When Shao took Daming back to his dormitory, there were loud cheers and greetings.

“Wei Daming! Have you come back to drag down the class average?”

“Are you staying for New Year celebrations?”

All through the evening, Daming sat in the dining hall, the center of attention. Some professors stopped to greet him, his misdeeds long forgotten. Everyone wanted a firsthand report on conditions at the front.

“Morale couldn’t be better,” Shao heard him proclaim. “Everywhere the troop transports go, long lines of men are waiting to enlist. Very soon the factories that moved inland from other cities will be manufacturing armaments. The Japanese don’t stand a chance.”

“Will Daming come to our New Year celebrations?” Meirong said. She nudged Shao and he moved over to make room on the bench for her and Lian.

“Trust me, he’ll be the last to leave every party,” Shao said. “And for the next month he’ll be rotating between Changsha and Wuhan. I’m sure we’ll see more of him.”

“Do you think he’d be willing to tell his story for our newspaper?” Shao realized that Meirong was rather in awe of Daming.

His friend was no longer the thoughtless boy who’d been the despair of his family and professors. His lean face, though cheerful as he joked with friends, held the haunted look of someone older, someone who had seen too much. Shao looked over at Lian and she returned his smile. But her eyes also held the same haunted look. Perhaps they all did.

Shao’s dormitory was unusually quiet when he returned. His roommates were absorbed in reading. Reading letters. He rushed to his bed and almost laughed out loud. A bundle of letters tied with string lay on the covers.

The four letters from his mother he skimmed quickly. There was one from a favorite cousin, others from friends in Shanghai. Another one from the Liu family’s accountant, brief instructions attached to a money order. He lay down and returned to his mother’s letters, this time reading each one more thoroughly. Gossip, weddings and births, illnesses, the death of one elderly great-uncle. His father had penned a few lines at the end of each letter, repeating admonishments to take care of his health.