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From the second day of the New Year onwards, the house was a constant stream of visiting relatives. It was not just the many aunts and cousins she barely knew — they also brought along seven or eight children of primary school age, all of them noisy and raucous together, turning the house into absolute chaos.

In search of some peace, Li Kuiyi would exchange a few brief courtesies with the relatives each time and then disappear up to the rooftop, phone and book in hand, finding a sheltered spot from the wind and settling there for most of the day.

But this time, when she pushed open the door leading to the rooftop, she found Su Jianlin’s back.

He was leaning on both forearms against the railing, gazing into the distance. Li Kuiyi noticed quickly: hanging between his lowered fingers was a long, slender cigarette.

It was the first time she had seen him smoke.

At the sound of movement, Su Jianlin turned to look. When their eyes met, he showed no trace of embarrassment at being caught. His gaze drifted slowly toward her, then after a moment moved away, and he lowered his eyes and stubbed out the cigarette.

Li Kuiyi stepped out onto the rooftop and left the door slightly ajar behind her. She walked over. Not quite knowing what to say — should she tell him not to smoke? — she considered it, but then reflected that he was already an adult; there was not much to fault him for. In the end she only offered something rather formal: “Smoking is harmful to your health.”

“Mm.”

Li Kuiyi could not tell what that sound meant, and she did not want to press. The rooftop wind was fierce, and he had made no effort to find a sheltered corner; his hands and face were blown white as chalk, drained of any color.

“Is university very stressful?” She could not hold the question back after all.

“No,” he said mildly.

Then why had he started smoking? Li Kuiyi wondered. She was quite certain Su Jianlin was not the kind of person who smoked out of curiosity or to look cool. She was almost certain, without needing to reason it through, that something had happened to him — something he could not untangle on his own.

Was it related to his background?

Li Kuiyi only knew that Su Jianlin had been brought home by her grandfather. From fragments of adult conversation she had pieced together a vague picture: he was apparently the child of a friend her grandfather had made in his lifetime, a child who had lost both parents.

This sad history made Li Kuiyi feel instinctively that he was like her — of the same kind — and she had always wanted to be close to him. But Su Jianlin was as cold as a piece of polished jade, always standing at a cool, still distance while he watched her squabble with her grandmother, watched her get beaten, watched her sob and wail. Sometimes he did not even watch — he would put his headphones in and attend entirely to his own affairs.

Later, Li Kuiyi returned to the city for middle school, and Su Jianlin also got into a high school there. Though the distance between them was not great, they almost never saw each other. Not until their grandfather suffered a sudden cerebral haemorrhage and died did Su Jianlin come to find her at school and take her home. It was on that occasion that Li Kuiyi stumbled across a photograph inside Su Jianlin’s bag — a woman and a small boy. From what could be seen, the little boy was Su Jianlin when he was young, and the woman had features that resembled his by six or seven parts.

Was it his mother? Li Kuiyi had wondered. But before she could look further, Su Jianlin had come back from buying food.

She had stuttered through an explanation: “Your phone kept going off in your bag… I wasn’t going to answer it, but it rang three times in a row, and I… I thought there might be something urgent, so I… I was going to pick it up for you… I’m sorry.”

Su Jianlin said nothing. Beneath his cold composure, the darkness in his eyes was like the bottom of a still, frozen pool — fathomless, as if it could swallow her whole.

After that, Li Kuiyi had been a little afraid of him. So Fang Zhixiao was right — when Li Kuiyi was reluctant to reach out to Su Jianlin, it was not unwillingness: it was simply that she was frightened.

Even later, when he began giving her birthday presents, she had never been able to fully erase from the depths of her heart the fear that one look of his had planted. Alongside the fear there was some guilt, and a trace of regret.

The last time he had placed her fifteenth-birthday gift in her hands, she had realized, somewhat belatedly, that perhaps his giving her gifts was his way of saying he did not hold a grudge.

“What time is it?” Just as Li Kuiyi was lost in her own thoughts, Su Jianlin asked, without any preamble.

Even with her phone already in her hand, Li Kuiyi reflexively pushed up her sleeve and glanced at the watch on her wrist: “Nine fifty.”

A black mechanical watch, worn against her pale wrist — Su Jianlin’s gift to her for her fifteenth birthday. The moment Li Kuiyi realized this, she paused.

Su Jianlin also glanced at her wrist.

“Read your book. I’ll be up here for a while.”

“Alright.”

Li Kuiyi took her book and walked toward her usual spot. Just as she was about to sit down, Su Jianlin turned back one more time. “When does your school start term?”

“The seventh.”

“Do they allow alumni to come and give talks?”

“Talks?” Li Kuiyi was not quite sure what he meant. “Talks about what?”

“An activity where we revisit our old schools — basically promoting Zhejiang University to the students there.”

Su Jianlin would participate in something like that? Li Kuiyi found it slightly odd, and guessed: “Does doing this earn you course credits?”

“It counts toward extracurricular activity points.”

Li Kuiyi did not fully understand what extracurricular activity points were, but upon hearing that there were points involved, she understood. Of course — that made sense. If there were no points in it, Su Jianlin would not have any interest in this sort of thing.

