The first month of the internship passed quietly. One day, the foreign teacher handed Wen Di the lesson plan materials and asked him to try teaching a class.
Wen Di had done tutoring in college, but one-on-one tutoring was very different from teaching a large class. With dozens of students, the number of things to pay attention to multiplied many times over. The rhythm of the knowledge points, the reactions from the students, the techniques for asking questions, and the feedback and evaluations for the students required the coordination of all senses, keeping him mentally tense at all times to ensure the completion of a class.
However, the most challenging aspect was maintaining discipline. Among the wealthy students, there were both model students and those who were spoiled. These students were inattentive most of the time, playing on their phones, sleeping, or even chatting openly, except when they were telling jokes. Wen Di didn’t dare to manage them and felt he couldn’t. As a commoner, why would he provoke these future dignitaries?
During the breaks in his internship, Wen Di began to reflect. A significant part of his desire to pursue a PhD was due to the social status of university teachers. If he ended up living such a humble life, it would contradict his original intentions.
However, wealth—both explicit and implicit income—was high. Wen Di found himself struggling between money and his initial aspirations, so he decided to continue for the time being. Isn’t it just serving others? It’s like having twenty-some Old Liu’s sitting in the classroom.
Speaking of Old Liu, he hadn’t told the other party about his internship. His advisor was never pleased when students had bright prospects; when he heard they were interning during the week, he would only become furious about his cheap labor skipping out on work. Previously, a senior sister had interned at a foreign company and somehow Old Liu heard about it. During a group meeting, she became a target and ended up crying on the spot from the criticism.
Old Liu concluded that spending all time on miscellaneous matters not only would reduce academic ability, but also reduce psychological resilience.
With the previous experience as a lesson, Wen Di decided to be extra cautious and keep his internship a secret. Luckily, as a humanities student, he didn’t need to check in at a lab, and typically went to places like the library instead. As long as Old Liu didn’t suddenly summon him, and he attended group meetings on time, he wouldn’t get caught.
Days passed, winter went and spring came, the branches outside the window sprouted new buds and birds chirped melodiously. Opening the window, the spring breeze brushed against his face, stirring his spirits.
Wen Di took a deep breath of the earth’s awakening scent, and eagerly walked into the kitchen, firing up the stove. Today was Yu Jingyi’s second-interview day, so he planned a different breakfast.
He boiled the water, placed eggs in it, turned off the heat, and went downstairs to buy fried dough sticks. By the time Yu Jingyi entered the kitchen, breakfast was steaming on the table.
“Eat up, eat up,” Wen Di said. “One fried dough stick, two eggs.”
Yu Jingyi smiled as she picked up an egg, cracking it on the edge of the table. “I ate during the written exam; do I need to do it again for the interview?”
“Didn’t you get first place on the written test?” Wen Di replied. “If you eat again, maybe you’ll get a perfect score on the interview too.”
“Anything over 80 counts as high for the interview—there’s no such thing as a perfect score.”
Wen Di ignored her words. “Do you have Nike shoes?”
Yu Jingyi shook her head.
Wen Di sighed, then quickly cheered up. “No worries, even without the swoosh blessing, you’ll still crush them.”
“You underestimate a master’s degree in interpreting in foreign languages too much,” Yu Jingyi replied.
“Of course, I wouldn’t stand a chance against them,” Wen Di said, “but you’re different. In the speech contest back then, they were defeated by you—let alone now…”
Yu Jingyi swallowed the egg whole and raised her hand to stop his flattery: “Alright, alright, I’ll borrow your good words.” She looked at Wen Di with a mix of helplessness and gratitude: “You’re putting me on too high a pedestal, making me seem like some rare talent.”
“You are one,” Wen Di said, sitting across from her as he started his breakfast. “You don’t know how much you’ve influenced my life.”
“You’re exaggerating again.”
“It’s true,” Wen Di replied, peeling his egg as he recalled the past with a nostalgic tone. “First year, when you won the Hope Cup for the first time, the judges asked you if you had been taking classes with foreign teachers since you were a child, and if you had ever been abroad. And there you were on stage, calmly saying, ‘My parents both work in an electronics factory, never been abroad, never hired a foreign teacher. My mom brought home a radio from the factory when I was little, and I practiced with that.’”
Yu Jingyi looked puzzled for a moment. “Is there such a thing?”
“En,” Wen Di said, collecting the eggshells in a bowl, “from then on, I felt a sense of relief.”
“About what?”
Wen Di shook his head without answering, only saying, “Good luck with the interview.”
