If You Could See the Sun (61)

“No. I sensed your presence.”

I frown. “Well, that’s not good. If people can sense when I’m here, I’ll need to fix that before tomorrow. Work on masking my steps better, or moving more slowly, or...”

But he’s shaking his head before I’ve even finished my sentence. “That’s not what I meant,” he says, then pauses, seemingly searching for the right words. “It—it’s only because... I’m around you so often. I highly doubt anyone else would be able to.”

“Ah,” I say, though I’m still unsure what he really means. All I know is that if Henry’s being this ineloquent, maybe he’s even more stressed than I realized—but about what, I have no clue either. “Well, then. Seeing as I came all the way here from my carriage, are you going to be a gentleman and offer me a seat or what?”

“Oh—yes. Of course.”

He moves over to make room at once, and I sit, but alarm flashes through me. I’ve never known him to be this compliant before. Something’s definitely wrong.

Still, we are both silent for a while, listening to the steady snores of the two businessmen and the creak of the train tracks below, before I finally muster the courage to point out the obvious. “Not to sound like the school counselor or whatever, but you don’t seem like your usual self today.”

“My usual self?” he repeats, eyebrows rising.

“You know—your superpretentious, unnecessarily formal, annoyingly arrogant, walking-advertisement-for-SYS self.” The intended insult comes out sounding much more affectionate than I wanted, so I add for good measure, “You even stumbled over your words when you were talking just now.”

Horror clips his tone. “I did not.”

“You did,” I say, mock-serious. Then, with sincerity: “So. Do you see my cause for concern now?”

“I suppose. I just...” He smooths out a nonexistent crease in his shirt, then says, with all the tones of someone making a terrible, humiliating admission: “I’m...not exactly a big fan of enclosed spaces.”

“Okay,” I say slowly, trying hard to think of what to say next. Because if this really is an admission, it means he’s trusting me with something private, something precious. And god help me, for whatever reason, the last thing I want is to ruin it. “Okay,” I repeat. “Do you want to talk about why...?”

“Not in particular, no.”

“Oh.” I clear my throat. “Well, all right then.”

A long, awkward silence ensues, and I’m starting to worry this conversation is over—not that I enjoy talking to Henry Li or anything, it’s more the principle of the matter—when he sucks in a tight breath, the way you would before ripping off a Band-Aid, and says, “It’s...quite silly, really. And it was a very long time ago—I couldn’t have been more than four or five. But...”

I wait.

“At our old house in Shunyi, there was this room in the basement—well, not so much a room as a closet. There were no windows, nothing except a door you could only open from the outside. I remember... I just remember it was always cold in there, and dark, like the mouth of a cave. My mother wanted to leave it for the ayi to store her cleaning supplies, but Father thought it’d be put to better use as a...study space.” His jaw tightens. “So every day, at precisely five in the morning, he’d leave me in there with only a book of practice questions and a pencil for hours.”

He pauses, rubs the back of his head. Forces out a hollow laugh. “Of course, it wasn’t quite as terrible as it must sound. Not at first. Hannah—my older sister—would sneak me snacks and books when my father was busy working, or simply sit outside the door to keep me company... But then her own grades started slipping, and she was sent off to school in America, and it was—it was just me in that room for hours on end...” His voice grows quieter and quieter with every word, until it’s swallowed completely by the rattle of the train and the shrieks of a baby in another compartment.

And I know I should say something at this point. I know. But all that comes out of my mouth is, “Oh my god.”

“Yes.” He shifts position slightly, so I can no longer see his face. Only the pale curve of his neck. “Indeed.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I honestly—I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been...”

I mean this as more than just a phrase. Despite what everyone likes to assume based on my scores and general personality, Mama and Baba have never pressured me to study. If anything, they’re always the ones to tell me to relax, to put the textbook down and watch some TV, go outside more.

And when I was five, Mama made it clear that she only ever wanted two things from me: for me to be a good person, and for me to be happy. That was also why she and Baba decided to sell their car, their old apartment, and use all their savings to send me to Airington, even if they knew I’d resist the idea at first—they hoped to protect me from the intense pressure of the gaokao.

“It’s fine now. Really,” he says, voice rough. “And I wouldn’t be where I am without—”

“No.” Anger cuts through me like a knife: anger at his father, for doing this to him; anger at the universe, for letting it happen; anger at myself, for assuming his competence was rooted in an easy childhood, a painless childhood. “I hate that. I hate when people justify a clearly inhumane process and use it as some kind of model for success just because the results are to their liking—”