Heading for the Plains - Chapter 22

After that night, everything returned to normal. Or rather, nothing had been “abnormal” to begin with.

Xia Chao suddenly became incredibly busy. Zhu Cijing’s overnight stay hadn’t been for nothing; through her connections, Ping Yuan found an old schoolmate now teaching in a middle school to inquire about repeating a year. Remarkably, they found a high school willing to accept Xia Chao’s files.

It was a proper public high school with a rigorous academic atmosphere. While not a top-tier provincial key school and its students weren’t all geniuses, its success rate for getting students into good universities was solid. Most importantly, unlike other schools, they didn’t open their mouths and demand a “temporary student fee” of over 100,000 yuan.

Xia Chao knew immediately that Ping Yuan must have used up favors and put in significant effort. The world of school placements is a deep, murky pool. Ping Yuan was a detached person who preferred “friendships as light as water,” so this hustle must have been exhausting for her.

Enrollment required passing a unified school exam. With the senior year start date looming, the test was set for mid-August. Time was of the essence. Logically, Xia Chao should have quit the milk tea shop to focus entirely on prep, but during her interview, she had promised to work a full-term schedule and never “run away” halfway through.

The boomerang she’d thrown half a month ago had finally come back to hit her, leaving her seeing stars. Xia Chao really wanted to slap herself: Weren’t you the one so “death before surrender” about not going back to school? Now look who’s tripped over their own feet.

But she had no choice. The manager had hired her based on that solemn promise, and now that summer business was at a fever pitch, they couldn’t find a replacement on short notice. Xia Chao wasn’t ungrateful; she couldn’t leave them in the lurch. She agreed to stay for another two weeks until a new hire was found.

With her days gone, catching up meant burning the midnight oil. Ping Yuan favored “iron-blooded” tactics, and now that a school was on the line, both felt like soldiers with their backs to the river—there was no turning back.

Building a foundation through a “carpet search” of the textbooks was too slow. Ping Yuan asked her friend for last year’s mock exams and printed them alongside past Gaokao papers. She made Xia Chao start from the oldest years, then explained the sections where she made the most mistakes.

It wasn’t a stable, systematic way of learning; it was a desperate commando raid to pass the entrance test. They both knew that only by getting in would the actual Gaokao even become a possibility.

Consequently, Xia Chao didn’t complain about Ping Yuan’s strictness. It was just that the intensity was… a lot. Every night she studied until she saw stars, feeling like a force-fed goose. When she slept, her dreams weren’t about normal things; she was either solving coordinate axes with simultaneous equations or calculating the deflection path of charged particles.

Despite this, her first “diagnostic test” was a massacre of red ink. Seeing the sea of red “X” marks, Ping Yuan even put on her glasses, seemingly unsure whether she was trying to find points to give or points to take away.

She looked at the tragic stack of papers, tapped the table, and unconsciously adopting the tone of a seasoned high school teacher said, “You can’t even apply the basic formulas? How did you take this? Didn’t I tell you before? If you run into this type of problem, write the formula first. That’s a guaranteed five points.”

“We had a deal. If you miss a ‘gimme’ question, you get your palm swatted,” Ping Yuan said lazily, sitting on the sofa. “Three questions. Three swats. Hand out.”

Xia Chao piteously extended her hand. Pa, pa, pa. Three light taps.

Ping Yuan wouldn’t actually hit her hard; that would be corporal punishment. These three taps were more of a lighthearted tease. The physical pain was zero, but the shame was absolute. Making such a fool of herself in front of a sister who was both teacher and guardian was enough to make the prideful girl’s face turn beet-red. She would remember those three formulas for the rest of her life.

Xia Chao, being herself, only thought to explain after the punishment was over. “It’s not that I didn’t know I should list the formula…” she whispered. “I just… forgot the formula for a second.”

It was a logical explanation. At the start of learning, logic and “the way through” are more important than rote formulas, which can be practiced later. That’s the advantage of the “sea of problems” tactic.

As long as she doesn’t forget the lesson, Ping Yuan thought, a faint smile appearing. “I know.”

“Then you still…!” Xia Chao cried out, aggrieved, before the realization hit her halfway through. “You did it on purpose!” She huffed and glared. “You only made that bet so you could hit me three times!”

