◎The Sun Rising Over the Sea◎
After returning to her room, Chun Zao buried herself completely under the covers. The weather wasn’t cool yet, and the thin air-conditioning blanket was as light and soft as a nonexistent cloud, making the stuffiness and heat on her face all the more obvious.
Young miss.
No one had ever called her that in all her life, not even her parents. Oh wait, her older sister seemed to have teased her like that before, but it felt completely different coming from Yuan Ye. Back then, she would only activate mutual roasting mode.
But just now…
Her spine felt electrified.
Then came goosebumps, with summer’s heat waves overwhelming everything. Making her want to escape this season that was impossible to escape.
The roaring in her chest seemed to cover her hearing. She couldn’t help wanting to pay attention to when Yuan Ye would return to his room, but she simply couldn’t do it.
Deliberately concentrating and holding her breath only brought the sound of her heartbeat—thump-thump, thump-thump—urgent enough to be suffocating.
Chun Zao put in her earphones and turned the music to maximum volume.
She raised her phone, the screen freezing on the QQ interface. First was Tong·CP Scholar, second was Yuan Ye…
Chun Zao immediately closed it.
Why.
Why.
It wasn’t like she’d never been around boys. Since nine years of compulsory education, peers had shown interest in her both openly and secretly—sometimes through frank letters, sometimes through unusual care—but she had never experienced such emotional turbulence, so winding and circuitous. Even when she had feelings, they were only shallow and light: This isn’t quite right…
But now, at this moment, she only felt: Very bad.
Quite bad.
Universally, infinitely bad.
Yuan Ye hadn’t done anything particularly special.
Just some timely help, some meticulous and considerate courtesy, some logical interactions.
After all, they were roommates now, having another layer of relationship beyond being schoolmates in the same grade. With his naturally good social skills, he naturally had a perfect way of handling things.
Logical things.
Why should she have such a strong reaction?
Chun Zao fell into deep sleep amid her tangled thoughts. The next day, she was greeted by the girl in the mirror with faint dark circles under her eyes. She rubbed her slightly puffy eyelids in silent grief.
Chun Chuzhen seemed to notice too: “You didn’t sleep well?”
Chun Zao’s hand paused while tearing apart her pork floss bread: “Have I slept well since starting high school?”
Chun Chuzhen was speechless, taking a few seconds before saying: “I was just caring about you. Why are you so grumpy first thing in the morning?”
Chun Zao fell silent.
At their usual meeting at the stationery store, gossip queen Tong Yue munched on a meat bun while caring about last night’s events. But Chun Zao could no longer tell all the details clearly, only giving a summary: “Treated him to chicken strips, then went home.”
“That’s it?” Tong Yue was unsatisfied.
Chun Zao kept a straight face: “That’s it.”
She had lied.
Resistant to sharing, resistant to opening her heart.
Looking at her friend’s face dimming with disappointment, Chun Zao fell into extremely contradictory self-reflection. She was afraid Tong Yue would use this to conduct another ten-thousand-word analysis, chiseling open more channels she couldn’t face. As things stood, the light beams penetrating deep into her heart, growing exponentially, were already so bright and scorching that she couldn’t bear them.
She said with feigned lightness, “Finally finished treating him, no more guilt.”
Pretending a tone of relief, her heart immediately hung in her throat, and she felt a bit hoarse.
Tong Yue was shocked by her words: “What are you even talking about?”
Chun Zao looked at her: “What’s wrong with what I said?”
“Nothing wrong…” Tong Yue chewed her bun, her voice muffled: “It’s just… you’d probably find more resonance at Pure Cloud Nunnery.”
Pure Cloud Nunnery.
A famous Buddhist site in their city.
Chun Zao: “…Are you sick?”
Tong Yue: “You’re the one who’s sick.”
—
During morning exercises, Chun Zao stood orderly as always. Tong Yue and Ding Ruowei stayed in the corridor to work on the bulletin board. Since it wasn’t her turn yet, she went to exercise as usual.
Without Tong Yue, that chattering magpie, it felt inexplicably lonely.
