TBW - 15: Karmic retribution for uncivilized behavior.

Cheng Simin pressed him: “Why not?”

She had waited half the class period just to take a dual portrait with him as a keepsake.

Shi Ying tugged at his clothes, failing to free the fabric from Cheng Simin’s grasp. He made up an excuse to brush her off: “Boys take pictures with boys, girls with girls. Go find someone else.”

“Liar! A girl just took a picture with you earlier. I’ve been waiting for you this whole time—I haven’t taken any pictures with anyone else.” Cheng Simin was determined to persist until this matter was resolved.

“That was a group photo, not just two people.” Shi Ying glared at the dimple on her cheek, visibly annoyed. “Who told you to wait for me? Besides, we’ll take a big group photo later. Why do you have to take one with me? Let go of my uniform first!”

“We’re friends, and we sit together. Why won’t you take a picture with me?” Cheng Simin’s eyes reddened, her features crumpling pitifully. Still, she tried to swallow her grievance and smiled at him. “You’re my best friend.”

Shi Ying couldn’t stand her habit of smiling at everyone. In his childish voice, he corrected her: “You’re not my best friend.”

Their friendship was unequal.

“I am!”

“You’re not!”

“I am!”

In the midst of their argument, Cheng Simin let go of Shi Ying’s uniform. The dimple that usually irritated him disappeared, and she stopped smiling. Her mouth formed a downturned half-bracket, her lips pressed tightly together.

Shi Ying didn’t dare refute her last statement because he sensed something dangerous about her expression. Perhaps in the next second, she’d summon all her strength to punch him—or worse, burst into tears and report him to the music teacher.

Since meeting Cheng Simin at five and a half years old, he had never seen her cry. Children were naturally afraid of the unknown, and besides, being hit by a female classmate would be utterly humiliating.

Next, the elementary school-aged Shi Ying racked his brain and changed tactics to discourage Cheng Simin: “How can you prove that you are my best friend? If you can’t prove it, then you aren’t.”

That day, Shi Ying didn’t get beaten up because the bell was about to ring, signaling the end of the small group photo session. The teacher gathered the students to stand on the steps under the tree for the big group photo.

In the group photo, Cheng Simin stood two students away from Shi Ying.

When the shutter clicked, Shi Ying couldn’t help but glance over the baseline at Cheng Simin’s face. She was still pouting, her round eyes brimming with tears. Because of her puffed cheeks, her already flat face looked even flatter, resembling a freshly steamed dumpling emitting sour steam.

So this was what Cheng Simin looked like when she cried—so ugly. If he had known how pitiful she’d look when sad, Shi Ying might not have refused to take a picture with her.

After the group photo, school ended, and the students rushed back to the classroom to grab their bags as the dismissal bell rang. Shi Ying had intended to call Cheng Simin over to say a few more words, but she slung her backpack over her shoulder and ran toward the playground behind the school building.

Shi Ying chased after her for a few steps but soon gave up. Standing by the basketball court, he shouted across the distance, asking where she was going.

Cheng Simin’s short ponytail bounced like a rabbit’s tail as she turned her head and yelled back with all her might: “You wait! I’ll prove it—I’m your best friend!”

That day, Cheng Simin climbed a poplar tree in the small grove and carved those words into the trunk with an art knife. Perhaps as karmic retribution for her uncivilized act, while sliding down the tree, she lost her grip and failed to hold onto the injured trunk, breaking her right arm in the fall.

But it was also from that day on that Cheng Simin, with her arm in a cast, truly became Shi Ying’s best friend.

Nine weeks later, when the cast was removed after her bone had healed, it bore only one inscription—Shi Ying’s handwriting. His penmanship was neat and elegant, far more refined than Cheng Simin’s scrawl, but the content matched the words carved on the poplar tree exactly.

Eleven characters:

“Cheng Simin is Shi Ying’s best friend.”

“Shi Ying, did you see it?”

“Did this really happen? How did this tree end up in the flower bed by the roadside?”

“How incredible! I only climbed this high when I carved those words. Hasn’t the bark grown upward over the years?”

“Hey! There can’t be another Cheng Simin and Shi Ying in Banshan, right? This is what I wrote for you as a child, isn’t it?”

