Yue returned home broken. His wrists ached from the jolt of the pickaxe and his back was a knot of pain. The locals had shunned him and the Chinese had laughed at him. Determined not to shame himself, Yue had tried to work hard, imagining the face of his father in each rock he smashed open. But no matter how much effort he put in, he couldn't keep up with the pace of the locals, who wielded their pickaxes with machine-like efficiency. Not only was his body unused to hard physical labour, but his mind kept wandering. It was cluttered with a thousand different thoughts that swelled and dissipated like the cumulus clouds that brooded overhead.

One moment he was thinking about a poem he had studied at school, the next he was visualising the labourers rendered in ink. But although his mind roamed far and wide it kept returning to one recurring theme; the image of a startled teenager lying on a snowdrift on a summer's night. Their face came back to him, similar to the face of an Uzbek, but also similar to the face of a Chinese. There was something mixed about that face that intrigued Yue. Then there were their clothes, all fur and felt, like a costume from a tv show.

A bang on the front door snapped Yue out of his reverie. His father had returned home, covered from head to toe in dust. He placed his hard hat on the table and went to wash his hands in the sink without exchanging so much as a word with Yue. Five minutes later the microwave pinged to let them know that dinner was ready. Yue's father sipped at his ubiquitous cup of Red Star. They ate straight from the box. Silence reigned, broken only by the sound of lukewarm noodles being slurped. Yue would have excused himself, but he had nothing to do, no books to read or pencils to sketch with. His father didn't even own a laptop and wouldn't countenance the presence of a smartphone in his house. He called them trifling distractions and although Yue was inclined to agree, at this point he would have welcomed any form of distraction from the long evening ahead.

After the remains of their dinner was disposed of in the bin, Yue's father made a point of locking the front door before retiring to his room. It seemed that there were to be no more midnight escapades. Yue focused his anger, letting it grow and grow, until he felt it simmer and foam inside him like a raging torrent. He pictured overturning the kitchen table and smashing the chairs against the floor, splintering them into an unrecognisable mess of plywood and plastic. He imagined ripping the microwave out of its cubby in the wall and kicking it with his steel-capped boots until it crumpled like an empty shell casing. He dreamed of smashing open his father's bedroom door with his shoulder, hoisting him out of bed and...and....

Yue let out a deep breath, emptying his lungs through his nostrils. He visualised his anger as a viscous poison accumulating at the base of his spine. He reached behind his back with both hands and drew it out with an imaginary syringe. A sense of calm returned. He made his way to his bedroom and lay down on his bed. He stared at the ceiling, letting his mind go blank. This was the technique the councillors had taught him after the incident that had got him thrown out of school, the reason why he was here with his father instead of in Beijing studying for his Zhongkao.

Soon he heard his father snoring next door. It was a loud phlegmatic sound, like a drill rasping through stone. Yue counted to sixty, five times, then got out of bed, taking care to tread lightly. He eased open his bedroom window, filling his room with the pulse of cicadas. The night was not as bright as the previous evening and clouds periodically obscured the moon. The air was pregnant with an approaching storm and Yue sensed that the early hours would be filled with heavy rain.

He tied his boots together by their laces and yoked them over his neck, so that they dangled across his chest. He wriggled his toes and shifted his weight onto his injured ankle, testing how strong it was. Then he poked his head out of the window and looked down at the ground below. If he fell, then a sprained ankle would be the least of his worries. Yue eased himself onto the window ledge, swinging his right leg out first and reaching down with his bare toes to feel for the metal edge that ran around the circumference of the cabins. He turned his feet outwards and plastered himself against the side of the building, his hands gripping a parallel ledge that ran at head height. The song of the cicadas grew louder as Yue began to shuffle along the side of the cabin.

As he passed his father's window, he paused to peer inside. His father was curled up in the foetal position, his stern features disarmed by sleep. Yue's shirt was neatly folded on his nightstand. His father had sowed the strips back together. Yue didn't even realise that his father knew how to sow. He felt a pang of guilt, but then he remembered his books and his paintings and all that he held dear. He steeled himself and continued on his way. When he reached the apex of the portacabin he had to place all his weight on his left foot and swing himself around the corner of the building. He gritted his teeth against the pain, willing his ankle to support him. For a brief moment it looked as if his grip would fail, but instead of falling to the ground, he landed gratefully on the metal stairwell. He made his way down the stairs and headed for the railway. He wanted to discover whether it could snow twice in one summer.