The way she said it made Ping Yuan sound like a villain. But Ping Yuan realized she actually enjoyed being a bit “bad.” At least since that night, she found she liked teasing Xia Chao. It was a very, very new discovery.

She didn’t deny it, giving a triumphant smirk. “Yes, I did.”

That smile was striking. It wasn’t that her previous smiles weren’t beautiful, but they were usually just a slight curve of the lips—thin and light, like a white orchid in a cold mist. A fragile stem, a slender leaf, a gentle sway in the haze before vanishing. But this smile was like the one from that night: full of mischievous triumph, clear and bright like a sudden splash of spring water.

That splash hit Xia Chao’s eyes—arrogant, provocative, more vivid and real than the night mist, and infinitely more shimmering. It hit Xia Chao so hard she wanted to say something, but she found herself momentarily dazed.

Ping Yuan waved a hand in front of her. “What’s wrong? Stunned by anger?”

She was always so good at saying things that made one’s teeth itch. Xia Chao looked at her at the thin lenses on her elegant nose— nd blurted out, “You really are like a teacher.”

Ping Yuan raised an eyebrow behind her glasses. “I am your teacher right now.”

Xia Chao blinked, and for reasons she didn’t understand, she started to drawl her words slowly. “I mean… the kind with a megaphone who likes to say, ‘You can’t even do this? You’re the worst class I’ve ever taught!'”

Pa. Ping Yuan tapped her again—not hard, not truly angry. She smiled slightly. “You are indeed the silliest student I’ve ever taught.”

She clearly didn’t think the comment had much bite, and she was right.

But Xia Chao’s mood suddenly soured.

She knew she was being ironic. No teacher was less like a teacher than the Ping Yuan of this moment. No “proper” teacher would wear loose, soft pajamas, let their freshly washed hair hang loose, and lean lazily against a sofa, propping their head with one hand and holding a ruler with the other while looking at a student with a teasing, slanted gaze.

The glasses on her nose were the most common style—thin silver frames, bright lenses—adding just a hint of coldness to her. But only a hint. Like a cool finger or a stray drop of cold rain down one’s neck, it only served to make one more aware of the warmth of their own body.

In that instant, Xia Chao remembered the rainy night. Ping Yuan’s arms around her neck, the warm breath. She had listened to the cold rain outside while her heart felt a steady, chaotic heat.

The rain that night might have actually been warm; it was July, after all, and the “Minor Heat” of summer was coming. On those hot nights, the cicadas screamed. She remembered nights in her hometown, where the relationship between humans and nature was closer than in the city. The crisp sounds of katydids and crickets rose from the “green veils” of the crops. The reeds were turned white by the moon. If she closed her eyes, she could count how many types of insects were singing outside the window.

She knew that in this all-encompassing darkness, far beyond the thousands of miles of fields and green mountains, her hometown was in the season of wild, growing greenery.

Humans are not plants, yet they suffer from insomnia because of it. She looked at Ping Yuan, wondering why these thoughts were surfacing. She instinctively felt her thoughts were a bit “offensive”—offensive to Ping Yuan’s sleepy mumbles, and offensive to the way Ping Yuan had unguardedly tangled her legs with Xia Chao’s. In the haze of the night, it had gone unnoticed, but now, facing Ping Yuan’s clear eyes, she was suddenly panicked.

Her sarcastic retort had been a defense. It was like two martial arts masters meeting in a dream—their swords humming with excitement in their sheaths—only to wake up just before the blades drew blood, instinctively pinching themselves to fall back into the sober reality.

Perhaps “escape” was a better word for the feeling, even if the one escaping didn’t know what they were running from.

She could only sulk by herself. Ping Yuan watched her, having no idea what was going on in the girl’s head. She even wondered if she’d teased Xia Chao a bit too harshly. The girl’s face had been flushed red with embarrassment. Ping Yuan reflected on how she’d been leaning back, maybe she had gotten a bit carried away.

Anyone who has survived the Gaokao tends to feel a bit of a teasing impulse when watching a junior struggle with the same problems. Ping Yuan used to find this boring—like how she, who was exempt from PE tests, never understood why the kids who finished the 800-meter run loved to stand by the track and watch others suffer. Now she understood. The girl was thin-skinned and good-natured; she always took the biting comments without baring her claws, which made Ping Yuan want to provoke her even more.

