During the period when Zoe Young became increasingly gloomy and silent, her mother grew more and more irritable. She had no idea what difficulties her mother faced at work; all she knew was that the job, along with the constant friction and arguments with her aunt who lived with them at her grandmother’s house, had turned her once gentle mother sharper and harsher. She became swift and decisive in her actions, nitpicking in her words, and even her gaze grew piercing and cold. With Andrew Lane’s help, Zoe Young gradually started to grasp pinyin. Aside from occasionally making some careless little mistakes, her test scores basically stabilized in the eighties. Yet, the mother who hadn’t been angered by a score of less than forty before, now flew into a rage at a paper marked in the eighties.

No matter what her mother said, she always kept her head down, didn’t argue, and didn’t promise, “Mom, I’ll do better next time.” Even when she saw Lily Young and Tina Young peeking through the crack in the door. In the end, her grandmother appeared at the doorway, sighed, and said to her mother, “Come here, come to my room.” Zoe Young’s little room was closest to her grandmother’s; she stood at the door holding her test paper, faintly hearing her grandmother’s heavy sigh.

“Didn’t I try to talk you out of it back then? Do you remember anything I said? You’re an adult. Since you insisted on having the child and refused to accept her father’s support, then you should be prepared to bear all the possible consequences, including these hardships. I know it’s hard for you to hold on alone, and I’ll go talk to your sister-in-law, but how can you treat the child like this? Zoe is your own child. She never asked to be born. You acted on impulse—haven’t you learned to take responsibility by now?”

The test paper was soaked with sweat from her palm, the bright red score of eighty-four blurring into a smear.

Zoe Young fell in love with a different kind of game. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d dressed up in “silks and satins” to play princess or heroine in her little room. Zoe Young fell in love with drawing. Her sketchbook was filled with rough, disproportionate “beauties” in princess dresses or flowing white gowns, some holding swords, some carrying holy water jugs. She often curled up alone in a corner, drawing intently. No one knew what she was thinking, and the drawings were all independent, unable to connect into a story—just clumsy single portraits.

No one knew that Zoe Young’s private world had suddenly undergone a huge transformation. She was no longer the protagonist, no longer the one holding the holy water and braving thorns. All the stories became puppet shows; she pulled the strings for the main and supporting characters to act out the plot, but no longer threw herself into feeling their joys, sorrows, and passions. Each individual character was a story, beginning the moment her pen touched the paper.

When she drew the crown of flowers, the little princess was born. When she drew the gentle face and big Japanese-style eyes, it was the princess’s fifteenth birthday, when the people praised her beauty.

When she drew her slender waist, it was her eighteenth birthday, when her dance stunned the capital. When she drew the flowing, puffy skirt, it was when she first met the prince, who fell at her feet... When a character was finished, the story ended in her mind. But Zoe Young was not that princess.

The role Zoe Young played was fate. The stories were no longer simple and straightforward. She began to draw ordinary girls who endured hardships, or female leaders who died misunderstood and full of resentment... Zoe Young, the goddess of fate, no longer seemed as merciful as before. All these silent times were imprinted on paper. She was manipulated by others, so she manipulated others.

It seemed that the only bright moments came from walking home with Andrew Lane after school. Even though Andrew Lane on stage seemed so far away, when he walked beside her, grinning as he tugged her ponytail, telling her all sorts of interesting things, discussing the love and hate in cartoons with her, Zoe Young felt her life was full of sunshine—

Even if it was the light of the setting sun.

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10. How Many Butterflies Are Left

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Zoe Young once told Andrew Lane the story of the holy water. The story she had once played to her heart’s content, from Legend of the Magic Knight.

The goddess in charge of autumn and winter and the god in charge of spring and summer fell in love. The other gods, trying to stop them, turned them into statues and placed them in different sanctuaries—except the sanctuary of the god of spring and summer was covered in snow and ice, while the sanctuary of the goddess of autumn and winter burned with unending fire. The protagonists climbed snowy mountains and crossed seas of fire, exchanged the tokens of the two gods, and finally saved the people from their suffering. After completing the mission, they rode the rainbow bridge to a higher level of the demon world mountain.

