Wild Fire Bids Farewell To Summer Chapter 7

After Grain Rain

The geography lesson reached the Peru Current. The projector cast blue arrows onto the screen, the light piercingly bright. Wei Zhiheng sat in the penultimate row, a fixed dark shadow in the upper right of his vision—a retinal hemorrhage point, the size of a needle tip, which had appeared three days ago. He squinted; the ocean current arrows on the blackboard distorted at the edge of the shadow, looking like exudate from a ruptured blood vessel. The arrows were supposed to point from left to right, but in his eyes, they bent downward as if about to drip.

His right hand held a 0.5 mm sign pen. The tip paused on his notebook, and the ink bled into an expanding black dot. This dot overlapped with the hemorrhage point in his field of vision. He blinked, unable to distinguish the ink on the paper from the blood in his eye.

Inside his desk, the leather buckle of his art box pressed against his knuckles. He reached his left hand inside and touched the shaft of a wolf-hair brush; the bristles were split and withered. On the inside of his right wrist was a new bruise the size of a coin, the center a purplish-black and the edges flushed red. He had discovered it while washing his face that morning; pressing it felt like pressing into a bruised apple, soft and dully painful.

Huang Jinye’s seat was empty. The desktop bore diagonal lines carved with a pencil knife, embedded with graphite powder like a scab.

At 14:32, Wei Zhiheng closed his notebook. The slapping sound of the pages closing blended into the hum of the projector fan. He stood up, the plastic chair legs scraping against the floor in a scream. As he walked toward the back door, his knees felt weak. His right hand pressed against his abdomen—something heavy was sinking there, perhaps a stone, a tumor, or just an empty stomach cramping.

The back door was ajar. He pushed it open, and the voice-activated lights in the corridor groaned to life along with the door hinges, casting a deathly pale glow. The limestone wall tiles were damp with moisture, white frost crystallizing in the gaps between bricks, feeling like licked salt to the touch.

Passing the faculty office, Li Min’s voice leaked out in the Guiliu dialect, her tone rising at the end: “…running even with joint effusion, the bones will be ruined…” Wei Zhiheng’s footsteps faltered, a perceptual error: he heard it as “the bones will crack,” thinking she was talking about his own leg bones. He looked down at his knees; under the fabric of his school uniform trousers, the outlines of his patellas were blurred, as if about to shatter. In reality, his knees were fine; it was merely the illusion of increased friction caused by anemia-induced reduction in synovial fluid.

Li Min stood by the window, a piece of chalk between her fingers, writing the words “Peru Current” on the blackboard. As she finished the last stroke, the chalk tip snapped. A white fragment flicked from her fingers, flew through the window, and landed on the corridor railing, breaking into three pieces. One piece was caught by the wind and drifted toward the stairwell. The white powder was kicked up by the airflow, crossing the iron gate and sticking to Huang Jinye’s wet back—he had just finished swimming and was bending over to smash stones. His back muscles bulged, steam rising from him, and the chalk dust adhered to his bronze skin, forming several white spots like embedded shards.

The voice-activated light in the stairwell was broken. Wei Zhiheng felt his way down by the handrail. The iron pipe had been polished bright by ten thousand hands, the oily patina slick and greasy. His palms were damp with sweat, creating a sticky suction when they touched the iron pipe, as if his hands were about to be glued fast. Reaching the first floor, he turned behind the toilets and squeezed through a rusted iron gate. The hinges let out a groan like a fracture, a joint popping out of place.

Outside the gate was the Lucen Mountain wire fence, two meters high. The barbed wire at the top had rusted into a reddish-brown, like dried blood scabs. A gap at the bottom had been cut by previous students and peeled upward, forming a triangular passage with sharp, jagged ends.

Huang Jinye was crouching on the outside of the gap. The edges of his black athletic shorts were frayed, revealing white fibers. His left leg was extended and his right leg bent, knee pressing into the ground like a starting block. On the back of his right hand, a fresh scratch ran across his palm lines—cut by the wire just now as he climbed over. Beads of blood were seeping from the wound, forming a thin red line that flowed along his palm toward his wrist.

“The wire ends are pointing up,” Huang Jinye said. His voice was kept extremely low, squeezed out from his chest. He reached out his left hand, knuckles protruding, white stone dust embedded under his fingernails—Permanent, brought out from his mother’s factory, impossible to wash away.

