Just a few minutes later, Zhang Xiaoqiang came along, casting glances around as she walked.

When Jiang Du saw her, her embarrassment deepened — especially since she was standing there holding a boy’s jacket, and the smell was not exactly pleasant. As Zhang Xiaoqiang drew closer, Jiang Du automatically stepped back to put a bit of distance between them.

Sometimes, when someone else’s kindness was hard to refuse, Jiang Du found herself completely at a loss when faced with a girl like Zhang Xiaoqiang. She didn’t want to explain her predicament, yet she couldn’t avoid saying something.

A visit to the medical room, a pack of sanitary pads, and being walked back to the dormitory — by the time the whole process was over, Jiang Du had said “thank you” many times. Zhang Xiaoqiang reached out and gave her smooth hair an easy pat: “We’re classmates. Why are you always so formal?”

There was something about her manner — like talking to a younger sister. Gentle and natural.

Jiang Du didn’t ordinarily like people sitting on her bed. She would never casually sit on someone else’s either — what she didn’t want done to herself, she didn’t do to others; that much she understood perfectly.

But Zhang Xiaoqiang had just been running around in blazing sun on her behalf. Jiang Du, when she offered her a seat, quietly removed a worn yellow bath towel she’d spread along the edge of the bed.

The morning they’d moved in, she had placed it there with a slightly guilty conscience, saying to Wang Jingjing: “Washing the sheets is such a hassle — this way I don’t have to wash them as often.” The roommates had all been busy settling their own things and nobody in particular was listening to what Jiang Du said.

Yet Wang Jingjing, with absolutely no awareness of what she was doing, just blurted out at full volume: “Are you scared of people sitting on your bed?”

Jiang Du could have died. She denied it frantically, face burning red.

But as it turned out, the moment worked in her favor — someone else actually half-jokingly took it as a cue to admit that she also preferred people not sitting on her bed, and said she thought Jiang Du’s method was worth copying.

Jiang Du envied people who could be so effortlessly candid about their true feelings — no awkwardness, sliding naturally into the moment without leaving a trace. It was something Jiang Du would never be able to pull off.

She didn’t want Zhang Xiaoqiang to read too much into it — after all, Zhang Xiaoqiang had just gone out of her way to help her.

Zhang Xiaoqiang seemed not to have noticed anything. She sat down easily and found a topic: “Hey, Jiang Du — I noticed your Chinese score is nearly perfect. Has it always been your strongest subject? Would you be interested in doing a small research project with me?”

Jiang Du’s middle school was of average standing in the city. Each year, it sent around seventy or eighty students to Mei High through a combination of regular admission and designated quota places. Designated quota students got in with scores roughly twenty to thirty points lower than regular admission. Jiang Du had a mild imbalance across subjects, and both she and Wang Jingjing had come in through the quota — which, in a school as competitive as Mei High, gave them little ground to stand on.

A single strong Chinese score proved nothing much.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, by contrast, had come from the city’s top middle school. Her Chinese score was only two points below Jiang Du’s — and every other subject of hers was equally strong. The gap between someone whose Chinese excellence came from genuine love of the subject and someone who excelled across the board simply couldn’t be compared.

The two talked for a while. Zhang Xiaoqiang’s mind moved quickly, and she spoke fast. But Jiang Du was clear-eyed about the distance between herself and a top student from a top school.

“Ah, look at me, just chatting away with you — the instructor might think I’m slacking off. I should go. We’ll continue later.” Zhang Xiaoqiang suddenly gave herself a light slap on the forehead and smiled at Jiang Du before heading out.

The dormitory was quickly left to Jiang Du alone. She had been half-dozing against her pillow when she jolted awake and hurried to soak the dirty jacket in warm water, then quietly pushed it under the bed.

Less than half a minute later, Jiang Du climbed back out and dragged the basin out from underneath.

She pushed through the discomfort and made herself go to the washroom. Soaking wet, the jacket was heavy — and she had grown up washing at most her own underwear and socks. After a few attempts at scrubbing, her back already ached from hunching over.

Not only that, but Jiang Du remembered Wang Jingjing’s period-time warnings precisely: with each rinse, she added a little warm water. Half an hour later, the girl’s complexion was pallid and her forehead damp with a cold sweat from weakness.

In the end, Jiang Du sneaked the jacket out and draped it like a thief over the honeysuckle bushes in the small garden near the dormitory building.

That afternoon, she skipped the sports field, and at four o’clock, wearing a short-sleeved top and training trousers, she went out to retrieve the jacket — pretending to anyone who might see that she was collecting her own clothes. Forcing herself to stay calm, she folded it, put it in a plastic bag, and left it beneath the honeysuckle bushes.

