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Jianyi stretched, registering the tension in his shoulders and back at last. Too many hours hunched over a desk reading the opinions of fools, but it would be worth it just to see the expressions on people's faces in the next departmental research seminar. No one liked being shown up by newcomers, especially when that newcomer was a decade and change younger and - he rubbed his jaw ruminatively - still hadn't got past embarrassing teenage acne. He grinned down at the article he was reading. He was never embarrassed; he enjoyed people looking at him and thinking he was a child. It made tearing their egos to shreds so much the sweeter.
Right at that moment he was anticipating the sheer joy that would follow his critique of the utter trash he had just read. Shao Juncai shouldn't be allowed wipe his shit on toilet paper, let alone publish in a journal, but there his name was, first in line after his supervisor's. He must have sucked a serious amount of dick to even get on his supervisor's pet project in the commercial lab in the first place. Probably his parents had handed over funding - Jianyi scowled. His fucking deadbeat progenitors should finance his projects more generously. Goddam cheapskates. Oh, Jianyi, we have your sister and brother's schooling to think of! Oh, Jianyi, we've already paid for two degrees in prestigious universities. Excuses, excuses.
He took the heavy, expensive pen his father had given him when he started his Master's programme - what a stupid gift, he should have saved the money and bought something bigger when he started the PhD, he blasted through the Master's in a year - and wrote some notes in the margin of the journal in a careful, anonymous hand. Puerile rubbish. Barely worthy of a high-school biology class. With a quick and easy movement he shuffled his notes across the page as he saw movement from the corner of his eye, and a young woman came up to the desk.
"Hey, Jianyi," Qian Fengnan said, trying a little too hard to be friendly. "Oh, you're reading Juncai's article! Pretty cool, huh?"
He ducked his head shyly and smiled up at her, so over-awed by an older woman speaking to him.
"Yes! He must be so proud of it. It must be so cool to see your name in print."
He had published two papers during the Master's, both of which had been praised as being clearly of a doctoral level. Not one of the fools in the department had ever read them or connected the Ni, J. listed on them with the skinny fifteen-year-old in their midst.
"I'm looking forward to hearing him talk about it in the seminar," Fengnan said.
"Oh, me too," Jianyi said in complete sincerity.
"Listen, a few of us wanted to celebrate his success. We're going on a camping trip for a long weekend - actually almost a week, and I thought we should ask you if you wanted to come along."
Jianyi looked askance at her. The weather was getting cold and they wanted to go camping?
"We all have a lot of work - " he started.
"Jianyi," she said, sitting on the edge of his desk. He automatically looked at the fresh inches of thigh revealed. "It'd really do you good to get to know everyone better! You've been here a whole semester and all you do is work! You'd find things so much easier if you made friends!"
Friends. Losers bothered about friends. He'd done perfectly well without them for years. He opened his mouth to say so when she put a hand on his shoulder and trailed a finger an across his cheek, brushing his hair back.
"Do come! It'll be fun! We'll have lots of junk food and hot wine and no one will say you're too young to drink it. Anyway, Professor Bu isn't well, so you don't have work to catch up on."
She was mocking him. She thought he was that easily persuaded. She would vaguely promise and never deliver. He found he didn't care, and that he really just wanted her to touch him again. How could he repeat the circumstances that led to her doing it the first time? And she was right that his supervisor was ill. He closed the journal. He'd excoriate Juncai after they got back from the trip, not before.
* * *
The countryside was a terrible place, especially in early winter. Jianyi sat on a log, huddled into his anorak, holding his hands out to the campfire, bitterly aware of how little he fitted in. The other students chatted to each other and now and then made awkward attempts to include him, but he had never bothered to watch the TV shows they discussed or the blockbuster movies they had theories about. They had always seemed so childish, and he had been desperate to seem older than his years. To have full-fledged adults discuss such rubbish confused him.
Fengnan sat on the log beside him and held out a flask. "Have some of this, it'll heat you up."
He took it and had swallowed a full mouthful before it registered that it was strong wine. He managed not to cough, but felt his face flush at once. Dammit, now he looked like a fool who had never had alcohol in his life. And if he protested that he was used to a civilised glass at New Year's he'd look like a baby saying he was a big boy, he was. He smiled pleasantly and passed the flask back.
"Thanks," he said. "I needed that, it's freezing."
"It really is," she laughed and swigged a massive gulp, going bright pink as well.
She was - trying to make him fit in. Or perhaps was sorry for him. He'd take either if it meant he could work her round to a kiss. He smiled conspiratorially at her and edged a little closer. She passed the flask back and bumped her shoulder against his. Excellent, Jianyi. Drink a little less this time, try to get her to take another big gulp -
Juncai dropped down beside her, his arm going around her shoulder.
"What's up, Nan-Nan, babysitting?"
"I'm having a chat with Jianyi," she said. "He likes your article, right, Jianyi?"
"I was really surprised by the confidence of the phrasing of the conclusions!" Jianyi said. "Especially by someone at the start of their career."
"Yeah, when you have some actual experience you'll see how it's done," Juncai said, trying to reel Fengnan in. She pulled away but he held on. "So, Ni. What's it like being a certified child prodigy?"
"I'm not sure I can say," Jianyi said modestly. "I've never known anything else. What's it like being of . . . average intelligence?"
Fengnan giggled, as he'd hoped she would. She didn't want Juncai holding her. Juncai's face went pinched and tight.
"Who the fuck asked you to come with us anyway?" he said. "You should be in highschool, not in our university."