“When I make it, I’ll treat you to a big meal.” She finished her fried dough stick in a few quick bites, slung her bag with a loose thread on her shoulder, and headed out the door. “Enjoy the culture festival.”
Wen Di picked up another youtiao to munch on. “Jiayou!”
Today was Xingcheng Secondary School’s International Cultural Festival.
Xingcheng has a wide variety of extracurricular activities, and when Wen Di first saw the club brochure, he was nearly overwhelmed by the choices. Besides the usual study clubs and interest groups, there were music concerts, drama and dance performances, outdoor adventures, Model United Nations, garden parties, and sports competitions like sailing and rock climbing.
When he thought back on his high school years, it seemed to be nothing but studying, exams, and extracurricular tutoring classes.
The International Cultural Festival was a long-standing school tradition. Each class would choose a culture from around the world to showcase, aiming to broaden students’ perspectives and cultivate cultural sensitivity.
There were no classes in the afternoon during the Cultural Festival, so Wen Di could have returned to campus earlier. However, he was curious about the creativity of these wealthy students and wanted to stay and see what they could come up with.
As he walked to the sports field, he found a circle of tents set up on the artificial turf, buzzing with noise. In front of each tent there were young students wearing ethnic costumes. Inside the tents there were handicrafts and various cultural activities. After wandering around, Wen Di concluded it was quite similar to the club fairs at university.
He strolled to the far corner and spotted a sign: Chinese Traditional Culture.
Chinese culture is vast and profound; this class had certainly chosen a broad theme.
Wen Di walked over to take a look. In front of the tent set up as a booth was a wooden table with a Go board, paper, and inkstones on it, available for visitors to experience. In the center of the tent, there was a bamboo tube-shaped object with a few blunt wooden arrows beside it.
Wen Di knew very little about ancient culture, but he had paid close attention in his Chinese literature and history classes. This should be touhu.[footnote]Touhu (投壶): an ancient Chinese game where players toss arrows into a distant container or vase. It’s pitch-pot in English btw![/footnote]
The booth had few visitors; only one boy was picking up arrows from the ground. Wen Di stood in front of the booth, looked around, and suddenly exclaimed, “It’s you!”
The boy straightened up, blinked, and showed a radiant smile, clearly recognizing him too. Seeing Wen Di looking at the bamboo tube, he walked over and handed all the wooden arrows to him. “Want to play?”
Wen Di waved his hand. “I’m not a student.”
The boy stuffed the arrows into his hand and shook his head. “There’s no one else.”
Wen Di took the arrow and looked at the empty booth: “Where are the other students from your class?”
“They have something to do,” the boy said, “so they left me here.”
It seemed they had gone off to play by themselves.
Wen Di looked at the arrow in his hand. Since it was given by the boy with good intentions, it would be disrespectful to refuse it. He narrowed his eyes, took out an arrow, aimed at the bamboo tube, and threw it.
Unexpectedly, although the distance didn’t seem far, aiming was difficult to master. The wooden arrow brushed past the bamboo tube and fell behind it.
“It’s okay,” the boy encouraged him from the side, as if worried that Wen Di might lose confidence after a single failure. “Try again.”
Wen Di didn’t care if he hit the target, but the boy’s encouragement made him a bit embarrassed. So, he focused, trying to find the right technique, and his aim finally improved slightly. Unfortunately, since the bamboo tube was placed on artificial grass, it wasn’t stable; each time he hit or grazed the edge, the bamboo tube fell over. Before Wen Di even finished the arrows, the boy had run over to set it back up several times.
“Thanks, thanks,” Wen Di said, waving at the boy after using up all the arrows. “I had a lot of fun. By the way, what’s your name?”
The boy smiled at him, dimples appearing at the corners of his mouth. “My name is Jiang Yu.”
Looking at the boy’s happy smile, Wen Di suddenly felt a little reluctant.
Combined with the previous scene of him pushing the wooden box, he could conclude that Jiang Yu was enduring some level of bullying at school.
But after hesitating for a few seconds, Wen Di still walked away. He was only an intern teacher, without even the authority to officially teach, and didn’t have much standing to discipline students. Besides, he was assigned to the high school division—why should he overstep his bounds and interfere with the middle school division?
As soon as Wen Di left, a group of boys in the class came back. The leader was a tall guy, about 13 or 14 years old like Jiang Yu. He walked to the chair behind the wooden table and sat down, while the others also found places to sit, leaving only Jiang Yu standing to the side.