Fortunately, there was no one about. The second and third years were all in class, and the first years were on the field. Jiang Du let out a long breath.

But how to return it to Wei Qingyue — that was the tricky part.

The last thing she wanted was to become the subject of gossip. She knew perfectly well what would happen if she handed it back in front of people: there would be whispers. This kind of thing she had already learned in middle school. Classmates loved to stir up excitement, loved to spread “rumors” about who liked whom, who was secretly dating.

She didn’t tell Wang Jingjing — Wang Jingjing was a walking loudspeaker.

Military training didn’t involve formal classes, but there was evening study hall.

Many students had already previewed high school material over the summer; Jiang Du was among them. She noticed something alarming: high school mathematics seemed to have suddenly rocketed to a completely different level — nothing like middle school, as though the two belonged to different universes entirely.

Mei High was Mei High. It had only indulged the new students for a single evening on move-in day. From the start of military training, everyone showed the self-discipline expected of a top high school. During evening study hall, with no teacher present, the room was perfectly quiet.

The evening breeze drifted in softly through the windows. Jiang Du would periodically lift her eyes from a math problem that had defeated her entirely — past the open corridor windows — to take in the deep blue of the sky and the black silhouettes of the trees.

Beside her, Wang Jingjing was eating snacks with oily fingers while idly flipping through a girls’ magazine. She was completely unworried — she had made up her mind to study properly only after military training was done.

A figure passed by outside the window. Jiang Du blinked.

She recognized him immediately. It was Wei Qingyue.

Moving fast, Jiang Du pulled the sanitary pad from her drawer, nudged Wang Jingjing to scoot, and Wang Jingjing — with knowing expression — leaned forward against the desk to make room. Jiang Du slipped out, using Wang Jingjing’s back as cover.

She had almost called out right there in the corridor, but was genuinely afraid someone might step out from Class Three or Class Four at any moment. Jiang Du quickened her pace to follow. Wei Qingyue’s figure was tall, his legs long, his stride fast. If she was reading the direction correctly, he was heading toward the restrooms.

“Hey!” She called out to him the moment she stepped out of the teaching building. As soon as it left her mouth, she felt a pang of embarrassment — and, strangely, a flicker of unexpected delight.

Wei Qingyue didn’t turn around. As if he’d gone deaf.

“Wei Qingyue.” Jiang Du had no choice but to say his name. Her voice was light, as though afraid of disturbing anyone.

He stopped. He turned.

He stood just outside the brilliantly lit teaching building. The light fell dimly there, as though some small, dazzling mechanism had been quietly switched on.

Jiang Du stood with a book clasped against her chest. She was too shy — she needed something in her hands to lean on, some small anchor. Even so, the book against her chest couldn’t muffle the rapid, frantic knocking of her heartbeat.

Wei Qingyue was far more composed than she was. Not once, from beginning to end, had he shown any sign of embarrassment or self-consciousness about her having witnessed him at his lowest.

“Here.” Jiang Du felt her breath stop entirely. As she drew close enough, she held out the note she had prepared for him.

In her head the words went: take it, please take it, and please don’t let anyone see this.

Wei Qingyue first frowned — then, with a kind of practiced ease, let out a brief laugh. He didn’t move. One hand behind his back, he gave a gentle push in refusal: “What you owe me is my jacket, washed clean. Not a love confession note.”

Jiang Du stared. Her mind buzzed: “It’s not — I wasn’t confessing anything.”

Wei Qingyue glanced at her sideways. “Oh.” His face didn’t change; his pulse didn’t stir. He felt not the slightest trace of embarrassment at his own mistake.

That single “oh” held habitual indifference, and an infinite, careless disregard for other people.

Every feeling compressed itself into arms that held the book more tightly. Face burning, Jiang Du hugged it to herself and walked stiffly ahead toward the restrooms.

On the note, in neat handwriting, was a small map — earnestly drawn, though rather terrible to look at, as though someone had tried very hard but lacked any talent for it.

Wei Qingyue suddenly laughed. It was a thin, faintly mocking smile. He scanned it briefly, then stepped forward and crouched to pick up something that had slipped from the girl’s book.

A sanitary pad in a pink wrapper.

He examined it for a few seconds. When he understood what it was, an expression came over his face that defied description.

Wei Qingyue set it on the corridor windowsill. If the girl wasn’t completely oblivious, she would come back for it.

He went to the girls’ dormitory building. Near the honeysuckle bushes, without any difficulty, he located the plastic bag. The jacket was neatly folded. When he opened it, the first thing that hit him was the strong smell of laundry detergent.

When he got back to the dormitory, Wei Qingyue noticed that the jacket was streaked with very visible, very committed patches of undissolved detergent — never rinsed out fully, leaving stripe after white stripe, looking rather like dried sweat stains.