Wei Zhiheng bent over. The leather strap of his art box dug into his shoulder, pressing a red mark below his collarbone. He first shoved the art box through the gap; the leather rubbed against the wire with a harsh scraping sound, leaving white scratches on the surface. Then he lay flat, his body hugging the ground, and crawled out through the gap. The jagged wire ends were very close to the back of his neck. He had a visual error: he mistook a drop of blood-red rust for an extension of the wound on Huang’s hand, thinking the wire was bleeding. The metallic chill pressed against the skin of his neck, a cold blade.

The ground was damp soil mixed with rotting leaves, the smell sickly sweet, like the scent of bleeding gums.

Huang Jinye grabbed his left wrist and pulled him up. Upon contact, Wei Zhiheng felt the palm was hot, a branding iron, while his own wrist was cold, a corpse. The calluses on Huang Jinye’s palm rubbed against his skin like sandpaper. Blood dripped from Huang’s hand and splashed onto the surface of Wei Zhiheng’s canvas shoes—there was an old stain there, the mark of dried turpentine, yellowish-brown with cracked edges. The blood drop landed in the center of the oil stain, the color deepening like ink dropped onto an old painting.

“Your hand,” Wei Zhiheng said.

Huang Jinye raised his right hand. The blood had already reached his fingertips, dripping onto the withered leaves, which turned dark as they absorbed the moisture. Wei Zhiheng pulled a gray cotton handkerchief from his trouser pocket; it was stained with paint. He pressed it against the wound. The handkerchief was coarse, and as it rubbed the injury, Huang Jinye’s fingers convulsed and his knuckles turned white, but he did not pull away. Blood soaked through the fabric, forming a purplish-black halo on the gray surface, like a watercolor wash.

The two of them walked south along the dirt path at the foot of the mountain, passing through a eucalyptus forest. The rustling of the eucalyptus leaves sounded like sandpaper grinding bone. The fallen leaves on the ground were about five centimeters thick; stepping on them caused a collapse, the muffled sound of internal organs being squeezed.

Fourteen minutes later, they reached the Cheng River embankment. The concrete bank was riddled with cracks, weeds growing from the fissures, their leaves withered and yellow. The beach below the embankment was grayish-white, the sand coarse, a product of weathered limestone. The river formed a backwater bay here, the current slow and the water surface a dark green—the underground river from the upstream Tunbang Tianchuang surged out here. The water temperature was 16°C, creating a temperature difference with the air that caused white mist to rise from the surface, like breathing.

Huang Jinye took off his school jacket and threw it on the beach; it was blue, printed with “Guixi No. 2 High School 055” on the back. Then he pulled his black athletic tank top over his head, baring his upper body. The lines of his back muscles shifted between light and shadow in the afternoon glow: the trapezius bulged like stones, the latissimus dorsi spread like cliff faces, and the spinal groove sank deep like a fissure. His skin was bronze, covered in grayish-white powder—the stone dust from his mother’s factory, mixed with sweat into a paste that was embedded in his pores, un-washable. Those few spots of chalk dust stuck below his right scapula, white patches like unhealed wounds.

He did not enter the water immediately. Instead, he walked toward a protruding piece of limestone on the riverbank. The stone was about half a meter in diameter with a rough surface. He bent down and picked up another stone the size of a fist, then smashed it violently against the limestone.

Smash.

The stone struck the limestone with a dull thud, like a bone snapping. Shards flew; one piece grazed his calf, leaving a white mark. He continued to smash, his movements violent, repetitive, mechanical. Stone collided with stone, fragments leaping up and falling onto the beach, forming small white piles. He smashed five times until the web of his thumb split, blood mixing with the stone dust to form a red-gray mud in his palm.

Wei Zhiheng sat on a smooth rock. It was limestone, long eroded by the river, its surface grayish-white with gray chert bands. The rock was composed of layer upon layer, a flattened geological stratum. He opened his art box and took out a sketchbook—A3 size, fine-grained paper, ivory white. His left hand pressed down on the paper while his right hand held the wolf-hair brush. The tip was split like withered roots as he dipped it into ultramarine pigment.