“Shi Ying?”

“Say something!”

“Are you asleep?”

“What time is it?”

“6 PM.”

“Early to bed, early to rise makes one healthy, right?”

“Not even an eighty-year-old has better sleep habits than you.”

As the clock hand swept past midnight, how could Shi Ying possibly sleep? He initially didn’t want to reply to her messages, but Cheng Simin was the type to get carried away, completely oblivious to boundaries between a married woman and a single man. Excited, she kept sending messages, forcing him to pick up his phone and respond.

At first, he typed: “Your husband doesn’t mind you chatting with me late at night?” But as soon as he reached the word “husband,” he felt stung, as if by a wasp, and quickly deleted the entire message with a grimace.

Midway through, he typed a few more sentences, but they were all probing questions about her marital life, sounding unnecessarily sour. Realizing how inappropriate they were, he deleted them and sent a bland, emotionless sentence instead:

“The campus expanded nine years ago—it’s normal for trees to be transplanted.”

Such coincidences were certainly unusual, and his inner astonishment rivaled Cheng Simin’s. But what could frequent coincidences prove? They were no longer children; their moods shouldn’t hinge on scars left on a poplar tree.

Childhood innocence wasn’t justification for disrupting someone else’s marriage. He wasn’t that cruel.

“Is that so? Our old elementary school expanded?!” Nine years ago, Cheng Simin had been in her second year of high school. News she herself didn’t know, yet Shi Ying seemed to recall vividly.

The chicken strip she had eaten earlier was a bit salty. Cheng Simin grabbed a tissue to wipe her fingers, walked to the kitchen to pour water, and typed with one hand: “How do you know this? Did you come back before going abroad? Did your parents reconcile with the family later?”

For a period during elementary school, Shi Ying had often been gloomy because he could no longer visit his grandfather’s house. Adults’ conflicts left no room for children to intervene, and Cheng Simin didn’t know how to comfort him. So every day, she brought a piece of fruit from her family’s stall and placed it on his desk.

Apples, pears, oranges—an entire week of these cheap fruits failed to cheer Shi Ying up. Desperate, Cheng Simin resorted to sneaky measures. She ran to the fruit specialty shop diagonally across from his family’s stall and stuffed a handful of longans into her school uniform pocket.

Her theft was clumsy, almost blatant, practically stealing in broad daylight. At least ten witnesses in the market saw her take longans from someone else’s stall.

That evening after school, Cheng Wei dragged her to the residence of the shop owner’s family. In front of their eight-member, three-generation household, he kicked the apologizing Cheng Simin from the living room onto the balcony.

Even days later, Cheng Wei remained unsatisfied, repeatedly complaining at the dinner table to Chen Xiaofen about how the shop owner had embarrassed him in the market and how Cheng Simin’s stuttering apologies had made him lose face.

The memory of being kicked by her father in front of strangers had long vanished, as if someone had surgically removed that humiliation. What Cheng Simin remembered clearly was how sorry she felt toward Shi Ying the next day at school. Best friends were supposed to help each other, but not only had she failed to help Shi Ying, she had also been severely beaten by her father. Worse still, her parents permanently revoked her privilege to take fruit from their vegetable stall.

For a long time afterward, she couldn’t work at the market to earn pocket money—the sole source of her income.

But after hearing her story, Shi Ying asked her a question that not even Chen Xiaofen had thought to ask.

First, he furrowed his brows like Lin Daiyu in the 1987 TV adaptation of Dream of the Red Chamber: “Are you okay? Did your dad hurt you badly?” After saying this, he examined the bruises on Cheng Simin’s arm, looking genuinely sorrowful. But soon, Shi Ying burst into a smile, his ability to switch expressions rivaling the best Sichuan opera performances.

Not only did Shi Ying laugh exaggeratedly and beautifully, but he also spoke with perfect clarity: “I’m already fine, really. I stopped missing my grandparents yesterday—I’m sure your fruit worked wonders.”

“Next time you want to buy something, just tell me. Don’t sneak things when no one’s looking. I have plenty of pocket money—more than I can spend. I’ll share with you.”