The small incident passed quickly. Everyone knew Jiang Du had someone looking out for her — her fierce and formidable best friend Wang Jingjing, whose fighting spirit knew no bounds. Back in elementary school, Wang Jingjing had gotten into shouting matches with grown women and actually made them cry.
Everyone was here to make it into a good university, yes — academics came first. But outside of studying, something was always needed to add color and interest. Watching a good scene, for instance.
This particular scene: Chen Huiming was no match for Wang Jingjing at all. She was the classic bully-the-weak type. After a few exchanges, she dissolved into tears, and the watching crowd, not knowing either side well enough to take a real stance, felt mostly dissatisfied — the dissatisfied feeling of a spectator who didn’t get enough of the show.
Chen Huiming sniffled and stopped speaking to either of them.
By the time military training wrapped up, Jiang Du’s eye infection was gradually clearing. She was careful everywhere she went, and she had also taken to heart the complete nonsense about catching the infection just by making eye contact — so when she talked to Wang Jingjing, she fixed her eyes on the floor.
Teacher Xu rearranged everyone’s seats by height, with a rotation every two weeks.
On the weekend, Jiang Du went home for a visit.
After a shower, while her grandmother cooked, she sat in her own room and wrote in her journal. What was a journal? It was the thing that filled in the loneliness of adolescence — recording small daily moments, different kinds of scenery, or carrying certain private, unspoken feelings that couldn’t be said elsewhere.
Jiang Du’s essays were good — not in a showy, flowery way, but in a very plain and honest way. What people called unadorned sincerity. No matter what she wrote, there was something grounded and warmly gentle about it, like the earth itself. Her journals, read at a glance, were fairly mundane: how the spring breeze blew, how the autumn mist spread, how the sun on the sports field made the scalp prickle with heat, how the sand in the shade under the trees stayed warm… And then, there was this: a boy whose grades were unusually good, with very dark brows and a tall frame, who wore a certain size clothing and had a manner of looking at people from above that suggested he wasn’t easy to get along with.
But he has no intention of getting along with me.
After each line she wrote, Jiang Du lifted her head and stared out the window at the osmanthus tree for a few seconds. It was heavy with fragrance, almost cloying. She shook herself out of it and bent her head back to write.
Her grandmother came to call her for dinner.
Her grandfather had dragged in his small wooden stool and come inside as well. Both of them were retired. Her grandmother loved setting out early with her cloth bag to wander through the morning market. Her grandfather preferred to play chess with other old men. When Jiang Du came home, her grandmother always cooked a full spread.
Meat and vegetables, bright colors on the plate.
“Is your eye all better, sweetheart?” Her grandmother ladled out a bowl of pork bone soup for her.
Her grandfather had already looked Jiang Du over from head to toe: “I’d say the child looks just about fine.”
Jiang Du tended to share the good things and keep the bad things to herself. She talked about funny moments from military training, mimicking her homeroom teacher’s manner of speaking, and the drill instructor’s severity, making her grandmother laugh.
Only when Jiang Du came home did the house feel properly like a home — lively, with something to say and laugh about. Even the old furniture seemed to brighten.
After dinner, her grandmother’s gaze drifted, as if by habit, to the calendar on the table. Jiang Du already knew what that meant. She had noted the date of the Mid-Autumn Festival long ago.
That person came home twice a year — Mid-Autumn Festival and New Year’s Eve. On these days of family reunion, Jiang Du was required to stay at her great-aunt’s house.
Jiang Du had not celebrated Mid-Autumn with her grandparents in many years.
This year, it seemed, would be no different.
The two old people exchanged a quiet glance. Her grandmother spoke, full of guilt: “Sweetie — this Mid-Autumn will be the same as usual, alright?”
What was there to say about whether it was alright? Jiang Du allowed herself one brief moment of darkness, then smiled: “That’s fine. When school lets out for the holiday, I’ll ask Wang Jingjing to go to the bookstore with me.”
Her grandmother’s mouth moved as though she wanted to say something. The emotion in her eyes was impossibly layered — impossible to put into words.
Jiang Du knew only that the person was her mother. When her mother came home, Jiang Du had to leave — because if she didn’t, her mother would never come back at all.