He began to draw Huang Jinye’s back. The brushstrokes started from the spinal groove and extended downward. Seeing those few spots of chalk dust, he had a perceptual error: thinking they were salt frost crystals or the cadaveric spots of a skin disease, he dipped his brush into white pigment and dotted them over those spots, painting them as corpse-like circles. He misperceived again, seeing the contraction of the muscles as the skin tearing open, and the spinal groove as a wound. He drew this “fissure,” his lines trembling—his hand was unsteady, his platelets low, his muscle control failing—the lines were irregular waves, like fault lines on a seismograph. He increased his pressure, the brush tip sinking into the paper, the pigment soaking into the fibers to form dark trenches.

Having finished smashing the stones, Huang Jinye walked toward the water. His gait was uneven, his left knee making a grinding sound as he bent it, fluid sloshing in the joint cavity. He stepped into the river, his pace slow, testing the bottom. The water was 16°C; the moment it touched his skin, his pores constricted violently, goosebumps spreading from his ankles upward as if his skin were about to peel off. When the water reached his waist, he tucked his legs, exerted force with his core, and his body folded into a right angle beneath the surface as he dove in.

Water splashed, ripples spreading and meeting the current surging from the underground river, only to be swept away. He moved underwater, his back muscles twisting beneath the surface like geological faults shifting under pressure. He swam toward the mouth of the tianchuang where the current was swifter and the water colder, the dark green turning almost black. He stayed there for about thirty seconds before turning to swim back against the current. The stiffness in his left knee made his kicking asymmetrical; his right leg worked harder, creating irregular ripples on the surface, like a convulsion.

Wei Zhiheng continued to draw. He captured the traces of stone dust on Huang’s back—after being washed by the water, they formed gray streams flowing down the hollows of the latissimus dorsi. He drew it wrong, depicting the water trails as bloodstains and the stone dust as salt frost.

Huang Jinye swam back to the shore and stood up. Water flowed down his back, washing away the residual stone dust. The white powder was diluted into a grayish-white liquid, flowing down the spinal groove and pooling at his waist before dripping off. The chalk dust spots had been faded by the water but had not completely disappeared, becoming faint white marks like healing scars. He walked toward the beach, his steps heavy, his wet footprints collapsing into the sand with blurred edges.

He stopped two meters away from Wei Zhiheng, his back turned, and began to wring out his hair. Water dripped from the ends of his hair, sliding down the bridge of his nose to hang from his chin, stretching. He did not wipe his back; his hands could not reach the scapular region.

Wei Zhiheng took a pack of wet wipes from the side pocket of his art box. It was individually wrapped in plastic, printed with the words “Bactericidal and Disinfectant,” with a serrated easy-tear edge. He pinched the packaging between his thumb and forefinger and tore it open—the plastic made a crisp tearing sound, like cloth being violently ripped—and took out the wipe. It was made of non-woven fabric, white and square, saturated with liquid, emitting a strong fragrance—an artificial lemon scent, heavily chemical and pungent, clashing with the sickly sweet smell of the river.

He did not hand it over. Instead, he pointed the serrated edge of the plastic packaging toward Huang Jinye, his fingers pinching the sharp points as if holding a blade.

Huang Jinye turned around and reached out to snatch the wipe. The movement was fast and rough, his fingers brushing across Wei Zhiheng’s palm, taking the skin’s warmth with them. He snatched it by grabbing Wei’s wrist and pulling the wipe from between his fingers, leaving red marks where the plastic edge had pressed into Wei’s palm. He turned his back to Wei Zhiheng again and began to wipe his back. It wasn’t wiping, it was scrubbing—the wipe made a coarse friction sound against the skin, like sandpaper grinding limestone. He scrubbed his trapezius with force, then his latissimus dorsi, his movements violent as if he wanted to scrub off a layer of skin. The wipe left red marks on his skin, and the stone dust was rubbed into a gray sludge, embedded in the fibers of the wipe. The chalk dust spots were rubbed into a gray paste, blending into the grime on the wipe.

Wei Zhiheng observed: the skin on Huang’s back was scrubbed red, the stone dust traces becoming red-gray abrasions, as if the fault lines on a geological map were being forcibly erased. The muscles contracted during the scrubbing, the contours of the latissimus dorsi shifting like a mountain moving.

He continued to draw. He captured these red marks from the violent scrubbing—a faint blood color contrasting with the bronze background. The lines were short and intermittent; the skin was screaming.

