Guitarist and Shadowless Kick (4)
After school on Tuesday, Zhao Shihua didn't go to the cafeteria with Zhuo Siqi as usual. Instead, she slowed down to pack her bag and waited. Shao Yifu, like her, was also slow and sluggish. Normally, he'd rush home like a whirlwind, but lately, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he'd lost his excitement after school—because those were his Tai Chi practice days.
There was a staircase at each of the four corners of the teaching building. The east staircase led to the cafeteria and dormitory, while the west staircase led to the playground and the back door. Therefore, when Zhao Shihua went downstairs, he didn't mean to follow Shao Yifu; they just happened to be going to the same place.
"Why are you following me?" The figure in front of me suddenly turned around after jumping down two steps.
"Who has time to follow you?" Zhao Shihua couldn't help but roll his eyes. It seemed that the narcissistic shadow on the stage was still stuck on him and couldn't be torn off.
"Are you going to the playground?" Seeing that she didn't answer and walked straight around and downstairs, Shao Yifu hurriedly caught up with her and asked casually, "Are you going to practice Tai Chi too?"
"Hurry up, or you'll be late." Zhao Shihua urged without turning back.
"...Oh my god! Are you really going to practice Tai Chi?!"
Not only did Shao Yifu not believe it, but even Zhao Shihua himself found it incredible. How did things develop to this point? It was probably because of the somersault that night that something in his mind went wrong, causing him to go to Teacher Mei.
During a break between Sunday evening self-study classes, she walked alone to the PE office. She was making a bet with the heavens: If the teacher was there, she'd ask her to participate; if not, forget it, pretend nothing had happened. She counted on her fingers the entire way, like a child plucking petals—go, no go; go, no go; go…
Actually, it was somewhat intentional. After all, normally, the PE teacher wouldn't come to the office on Sunday nights, and that Sunday was no exception.
Zhao Shihua turned a corner and found that the lights in the office on the distant playground were indeed off. She sighed, not knowing whether it was relief or disappointment.
Forget it. You see, exceptions really won't happen. Even Heaven wants you to stay the way you are. Besides, when Teacher Mei invited you, you said you wouldn't go. Now you're insisting on joining. Aren't you just deliberately disrupting everyone else's plans?
Even a child knows that the moment they pluck the petals, they already have a feeling for the outcome. The answer is clearly there, but they cover their eyes and dare not look.
During Monday's flag-raising ceremony, Zhao Shihua, consciously or unconsciously, searched for Teacher Mei. As soon as the meeting was dismissed, she chased after her, feeling like a salmon swimming upstream, squeezing her way toward the opposite side of the teaching building, saying "Excuse me" and "Please make way."
"Teacher!" Zhao Shihua was already a little out of breath when she finally ran up to her. "I..."
"What's wrong?"
"I—ka, ka, ka!"
Seeing that she hadn't caught her breath for a long time, Teacher Mei patted her on the back and said, "Take your time first. Do you want to ask for leave from physical education class?"
"No, I want to..." Zhao Shihua shook his head, his heartbeat pounding like it was hammering at his eardrums. "Tai Chi—can I still join?"
However, Teacher Mei didn't answer immediately. Instead, she looked her up and down. Zhao Shihua didn't dare look up again. She only heard that the teacher seemed a little embarrassed. After a while of "hmm," he said, "Of course, I can. However, the formation has been set. I can... I can change the leader. But since you've learned it before, it will be no problem. By the way, is your foot okay?"
"Ah? It's okay, it's okay." The preparatory bell rang, and Zhao Shihua looked back at the big clock on the gymnasium tower. He wanted to explain that when he said "okay", he meant that the injury on his right foot was healed, not that he agreed to be the leader.
"Okay, go back to class first and meet at the football field after school tomorrow afternoon."
As she went downstairs, she continued to ponder how to explain it to the teacher. She couldn't just say she wanted to participate the day before, only to back out the next day because she had to be the leader. She could only hope that Teacher Mei was joking. After all, the last time she volunteered for the long-distance run, she had just said it casually. Maybe this time, too, she would be relegated to a dispensable position.
Zhao Shihua turned and walked out of the stairwell, but Shao Yifu, who was following behind her, jumped down several steps in a row and hit her shoulder with such force that she almost pushed her down. She was so scared that she staggered and almost fell to the ground.
"Are you serious? You're not kidding?"
