Li Yingqiao’s reputation lasted all the way until they graduated from Xiao Hua City Primary School.
After that year, the kids of Xiao Hua City rarely called her “Tank” anymore.
They all, as if by agreement, started calling her “Idol,” and even made up a catchy rhyme that, on the spot, could dig out a whole Disneyland castle—
My idol is called Xiao Fang,
She cuts through substitutes, breaks through light.
Her eyes are round and bright.
Bad people get nervous and happy when they see her.
My idol is called Xiao Fang,
She can beat wolves, walk through walls.
Her twin braids are long and long,
All the child traffickers get caught, every last one.
At first, Li Yingqiao felt very proud, but later she found it terribly embarrassing.
The moment she heard someone start the chant, she would tuck her tail and run away.
If there had been a wall in front of her, she really could have run straight through it.
Li Shuli would curse and shout every time she heard them sing like that.
That day, when the police came to their door and said that, with her daughter’s help, they’d successfully caught a group of traffickers who’d recently been committing crimes in Fengtan, her heart nearly jumped out of her chest and her knees went weak.
After the police explained the whole story and praised Qiao Qiao’s cleverness several times, Li Shuli—who had seen those vicious criminals before—could hardly believe that something so earth-shattering could happen to her own daughter.
She lost all reason, grabbed the officer’s arm, and, almost without thinking, fired off three questions, “Have you caught all the traffickers? Will they retaliate against my daughter? How much do they know about her?”
The police, of course, understood her feelings as a mother and quickly tried to comfort her, but could only offer a wry smile and say, “We definitely can’t catch them all. But the ones who’ve been committing crimes in Fengtan are all in custody for now. We’ll do our best to protect Qiao Qiao’s information and safety.”
***
Still, two reporters managed to find their address from vague information.
From then on, people came to their door for interviews in an endless stream, practically putting Qiao Qiao on a pedestal that ordinary people could never hope to reach.
Li Shuli knew very well that Qiao Qiao was just a little clever, and she had never wanted to turn her daughter into a hero praised by everyone.
Ever since the police had come to their door, Li Shuli bought an extra copy of the Star River Daily every day to check if there had been any more trafficking cases in Fengtan.
The TV was always set to the local Fengtan news, never changing channels.
She never slept well at night anymore, often staring wide-eyed until dawn.
If she heard even the slightest creak from the rolling shutter door, she’d immediately get up to check if her daughter was still in bed.
Sometimes, Li Yingqiao would still lie under the covers, eating snacks, making jia zi di zi sounds in the quiet room.
Before, she’d chew carefully for fear her mother would notice; later, she’d chew loudly, afraid her mother wouldn’t notice.
***
It was a long, long time later—by then, Li Yingqiao was already in college in Beijing—when Li Shuli was cleaning up the shop to reopen it.
Her knees ached faintly as she knelt on the floor, gathering up a pile of old, yellowed copies of the Star River Daily.
Suddenly, a few sheets of yellow wax paper fell out from between the brittle pages, some still stained with oil.
She remembered how, when Qiao Qiao was little and mischievous, while other kids used plain paper to fold paper cranes for their PE lung capacity tests, her daughter insisted on using the oily paper from wrapping flatbread—because it smelled delicious, and blowing on it helped satisfy her cravings.
Li Shuli never imagined that Qiao Qiao would treasure and keep so many pieces of oily paper.
Just as she was about to throw them out, she happened to notice that on the back of each sheet, there were two lines of childish handwriting—
Wind, stop.
Rolling shutter, don’t move.
When Li Yingqiao was very young, she went through a period of constant nightmares.
Li Shuli got her a yellow talisman paper and stuck it under her pillow, and the nightmares really did go away.
Li Yingqiao must have been imitating that, even drawing messy symbols on the oily paper just like the talisman.
She drew many, but none were quite right.
There had to be one successful one—she couldn’t have made a pile of failed papers, not with her competitive streak.
Sure enough, Li Shuli found the one successful yellow wax paper under a stone behind the rolling shutter door.