"I asked him," Fengnan said as Jianyi said,
"I'd finished all my high school courses by the time I was eleven. I'd wanted to go to university at ten but no one would actually believe I was ready. They made me wait until I was twelve - I'd studied so much by myself that I finished my first four-year degree in under two years." He smiled, a lot less modestly, at Juncai. "Then I got faster. That's what it's like, being a child prodigy."
Juncai gave him a disgusted look and walked off to smoke with the other guys. Fengnan laughed and patted Jianyi's shoulder.
"That was a bit mean," she said, but not in a way that sounded like she was too upset. "I'm going to get started on lunch with Yubian."
She got up and wandered over to where An Yubian was poking suspiciously at their supplies as if she were about to carrying out some sort of unethical experiment. It was a typical reflection on patriarchal societal norms, Jianyi reflected, that the only two girls in the camping group were the ones saddled with cooking duties. Then he reflected on how much he despised being asked to help out in the kitchen at home and decided it was time to go for a walk.
His steps took him down to the river's edge where he stood, getting colder and colder as he watched the grey water swirling past. Perhaps in a month it would begin to freeze - did it ever get that cold? They'd come quite far north from the city and there had been a flurry of snow last night. Perhaps the girls' tent would develop a leak and Fengnan would need to share a sleeping bag to keep warm. He smiled at the thought. If he was still a virgin by the time he had to go home for a family visit he'd count it as a personal failure. The real question was how to make sure the girls' tent developed a leak.
A branch drifted past, showing how quickly the water flowed. The stupid peasants out here actually depended on the river for their water supply - bad luck to any of them if they fell in, especially at this time of year. The shock of cold would mean no one could last long.
They also just threw their trash into the river, he saw, grimacing at the sight of a cardboard box floating down towards him. He squinted. Someone had put blankets in it. God. Didn't they have rubbish collection out here? Filthy hicks.
A high-pitched noise reached his ears over the sound of the water lapping at the bank, the noise of his own sniffles in the cold air. It sounded like a distressed cat. Oh, someone was drowning kittens. He watched the box with mild interest. It spun around in the current under his gaze and for a moment he saw into it. His eyes widened.
Wrapped tight in a cheap fleece blanket was a tiny baby.
The cold would surely kill the thing quickly enough even if the box didn't sink. Which would happen first - the cold lulling it into a sleep from which it would never wake or the river drawing it down? He watched with sharpened interest as the box spun around again opposite him as if held in place. There must be some counter current there, strong enough to stop the box, but not strong enough to impede the progress of a heavier object such as the branch.
The baby shrieked again, sounding more distressed than before. It couldn't be long now; he could see that the cardboard was becoming more and more sodden. Soon it would either break apart or simply sink and that would be that. He decided to time the event.
"Jianyi!"
He jumped, looking around as Fengnan came up, smiling.
"Lunch will be ready in about ten minutes - what are you looking at?"
"Uh - I'm not sure," he said as the baby screamed again, surely its last furious howl at the unfairness of life.
"Is that -" Fengnan said, stepping forwards, realisation dawning on her face. "Jianyi, that's -"
"Oh, my God!" he yelled drawing her attention back to him. "Fengnan! It's a baby!"
"Oh! What can we do?" she screamed.
The box spun in place yet again, its side softening, giving way. God, if he didn't get at least a good feel-up out of this -
Jianyi threw off his anorak and glasses, kicked off his shoes and ran the final few steps to the river, diving with perfect form into the water. The cold was worse than he could ever have imagined, the breath punched from his lungs, but somehow he came up, the box before him. He had to do this, therefore he could do it. He grabbed the box and pulled it behind him to the bank, and both he and it were hauled up by Fengnan.
He collapsed on top of her, his head on her breasts, his only thought that he desperately needed to get warm. She flung his anorak around him and ripped the sodden fleece from the baby revealing a string of red prayer beads wrapped around the tiny body and swaddled her own coat about the cold little form. Then she pulled Jianyi back to the camp, shouting for help.
It was very nice to be a hero. Yubian and Fengnan had no attention for anything but the baby and him. God, he should have carted a kid around with him long before this, it was a girl-magnet. All the guys clapped him on the back and poured wine down his throat, and got him dressed in the warmest clothes. Juncai looked like he'd swallowed a spider.
"We can't keep a newborn baby out here!" Fengnan said. "But it's not fair to spoil everyone's trip. Hui, can you run me back to town with him so can can be checked out?"
"Yeah, of course," Hui said, who had borrowed the departmental van to get them all out of the city. "Guys, you'll be OK till I get back, right?"
"Yeah," Yubian said at once. "That poor little thing needs to go to hospital!"
No one could argue. Fengnan grabbed her wallet and looked at Jianyi.
"Come on, Jianyi, you need to be checked out too."
"Huh?" he said.
"How much of that water did you swallow? It could have anything in it!"
He'd have her all to himself for the whole trip, and back again. Juncai's face was like thunder. Jianyi nodded meekly and followed her to the van. Fengnan sat between him and Hui in the van's front seat, the baby in her arms. Jianyi was very aware of the feel of her thigh against his. He leaned over and tickled the baby's cheek with a finger.
"I think you'll bring me luck, little fellow."
"I think you already brought him luck," Hui said, "more than those stupid prayer beads he was wrapped in." He started the van in motion.
As they moved away Jianyi looked out the side window and saw that a fair-haired man dressed in old-fashioned monk's robes had come out of the woods and was talking to the rest of the students. He looked a little confused and whatever he was saying was obviously equally confusing his listeners.
Jianyi sat back and smiled at Fengnan. He had more important things to consider than some local hermit.