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The village had him figured out from day one: Fan wouldn't be sticking around.\nEveryone knew how the system worked. Young scholars out of the Inkbound Order only took these rural magistrate postings as a stepping stone. Give it six months to a year, and he'd be off to a comfortable promotion in the city.\nYang Fan never tried to argue. He wasn't much of a talker anyway.\nThe harder he tried to explain himself, the more tongue-tied he got.\nHe spent a solid month wearing down the seed merchant in town until he finally scored a new, hardier strain of wheat for the village. That autumn, the harvest jumped by twenty percent. Old Man Sun just squatted by the fields, staring at the heavy, golden stalks in total silence. After a long while, the old man stood up, clapped Yang Fan on the shoulder, and walked away.\nLater, when it was time to repair the local roads, a few folks refused to pitch in. Yang Fan didn't complain. He just picked up a shovel and did their share of the backbreaking work for three days straight. On the fourth day, one of the holdouts showed up without a word, grabbed a shovel of his own, and got to work.\nWhen his mother came to drop off a fresh jar of pickled vegetables, she took one look at the dark bags under his eyes, the mountain of worn notebooks by his bed, and the holes eaten clean through the soles of his shoes. Softly, she told him it was time to come home.\nYang Fan shook his head. "Mum, there are over a hundred families in this village, and I know every single one by name. I know whose elders need their medicine, and whose fields need watering. If I leave, who's going to look out for them?"\nEventually, the inevitable happened. An official transfer order arrived, offering him a prestigious desk job back at the County Court. Yang Fan shoved the letter under a heavy book titled Agricultural Administration and didn't sleep a wink for three nights. On the fourth day, he walked into the village chief's house and dropped the letter on the table.\n"Chief, I'm not leaving."\n"You sure about that?"\n"I'm sure."\nEven now, folks will stop him on the road and ask, "Fan, are you really staying?" Yang Fan just smiles.\nThese days, Old Man Sun is the one who answers for him. "Where's he going?" the old man huffs, taking a slow drag from his pipe. "Boy belongs to this village more than the rest of us do."\nOutside the window, the vibrant green of the scallion fields stretches on, as far as the eye can see.