There had been one year when she was truly curious, and truly longing. She had convinced herself her mother would like her. She never caused trouble, she loved to study, she was hardworking — gentle as a little lamb. Wang Jingjing picked fights with people and got parents called to the door over it, and her own mother still sided with her every time. Jiang Du thought, if her mother just got to know her a little better, surely she would like her too. Under this reasoning, she had secretly slipped back home — but before she could even catch a proper glimpse of anything, her grandmother spotted her and frantically shooed her back toward her great-aunt’s house, the old woman’s face stricken.
Jiang Du had felt unbearably wronged. Blinking back tears, she kept looking back over her shoulder — and all she could see was her grandmother’s hand rising and falling, over and over: Go. Go now.
She had cried the whole way there, and only dried her eyes at the doorstep before going inside.
Even so, Jiang Du had never once asked the adults — not even her great-aunt’s family — what any of this was about. She believed: if someone wanted to tell you something, they would tell you without being asked. If they didn’t want to tell you, asking wouldn’t make them. Why put people in a difficult position? And if those people were family, putting them in a difficult position was the last thing she wanted to do.
As a kind of compensation, her grandmother again slipped her a little extra pocket money. Jiang Du wasn’t given to spending freely, but this time she intended to use it. The competition at Mei High was relentless. She had entered at about mid-level standing — unremarkable, no special presence. In the teachers’ eyes, there were only two things: getting students into Tsinghua or Peking University, and the rate of first-tier university admissions. Jiang Du was very worried she might end up at an ordinary university in the end.
She had no brilliant solutions. Drowning herself in practice papers seemed to be the only path forward. At least she wasn’t afraid of hard work.
But then again, the first-tier admission rate at Mei High was very high — unless you were in the absolute bottom tier, the anxiety always eased a little when she reminded herself of that.
When her grandmother was clearing the dishes, Jiang Du overheard the two old people murmuring something to each other in the kitchen. She didn’t lean in to listen. She went quietly back to her room, opened her journal, and looked out the window at the osmanthus tree. In the dark outside, the moon curved — a pale, slender bow, nearly the color of a face drained of blood.
Jiang Du felt the journal needed an ending. But in the end, all she wrote was a single character: him. Bare and alone, without even a name.
One character. One line. One period.
The most dreaded thing after military training was writing a reflection piece — exactly the same feeling as having to write a composition about the spring field trip in elementary school, the kind that made your heart seize. The composition notebooks hadn’t even been handed out yet, and everyone was already reluctant to hand in so much as a diary page, afraid the Chinese teacher would sell them for scrap paper and leave them with nothing. The sensible choice was to tear out a single sheet, and on it, write a round of formulaic nonsense.
So the pile of papers collected was uneven in size — a rather shabby sight. Jiang Du sorted them by size before handing them up. Wang Jingjing complained the whole time while helping her, saying Jiang Du was the type who loved doing this kind of quiet, unrewarding, fiddly good deed.
“I’m the Chinese Class Representative — it’s my responsibility to get the assignments in order for the teacher.” Jiang Du’s smile showed a row of small, neat teeth, and her eyes curved too.
Wang Jingjing adopted a world-weary tone: “I strongly suspect the Chinese teacher doesn’t read these at all — it’s just a formality. You’re doing this for nothing.”
Jiang Du said softly: “I do what I’m supposed to do. I don’t think it’s for nothing.”
“Hopeless.” Wang Jingjing flicked her on the forehead with a grin.
Handing in the pieces meant passing by the door of Class One, as usual. Out in the hallway, Wei Qingyue was explaining a problem to Zhang Xiaoqiang — one hand in his pocket, the other tracing over her study materials, pointing things out with an unhurried ease, as though everything he did was effortless. When Jiang Du caught sight of him, her heart gave a small, involuntary tremor. She couldn’t tell if it was happiness or nerves.
Three parts return to primal energy.
Jiang Du had no idea how her mind ended up on Heroes of Wind and Cloud — she and Wang Jingjing’s absolute favorite from their childhood.
Wei Qingyue reminded her strongly of Bu Jingyun… In the space of a few seconds, Jiang Du had already played out an entire emotionally stirring drama in her head.
Nobody saw her, but her face went red. Her peripheral vision crept carefully, quickly over those two exemplary top students — like someone guarding a secret nobody else was allowed to know.
When you’re distracted, embarrassment follows. Every bit of Jiang Du’s attention was on those two figures in the hallway. A boy came barreling out of the back door and collided into her, sending the composition papers scattering across the floor.