He laughed again.

He got out a basin and rinsed it several times on his own until it was clean.

Military training lasted only a week — not long. But this autumn proved troublesome. No one was certain who started it, but somehow red-eye disease spread through the students, and the bacteria moved with extraordinary speed. By the fourth day of training, twenty people in the class had already come down with it.

Teacher Xu reminded everyone of the precautions. Everyone’s most hoped-for outcome — training suspended — showed no sign of materializing. All they could do was peer at one another’s eyelids and administer eye drops in turns.

Jiang Du didn’t catch it. Neither did Wang Jingjing. But the girl sitting in front of them had come down with it, which kept everyone on edge.

“Class Representative,” the girl in front — Chen Huiming — turned around to Jiang Du with a grin. She never used her name, always just “Class Representative.” She picked up Jiang Du’s pencil case, rubbing her own infected eye with her finger and then deliberately wiping it on the case: “You have such a strange immune system — you couldn’t do military training, but you haven’t caught the red-eye disease. We all figured you’d be the first one sick! I’m going to infect you — then we’ll all be even.”

Chen Huiming said it half-jokingly, smiling the whole time, making it look like pure mischief. Jiang Du felt a stab of anxiety but didn’t know how to say anything. She could only force out a stiff, dry half-smile and watch helplessly as Chen Huiming deliberately ran her hands all over the pencil case.

When she finished, she turned back around, visibly satisfied. Jiang Du opened her mouth, then closed it. In the end she said nothing. How could a new classmate do something like this? She let herself feel quietly disappointed for a moment and nothing more.

Outside, the early autumn evening breeze moved past. It sounded almost like a sigh.

Jiang Du eventually, thanks to Chen Huiming’s dedicated efforts, caught the eye infection. Her eyes became gummy and kept tearing up. Wang Jingjing pinned her down on the bed and administered eye drops three times a day without fail, completely unbothered by the risk of catching it herself.

And then she turned around and gave Chen Huiming a thorough dressing-down — Wang Jingjing was not doing this halfway. She told Chen Huiming she wasn’t much in stature but had more than her share of mean tricks. Chen Huiming burst into tears.

“Oh, spare me — you infected someone on purpose and now you’re crying? How shameless is that!” Wang Jingjing stood there rolling her eyes.

Jiang Du tugged softly at the hem of Wang Jingjing’s shirt, trying to get her to stop. Wang Jingjing curled her lip and told Chen Huiming that if she pulled anything like this again, she would personally throw her mattress through the window of the boys’ dormitory opposite.

The onlookers erupted again. The boys in that direction started calling out: “Wang Jingjing, you’d better make good on that — do it or you’re not Chinese!”

Only Zhang Xiaoqiang was earnestly trying to mediate.

The class was in uproar. The noise got so loud it carried next door to Class One. Their interim class monitor came and knocked on the back window: “Hey — keep it down. Some of us are actually trying to study.”

Class One was, by default, understood to be the highest-ranking class. Being told off like that stung. The boys in the back bristled — “It’s not even a class period right now. We can’t even talk?” The class monitor gave them a look that plainly said “this is why Class Two has no standards,” shrugged, and left.

Fifteen or sixteen years old — the most rebellious age. After being so nakedly looked down upon by Class One, the defiance in the room spiked. Training meant no new lessons yet. The boys began deliberately banging on their desks and belting out the military training songs at full volume.

Before long, a face everyone recognized appeared at the back window.

“Your class is genuinely very noisy. Please keep it down.” Wei Qingyue happened to be standing right at the window where Jiang Du sat, delivering the words with cool detachment. The faint impatience on his face landed on every person in the room with a strange, wordless weight.

The classroom went silent at once.

At the sound of that voice, a rush of something tangled and dense rose inside Jiang Du’s chest — she couldn’t name it. Her heartbeat slipped out of her control.

Something warm rushed up into her nose and spilled slowly downward. Every autumn when the air turned dry, Jiang Du was prone to nosebleeds. She recognized the feeling. She had no choice but to tilt her head back, groping blindly in her drawer for tissue.

What Wei Qingyue saw was a pale girl’s snow-white face, scattered with a string of red. Adolescence was unpredictable and strange like that. His mind instantly conjured the pink, private, feminine thing from earlier.

Jiang Du sensed eyes landing on her face. It was Wei Qingyue. In an instant, the world inside her head started to roar — all she wanted was to escape this moment as fast as possible. She seized a pack of tissues and bolted out of the classroom as though on pure instinct.

The hallway gleamed spotless — not a scrap of paper on the floor. With each drip that fell, a small red flower bloomed against the pale surface. Wei Qingyue watched Jiang Du run past him.