor about ten centimeters above the ground, revealing her ankles.
Li Min’s voice rang out, though not directed at their door. She was shouting at someone at the other end of the hall: “You there! The school-closing bell is about to ring. Why aren’t you back in the dorms? Don’t let me catch you loitering on this floor again. If I see you one more time, I’m calling your parents tomorrow.” Her voice was stern, her tone dropping at the end with a Guiliu lilt.
The footsteps moved again, heading west and disappearing down the stairs. Another student had been chased away, their footsteps frantic and hurried, their rubber soles screeching against the floor.
Huang Jinye stood up. He picked up the broken shoe, and more grayish-white powder fell off, forming a tiny, conical pile on the floor. He walked to the door, paused, and looked back at the drawing table. Wei Zhiheng didn’t look up; he was painting the reflections on the water in the enamel cup—stroke after stroke, the brush barely touching the paper before lifting, leaving faint marks that formed an irregular arc of bright highlights.
“Don’t want the shoe?” Wei Zhiheng asked. His eyes were on the paper, but he saw Huang Jinye’s movement in his periphery.
“Leave it here.” Huang Jinye leaned the shoe against the wall by the door. The toe pointed toward the window and the heel toward the room, creating an angle that pointed back at the still-life stand. The grayish-white crust looked rough in the sunset light, its surface riddled with deep cracks that exposed white fibers. “Use it as a still life. Give it back when you’re done.”
“I’m not giving it back.”
“Suit yourself.”
He pushed the door open and walked out. The door swung shut behind him with a thud that shook the frame, sending a line of dust falling from the top. Footsteps echoed in the hall—heavy right, light left—turning right and disappearing toward the stairs. Then came the sound of him descending, the footsteps echoing in the stairwell before fading, eventually drowned out by the low-frequency hum of the voice-activated lights.
Wei Zhiheng stopped his brush. He stared at the broken shoe. The grayish-white crust on the upper showed a texture of light and shadow in the sunset—white highlights and gray depths. He set down the palette. The turpentine on the bottom was half-dry and tacky; it stuck to his fingers, pulling at his skin with a faint sting.
He stood up and went to the window. He pushed it open, and the outside air rushed in, carrying the moisture of the Guixi River—damp and fishy, mixed with the distant smell of the cafeteria’s oil smoke. It was the heavy scent of heated rapeseed oil, settling in the lower layers of the air. Jiujiu Square was empty now. No shadows moved on the red track; only the wind blew scraps of plastic across the ground. The red granules rolled with a rustling sound, like the falling sand of an hourglass.
He closed the window and returned to the table. The paint on the palette was drying, cracks spreading from the edges to the center in a radial pattern, like parched earth peeling away in chunks. He picked up a small brush, dipped it in clean water, and applied it to the errant color, trying to fix it. The water mixed with the turpentine, and the pigment bled into a murkier blotch—blurred, purplish-brown, and uneven.
The ceiling fan continued to spin, creaking. The light was shifting as the sun dipped lower. The angle of the window changed, the light moving from forty-five degrees to thirty. Shadows lengthened, casting a giant, distorted silhouette of the still-life stand against the wall, its edges blurred.
Wei Zhiheng continued to paint. He pressed his left hand against the paper and held the brush in his right, but the scab on his thumb webbing split under the pressure. A bead of blood seeped out, staining the edge of the medical tape a bright, wet red. He didn’t stop. The blood dripped onto the paper, landing in the shadow of the limestone. It formed a small red dot that mixed with the pigment, turning a dark, dull brown.
He stared at the drop of blood but didn’t wipe it away. The blood spread across the paper in an irregular shape, reacting with the turpentine-thinned paint. The color deepened, turning purple and forming a ring—dark in the center and light at the edges. He kept painting, incorporating the blood into the stone as part of the shadow, smearing it with his brush until the colors merged and the boundaries vanished.
The school-closing bell rang. The sound waves traveled down the corridor, hitting the walls and reflecting in a ten-second reverberation—sharp and high-frequency. Wei Zhiheng put down his brush and looked at the paper. The limestone and the enamel cup were beginning to take shape, but the shadows of the stone remained murky, stained with blood and failed colors. The paper fibers had swollen, the colors were muddy, and the texture had softened.
He stared at the murkiness but didn’t try to fix it again. He packed up his paint box, the plastic lid snapping shut with a crisp click. He kicked the broken shoe under the drawing table, hiding it in the shadows. The grayish-white powder on the sole left one last trail on the floor—a broken, dotted line.
He locked the door and shoved the key back into his pocket. The cold metal of the key pressed against his skin through the fabric. The corridor was deserted, save for the sound of his footsteps and the distant dripping of a leaky faucet at Jiujiu Square—drip, drip—at a constant interval of once per second, clashing with his heartbeat in an irregular rhythm.
He walked down the stairs, the voice-activated lights flickering on floor by floor with his steps and then extinguishing behind him, light and shadow alternating. Behind him, the ceiling fan in the art classroom continued to spin and creak until the power was cut. The sound stopped abruptly, leaving a total silence broken only by the faint, explosive pops of drying paint—crisp, brief releases of internal tension that continued for a while before finally falling still.