The truth was that when the captain gave his speech in the school auditorium, the girl had not spontaneously decided to offer him flowers at all. It had been carefully planned by the school out of courtesy. The girl had also been chosen specially by the class teacher. On that day, in the auditorium thunderous with applause, the girl couldn't help but feel a bit excited. She ran blushing onstage, gave a salute, and then gave the flowers to the "sweetest person" … Now the "sweetest person" had come back to the school to look for her.
The old headmaster directed his puffy eyes under their glasses at the captain. He ruffled his hair distractedly, swallowed, and then with eyes shifting about uneasily, said, "Ah, well, yes, now, this cohort is getting older … But first I'll have to look into the student's views. Which class is she?"
"The long braid," said the captain.
"Aha. A long braid?"
"The tip touches her bottom."
"Ah. Aha. Which class?"
"Class three," said the captain swiftly, "The fifth one on the ninth row of class three."
The old headmaster flicked through the register for a moment. "Oh, I see. It's Wu Yuhua." He looked back at the short artillery captain, then measured his words carefully. "Well, then … I'll get on with some work now. I'll look into the situation later on … okay?"
"Okay," said the captain, "Do your work. I'll wait on the playing field." Without waiting for a reply, he turned around and marched out of the office. He strode right out to the playing field and stood under the basketball hoop.
The old headmaster had just been making an excuse. Hearing the captain's words, his mouth fell open in shock.
When the end-of-school bell rung that afternoon, the students immediately streamed out and then flooded onto the playing field like a tidal wave. A rumour was spread all around the school by chatterboxes, especially by the girls who chirped and chattered as they added colourful details: A short army captain likes the school belle!
Wu Yuhua from class three was simply a fairly tall girl with two swinging pigtails, who held her shoulders back a little, and had a fairly round bottom. Whether she really counted as a belle is another question. But at that moment several hundred school pupils all gathered round the playing field, encircling the captain as if to watch a monkey.
He had been standing on the field more than an hour. He was pacing back and forth under the basketball hoop, waiting for the old headmaster's answer. Probably to steady his nerves, he went to the horizontal bar, threw himself up at it, and hung down by both arms. But when he somersaulted down and turned around, he realised he had been encircled by several hundred people, and that he was the students' entertainment.
A sea of eyes greeted him. They were like a semi-circle of lone soldiers. The girls pointed at him, covering their mouths with their hands and tittering. The boys' expressions were very complicated, like wolves who had burst into the sheep-pen. The captains' face flushed straight away. He hadn't expected things to escalate like this. But he had been in battle after all, so without appearing too hurried, he just muttered something and leapt down from the bar in one clean leap. After a second he snapped his feet together and tensed his body, saluting the students solemnly, and then suddenly screaming out like a lion's roar, "Attention!"
The students were dazed for a moment, then, without knowing what they were doing, followed the order, standing stiffly and bringing their feet together. Then the captain barked out his second order without waiting for them to gather their wits, "Turn round—and—march!"
That lion's roar was hard to doubt. So the students retreated crestfallen. Captain Cai Guoyin was left alone on the field again.
At first Wu Yuhua had followed her classmates confusedly as they ran towards the field. But halfway there she had been told to turn around by a female teacher. When, in the headmaster's office, she learnt everything that had happened, she was deeply ashamed. Hiding her face in her hands, she fled to her dormitory and refused to come out.
Maybe she had at first been a little bit interested in the captain. If so, it was hidden in her heart. Of course she had seen him when she gave him the flowers. As a representative of the local garrison, he had twice given the students military training and once given a speech in the auditorium. In those days, most young girls' dream man was a soldier—that was the order of the day. When he got onstage to give his speech, and the school chose Wu Yuhua to give him flowers, she was certainly quite excited.
It was the first time she had gone onstage to present flowers. Her heart thumped, her face flushed, and she didn't get a clear look at his face at all. She just had a vague impression of his long, tube-shaped riding boots. After presenting the flowers, she gave a salute and ran back offstage blushing with embarrassment. That was all. They didn't have any direct contact. Objectively speaking, you could say that at that stage she felt an adolescent girl's adoration towards a soldier, a hero. It was a very vague and fuzzy feeling hidden deep in her heart, a kind of archetypal infatuation. She didn't think any more about it. But now this soldier had actually come to the school to get her.
All the students gathered around her dormitory, the front, sides and back. Behind the thin window paper was a wall of eyes. Their moist breath made a thousand holes appear in the paper, and then she saw their spit and heard all kinds of revolting things coming at her from every direction. Most of the comments were about Wu Cai Guoyin's height and his teeth, or about Wu Yuhua's breasts or bottom. In the space of just an afternoon, they had already got nicknames: "Little Bullet" and "Big Mare" .
Wu Yuhua wept.