After a while, several students came over and saw the touhu game, which they found very novel. Jiang Yu handed the wooden arrows to them, and they lined up, taking turns trying their hand at the game.
The bamboo tube was still unstable and toppled with each throw.
The tall boy frowned, finding it troublesome, and pointed at Jiang Yu. “Don’t you have any sense? Go over there and hold it up!”
“But I still need to pick these up,” Jiang Yu said, clutching the arrows.
“Can’t you do both?” The tall boy grew irritated. “Can’t your brain handle that much?”
So Jiang Yu walked over and squatted down, holding the bamboo tube steady with both hands. This time it stayed stable, no matter how he threw it, it would not fall down, but the students with poor aim often hit him with the arrows. Although the arrowheads were blunt, getting hit still hurt a bit. One arrow almost struck him in the eye, and as he raised a hand to shield himself, the bamboo tube toppled once again.
The tall boy, irritated, stood up, walked over, and gave Jiang Yu a slap on the back of his head. “Didn’t I tell you to hold it steady?”
“It hurts,” Jiang Yu said, pointing to the spot where he’d been hit.
“I’m really impressed, it’s not a real arrow, how much can it hurt?” the tall boy said. “Can’t you be of some use?” He pointed at the circle of people around, “Can you plan activities, write documents, or rent venues? Everyone has their own tasks, and you’re just sitting around doing nothing. When I ask you to do something, you still complain?”
Jiang Yu looked confused, he didn’t understand most of what was said.
“Idiot,” the tall guy slapped him on the back of the head again. “Do you even know what it means to contribute to the collective?”
Jiang Yu nodded: “I know.”
“Are you only capable of causing trouble for everyone?”
Jiang Yu shook his head.
“Then hold it properly and don’t move, got it?”
So Jiang Yu stayed still, obediently holding the bamboo tube with both hands. The wooden arrows struck his arms, shoulders, and legs, but he didn’t dodge them.
After watching for a moment, the tall boy suddenly turned towards the classmate next to him. “Don’t you think this is more fun than pitching pots?”
The other boy watched with interest for a while, then nodded, “Yeah.”
The tall boy curled his lips into a smirk, stood up, and picked up a wooden arrow from the ground. The other students in the class smiled in tacit understanding, forming a line behind him.
“Let’s keep score,” one of them suggested. “Two points for hitting a leg, three for an arm, four for a shoulder, and five for the head.”
“Alright,” the tall boy rubbed his hands together. “I’ll go first.”
Jiang Yu looked at them as they gathered in front of the wooden table, his eyes filled with confusion. Holding the wooden arrow, the tall boy grinned and said to him, “We think this cultural activity needs some improvement. Just stay there and let us test the new rules. This is your way to contribute to the group, got it?”
Jiang Yu didn’t understand but, seeing that everyone was staring at him and waiting for a response, he did what he always did when unsure: he nodded.
The members at the entrance of the tent burst into laughter. Before Jiang Yu could fully grasp what was happening, wooden arrows started raining down on him. He wanted to raise his hands to cover his head but remembered he wasn’t supposed to move, so he lowered his head as best as he could to keep his face from getting hit.
He didn’t shout, scream, or hide. After playing for a while, the tall man felt a little bored, clapped his hands, and said angrily, “Forget it, it’s not fun.” Then he asked, “Who won?”
A boy in the class raised his hand: “I got 58 points.”
Everyone clapped. The sound reached the tent, Jiang Yu looked up and saw that everyone was clapping. Whenever trophies were awarded in class or during sports events, they all clapped together, so he joined in.
The laughter at the entrance grew louder.
The other students in the class came back in twos and threes. Some stood quietly by, and some simply walked away. Occasionally, someone would cautiously say “Stop playing”, but the tall boy would look at them and they would shut up again. There were also teachers passing by, but they all walked past without looking, and no one stopped or spoke up to intervene.
The theme of the class next door was Pacific Islander culture. A girl dressed in traditional Samoan attire couldn’t help but speak up, “Don’t go too far.”
“What?” The tall boy raised his eyebrows, “What’s wrong with us? We’re just joking. Isn’t he very happy? Look, he’s still smiling.”
The girl looked over at Jiang Yu. He was picking up the scattered arrows thrown by other people, his face was smiling as usual, as if he really wasn’t upset. The girl felt that she was being nosy by interjecting so much, and turned to walk away.
The classmate next to the tall guy patted him on the shoulder and said, “Look at that one—it’s big.”
The boys smiled but said nothing, obviously having noticed it. Pacific islands are located in the tropics, and their traditional clothing is relatively light. The girls wore fitted strapless tops and grass skirts, making it obvious who was more developed.