“Sorry, really sorry!” Along with the boy’s apology, Zhang Xiaoqiang glanced over at the sound. She tucked her materials under her arm and came over to help Jiang Du gather everything up.
Jiang Du felt as if her whole body was about to catch fire. She scrambled around in a flustered mess, limbs suddenly uncooperative, as though her entire being were surrounded on all sides by a gaze that was everywhere at once — when in reality, Wei Qingyue had barely spared her a glance, recognized her, found nothing of interest, and turned to look out the window.
The autumn wind rose, rustling the half-yellowed, half-green leaves on the branches.
Wei Qingyue drifted for a moment.
He left his back turned to Jiang Du, who had already looked over. Between them, there wasn’t even a moment of eye contact. He didn’t help either. Wei Qingyue was entirely self-driven in everything he did. His speech at the orientation wasn’t born of any particular warmth toward classmates being roasted under the sun — he had simply found the school leadership’s speeches tedious, and he had the self-awareness to know that the repercussions wouldn’t be severe. Being the best-scoring student in the school, he would never be seriously held accountable for anything short of a truly outrageous violation. He could be completely guileless one moment, and shrewdly knowing the next.
Jiang Du’s eyes stung faintly. She murmured a quiet thank-you to Zhang Xiaoqiang, then turned without a word and almost sprinted down the stairs.
The wind was strong and scattered her hair in an instant, but it couldn’t blow away the deep, persistent feeling of longing that had settled in.
She was in the class right next door to his. There was no connection between them.
Jiang Du suddenly found herself wishing she could be sick on him again — that way, she’d have a reason to return another jacket.
But that wasn’t ideal either. The young girl pulled the composition papers tightly against her chest — as though holding close every hidden feeling of adolescence.
On the way back, passing through the empty hallway, Jiang Du stared absently at the spot where Wei Qingyue had been standing. There was nothing there now.
Her heart felt equally empty, equally adrift.
Back at her seat, Wang Jingjing’s eyes were bright as light bulbs — blazing. Before Jiang Du could even sit down, she grabbed her and said with great seriousness: “Wei Qingyue smiled at me. The Wei Qingyue from Class One — you know who I mean? He likes me.”
Wang Jingjing was that confident.
Jiang Du felt her heartbeat stop for a second. She steadied herself with effort. The sound of her own pulse was so loud it seemed it might change the pitch of her voice.
But she forced herself to look nonchalant. She pretended to think back: “The one who gave the speech at orientation?”
“Yes! I just went to the bathroom, and guess what — Wei Qingyue came out of the boys’ bathroom right at the same moment. He asked me if I had any tissue — said a classmate inside had forgotten to bring some.” Wang Jingjing suddenly covered her face in exaggerated dramatic fashion, shaking her head from side to side. “Oh no, having a boy ask you for tissue right outside the bathroom — isn’t that just mortifying? But Wei Qingyue is so handsome — even asking for tissue he looks amazing. My head was basically buzzing. Of course I gave him some. And then—” she yanked hard on Jiang Du’s arm, eyes going enormous, “—he smiled at me. A real smile from Wei Qingyue. I can’t handle this, Jiang Du, quick, give me the smelling salts!”
Wang Jingjing’s performance was wildly over the top.
Jiang Du was being shaken around, a flicker crossing her mind: He’s never smiled at me.
But — what did Wei Qingyue’s smile look like?
Jiang Du thought about that, let her eyes drop quietly downward. Her face was then seized and straightened by Wang Jingjing, who said with a grin: “Good deskmate, I’ve decided — starting today, I’m going to pursue Wei Qingyue. He definitely has feelings for me.”
Some girls were always so certain of themselves. Zhang Xiaoqiang, for instance — because she had grades to be proud of. Wang Jingjing, because she had been like this since childhood, doing whatever she wanted without a second thought. Inside the tangled and overgrown chaos of her own heartbeat, Jiang Du found her voice:
“How… how would you even pursue him?”
Wang Jingjing gave Jiang Du a conspiratorial blink: “Jiang Du, help me write a love letter. You write it first and then I’ll copy it out in my own handwriting. Listen — you were saving up for that Collected Poems of Classical Masters set from Zhonghua Book Company, right? Thirty-one volumes total. I’ll buy you ten of them. How’s that for friendship?”