Calling it a supernatural event was surely overstating things, but seeing Huang Haobing and the rest of the kids spend the summer vacation not going out to play but holed up in the dining room doing test papers—that came about as close to supernatural as anything got.
In the Huang household there were seven or eight children about Jiaming's age, and some of the relatives had sent their children to the big city for the summer too, so all told there were more than ten of them, most of them now gathered around the long dining table working on something that looked like a test paper.
Of the three adults keeping watch, one was Huang Bingxing, whom Jiaming had to call Third Uncle; the other man and woman were both young, around twenty.
The man was Huang Bingxing's son, Huang Haoyun, long the very model of the Huang family's spoiled young masters—never at home, throwing his weight around outside on the strength of the family name, and usually to be found in the company of young masters of the same stripe.
Just now, though, Huang Haoyun looked thoroughly well-behaved, his face wreathed in smiles, and the reason was naturally the girl beside him. She looked no more than twenty, wore narrow-rimmed glasses, and had the sort of intellectual beauty that drew the eye; a faint smile hung at the corners of her mouth, but Jiaming could tell she was thoroughly sick of this young master chirping away at her side. Laughing to himself, he was about to head back to his room when Huang Bingxing called him back.
"Jiaming. Hold on a moment."
"Third Uncle?"
"Put your things away, then come out and do a test paper."
"Oh."
Jiaming put the travel pack he had bought back in his room. When he came out again, he learned that this beauty was named Zhang Yahan; her family was quite prominent in Jianghai City too, and she had supposedly just come home from studying at Cambridge.
She was going to teach at the elite high school newly built in Jianghai City, and had come this time to get a sense of the caliber of the children who might enter that academy.
On the other hand, Huang Haoyun clearly had a crush on her, and Huang Bingxing, for his part, naturally wanted to use the occasion to push a marriage alliance between the two families.
Jiaming could deduce this sort of thing among aristocratic families from a few scraps of conversation. Once it was clear he had just graduated from elementary school, Zhang Yahan picked out a test paper for him, and he could just catch Huang Haoyun saying off to the side, "His grades have always been bad..."
Jiaming laughed inwardly and put on a show of gnawing at his pen for a good long while before answering, the better to suggest the questions were hard. He had always kept his marks hovering around sixty or seventy, so this time he got a little over sixty points' worth right—a pass was all he needed.
When the time was about up, Lingjing ran in to fetch him. After he handed in the paper, the two of them left together for the martial arts school. During the test Jiaming had several times caught Huang Haoyun's eyes drifting over to Lingjing.
She was thirteen now, and girls grow early; she already stood half a head taller than Jiaming, a little beauty anyone would take a liking to on sight. Jiaming of course knew what that look in Haoyun's eyes meant.
It wouldn't come to anything yet, but he was already quietly considering whether to slip the fellow something tonight that would leave him impotent for life, and nip the future trouble in the bud.
After dinner at the martial arts school, while they were watching TV, Jiaming casually put a few questions to Lingjing, and when she could answer only a few of them, only then did he realize something was wrong. Uh-oh. For Jiaming, keeping his exam scores under control was easy; gauging how hard an exam was was not. He had secretly read through the high school curriculum once, and to him the high school material and the elementary material were equally unchallenging. Don't tell me this test really is that hard? The thought filled him with misgiving.
It was already nine by the time he got back to the villa, and the hall was ablaze with lights; the several Huang elders now living there were all entertaining this top student home from Cambridge. From Steward Bai he learned that Miss Zhang would be staying the night, and that Huang Bingxing and the others all seemed very interested in the match between the two families.
As he passed by the hall, Zhang Yahan glanced over at him, whether on purpose or not, and Jiaming knew that things were indeed going to be troublesome. Sure enough, shortly after he got back to his room, a knock came at the door.
"Who is it? I'm going to bed."
"It's Sister Yahan, from today. They said you never go to bed this early—are you really asleep?"
Sister Yahan. Ugh, gross... Jiaming sighed in exasperation, went over and opened the door. "Something you need?"
"May I come in?"
"Oh."
He stepped aside and surveyed the contents of the room, and his head ached a little again. His room was in fact very simple—nothing but a chair, a desk, a bed, a stack of books in the corner with the baseball bat Huaisha had given him propped against it, and a mess of odds and ends on the desk, among them a radio taken apart. His wariness had dulled over the years and he hadn't had time to put things away, but it was only half assembled; surely no one could guess that he was practicing making bombs.
Looking at the radio on the desk, Zhang Yahan gave him a sweet smile. "Jiaming, can you repair this sort of thing yourself? How impressive."
Something moved in Jiaming's heart; then he shut the door and flopped onto the bed with an air of laziness. "It's just a little thing. I took it apart to have a look. And please don't talk to me in that simpering baby voice, all right? It's disgusting."
The Young and Dangerous movies hadn't come out yet in those days, but there was no shortage of thugs and hoodlums out there. Jiaming's act had its effect: Zhang Yahan frowned, then smiled and said, "I asked the others. They all say you run around with hoodlums, that your grades are terrible, that you barely scrape a pass. But this time you still passed... Here's your paper. I picked up the wrong one earlier—this is actually an exercise sheet meant for junior high graduates..."
Jiaming laughed to himself, took the paper back, glanced at it, and tossed it aside. "I can pass just by guessing blind, and it's a paper for junior high students besides. And another thing: when you're in the life, loyalty comes before everything. You badmouth my friends, so I don't want to talk to you anymore. Out! Brother Haoyun's still waiting for you to go to bed, isn't he?"
"What kind of child are you..." Zhang Yahan flushed. "There's nothing at all between Huang Haoyun and me, you..."
"What's that got to do with me?" Jiaming muttered. Zhang Yahan was plainly beside herself at this piece of sheer unreasonableness, and no longer had the appetite to probe further. "Good night," she said, and left in a huff.
The next day, when Zhang Yahan left the Huang house, Jiaming had already gone to the martial arts school; otherwise he'd surely have caught a few glares. A few days after that, the summer camp finally began. That morning the three of them didn't go out for their run; each hauling a big camping backpack, they met at the gate of the Ye Family Martial Arts School.
Over the summer Liu Huaisha had cut her hair short, and with a crisp short-sleeved shirt and climbing pants she looked like a tomboy. Lingjing's outfit was much the same, but on her it came off bright and cute. Girls grow early, and both of them were now half a head taller than Jiaming; add in Jiaming's ordinary looks, and the three of them looked for all the world like a servant trailing two young ladies about town. Being that unremarkable was exactly the effect Jiaming had always aimed for.
The camp was advertised as a student summer camp, but when the three of them reached the meeting point they discovered that the participants were basically all junior high and high school students. They trickled in until there were twenty-two in all, counting the three of them; three girls who looked to be high schoolers had also come together, and everyone else was male.
The group leader was a man in his twenties who looked reasonably dependable, the sunny, cheerful type. After he had roughly called the roll and confirmed everyone was present, the bus pulled up. It was only as he was getting on that Jiaming noticed the man and woman aboard greeting the leader—none other than Zhang Yahan and Huang Haoyun.