The tall boy suddenly had an idea. He walked over to Jiang Yu, patting him on the shoulder, and asked, “Do you know what loyalty means?”
Jiang Yu slowly blinked and shook his head.
“It’s when a bro wants to do something but doesn’t dare to do it, and you help the bro do it,” the tall guy gave a thumbs-up. “That’s loyalty. Real men admire someone with loyalty. Don’t you want everyone to admire you?”
Jiang Yu’s eyes lit up, and he nodded.
The tall boy put an arm around his shoulder and pointed at the girl next door. “See that strap on her back?”
There was indeed a tie on the back of her top, and Jiang Yu replied, “I see it.”
“Go over and pull it off,” the tall guy said, patting him on the shoulder again. “Then you’ll be a real man with loyalty.”
The boys around them snickered, their eyes all on the girl next door. This fool believed everything he heard, was easy to coax and deceive, and was submissive. This time, there was going to be something interesting to watch.
Jiang Yu looked at his classmates, then at the girl, but didn’t move.
The tall boy gave him a push. “What are you waiting for?”
Jiang Yu asked, “Does she know?”
“What?” The tall boy frowned. “Who?”
“Mom says, before touching a girl, you have to ask if she agrees,” Jiang Yu said. “Does she agree?”
The tall boy grew impatient; he didn’t expect so many steps just to see some skin.
“Your mom was talking about ordinary boys,” the tall boy said, “You’re different, you’re an idiot; You can kill people without any problem.”
Jiang Yu firmly shook his head. “This isn’t the right thing to do.”
No matter how the tall boy tried to convince him, Jiang Yu stubbornly repeated, “This isn’t good.” The tall boy was so angry that he kicked him and said, “You are an idiot, and you are trying to teach me?”
Jiang Yu fell to the ground, and the wooden arrows scattered all over the ground. He gathered them back up and stood up by himself.
“Hua-ge, let’s go,” said one of the classmates, glancing at his watch. “IELTS class is about to start.”
Sure enough, looking around, most of the classes had started packing up; the cultural festival was over. After everyone packed up, the tents would be taken down by the school workers, but the other items, all brought by the students, were to be taken back by them as well. The board game set and bamboo tube weren’t heavy on their own, but all the pieces together were cumbersome. The tall boy pointed at Jiang Yu. “We’re in a rush for class, you carry this back to the classroom.”
The other classmates all agreed, chiming in excuses about golfing with their parents or going to take equestrian lessons, scattering off together and leaving all the traditional cultural items for Jiang Yu to manage alone.
Jiang Yu watched them chatting and laughing without actually being in a rush. Two members of the cycling club even took out their newly bought mountain bikes from the club activity room and introduced the new models to others. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry.
A school worker dismantling the tents came over and asked if the stall was ready to be packed up. Jiang Yu put the items on the table into a cardboard box, lifted it, and started walking. From the sports field to the second-year classroom building, he had to cross half the campus, and by the time he reached the tree-lined path next to the teaching building, his arms were starting to ache. He wanted to set the box down to rest for a moment, but suddenly, he heard the ring of a bike bell behind him. Turning around, he saw the tall boy riding one of the mountain bikes, heading straight toward him.
“Hey!” the other party shouted, “Watch out!”
Even though he said that, the bike didn’t veer away at all. Jiang Yu quickly dodged to the side, but the bike immediately followed, closing in as if it would run him over.
“Why aren’t the brakes working?” the tall boy wondered.
Jiang Yu clutched the box tightly and started running. Almost at the same moment, the bike charged forward, and the handlebars rammed into his back, sending him stumbling forward and falling to the ground.
The box tumbled over, scattering black and white game pieces all over the ground. The mountain bike finally came to a stop.
“What the hell are you doing?” The tall boy straddled the bike, wrinkling his brows and scolding him. “All this stuff is from my home. If it’s broken, can you even afford to pay for it?”
Jiang Yu’s hand was scratched and blood was oozing out from the flesh. He looked at the mess on the ground blankly, and then a pair of hands appeared in his sight and pulled him up. He blinked and saw the young man who was playing the touhu game before.
“Running someone down and then yelling at him? what’s this little brat being so arrogant about?” The young man glared at the tall boy. “Which class are you in? Come with me to the administration office—let’s get your parents over here!”
T/N: Title is from Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 2. The literal translation for the title ‘命运有意向叛徒卖弄风情’ would be ‘Fate deliberately flirts with traitors..’
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