"I really didn't mean it this time!"

Xu Ye pulled his hand back in a hurry, protesting his innocence.

Without thinking, Chen Qingqing glanced up at the young mother on the side of the pool. Seeing that she wasn't looking their way, she pulled a face and said, "I'll teach you once. After that you can learn on your own with a swim ring."

"No problem."

Chen Qingqing swam a length of the pool and back with practiced ease. Her form was very clean, and in the water she was as nimble as a mermaid. In the time it took him to blink she was back at his side.

"The first thing you have to learn is how to breathe. Hold your breath underwater, breathe out above it. Try it yourself first."

Some people take to water naturally. Others are born afraid of it.

Xu Ye was the first kind.

He had never had a swimming lesson, but as a child at his grandmother's, every summer break he and the other kids would go catching crawfish in the stream that ran between the field ridges. The water in that stream was clear back then, and it was never very deep. If the crawfish were scarce they fished for them with homemade rods. If there were plenty, they simply rolled up their pant legs and went in after them.

Air conditioning wasn't common yet in those days, but he never felt the heat. Watermelon down the well, mung bean soup left to cool, old-style popsicles at half a yuan apiece — those were what summer came with.

There was just no going back to days like that now.

The clear stream had long since turned into a filthy ditch, and his childhood playmates had lost touch years ago and scattered in every direction…

Xu Ye obediently did as she asked, going under the surface and coming back up again. After only a short while of practice he seemed to have the hang of the breathing.

And Chen Qingqing moved on to the next stage of the lesson.

"Take a breath and…