When she caught sight of Class One’s homeroom teacher leading exercises in the distance, Chun Zao quickly averted her gaze, staring straight at the ponytail of the girl in front of her.
When the broadcast exercise melody started, Chun Zao began stretching her limbs.
…
“Body rotation exercise—”
The passionate male voice shouted the beat, echoing across the playground:
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight…”
Chun Zao curved one arm flat and stretched the other straight, twisting her upper body, reflexively looking toward the left rear.
The girl’s gaze was fixed slightly.
The back of a head she spotted immediately didn’t flash past in her field of vision.
Had she not looked carefully?
“Three, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight…”
Taking the opportunity to look again.
Yuan Ye really wasn’t in the formation. His usual position had been taken by another boy with glasses from their class.
Where had he…
Gone?
Since developing this habit, this was the first time Chun Zao hadn’t seen Yuan Ye in the formation.
First came confusion, then emptiness—an anchorless, completely strange and completely bewildered emptiness, like a ship sailing at steady speed, habitually looking up at the lighthouse top on sunny days, then suddenly one day the lighthouse vanished abruptly, leaving only herself on the vast sea surface.
The broadcast voice became unusually distant.
After dismissal, Chun Zao walked absent-mindedly toward the track with her arms crossed.
Her deskmate Lu Xinyue saw her solitary figure from far away, left the two girls she was walking with, and ran up to hook her arm.
Chun Zao was startled, coming back to her senses: “Why are you alone?”
Lu Xinyue said, “I was going to ask you that. Where’s Tong Yue?”
Chun Zao said, “She’s doing the bulletin board with Ding Ruowei.”
“Oh right,” Lu Xinyue realized belatedly: “Why didn’t you go?”
“It’s not my turn to write yet.”
Lu Xinyue grinned mischievously and pointed out, “So you came to exercise to slack off?”
“What are you talking about?” Chun Zao’s continuously sinking mood was pulled back to normal: “Not doing exercises would be slacking off.”
—
The last morning class was English. Chun Zao needed to go to the second floor early to retrieve last night’s pop quiz for the English teacher to review in the next class.
Carrying the workbook out of the office, Chun Zao stopped at the corridor entrance she usually took.
The second floor was parallel science classes, with noisy, hormone-filled boys everywhere in the hallways. She had always avoided them.
But today…
Strange alien thoughts were bubbling up.
Urging her to do things she normally wouldn’t want to do, things she’d never done before.
Chun Zao clutched the things in her arms tightly, walking quickly with her head down and breath held.
As long as she went down the stairs at the very edge, she could naturally pass by Class One… The girl quickly turned past the blocks of light and floating dust at the corridor corner, reaching the first floor.
Stepping down the last stair.
The Class 2-1 nameplate was right in front of her. Chun Zao moved a bit closer to their classroom window frame, slowing her steps slightly.
Now—
With the fastest speed, pretending to casually glance inside.
All the floating, rootless emotions anchored and settled in that moment.
The exceptionally handsome boy was standing perfectly fine at his seat, smiling as he used something rolled up—either a textbook or notes—to tap the shoulder of the person in front of him, who seemed to be napping with their head on the desk. The sunlight from outside brightened half his body, hazy and luminous, so clean it had its soft focus, as if he had just taken leave from some dream to return to the real world.
Chun Zao withdrew her gaze, satisfied.
“Yuan Ye!”
She heard someone angrily shout his name.
As if she had also become part of the prank, Chun Zao’s lips curved slightly upward.
She returned to the classroom, her mood light and buoyant. The sun had risen over the sea, glittering golden. She skillfully distributed the workbooks, walking down from the podium. Passing by Tong Yue’s seat, she caught the sweet fragrance of milk candy. Looking down, she saw the girl methodically applying hand cream.
Chun Zao spread her five fingers, thrust her right hand in front of her, shaking it left and right, then swaying it.
“What?” Tong Yue looked up in confusion.
Nothing much.
She inexplicably wanted to get a little, to apply some. Was that weird?