Li Shuli rarely cried; she was tough as nails.
But that was the first time she couldn’t hold back her tears.
Her chest softened, and she couldn’t get up from the floor, simply collapsing and weeping.
At that moment, she couldn’t even remember when that stone had been placed there.
She only remembered that they moved away from Xiao Hua City soon after.
***
It hadn’t been easy to get Li Yingqiao through primary school, and, as expected, she didn’t get into the Experimental Middle School.
She was set to go to Xiancheng No. 2 Middle School.
It was no wonder Li Shuli had been so nervous—right after the entrance exams, those reporters, like beasts smelling blood, lurked outside the gates of Xiao Hua City, eager to dig up Qiao Qiao’s results.
She knew all too well that Qiao Qiao’s grades would become a shadow over her heroic aura, an excuse for others to criticize her.
So, without another word, Li Shuli shut down the grocery store and moved with her daughter out of Xiao Hua City.
Thus, the chapter of Li Yingqiao’s “heroic era” came to a close.
At Xiancheng No. 2 Middle School, no one knew that the girl who had once shocked the entire city—making the front page of the Star River Daily for helping the police catch a group of traffickers—was actually Li Yingqiao.
Her classmates no longer looked at her with awe; she was just an ordinary student.
She stopped standing out, stopped playing the hero; as long as trouble didn’t come to her, she ignored it.
Campus bullying at Xiancheng No. 2 was severe.
Students were often dragged to the bathrooms and bullied—slapped, clothes torn, all sorts of nasty tricks.
Teachers were at their wits’ end, scolding and lecturing every day, but nothing could put a complete stop to it.
Li Yingqiao spent her days either reading novels, watching anime, or reading manga, never paying much attention to her studies.
For her, it was just as the adults in Xiao Hua City said: entering Xiancheng No. 2, her future was already set.
Whether she went to vocational school or ended up in a factory tightening screws, it was only a matter of time.
She never returned to Xiao Hua City, never saw Yu Jinyang and the others again.
All she knew was that Yu Jinyang had placed third in the county on the entrance exam and was admitted to the Experimental Middle School.
Yu Renjie hosted a banquet for everyone from Xiao Hua City at the big hotel in town.
She and her mother moved away right after the exams and missed the feast.
Ever since Gao Dian was almost trafficked, his grades had plummeted.
He moved with his parents to study out of town.
Zheng Miaojia also got into the Experimental Middle School, just barely making the cut.
For Li Shuli’s convenience, she moved them to an apartment near the Xiancheng No. 2 Middle School, practically crossing all of Fengtan.
Li Yingqiao’s life became extremely monotonous, just a straight line between school and home, never straying more than a hundred meters from the farmers’ market.
She felt like a donkey tied to a millstone, circling the market every day.
She didn’t even run into Yu Jinyang and the others—sometimes, just to see her own classmates, she’d have to walk two extra blocks.
Until one day, she ran into Liang Mei.
Li Shuli had never put any pressure on her academically, only hoping she’d grow up healthy and happy.
The thing she said most often was, “Even if you never work a day in your life, Mom will always take care of you.”
She didn’t have to do anything to earn all of Li Shuli’s love and attention, so she never thought to put effort into her studies.
It was actually Teacher Liang Mei who found them, though no one knew how.
Afraid her information would leak and the traffickers would retaliate, Li Shuli hadn’t told anyone their new address after moving, and even considered changing her daughter’s name.
This was the only time, from childhood to now, that Li Yingqiao truly couldn’t understand Li Shuli’s paranoia.
She yelled at her, “Why should I pay the price for your constant anxiety!”
After shouting, she regretted it, wishing she could scratch herself to pieces, even though she still didn’t understand.
But after that, Li Shuli never brought up changing her name again.
***
The day Liang Mei came to visit, Li Yingqiao was sprawled on the sofa, binging a hot-blooded anime.
The protagonist was shouting with her bare fists that she was going to change this damn world!
She was totally absorbed when the doorbell rang.
