Mei stretched as the bell tolled, announcing the start of the morning. She stretched, her head dozy, but ecstasy buzzing in her stomach. A new day of studying, a new year, a fresh start!
She put on his disguise, making sure to pack her hair into the bun extra tight, and the bindings on her chest were secure enough. As she got ready for the day, the chatter outside of her dormitory grew and grew. Carrying her materials, she joined the hoard of other students.
Jan woke up to the sound of chatter and bell tolls, and so promptly got ready for the day. He followed the other students to the courtyard where they will study, anxious about the lessons today. From the corner of his eye, he saw Tang rushing to his side.
"Morning!" he greeted. Jan looked down.
"Ah. Morning."
They tred to the courtyard, the low desks underneath the plum blossom trees already sprinkled with its fallen petals.
Tang kneeled at a desk, placing his supplies down, and Jan kneeled beside him, doing the same. With poetry being studied today, they had paperback books with them. He thumbed their spines, bound with white, cotton thread.
Very soon, the teacher arrived, a fan in one hand while stroking his long, white beard with the other. He welcomed the students to the academy and instructed them to turn to a page. Jan did the same. But when he looked at the characters below him, he frowned. True, he knew some conversational characters, but the rest he didn't recognise yet.
He nudged to his companion, who perked up. "Tang, can you tell me what that reads?"
"Let me see." Tang nudged in closer, and looked at the poem, before smiling. "Ah! My father really likes this poem!" He read it out loud. However, half of the words didn't make sense. Somehow, they jumbled out into an intelligible string of vowels. Jan's lips twisted as he tried to decipher the other half of them. Being a merchant's son, most of what he knew of the language was conversational, as opposed to the formality of this poem. Tang looked up.
"Is that clear?"
"Erhm, pardon? I don't think I know half the words-"
"De Vries," The teacher called, a fan resting in one hand. "Read the poem for today."
Jan stood up, scrunching his brow in recalling the poem. From the best of his ability, he recalled what he heard.
Tang clapped his hands together, and gave him an encouraging smile! He smiled back as he sat down at the desk.
"You did it!" He cheered, patting his shoulder. In contrast, the teacher eyed him, waving his fan.
"What is the intended meaning of the poem, and how is this meaning created?"
"It's… it's means-"
The teacher sighed in frustration as he shook his head.
"Poetry is drawing meaning from a text, not garbling the sounds. Improve your pronunciation next time as well, you sound like a dying mule," he scolded, fanning his fan. Some students snickered before the teacher moved down to the next row.
Jan sat down, a glimmer of dejection in his eyes. Mei huffed, and patted his shoulder, causing him to look up. "Don't worry. The characters are at a hard level, anyway, you're doing great!" In front of them, another student recited the poetry, the teacher nodding along. "Though maybe you could practice a little more." Cue the teacher scolding the student about the way the words were emphasised before the rest of the class laughed. "Okay, a lot more practice."
Under orange candlelight, Tang dropped some poems and some writing supplies down. he put his hands on his hips. "Okay, I'm gonna have to be tougher on you this time around so that you catch up. Got that?"
"Uh-huh. Got that."
"Right." Tang pulled out the book from today and flipped to the poem. "The biggest problem for you was that you don't know half the words yet."
He nodded. He stroked his chin while looking down at the poem.
"Of course, your other problem is that you can't read nor recognise half of these words yet." She sighed. Jan picked up an inkstone and an ink stick, and with some water, brewed some ink.
"I've got an idea for reading them." Mei looked up and watched, interested. Dipping a brush into the welling ink, Jan wrote down phonetics with European letters onto another piece of paper.
"Ah! Phonetics, I see!" Mei lied down onto her stomach, her eyes following the letters, waiting for him to finish. "Though we still need to figure out a way for you to know the meaning of the words." Jan nodded as he continued to write the sounds down.
For a while, it was just them, the crickets outside, and the brush dying the letters, a flickering orange light beside them. Mei yawned.
"Jan, do you ever think of home?" Jan glanced up. Twirling the calligraphy brush between his long fingers, he nodded.
"Sometimes." He leaned onto his arm. "Mostly because I miss my siblings. But I like it here. It's a beautiful place, even though I'm not exactly treated like a local."
"Uh-huh, I agree, it's very beautiful here!" Tang replied with a smile on his face. He glanced to the side, thinking up something else to say. "You've got siblings? Me too! How many!"
"Yes. I've got a sister and a brother. You?"
"Oh yeah," Tang sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. "I have siblings, but they're all guys." Jan raised an eyebrow at Tang's dejected tone.
"Aren't you a guy too? You're saying that as if it's a bad thing."
"Uh-huh, yep." He sighed. He perked up as if he realised he let out an important piece of information. "But anyway, enough with the chit-chat, let's keep on reviewing!"
Tang's quick change of the topic surprised him. Nevertheless, Jan shrugged it off, and continued to write the phonetics.
The sound of a bell caused Mei to stir. The dormitory was washed with the sun's rays. She gasped. It was morning! The candle now snuffed out to a stump, with a dozing Jan's face fallen into the inkstone. She tapped him on the shoulder, and he stirred.
"Jan! It's class time! We-" his words melted into laughter at the sight of Jan. He rose up, half of his face dyed black with ink, with some even in his hair. He fell asleep on the inkstone!