"Who has time to joke with you? And don't ask so many questions all day long." Zhao Shihua shook his hand off, but as they approached the playground, he couldn't help but keep asking, "How long do you usually practice?"
"Probably about one class period."
"Have you finished learning the moves?"
"Yeah, but I still can't remember."
"How many people are there in total? Does each class send a sports committee member? Seniors won't participate, right? That would mean about forty people?" The more she asked, the more nervous she became. She wondered how there were still so many things she didn't know. She had rushed in on impulse, and ended up not even knowing who the enemy - no, even her teammates were.
"What did you just say to me?" Shao Yifu suddenly put on a serious expression, his brows knitted into a knot, and imitated her tone and said, "Don't ask so many questions from morning to night."
Passing under the spectator seats, she could see a recreational fitness area at the other end of the playground. Quite a few people had already gathered in the open space in front. Zhao Shihua walked quickly towards it, but the closer she got, the more ominous her feeling became. She immediately recognized Teacher Mei in her white tracksuit, but the others—the other physical education committee members, to be more precise—were all boys?!
She turned her head and glanced at Shao Yifu next to her. She saw that his neck was huddled in the collar of his school uniform, his hands were in his pockets, and he was shaking like a leaf in the wind. Even this person was... male.
How could I not have thought of this?!
Zhao Shihua wanted to hit her head with a hammer. She should have considered this earlier. Shao Yifu had clearly told her that the participants were the physical education committee members of each class, but because he had said something like "If it weren't for Jian Tingting" at the time, she had created the illusion that Jian Tingting was also participating.
But a simple calculation would reveal that Jian Tingting, as the Vice Minister of the Student Union's Culture and Sports Department, had always been solely responsible for notifications. Who had ever seen a cadre personally planting rice during a rural inspection? Besides, wasn't she rumored to be hosting the New Year's Eve party? Between dancing and hosting, how could she have time for Tai Chi?
A fierce gust of cold wind blew in her face, pouring a basin of ice water on her heart. Zhao Shihua really wanted to turn around and leave. She couldn't help but think of the jokes the boys in junior high school made when they got together, such as "King Kong" and "strong man". It would be terrible if she was called "like a boy" again.
"Where are you going?" Shao Yifu saw that she was walking further and further off the track as if her navigation had failed.
"...going to the bathroom." He had just been there.
Martial artists never lie—I don't know where my master got that famous quote from, but it's as unreliable as Washington chopping down a cherry tree. But those early lessons were too hard to forget. Whenever she accidentally told a lie, Zhao Shihua would act to prove it, to clear her conscience. So, she actually went to the bathroom. Similarly, promises made to others shouldn't be easily reneged on—Zhao Shihua was referring to her promise to appear.
She wanted to wash her face to cheer herself up, but gave up the moment her fingers touched the water; it had rained lightly the night before, and the temperature had dropped significantly. She had to face reality. She could just use the excuse of a sprained ankle after training and slip away. Zhao Shihua looked in the mirror, making sure she still had a tortoise shell to retreat into, and then she steeled herself.
As soon as she walked out of the women's restroom, she was frightened half to death by Shao Yifu, who was guarding the door. He suddenly flashed out from the dark shadows, grabbed Zhao Shihua's wrist and pulled her out, and the latter instinctively stepped back.
"What are you doing?!" Zhao Shihua squatted down, lowered his center of gravity and dragged the other person.
"Are you trying to slip away?" Shao Yifu asked, not even turning his head, as he pulled hard. It looked as if the two of them were playing tug-of-war or sledding.
"I don't!"
"Then why don't you leave now?"
"Because you won't let go of me!"
When Shao Yifu realized the strangeness of the situation, he finally let go of her hand: "I'm sorry, I misunderstood."
"Psycho!" Zhao Shihua cursed. She didn't want to admit that she had indeed thought of running away when she was being chased and blocked.
Teacher Mei blew the whistle vigorously. After everyone took their seats, she pushed Zhao Shihua forward and briefly introduced her, saying, "A new student has joined us today." Without further explanation, she moved her to the back of the team and quietly explained, "Practice with everyone first and see how it goes."
So, was the so-called "leading" really just a casual remark? Zhao Shihua breathed a sigh of relief, completely unlike the disappointment she'd felt the last time she volunteered for the long-distance run and was ultimately ignored. Perhaps this return was for the best. After all, all the courage she could muster was only a tiny fraction, the size of a seed pinched between her index finger and thumb, a seed that had nearly been crushed the day before by the words, "You lead."