Having finished his back, Huang Jinye flipped the wipe over and continued to scrub his arms. The wipe was already dirty, having absorbed stone dust and water stains, its color turning gray. He crumpled it into a ball in his palm and wrung it out with force—moisture was squeezed out, dripping onto the beach to form dark circles. He kept wringing, his knuckles turning white, the wipe deforming in his palm as the non-woven fibers snapped with faint tearing sounds. He wanted to crush this layer of cloth, to wring a neck.

He turned to face Wei Zhiheng. Water dripped from the ends of his hair, slid down the bridge of his nose, and hung from his chin, stretching, about to fall. A drop of water hung below his jawline, surface tension maintaining its hemispherical shape, the light refracting inside it like a transparent cell.

The movement stopped.

The water drop hung suspended; time was stretched thin. Wei Zhiheng stared at that drop, watching the moment the surface tension was about to break—the neck of the drop connecting it to the skin grew thinner and thinner, an umbilical cord about to sever. He counted his own heartbeats: one, two, three.

The drop fell.

It detached from the jaw and plummeted, its trajectory a parabola, striking Wei Zhiheng’s drawing paper—landing on the bottom right corner of the sketch of the back, at the edge of the latissimus dorsi.

The drop struck the paper with a faint sound, like the ticking of a second hand. The water spread across the surface of the pigment, the ultramarine being diluted and blooming outward. The paper fibers absorbed the water and swelled, the texture softening as the pigment seeped deeper, leaving a stain.

Wei Zhiheng stopped his brush. He stared at the blooming spot, watching the color diffuse, merge, and settle in the water. He put down his brush; the shaft made a crisp sound as it touched the rock.

Huang Jinye walked over and bent down to look at the drawing. His breath fanned over the top of Wei Zhiheng’s head, hot and hurried, smelling of the river. He saw the water stain on the paper, that irregular smudge, but said nothing. His right hand still held the crumpled, ruined wipe; water seeped from between his fingers and dripped onto the rock, meeting the blood and oil stains on Wei Zhiheng’s shoe—blood, oil, water, and stone dust mixed on the shoe to form a red-yellow-brown-gray mud, a geological sequence.

The school broadcast drifted from the distance, the bell for the end of class. The sound waves traveled along the river surface, becoming blurred and low. The two sat on the rock with the unfinished sketch between them. The chemical scent of the wet wipe hung in the air, an artificial film covering the fishy smell of the river.

Huang Jinye suddenly reached out. He didn’t take the drawing, but instead grabbed Wei Zhiheng’s right wrist. He turned Wei’s hand over and looked at the palm—there were several new bruises there, a purplish-black. He pressed one of them with his thumb, using force as if to push it into the bone. Simultaneously, the index finger of his left hand picked at the scabbed scratch on the back of his own right hand, a cross-shaped scab. He picked until the edges curled up and beads of blood seeped out from beneath.

“Does it hurt?” Huang Jinye asked, his finger picking at the scab, blood dripping onto the back of his own hand, new blood covering the old scab.

Wei Zhiheng flinched but did not pull his hand away. He looked at the scratch on the back of Huang Jinye’s hand; the blood had scabbed over into a dark red cross intersecting with his palm lines. He had a perceptual error, seeing the cross-shaped scab on Huang’s hand as the jagged end of the wire fence, thinking Huang’s hand had been pierced through. He reached out to touch it, his fingertip meeting the edge of the scab—coarse, hard, like stone.

Huang Jinye released his wrist and instead picked up the plastic packaging of the wet wipe—it was empty, blown by the wind against the sand. He picked it up, crumpled it into a ball, and stuffed it into his shorts pocket along with the ruined wipe. The plastic rubbed against the wet cloth with a rustling sound.

Just then, a fragment of limestone rolled to Wei Zhiheng’s feet. It was a shard that had flown off when Huang was smashing the stones earlier; its edges were sharp and white, and it had bumped against his ankle. Wei Zhiheng bent down to pick it up—not out of initiative, but because the bump forced him to deal with it. The fragment cut a shallow mark into his palm, and beads of blood seeped out, mixing with the stone dust on the shard. He put the fragment into the side pocket of his art box, next to the bottle of turpentine. The leather of the side pocket was sliced by the shard’s edge, leaving a slit.

The river continued to flow, the 16°C water neither slow nor fast, carrying away heat, carrying away pigment, carrying away the changes occurring on the surface of the paper. Wei Zhiheng gripped the bloody fragment, his fingers tightening; the coarseness of the stone dust mixed with the wetness of the blood, feeling just like a stone.