“If you want to come and give a talk at the school, I can help you contact the teachers. Though…” Li Kuiyi thought about her relationship with Chen Guoming. “Whether it can actually be arranged is uncertain, so don’t get your hopes up too high.”

“That’s fine. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Li Kuiyi settled into her sheltered spot and opened her book. She had barely started when her phone screen lit up — and of all people, it was a message from Fang Zhixiao.

Fang Zhixiao: Oh my god, the world should just end already! My little cousin tore my Secret Garden coloring book to shreds!

Fang Zhixiao: I worked so hard on all those colors!

Fang Zhixiao: I am so done with children!

Li Kuiyi listened to the small children making noise downstairs and felt entirely sympathetic. “There, there.”

Fang Zhixiao: If it had been my holiday homework he tore up, I wouldn’t even be this upset!

Li Kuiyi: …

Fang Zhixiao: When are you coming back? I haven’t written a single word of the holiday homework yet! I’ll probably need you to save me.

Li Kuiyi: I haven’t written any either.

Fang Zhixiao: Seriously? But your favorite thing to do is to finish all your homework in the first few days of the holiday!

Li Kuiyi: I had a look at those Holiday Training workbooks. The questions are poorly made — not worth doing. Waste of time.

Fang Zhixiao: OK, I’ve already taken a screenshot of that. I’ll show it to my homeroom teacher.

Li Kuiyi: Your homeroom teacher is welcome to confront me about it.

Fang Zhixiao, reading this, relaxed completely. Not doing the holiday homework was always that much less daunting when a top student was in the same boat. She quickly moved on: “Hehe, have you been dropping my name around Su Jianlin?”

Well — no.

Li Kuiyi was genuinely not very skilled at this sort of thing. She was nothing like Fang Zhixiao, who would force a connection even where there was none to be had. She stole a glance at Su Jianlin’s back and changed the subject: “I discovered a secret about Su Jianlin.”

Fang Zhixiao: WHAT SECRET!!!

Li Kuiyi: He smokes.

Li Kuiyi: I thought you said you don’t like men who smoke?

Fang Zhixiao: Ahhhh, does Su Jianlin look cool when he smokes???

Li Kuiyi: …

Truly a woman with no principles whatsoever.

Once the last of the visiting relatives had been seen off, the day to return to school had arrived. Li Kuiyi did not know quite why, but she had the feeling that the air at school was fresher than the air at home.

Not everyone felt that way, of course — the sky, for one, chose this opportune moment to deliver rain. The clouds had not yet massed thickly, but the rapid, close-set drops were already clattering against the classroom windows in an energetic percussion. It was supposed to be the morning reading period, yet those who needed to catch up on sleep were catching up on sleep, and those who needed to catch up on homework were catching up on homework. The entire classroom hummed with an orderly kind of chaos.

“Kui-jie, save me! Let me copy your holiday homework.” Pan Junmeng pressed his palms together, staring at Li Kuiyi with imploring eyes.

Li Kuiyi glanced up from the new magazine she had bought: “I didn’t bring it.”

Pan Junmeng blurted: “Didn’t bring it means you didn’t do it!”

“…That’s fair.”

Li Kuiyi was surprised to find she could not argue with that.

“Did you actually not do it, or are you just saying that?” Pan Junmeng studied her expression, and began to waver.

Li Kuiyi simply pulled her bag out from under the desk and tossed it to him: “Have a look yourself. If you find so much as a scrap of paper in there, I’ll do your homework for you.”

Pan Junmeng plunged his head in and rummaged around. There was, indeed, nothing inside. He handed the bag back, gave his hands a confident, imaginary clap, and declared: “If the year’s top student didn’t bother doing it, why should I?”

“Is that really alright?” Zhou Fanghua asked — she had thought Li Kuiyi was joking.

Li Kuiyi said: “We’re probably splitting classes in the next day or two. Even if we’d done the homework, who would we hand it in to?”

At the mention of the class split, Zhou Fanghua bit her lip, while Pan Junmeng started wailing dramatically: “Kui-jie, you’re so heartless! When I don’t understand something after you switch to humanities, who am I going to ask?!”

Sure enough, at noon, the freshly printed arts-sciences class assignment list was posted on the notice board.

The rain had not stopped — a fine, steady drizzle. Everyone crowded around the board under their umbrellas. The umbrellas blocked far too much of the view, and with the crowd this thick, Li Kuiyi, Fang Zhixiao, and Zhou Fanghua nearly crushed each other trying to push through without managing to get anywhere near the front. Fang Zhixiao grew impatient and called out to the crowd: “Once you’ve found your own class, can you please step aside and make room? Don’t just stand there blocking everyone else — at this rate we’ll be here till the year of the monkey!”

The announcement provoked a few sideways glances but otherwise seemed to have little effect. Li Kuiyi was already losing interest — she was going to the humanities experimental class regardless. She just wanted to know which class number it was assigned to.

