Chapter 8

Lin Miao was a little nervous.
The doctor spoke gently, “The young master’s body is weak. Don’t take him outside where he might catch a chill, alright?”
Lin Miao asked softly, “Then is it okay if he just walks around the room? We won’t go outside.”
“That’s fine. But you need to be careful. If he falls and gets hurt, that’s something you can’t afford to take responsibility for.”
Lin Miao nodded quickly. As she left the room, she let out a quiet sigh of relief. He didn’t hit me. Thank goodness.
Back at her old school, whenever the teacher called her to the office, she’d get her palms smacked. Worse yet, the teacher would make her hold the stick and hit herself. Because of that, she was especially scared of adults wanting to “talk in private.”
Now that the young master was asleep, Lin Miao sat alone in her room reading. She was feeling uneasy, back home, she had her mom and her little brother. They’d go out collecting firewood or mushrooms, or play with the other kids in the village. Here, it was hard to adjust to being all alone.
So, quietly, she grabbed her Chinese textbook and a pen and snuck into the young master’s room.
He was still asleep.
Lin Miao sat down on the floor, reading and recognizing characters as she waited for him to wake up.
She hadn’t really touched her books since she came here, so she started from the first lesson: Our Ethnic Elementary School, stuff her teacher had already gone over.
She didn’t enjoy reading at all. But she had promised her mom she would study, and she was determined to keep that promise.
She sounded out each unfamiliar character quietly to herself, not making a sound, and then wrote them down.
Her current textbook had pinyin for some of the harder characters, but most didn’t have any help at all.
Lin Miao realized there were a lot of characters she didn’t recognize. That’s when she remembered, the dictionary her mom bought her! She forgot to pack it.
“What are you doing? Cough, cough, cough...”
A voice came from above her.
Lin Miao looked up and saw the young master awake. Embarrassed, she said, “I’m studying.”
The young master caught sight of the characters and pinyin on her notebook, suppressing a laugh. “Come here.”
Lin Miao moved closer. The young master picked up her textbook. “You’re in third grade? That’s pretty good.”
Lin Miao nodded. Thinking about his poor health, she figured he probably never got the chance to go to school. So she said modestly, “Not really. I don’t understand a lot of things. I’m not cut out for studying.”
But the young master looked serious. He glanced at the text. “Is it the underlined words that you can’t read?”
Lin Miao nodded shyly.
He said, “Come a little closer.”
She leaned in. The young master took her pen in his beautiful hand and pointed to one of the underlined characters. “This one is pronounced róng.”
Lin Miao repeated after him, “Róng.”
“Now read the whole sentence.”
He used her tattered pen to point to the full sentence.
“From a path...full of...róng ball flowers and sunflowers...came...many elementary school students.” Lin Miao read aloud, stumbling a little.
He pointed to the word róng again.
This time, she pronounced it correctly.
“You should write the pinyin above it so you don’t forget next time,” he said.
Her cheeks flushed red. She took the pen from his hand and wrote only the letter r.
The young master noticed her embarrassment, took the pen back, and added ong behind her slanted r.
His letters were beautiful, a stark contrast to her messy handwriting.
Lin Miao blushed even harder, suddenly regretting not practicing her penmanship more.
The young master pointed at the full pinyin he wrote. “R-ong. Róng.”
Lin Miao quickly repeated after him.
Then they moved on to the next underlined word.
One teaching, one learning, they quickly made it through the whole first lesson together.
Lin Miao began reading to the young master. Her voice was full of energy and rhythm, cheerful and expressive. It lifted the mood.
It was the first time Lin Miao realized, studying could actually be enjoyable.
That evening, Grandma came home. After dinner together, the young master went back to his room.
Lin Miao figured he must’ve gone to sleep again.
Her mom had always told her that sleeping right after a meal was bad for your health, and Lin Miao had always believed that.
So, before long, she tiptoed back into his room.
Sure enough, the young master was lying in bed again.
Lin Miao reached out to shake him awake, then suddenly paused. She still didn’t know what to call him.
The servants called him young master, but she didn’t want to use that.
His mom and grandma called him Xiao Yu.
They had told her to call him gege, big brother.
Lin Miao wasn’t the kind of kid to insist on being older than her little brother. She only teased him like that for fun.
So, after a moment’s thought, she softly called out, “Gege, how about you sleep a little later?”
Her voice was already gentle to begin with, lowered like this, it was downright soft and sweet.
The young master froze for a second. He turned his head and saw her looking at him with bright, expectant eyes. “Gege, gege, let’s go look at the stars. It was so sunny during the day, there must be lots of stars out tonight!”
He really wanted to say no, but in the end, let her pull him out of bed.
His ears were burning red. He didn’t say a word.
Lin Miao thought the word gege sounded lovely. She’d never had a big brother before, so she’d never called anyone that.
The doctor had said it was fine as long as he didn’t catch a chill. So Lin Miao led the young master over to the window.
But when they looked out, they saw lights in every direction, yet not a single star in the sky.
Lin Miao didn’t feel disappointed, though. It was only now that she realized, the view from this window was beautiful.
She had never seen such a lovely night before.
The young master assumed she’d be let down by the lack of stars, but then he heard her say, “It’s so pretty here.”
He realized something: Shui Shui was a completely different person when she was with him compared to how she acted around others. At the dinner table, she was quiet and well-behaved, barely saying a word. But around him, she talked nonstop, saying whatever came to mind.
She was still chattering away. “Gege, let me tell you a story.”
Back home, on summer nights, she and her little brother would sit under the pear tree in the yard, cooling off while she told stories under the stars.
The young master was curious. “Alright, go ahead.”
“Once, on a rainy night…” she began, then immediately realized the rest of the story was about a witch who ate children and got struck by lightning.
She cut herself off. That one was a spooky tale her friend had told her, not something suitable for the young master. She didn’t want to scare him.
Then it hit her, all her stories came from those same scary village tales that adults used to frighten kids. Definitely not something the young master should hear.
So she said, a little awkwardly, “I forgot what happens next.”
The young master believed her. After all, she wasn’t great at remembering things, he’d already seen that earlier today.
“Then tell me about your school,” he said.

Pinyin is the romanization system for standard chinese. It uses the Latin alphabet to represent the sounds of chinese characters, making it easier to learn pronunciation