Realizing she might have actually upset her, Ping Yuan felt a rare sliver of guilt. This guilt intensified when she looked at Xia Chao’s sea of red “X” marks. She realized she hadn’t told Xia Chao that her problem-solving logic was actually quite good.

Better late than never. Xia Chao had already sat back down to correct her mistakes. Ping Yuan hurried over and patted her shoulder. When Xia Chao looked up, her face was completely clear of any gloom. She blinked her clear eyes and asked confusedly, “What is it?”

The sulking from a moment ago felt like a hallucination. Ping Yuan froze, her prepared apology dying in her throat. Now it was her turn to feel a bit stifled. She bit the inside of her cheek.

Finally, she adopted her teacher persona and pointed out a few red checkmarks in the study guide. “Prioritize these questions I’ve checked. Combine them with the points I explained tonight to consolidate your knowledge.”

She had checked them in advance. Xia Chao was surprised. “When did you write these?”

“At work,” Ping Yuan said, looking puzzled. “Where would I find the time at night? I’m either cooking with you or doing problems with you.”

Doing this and that—her schedule was packed. For the first time, she was glad she’d bought a dishwasher; it saved so much time.

Though, flipping through a high school workbook in her office was a bit embarrassing. Having worked hard for years, she had a prestigious title and her own private office—sleek, modern, and decorated in her personal palette of grey, white, black, and blue. Yet there, hidden behind her professional folders, was a bright yellow and purple book. She had been “slacking off” by solving high school problems behind her folders like a thief.

Thinking about it made her want to laugh.

But Xia Chao didn’t laugh. She nodded seriously and said, “Okay. Thank you, Sister.”

Their dynamic had flipped; now Xia Chao was the serious one. Ping Yuan lingered for a moment, watching her bury her head in the “sea of problems,” her back as straight as a poplar tree. Ping Yuan suddenly felt like she had nothing to do.

Definitely a hallucination, she thought. Who would actually want to watch someone else run the 800-meter? It was boring.

But she didn’t want to look idle. In moments like this, whoever looked distracted felt like the one who was losing. Her hair was dry now; a stray lock fell over her eyes. She brushed it and her strange thoughts—behind her ear, pursed her lips, and went back to her room to read.

It wasn’t until her door clicked shut that Xia Chao’s tense back relaxed. She looked up and stole a glance at Ping Yuan’s door.

It was closed tight. Ping Yuan usually listened to music while reading, and they didn’t disturb each other. Xia Chao relaxed, unaware that her behavior was a bit “suspicious,” and unaware that Ping Yuan didn’t have eyes in the back of her head, from where she usually sat to read, she couldn’t see if Xia Chao was looking up from the dining table.

She was just panicking by herself.

She was still too young. At eighteen, and having spent so much time in hospitals because of Xia Ling, she had no friends her own age. She didn’t know that in high school, a person a girl claims to hate most is often the one she secretly loves. Even more, she didn’t know that the phrase “falling in love” uses the word “falling” because the moment of attraction often feels like a sensation of fear.

It is a moment both tender and cruel. Like an army collapsing; you don’t even know who to surrender to.

Perhaps ten years from now, looking back, she would understand. But now, eighteen-year-old Xia Chao just took a long, deep breath, tossed her pen aside, and forced herself to push those messy thoughts away.

You have an exam, Xia Chao! You can’t calculate conic sections or solve trigonometric functions, and you’re here worrying about these tiny emotions? You can’t fail the entrance exam and then shamelessly live at Ping Yuan’s house!

That would be so embarrassing!

She gave her hair a sharp tug. The tightening of her scalp brought back a sense of urgency. Xia Chao took a deep breath, picked up her pen, and threw herself into her work.

The “sea of problems” tactic worked. One problem brought peace, two brought detachment, and by the third, she was so lost in her scratch paper that she didn’t know where she was. Her thoughts became clear through the rows of formulas, and she felt settled again.

By the time she finished her work and checked her answers, it was 11:30 PM. Her accuracy on the later problems was good. Xia Chao stretched and looked up; Ping Yuan’s door was still closed. Ping Yuan used a focused reading light that only illuminated her book, so Xia Chao didn’t know if she was asleep or not.

But that wasn’t something she should worry about. Xia Chao yawned, feeling like she could get a good night’s sleep tonight.

If only she hadn’t gotten up in the middle of the night and run into an insomniac Ping Yuan in the living room.

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