Chapter 007: Rain Threads and Windblown Petals, Spring at Its Fairest—As Though from Someone’s Peony Pavilion
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“So you’re the teacher they were talking about?”
“I suppose I am.” Cheng Heng gave a shy smile, disguising his embarrassment. He turned around, picked up the scroll beside him, and held it out to the other man. “Since we’ve met by such a coincidence, we might as well get acquainted. My name is Cheng Heng. I studied opera directing.”
At that, Cheng Heng felt that he had made a rather sorry mess of his life. As a director, he had been unable to lead his classmates in demanding the money they were owed. Now he had become a teacher, only to be accused of violating all propriety.
“If they weren’t talking about you, who else could they mean?” Guan Yin accepted the scroll and sighed. He could not help feeling that this person was rather childish. “Other than you, who else would teach the students The Romance of the Western Chamber?”
“Hello. I’m Guan Yin, a trainee middle-school history teacher.” After briefly scanning the words on the scroll, Guan Yin extended his right hand and shook Cheng Heng’s.
“Teaching them The Romance of the Western Chamber—aren’t you afraid someone will report you to the authorities?” Guan Yin did not believe that people who worked in theater could study the history of opera without knowing how dangerous this was. “Aren’t you afraid that you might die here and never make it back?”
Cheng Heng, who had been smiling cheerfully, shifted three steps to the side and leaned against the small desk. He tried desperately to conceal his dejection beneath an air of disdain.
After that, all that remained was avoidance.
“What if I can’t go back even if I stay alive?” Before Guan Yin’s patience could force her to speak first, Cheng Heng seemed to see through the thoughts of a student’s teacher. When he opened his mouth, he was still doing his utmost to hide his guilty conscience. “Even if I die, accomplishing something earth-shaking would not be such a bad thing.”
Guan Yin very much wanted to remind this “foolish child” of the saying: “Before the expedition even begins, the general dies.” Yet exposing the frailty of someone already so vulnerable seemed somewhat unethical.
“What about you? What are you doing?” Cheng Heng tossed the question back at her. “I have neither elderly parents above me nor young children below me. Aside from teaching the students, there is nothing much I need to worry about exposing.”
Guan Yin had refrained from striking at the other’s sore spot, only to be struck herself. If she could send an image right now, it would certainly be one of a bloodstain trickling from the corner of her mouth…
“To tell you the truth, the work I’m doing now should count as something like an ancient playwright’s work. But I truly can’t write it.” Perhaps meeting Cheng Heng was precisely what she needed to resolve this problem. Guan Yin knew that delay invited complications, so she decided to explain her situation to him directly.
“Unlike you, I’m currently a person who… has a wife.”
While the other was speaking, Cheng Heng had poured himself half a cup of tea, then filled another half cup and held it out to Guan Yin.
“Pfft!” He sprayed out a mouthful of tea, hurriedly straightening his arm and moving the cup farther away.
“What did you say?”
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After a brief moment of shock, Cheng Heng’s gossiping instincts finally gained the upper hand. He poured the water in his hand onto the floor, then filled another cup.
“A woman disguised as a man?”
After receiving a roll of the eyes from the person before him, Cheng Heng put aside his curiosity and became more serious. “Try this tea. One of the students’ parents gave it to me. They said their family sells tea.”
“Oh.”
Seeing that Guan Yin still did not seem pleased, Cheng Heng hurriedly added, “The people here place great importance on education. It’s not as if I wanted to accept it.”
In ancient times, a teacher who transmitted the Way, imparted knowledge, and resolved doubts was not quite the same thing as a modern teacher. Guan Yin did not dwell on the matter or try to lecture Cheng Heng about it.
She accepted the cup he handed her. A faint orchid fragrance seemed to seep through her pores and into her skin. Guan Yin raised her eyebrows, then drank the tea.
“So she doesn’t know your true identity?” Cheng Heng finally asked a question that was actually relevant.
“She might.”
“Was the original body also a woman?”
“Yes. And it looks as though there is some history between them.”
It was not a bad idea for a playwright to reason out a plot for herself. In truth, what Guan Yin wanted to know even more was how she was supposed to continue writing that variety play, lest she starve to death because she could not repay the money.
“It wouldn’t be that…”
“No.” Guan Yin felt she might be rendered speechless by the imaginations of people who worked with words. After firmly denying Cheng Heng’s speculation, she continued explaining what she knew. “The original owner’s family seems to have been framed. After she fell into the pleasure quarters, she made a living through this kind of literary work.”
One person who wrote became a teacher after crossing into another world; another who taught became a writer. Both professions involved using knowledge to change society, yet neither was as easy as outsiders imagined.
“Can you write it?”
“I can’t.” Guan Yin knew Cheng Heng was not mocking her. She leaned against the desk and sat down. “But for some reason, the original owner already accepted payment. Now I can’t even find where… Her typhoid fever seems to have come from falling into the water.”
Turning to look at Cheng Heng, who appeared deep in thought, Guan Yin’s tone suddenly grew solemn.
“I think this matter may have something to do with the money as well.”
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“Then there ought to be a package involved.”
Even now, he still had the heart to joke. Guan Yin did not know whether to say that this person had an exceptionally good mentality or was simply too callous. “Teaching the way you do, aren’t you afraid something will happen?”
“They respect teachers and honor the Way. They won’t do anything to me lightly.”
“You do know how to lecture on the Four Books and Five Classics, don’t you?” Cheng Heng was merely putting on a brave front. Guan Yin had long since seen that he was not truly without fear. “How can you be so blatant about slipping in your own ideas?”
Even the Four Books and Five Classics could be used to explain that loyalty to the ruler meant loyalty to the people of this land, or that one did not study the sages in order to serve the sages. The reason the sages had become sages was because…
“In any case, don’t try to change the course of history through your own efforts.” As a history major, Guan Yin knew how difficult this was. She also knew that, when the level of productive forces was inadequate, such efforts might instead bring catastrophe upon ordinary people.
“The course of social history has its own inevitability.”
“Then do you know that those of us who work in the arts are supposed to identify society’s problems and envision a possibility for society to move forward?” A gunpowder scent had somehow begun to spread between them.
Perhaps Guan Yin had watched thousands of years rise and fall and had already sunk headfirst into everything deemed “unchangeable,” while Cheng Heng possessed precisely the restless fervor of a young person devoted to the arts. The two of them increasingly found themselves talking past each other.
“Do you know what those children said that forced me to teach them these things—things that could plainly get me killed?”
“Even if this world may have nothing to do with me… Forget it. Everyone has their own aspirations.”
Guan Yin very much wanted to explain that she was not denying Cheng Heng’s methods. But he seemed unwilling to continue discussing the subject.
“I may not become a teacher, but I don’t think being a teacher means merely protecting a group of children from harm.”
“But have you ever considered that, if these ideas cannot change society, they might instead get those children killed?”
The previously furious Cheng Heng fell silent as well.
Thunder began to rumble outside the door, drowning out his muttering. Guan Yin tried several times, but still could not hear him clearly.
“What did you say?”
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