Perhaps because of the teacher's nonchalant attitude, the students present only glanced at her at first. They were probably curious about which class's sports committee had a girl, why she joined so late, and so on. Before they could find out more, their attention was drawn back by the teacher's whistle.
The performance line was trapezoidal, narrow in front and wide in the back. Several of the boys in the fourth row looked over 1.80 meters tall. She reached the edge, only to discover a foreigner with curly hair lurking behind them. Now it was her turn to be puzzled. A class's sports committee member was actually from abroad, but it could also be a transfer student from Xinjiang. Perhaps seeing foreigners serving as sports committee members made the others accustomed to her, a "female sports committee member."
Zhao Shihua couldn't help but glance back, filled with gratitude. She was slender and delicate, with a raised nose like someone in an oil painting. But because her school uniform was too loose and her hair was short, it was hard to tell her gender. Of course, she was too embarrassed to ask. She still remembered her first foreign teacher class, so nervous that her tongue was tied, afraid that others would laugh at her Hakka accent.
Fortunately, as always, Teacher Mei quickly got to the point, avoiding the rambling of small talk that would have made the five minutes fly by. She immediately pulled out a small speaker and tapped her phone, which then blazed with unfamiliar background music and a familiar phrase: Yang Style 24-Posture Simplified Tai Chi.
Muscle memory may be even more reliable than mental memory, like the moment you get on a bike or jump into water—even after a long time, there's no need to recall the technique. Zhao Shihua's hands and feet moved spontaneously at the command, like a robot at the touch of a coin. If she occasionally made a small mistake, she would quickly correct it, muttering to herself, "Right, right, right, that's the way it goes." Meanwhile, the other students, who had been learning for two weeks, while some took it seriously and performed the horse stance with great skill, others performed with a lackluster, as if they would collapse at the slightest breeze.
"Wow—my sister's martial arts are so powerful!"
As they finished the last measure, someone behind them suddenly clapped. Zhao Shihua turned and saw a kindergarten kid she seemed to have seen before, clapping his hands while riding a spring-loaded rocking horse. Feeling shy, she raised her index finger to her lips, asking the kid to keep his voice down.
"You're doing great!" The foreign friend next to her also said to her, and the voice sounded like it was a girl's.
Zhao Shihua was startled. After pondering her meaning for a moment, he guessed she was referring to his good Tai Chi skills. He politely replied, "...Thank you."
"Have you learned the 'Taiqi' boxing?" From the non-standard tone of voice, one can still infer that the other party is probably not Chinese.
“Um, yes,” she said. When she was with foreigners, she would still get flustered and couldn’t even utter the most basic sentence structure. She had to sort out the word order in her mind and check the grammar before she dared to say, “I have learned it since I was young.”
“But you’re young now.”
Zhao Shihua was suddenly speechless, smiled awkwardly, and instinctively replied "sorry" as if his teacher had pointed out his mistake.
Teacher Mei clapped her hands in front of everyone, drawing their attention. "You did pretty well this time. It looks like everyone has memorized the moves. We still have a week and a half left, so we should practice the commands and formation changes as well."
There was a sudden wailing from the crowd below:
"Teacher, do we really have to memorize it? Can't we just play some music?"
"Yes, teacher, the movements are okay, but those commands are really too difficult to memorize."
"Add to that the positioning, and I'll have even less time to remember!"
"Teacher, the exam is next month, I don't have time."
Zhao Shihua discovered that tall and strong boys were just as good as girls at acting coquettishly.
Once the exam was brought up, even Teacher Mei was helpless. After all, this wasn't a sports school; studying was the top priority. But she didn't seem ready to back down. She blew her whistle hard, silencing everyone, and then said, "Be quiet and listen to me before you complain."
"What did they say?" the foreign friend asked her again.
"They, they are talking about the..." She didn't know which word corresponded to the "password" and hesitated for a long time without any further words.
Suddenly, the other person changed his tone and said in a clear and articulate voice, "Can you speak Chinese to me? I want to learn Chinese."
Zhao Shihua was stunned for a moment, then burst into laughter, his nervousness instantly forgotten. He completely copied the questions and answers from the first lesson of elementary school English, only translating them into Chinese: "Okay, what's your name? Which country are you from?"
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