Qin | Part 2

He had ambitions. Any illiterate shaved monkeys could stand on the stage, floundering like retards, masking their imbecility and bigotry with second-hand experience, squirting horse manure stinking of "positive energy" that they themselves couldn't buy. The only crafts they were truly versed in were hair-pulling, eyeball-gouging, ear-scratching, finger-pointing, bitching and hatching in office politics. Even a 12-year-old prostitute saw more truths, combat and blood than they did.

He constantly felt the urge to put in execution his definitions of a distinguished teacher: an acolyte of Nietzsche, transcending himself into some higher form of conflicting harmony; a linguistic Apollo, engineering intricate configurations showcasing his spiritual richness; a disciple of Dionysus, daring to stare at the rapturous primitive desire, demonic emotions seething within civilized chimpanzees; an eloquent logician, deciphering this wrought-iron world of criss-cross cause and effect; a Coriolanus-like warrior, battling the philistine hypocrisies plaguing his context, his culture; a Kafkaesque connoisseur, permeating into the impregnable fortresses of life and love; a qualified apprentice of human nature, harnessing its abysmal ambiguity and complexity daunting the sheepish minds; a master of group psychology, satisfying the sharpest intellect enticing peers' venomous envy.

He slept for an average of 5 hours a day, planning his own lessons, scribbling down his own verbatim scripts, rehearsing his own narratives, searching for his own voice.

Disillusionment with his ludicrous definitions was inevitable, but he had never thought that the meager income he earned could barely put food on the table. A whole day of passionate harangue was more of self-pitying ranting and raving. Depression was the mere concomitant of his grandiosity, nothing more.

Also, a touch of depression was adulterated with Qin's reaction to his lectures. She smiled every now and then at the fun parts, but she rarely uttered a word or participated in any group activity. Her precocious melancholy seemed a little eccentric, sometimes even putting her in a trance.

One afternoon, after the class, he was wiping his squiggles off the blackboard. All students had left the classroom, except Qin. She sneaked up on him, and tapped him on the back of his shoulder.

"Got a question?"

He looked into her watery, dreamy eyes and her moist, cherry lips. She picked up his right hand, held it in her little palm, stooped down and bit into the back of his right forearm, a spot near the elbow.

She nibbled a little harder and didn't let go of her game for a few seconds.

The hair could feel the tip of her tongue in this sweet prickling.

She loosened the grip of her trophy. A circle of indentations full of felicity left by her even teeth was still rosily visible, wet and hot.

Qin's girlish giggle broke the steaming silence:

"I just want to leave a mark. You won't be mad, will you?"

He was engulfed in a sudden whoosh of flame.

"Now I'll ride my bike home. I'd suppose a dumb boy like you hasn't got the knack. Sometimes I'd like to give a ride to dumb boys."

He was crowned on the back seat of her bike.

Acting upon an impulse, he laid his fingers on the left side of her waist. Through the gossamer silk, he could feel her body, robust, warm, tender porcelain. He was swooned with an urge to hug her from behind, but he took a grip on himself. He gently squeezed up a tiny hump of her skin on the side, and she let out a skittish hiccup. It soon turned to be a silly romp between them: he pinched the same spot several times, and she responded simultaneously with a happy staccato of coy burps.

"After the exam, I'll teach you to ride."