Chen Xiulan would never forget that autumn evening last year.

The sky above the school was layered with brilliant orange and purple, like an unrolled sheet of dyed cloth. The children had all gone home-she should have left too. But she stayed behind, organizing books in the classroom. Actually, she wasn't organizing books. She was waiting for that to arrive that time of evening when the village went quiet, when she could sit alone in the empty classroom without anyone calling her "Teacher Chen" or "Brother Jianguo's wife."

She had been teaching at the village elementary school for five years. Thirty-two students across three grades, all in one room. She taught math, she taught language, she taught music-she taught everything. When children misbehaved, she rapped their palms with a pointer. When children wet themselves, she lit a fire under them to dry their pants. She was the whole village's teacher, the whole village's mother. But no one ever asked her if she herself needed a teacher, or if she needed a mother.

She sat at her desk in the empty classroom, leaning her cheek against her palm, her elbow propping up the cracks in the desktop. She looked up at the crooked blackboard, at the Chinese characters she had written that day-"Field," "Earth," "Sky," "Person"-the four characters standing in a line, so simple that each seemed to anchor the next. She didn't know why, but looking at them made her want to cry.

Then the door opened.

Zhao Yunfei entered carrying a cloth bag.

"Teacher Chen, you're still here?" He looked surprised, but she didn't think he was really surprised. He had walked right up to the door of the classroom. Outside the window, he must have seen the light on. Even someone less observant would know someone was inside.

"Still organizing some things." She sat up straight, her hand brushing the books neatly on the desk.

"Good. I need to borrow some books." He walked to the bookshelf in the corner, taking it step by step. There was something in his gait-not quite wrong, but something that didn't sit right. Like he was walking to the bookshelf, but also like he was counting the distance.

She watched his back as he searched the books. He took a long time choosing, pulling out this one, flipping two pages, putting it back. Pulling out another, flipping a few pages, putting it back.

"You've been teaching for five years," he said suddenly, without turning around, his voice brushing over the bookshelf. "How much longer do you plan to keep at it?"

"Are you asking on behalf of the production team's education office, or as a fellow villager?"

"In my capacity as the production team's bookkeeper, temporarily inquiring about the teacher's career plans." He turned his head, a smile on his face.

She laughed. That was the first time she had really laughed with him. Before that, their relationship had always been "the Party secretary's son" and "the teacher," separated by a politeness that sat between them like the boundary between two fields, never crossed. But that day, the smile in that remark breached it.

"A lifetime, maybe." Chen Xiulan let her eyes float toward the window. The purple clouds were gradually sinking into the darkness. "I have nowhere else to go. Here, at least I still feel like I'm alive."

She said it lightly, as if just chatting. But it spooked Zhao Yunfei. He watched her profile, the line of her jaw drawn against the window, distinct and fine. She was beautiful in a quiet way-not in a way that turns heads in a crowd, more like a still pool hidden in a hollow, visible only to those who deliberately walk close enough to see it.

"Does your husband not come back often?"

"No." She answered simply. She didn't want to say more about that.

The conversation ended. It was neither long nor short. But in that span, something had changed between them. They both felt it. Like a seed buried underground-no one noticed it, but together they were waiting for it to sprout.