Sect Year 6 · third month · night of day 29 · the fifty-eighth life: the schoolhouse, his fortieth year
By his fortieth year the evenings had settled into a shape neither of them had planned. Each dusk the bell rang, and the children went down the lane with their slates under their arms. Ren Zhuo stood in the doorway and counted them out by habit. Bai Tong stood beside him and counted too, his lips moving in step with the master’s, and somewhere past the well the two of them always arrived at the same number. Then the stove was banked behind the benches and the room gave up its warmth slowly, the way a courtyard gives up the sun after dark. Ren Zhuo went to the window, and the boy, who had long ago stopped pretending he had chores left to finish, came up the steps and stood at his elbow.
They had done this for four years. The boy who had come up the road at nine with a slate he couldn’t hold steady was thirteen now, with his shoulders squared and a stick of charcoal tucked behind one ear. He had grown a hand taller over the winter. His voice had broken in the spring, and he hated the new one and kept clearing his throat, as if the old voice might come back if he asked it politely. He no longer said good evening. He began with the road.
