Winter Time Rendering

Meanwhile, the man in the duck-billed cap went to meet up with his partner. When he got there, he didn’t see his partner, but he did see three students.

Ruoping was closest to him at the time. By the time she noticed him, the man had already raised his gun and taken her hostage.

The man then marched the three of them to the fishpond at gunpoint. Ruoping had originally wanted to hide the fact that Zhang Shutong and Qingyi were there, but the two of them were chatting so loudly down below that anyone who wasn’t deaf could hear them. So, the man decided to lie in wait.

At that point, the hostage was still Ruoping. But for some reason, the man in the cap—perhaps thinking Lu Qinglian would be easier to handle in her long, cumbersome robe, or maybe just that she looked like a pushover—had an impulsive change of heart and swapped the two. This decision set the stage for the two swift kicks that were to follow.

A few minutes later, Zhang Shutong and Qingyi came up. After a standoff that lasted only a few seconds, Lu Qinglian KO’d the man in the cap with a single kick—

At that point, Ruoping remembered her phone. She winced as she picked it up, but luckily, it wasn’t broken, just knocked apart. Most phone back covers back then were detachable and made of plastic, so they weren’t too fragile.

—but that didn’t stop Ruoping from landing two kicks of her own to the man’s crotch, a sight that made the boys’ blood run cold.

After calling the police again, they sat exhausted on the curb, their hearts still pounding as they recalled the night’s events.

They looked at each other, their eyes shining in the darkness. Someone poked someone else, and one of them couldn’t help but laugh. Soon, they were all joking around again.

Qingyi was playing with the air gun. He’d only ever seen them in magazines and had never touched a real one. Realizing it would be confiscated soon, he felt a sudden pang of reluctance.

Du Kang, ever the provocateur, took advantage of the distance between himself and Ruoping. "Did you get so scared you cried earlier? Tsk, tsk, how embarrassing," he taunted, sticking out his tongue and making a face.

Ruoping immediately shot up. "I think you’re about to cry!" she retorted, moving to grab his ear. Du Kang cried for mercy, yelling, "Don’t forget I saved your life in the reeds!"

Ruoping pursed her lips. "That was the frog that saved me. If I’m thanking anyone, it’s the frog..."

Then someone brought up the idea of writing about tonight’s events for their next language arts essay. Since there were four of them, they could each write a section about their own experience, starting from the fishing trip.

And since Ruoping’s writing was always excellent—her essays were often used as models and read aloud in every class—they wouldn’t have to worry about their plan going unnoticed. Pieced together, it would form a complete, absolutely thrilling story.

Besides, they’d muddled their way through school for four years to finally become upperclassmen. How could they not bask in the admiring gazes of the underclassmen? It would even leave behind a legendary tale after they graduated.

At this, they all got excited and started discussing who would write what right then and there.

’Why don’t we just build a statue of the three of you?’ Zhang Shutong thought. ’And me, of course. We could put all four of us right at the school gate. We’d definitely be more impressive than Gu Qiuyan’s dad.’

He had strong objections, anyway. The other three had plenty to write about: ’Catching Frogs in the Reeds,’ ’Getting Scared to Tears in the Reeds,’ ’Tying Fishing Line in the Reeds’... a wide range of topics.

All he could write was ’An Argumentative Essay on Why My iPhone Has No Signal,’ but argumentative essays weren’t popular in middle school. His topic was doomed from the start.

The air was getting truly cold. Zhang Shutong sneezed and quickly turned his head, only to see red and blue lights flashing in the distance at the end of the road.

The sirens wailed.

The police had finally arrived.

...

The island’s police car was a pickup truck. An officer got out, and just as he was about to ask who had called, the kids shuffled aside, revealing the two unconscious men behind them. The sight gave him quite a shock.

They threw their bikes into the truck bed and squeezed in for the ride to the station to give their statements.

Halfway through, the officer named Xiong returned. He was about to glare at Du Kang when a colleague pulled him aside, and the two spoke in low voices.

When Officer Xiong looked up again, he seemed to be holding something back, his face turning red from the effort. In the end, he just patted Du Kang on the shoulder and walked away, pretending he hadn’t seen anything.

—but who could blame him? Du Kang was sitting there right in front of the officer, polishing a fishing rod. He was rubbing it so hard the tissue in his hand was about to tear, wiping with an air of triumphant flair.

Ruoping was right there beside him, asking with a sweet smile:

"My, isn’t that tiring? Would you like a sip of water? I see a spot you missed. Why does it look so dark right there? Oh, the rod was originally black? Never mind, just keep wiping..."

The kids really got to show off for a bit. But what could anyone do? They were heroes. Not only did the police have to put up with it, but they also had to praise them and send a commemorative banner to their school.

It turned out the two poachers were repeat offenders. The interrogation revealed that it wasn’t just about the two birds; they had pulled off a major haul this time. They had also killed a bunch of foxes, badgers, and pangolins, which were all in their vehicle not far from where the kids had been fishing.

As for why they had buried the fish, it was because the bald man had forgotten about the dead fish he’d left in the vehicle, and they had started to stink in the heat.

This also cleared up another mystery: why they hadn’t run into the electro-fishers during the previous version of this night. It turned out to be related to Du Kang. When he had been moving his stool, he ran into the man in the duck-billed cap. The encounter made the man uneasy, so he and his bald partner went back to check things out.

An "expert" was even called to the police station—in reality, he was just a chicken castrator, but the last ferry had long since departed for the night, so they had to make do. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

For a while, the place was in total chaos.

Ruoping’s mother also showed up. Du Kang and Qingyi just called home to let their families know they were safe and would be back soon. That’s how it was with boys on the island; they were used to running wild, and as long as they didn’t stay out all night, their families didn’t worry too much.

By the time everything was finally over, they left the police station yawning. It was past nine o’clock.