“And then?” “Huh?” Zoe Young looked at Andrew Lane in surprise. “What do you mean, and then? Then they went to fight other demon kings.” “I mean those two gods,” Andrew Lane stared at her seriously, “Did they... get married?” Zoe Young looked up, staring at the few wispy clouds in the sky that looked like diluted egg drop soup: “I don’t know.” “Then what kind of ending is that?” Andrew Lane pouted.

“But I think, they probably didn’t end up together.” “Why?”

“Because...” Zoe Young chose her words carefully, then hesitantly said an idiom, “You can’t... make the same mistake again and again.” Andrew Lane’s eyes lit up, and for a moment his face showed a look of deep confusion and admiration, but only for a few seconds before he forced himself back to his usual “it’s no big deal” expression.

But neither of them knew where this love had gone wrong. If the reason was that the god of spring and summer couldn’t fall in love with the goddess of autumn and winter, then why couldn’t he?

The reason for the reason, the cause for the cause—behind the world, all was darkness.

Andrew Lane didn’t know he had once been followed—the stalkers were, of course, his parents. The reason Andrew Lane gave for wanting to go home alone was the one he’d come up with after consulting Zoe Young: to cultivate independence. Of course, Andrew Lane knew his mother was in frequent contact with the homeroom teacher, so he didn’t dare make up wild stories like Zoe Young did about the teacher’s orders.

Andrew Lane’s mother agreed to try it, then dragged Andrew Lane’s father along to follow at a distance and spy on him. The good news was, her precious son didn’t sneak into the arcade. The bad news was, her precious son was clearly not “independent” enough on the way home from school. “Do you think... I should talk to Andy? Last time I mentioned that little girl’s name to their teacher, Ms. Zhang, but maybe the teacher forgot. I think I need to find out about that child’s family background...” Andrew Lane’s father smiled, “Background? Why bother with that?” “What if that little girl isn’t from a decent family? Like that boy upstairs—if I hadn’t happened to get off work early last time, he would have led Andy and the other kids to the arcade...” Andrew Lane’s mother got worked up recalling the past.

“You’re overthinking it,” Andrew Lane’s father put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, looking at the two small figures in the distance, still smiling, “That child looks very polite. You should be glad your son isn’t the one leading her astray.”

“So, do you think Andy likes that little girl?” “Isn’t it obvious?”

“How can that be? You always act like nothing matters, but he’s still so young...” “You said it yourself,” Andrew Lane’s father’s smile turned a bit helpless, his handsome eyebrows drooping like the hour and minute hands at 8:20, “He’s only seven...”

The small seven-year-old bodies, walking side by side into the sunset, cast shadows behind them as long as if they were seventeen.

Zoe Young’s peaceful life gradually started to improve, maybe because they had finally finished learning pinyin. Unfortunately, she never did get a Sacred Eraser in the end.

The first lesson, titled “Autumn Has Come,” was like a belated answer to a riddle. Looking at the pinyin marked above the Chinese characters, first-grade Zoe Young felt a flash of lightning in her mind, just like first-grade Conan Doyle. In that instant, she understood.

Teacher Yu, Zachary Lewis, even Andrew Lane—they had all told her she had to memorize the letters and the rules for reading them, but no one had ever told her that pinyin was used to mark the pronunciation of Chinese characters!!

The knot in her mind suddenly unraveled, and the spelling and combinations no longer seemed so confusing or random. Zoe Young suddenly felt a sense of regret that it was all too late. She gritted her teeth for a while, then finally sat quietly at her desk, lost in her own gloom.

In class, the teacher led everyone in reading the text aloud, then starting from the first student in the front left, had each of them stand up and read the text aloud using the pinyin.

Zoe Young was surprised to find that many people stuttered and mispronounced words, as if they were extremely nervous. Occasionally, when someone read fluently, they would be told, “Read with more feeling. You’re reading too fast.”