Jan raised his eyebrows at the sight of Tang laughing until he touched his face and stared at the black ink on his fingers in horror. He glanced up to Tang and squinted.
"Tang!"
"Hm?"
"Your hanfu, the words are printed onto it!" Tang's eyes widened in horror as he kneeled up, screaming in horror (and a surprisingly high pitched voice) at his ruined outfit.
After a quick clothes change and a thorough clean of the ink, the two rushed towards the courtyard, the other students already writing characters onto paper with large brushes. Calligraphy! They sat down at their desk and pulled out their calligraphy materials.
"You're late," the teacher scolded with a dirty look in his eyes.
"He was up studying all night, I was helping him!" Tang objected. The teacher stroked his long beard with narrowed eyes.
"Fine. Get your materials ready."
After they pulled out their materials, they got to work with writing the characters. Jan's was wonky and out of proportion. He leaned over to his companion's calligraphy and whistled.
"That's pretty neat," he whispered. Tang turned to him and smiled.
"Thank you!"
"Wang Tang, let me see what you've got there," said the teacher. Tang looked up and backed away. The teacher peered at Tang's work. "No no, that's too restricted, it needs to flow. As for you, Jan De Vries…" He glanced towards Jan's calligraphy. "I see you're painting a mutilated snake. This is a calligraphy class, not an art class." The rest of the class erupted in laughter.
Again, they've studied at Jan's dormitory. Tang huffed as he unpacked the writing utensils.
"Hmph! Mutilated snake! We'll show him!"
To their despair, they were late the next day, Jan's face red from scrubbing ink off, and Tang adjusting the ties of the hanfu, each carrying a guqin under their arms. It was music today.
Both of their music was not as good. No matter how hard they tried to follow the required melody, both of their music sounded horrendous.
The teacher watched Tang and Jan play and looked at them with judgement.
"The Han has stooped to the level of the foreigner. My, what a turn of events!" The rest of the class laughed. Jan frowned at seeing the tables turn and Tang's spirits lower. He tapped him on the shoulder.
"Let's both revise this evening."
And so this pattern continued on for a few more weeks, Tang helping Jan with his calligraphy and poetry as they talked, usually late the next morning. Over the time period, the two of them became good friends, who are able to support each other during the tough times. At some days, he was really grateful for Tang's friendship.
Jan felt that just helping Tang with his music wasn't enough for the countless nights of calligraphy and poetry studies. He thought- what could he do to thank him? Jan remembered how Tang had eyed his pastels on the first day here. Perhaps he could lend some to him as an act of gratitude.
"I'm thinking," Jan started in their art class, a class they were both good in, "as repayment for all the help with the calligraphy and the poetry, would you like me to teach you how to use pastels?" Tang's eyes lit up, and a huge grin stretched across his face as he nodded rapidly.
"Certainly!"
Tang experimented with Jan's pastels that night, drawing some objects around his dormitory. The images were soft, messy things resulting from only just able to learn how to use pastels. Despite the paper covering the pastels, oranges and reds stained onto Tang's fingers already.
He was up to his seventh picture, though judging from how he tilted his head and sighed, he was still getting the hang of it. Tang had promise- he had shown him his just as apt artistic abilities, it's simply a different medium.
Tang huffed as he sat back, examining the drawing of a calligraphy brush. Jan leaned next to Tang, examining the drawing.
"Hm... not bad. You could use more blue for the shadow to accentuate the orange highlights." It was a little more formal than what they would've preferred, but it will do. It was a nice change of pace- this time, Jan was giving advice, not the other way round. At times, Jan worried if his advice was too harsh on Tang, who mixed his own with words of encouragement. "But... I think that you've improved since your first picture," he added. Tang nodded.
"Thanks!"He replied with a smile. Turning back, he continued to work on the image.
As Tang used primarily yellow colours, by the time he was finished, his fingers were stained with a saffron yellow. Tang seemed to be thinking about something as he focused on the tip of his stained fingers.
"Is something wrong?" Tang hummed in response.
"You know... how do you say the colour yellow?" Jan raised his eyebrow. "In Dutch."
"Ah. That would be geel."
"Geel," Tang repeated under his breath, as if admiring each syllable and nodded. "I see! How about red?"
"Rood."
For the rest of the evening, Jan instructed Tang on using pastels while Tang asked him about colours in Dutch.
Time seemed to fly quickly. That night, Tang fell asleep at the desk, his back rising up and down, a picture of a candle on a piece of paper drawn. Jan picked up the piece of paper, examining the picture of the candle. Tang had coloured the background a maroon colour to highlight the candle's pale wax body and the golden flame. Furthermore, he used a pale purple colour for the shadows, contrasting with the yellow light. He smiled.
"Tang?" Jan whispered. "Tang." He was fast asleep, his form draped over the desk. He kneeled down to take a closer look. A tint of red, yellow and orange covered his forefingers, a pastel rolling away from them. Jan had to admit, with the gentle lighting and shadows, he looked like a Renaissance painting.
"Well done," he whispered. Not wanting to wake him up, Jan put a blanket over him and blew out the candle.
This is not really my best chapter, apologies ;-;
EDIT: so it came to my attention that two of the sentences are incomplete! This is fixed now ^^