Li Shuli, thinking it was a plumber, called out from the kitchen without turning her head, telling her to open the door.
But when she did, she saw Liang Mei standing there.
It wasn’t until she saw Liang Mei that Li Yingqiao realized how much she missed the carefree days in Xiao Hua City.
Even the stinky, fishy smell of the crazy harbor—she wanted to go back and breathe it in.
It felt like, after enduring the endless rainy season, she was finally basking in blazing sunlight.
Seeing Liang Mei, she was so surprised and happy, “Teacher Liang!”
That night, she didn’t know what Liang Mei and her mother talked about, but her mother actually agreed to let Teacher Liang take her out for a while.
As they left, Liang Mei put an envelope on the table.
Li Yingqiao noticed, and once they were outside, she asked, “Teacher Liang, what did you leave on our table?”
They hadn’t seen each other for nearly two years.
Li Yingqiao was about to start her third year of middle school, her figure shooting up, though her face still had the soft baby fat of childhood.
Her features were delicate, her hair tied in a neat bun, but there were still curls at her temples—she took after Li Shuli, with natural waves, which made her look even more spirited than before.
In contrast, Liang Mei’s changes were shocking.
In just two years, she’d grown gaunt, her once sharp jaw now almost knife-like.
But where her eyes had once been fierce, now they were much gentler.
Liang Mei was deeply glad she’d made this decision today—she finally saw Li Yingqiao again.
She didn’t answer the question, but stood at the entrance to the farmers’ market, the air thick with the smells of live poultry.
Her gaze swept the crowd, finally landing on a stall selling live chickens and ducks.
She turned and asked, “Li Yingqiao, have you ever thought about what you want to do in the future? Will you open a shop like your mom, or spend your whole life at the market? Or, to put it another way, have you ever thought about what kind of person you want to become?”
“You answer me, and I’ll answer your question from earlier,” Liang Mei said again.
Li Yingqiao really hadn’t thought about it, but suddenly, the line from that anime popped into her head.
Since Teacher asked, she must want a passionate answer.
“I want to change the world!”
“How? Change the world at the farmers’ market? That’s too vague—give me something more concrete. For example, if you give the chickens, ducks, and geese a stylish haircut while plucking their feathers, that’s one way to change the world too.”
Liang Mei knew she hadn’t thought it through at all, but it didn’t stop her from laughing.
She looked at her and said, “Let me take you somewhere. You can think about your answer a bit more. As for your question just now, I can answer that first. That envelope is the wages your mom earned driving the school’s refrigerated truck back then.”
Li Yingqiao only found out after moving away from Xiao Hua City that the school had asked her mom to help with refrigerated deliveries and never paid her.
They thought it’d just be a few days of help, so it didn’t matter, but she ended up driving for a whole year without getting paid.
Her mom was so scared of the reporters using it against her that she put up with everything and refused to let her go back to the school to argue.
She never expected that Teacher Liang would remember.
Li Yingqiao said, “Huh? You helped us get it back? The school didn’t give you any trouble?”
“I already resigned,” Liang Mei said, not looking back as she led her across the street. “Alright, no more questions—I won’t answer any more.”
***
Back then, Fengtan didn’t have any five-star hotels, but there was a grand, state-run hotel downtown, lavishly decorated in gold and jade.
Last time, Uncle Yu had hosted Yu Jinyang’s graduation banquet there.
Li Yingqiao hurried after Liang Mei as they got out of the taxi.
As soon as they crossed the street, she spotted the huge Roman columns at the hotel entrance—so big two people couldn’t wrap their arms around them.
A few shiny black official cars were parked nearby, as if some important meeting was going on inside.
“Teacher Liang,” Li Yingqiao quickly called out, refusing to take another step forward.
“Let’s not. I don’t have any money! Don’t treat me to such an expensive meal—if you do, I’ll start to suspect you want something from me.”
“No need to suspect. I do want something from you,” Liang Mei laughed, completely candid, but her gaze drifted into the state-run hotel.
“I’ve also invited a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. Do you want to go in and talk to him?”
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