After another ten minutes of pushing and squeezing, they finally made it to the front. Following the school’s convention of “sciences first, then humanities,” Li Kuiyi went directly to the last few assignment sheets. At last, on the fourth sheet from the end, she found her own name.

Year One, Class Seventeen. She was first on the list, as expected.

Year One had twenty classes in total — and only four of them were humanities classes.

So as not to hold up other students trying to see the board, Li Kuiyi stepped back out of the crowd as soon as she had found her name. Looking around, she found Zhou Fanghua had already emerged. That she had found her name so quickly — Li Kuiyi was fairly certain she must have made it into the sciences experimental class.

But why did she not look particularly happy?

Li Kuiyi walked over to her and hooked her arm through hers. “Well?” she asked softly. “Did you make it?”

Zhou Fanghua lowered her eyes and nodded.

“I knew you could do it!” Li Kuiyi gave her arm a joyful shake.

Only she knew how hard Zhou Fanghua had worked. Like Fang Zhixiao, Zhou Fanghua’s humanities scores were actually stronger than her sciences scores, and the sciences gave her real trouble. But she had held steady and ground her way through it, bit by bit. In that final push before the end-of-term exam, long after everyone else had gone home, Zhou Fanghua was still in the classroom — people said she would stay studying until the last minute before the dormitory gates closed.

If she had chosen humanities, things would have been much easier for her. But she had kept walking in the direction she found most difficult, and now, having made it into the sciences experimental class, her wish had in a sense been granted.

Just then Fang Zhixiao squeezed out from the crowd — only a regular class, but she was elated, and flung her arms around Li Kuiyi with a shriek: “I’m in Class Sixteen, and you’re in Seventeen — we’re next door! This has to be fate — even if we can’t be under the same roof, we’ll still be neighbors!”

Li Kuiyi thought it was very good luck indeed, but looking at the smug expression on Fang Zhixiao’s face, she could not resist teasing her: “Is it really that wonderful? Class Sixteen and Seventeen are both on the fourth floor, you know. Are you sure you’re happy about climbing all those stairs?”

Fang Zhixiao pouted. “Hmph. Look who’s talking. As if I don’t know someone who wanted to die after five laps of the running track.”

Li Kuiyi: “…”

On the first day of the new school term, the school scheduled no evening study session, and students could go home in the afternoon. Before they left, Liu Xinzhao held one final class meeting for a brief farewell. In truth, no one felt especially sentimental — they had only been together half a year, and the bonds were not that deep; besides, the class composition had not changed dramatically, and everyone was still laughing and joking with each other, as though the cheerful noise carried within it each person’s bright future ahead.

Liu Xinzhao said, at the end: “When I was a student, I always thought ‘a brilliant future’ was too clichéd a phrase. But after I became a teacher and watched one cohort of students pass silently through a thousand days and nights, through blood and tears and sweat, I found that I genuinely, wholeheartedly wanted to wish them well. Looking at all of you now, I still want to say the same thing: may each of you get what you wish for, and may your efforts never be in vain.”

The classroom erupted in applause.

Many people came to say goodbye to Li Kuiyi: Xia Leyi, Qin Weiwei, Zhou Ce, Pan Junmeng. She hugged the girls and exchanged a few playful words with the boys. Then she turned and looked one last time at the small garden outside the window, and said a quiet goodbye.

She slipped a greeting card into Zhou Fanghua’s hand, smiled shyly, and asked her to open it when she got home.

Zhou Fanghua’s eyes shimmered with the faintest film of tears.

She was going to a new class. Li Kuiyi wanted a seat by the window as always, so she decided to set her alarm a little earlier in the morning.

The next day, the moon had not yet fully set when Li Kuiyi arrived at school. She breathed in a lungful of sharp, cold air — like a shot of energy straight to her veins — and strode toward the building.

Up to the fourth floor, she pushed open the door to Class Seventeen and felt along the wall for the light switch.

The humanities experimental class had only thirty students; thirty desks and chairs were arranged inside, leaving the room feeling rather sparse. But whoever had set up the room had arranged the desks in a loose examination-style formation — one person per desk, rows spaced well apart — giving the impression of being in an exam at all times. Perhaps that was precisely the intention.

One desk per person, space between every row, no seatmates.

Li Kuiyi crossed to the window side and stopped beside a seat. This classroom had four windows: two that faced the corridor, and two that looked out on open sky and trees.

She naturally wanted one of the open ones.

But just as she was about to sit down, she discovered that this desk’s storage shelf already held a large black backpack — and one that looked rather familiar.

What was she supposed to do? Her most coveted seat had already been taken.

There was still the other open window, but outside that one grew a tall dawn redwood — the same tree she had glimpsed from Room 501. The dawn redwood was beautiful, but it would block her view. She would not be able to turn her head and see the open sky and the setting sun.

Li Kuiyi could not help pressing her lips together in frustration.

She had come so early, and somehow someone had still gotten here before her!

She stared at that seat with a mournful expression, not moving for a long moment.

Just as she was standing there in irritable bewilderment, a familiar voice came from behind her — teasing, with a thread of delight woven through it: “Do you find my seat that fascinating?”