On the fourth day of tutoring, after school, Jiang Yuchi saw Xin Su through the car window. He was wearing headphones and carrying a canvas bag.
She guessed he must be listening to English audio exercises.
She told the driver, Xinzhi, to pull the car over in front of a quiet alley ahead. As Xin Su walked by, she opened the door wide and invited him inside.
Xin Su hesitated for a moment before accepting her offer; he was already on his way to the Young Miss's house for the tutoring session anyway.
He had intended to sit in the passenger seat, but the Young Miss was already waving him over from the backseat. Her smile was radiant, and she called out to him, "Little Teacher," in a tone that sounded a bit affected.
He could not refuse.
After getting in, Jiang Yuchi took the initiative to cross the subtle boundary between them, grabbing one of his earbuds as she said, "Teacher, I want to improve my English, too."
There was no surprise—it was truly just English audio. Xin Su was so easy to understand, transparent at a single glance.
At first, Jiang Yuchi managed to prop herself up to listen to a few segments, but she soon began to grow drowsy. Her head drifted softly until it rested on Xin Su's shoulder.
Xin Su’s gaze turned unnaturally toward the window. He looked out at the boundless expanse of blue; the sunlight scattered across the sea, fragmented into tiny pieces. Every dancing glimmer of light seemed to be imprinted with the Young Miss’s face.
On the seventh day of tutoring, Jiang Yuchi confessed her feelings to Xin Su.
"Do you want to try dating me?"
Her tone was arrogant, as if she were doing him a favor.
Xin Su remained silent, his lips pressed tightly together, refusing to answer. After Jiang Yuchi shook his arm, persistently urging him for a response, he finally couldn't help but speak: "You don't like me. What are you trying to rebel against by using me?"
Jiang Yuchi stiffened all over. A moment later, she let go of his arm as if nothing had happened and said, "Forget it if you won't agree."He had known the Young Miss was no ordinary person from the very first day he flipped through her final exams from the previous semester.
It was not easy for a good student to score low on purpose. Among those chaotic test papers were many where she had already written down the correct answers only to cross them out, or where she had drawn the right auxiliary lines only to erase them.
He did not know why the Young Miss did this, but in that very instant, every drop of blood in his body had surged, nearly taking over his senses and making him nod in a daze.
Yet the timing was wrong. It could not be now.
He was climbing a spiraling staircase, while the Young Miss reached out from above, inviting him to dance and plunge into the abyss together.
It was the sweetest trap in the world.
And yet, Xin Su felt that perhaps he could pull her back up.
Following her rejected "confession", Jiang Yuchi treated Xin Su like thin air for half a month, right up until a weekend when the driver, Xinzhi, asked with some hesitation if he could borrow a car for the day.
A dedicated driver borrowing his employer's car to attend to personal matters was nothing out of the ordinary, and since Xinzhi had always been a conscientious and reliable driver, Jiang Yuchi naturally did not refuse. She merely asked out of idle curiosity what he needed it for.
Thus, when a reluctant Xin Su climbed into the car that day, the Young Miss was already inside, and the two of them ignored each other completely.
The car drove toward Enming Temple, an island sanctuary renowned for its incense, housing all manner of deities and Buddhas and famed across the island for its miraculous efficacy.
Xin Su's parents had crossed five mountains to reach the town, and using spare change to make a call from a public payphone to Xinzhi's number, their very first words had been, "Ah-zhi, you simply must find the time to bring Su to the temple to pray."
Xin Su did not believe in gods or Buddhas, but he could do nothing against the fact that his entire village did, and with absolute conviction at that.Before he could even speak after taking the phone from his uncle, his parents’ voices came crashing down on him, warning him not to forget his roots just because he had left home. They insisted he make time to pray, claiming that his good grades were entirely due to their daily, devout offerings to the Buddha.
He couldn't argue with them. They had crossed so many mountains just to find a signal to speak with him, and he had no room to refuse such a minor request.
However, accustomed to a life of austerity, he didn't follow their instructions to buy extravagant offerings. Instead, he simply picked a fresh-looking apple from a roadside stall, washed it, wrapped it up, and planned to offer it to the deities.
As it turned out, when he saw the Young Miss looking listless on the road, he handed that very apple to her, pretending it had been in the car all along.
When the car stopped in front of Enming Temple, Xinzhi parted ways with them. He had been married for two years without a child, so he went to the Guanyin Hall to pray to the Goddess of Mercy for a child.
Having eaten the apple he provided, the Young Miss’s attitude toward him improved significantly. With a crescent-shaped smile, she led him to draw a fortune. The person responsible for interpreting the lots said that the Young Miss had drawn a positive fortune, signifying that whatever she yearned for would come to pass.
It was a common auspicious platitude; telling people what they wanted to hear was never wrong.
Yet, this single sentence was enough to make the Young Miss beam with delight, and she transferred 8,888 on the spot as an offering.
Xin Su could not contain his curiosity and… a vague sense of expectation.
By the time he snapped back to reality, he realized he had already unwittingly blurted out the question in his heart.
"What did you pray for?"
"You want to know?" Jiang Yuchi curled her lips into a wicked smile, deliberately leaning close to his ear to whisper, "I prayed for my grandfather to die soon."
"Jiang Yuchi, speaking recklessly about life and death inside a temple is a grave taboo."
"And so what?" She pulled away from him, completely unconcerned, and said with disdain, "I never believed in this stuff anyway."
With that, she sat bored on a bench outside the hall, playing with her phone, while Xin Su turned and walked back into the hall filled with gods and Buddhas.
*I don’t believe in it either,* Xin Su thought to himself.
In the past, seeing his parents living such meager lives only to make offerings to gods and Buddhas, he had found them ignorant and ridiculous. He regarded their talk of accumulating virtue, karmic obstacles, and retribution as nothing more than empty nonsense.
But now, faced with the Young Miss’s fearlessness, he felt an inexplicable trepidation. Following the way his parents had taught him, he bought incense, lit it, and knelt devoutly on the prayer mat to pray.
On the return trip, their roles were reversed. This time, it was Jiang Yuchi pestering him, asking, "What was it that you went back inside to pray for?"
"Nothing special. Just academic success," he said, lowering his eyes to hide the myriad of thoughts swirling within them.
The Young Miss muttered that he was boring and went back to playing on her phone.
Only Xin Su knew that when he first stepped into the hall filled with gods and Buddhas, his heart had been utterly calm. They were merely beautifully carved works of art with aesthetic value, nothing more.
In the past, he had tried to pull his parents out of the vortex of superstition. Presenting facts and reasoning with them had proven futile; they would always shut him up with a single, airy sentence:
"In matters like this, it is better to believe they exist than to assume they do not."
*Better to believe they exist than to assume they do not.*
Stepping into that hall for the second time, he suddenly felt as if every god and Buddha had come to life, glaring at him with fury.
He knelt down and prayed with the utmost sincerity in his heart:
"May Jiang Yuchi’s wish come true. If there is any karmic retribution, let it fall upon me."