Lin Tao stared at the radiant smile on Jiang Yan’s face for three full seconds. Then she chose, with complete composure, to look back down at her desk and pretend she didn’t know him.
Which was technically accurate. They’d only crossed paths a handful of times.
Jiang Yan didn’t appear particularly bothered by Lin Tao’s non-reaction. He put away his smile, walked straight to his seat, and pulled a pen out of his pocket.
The pen was completely unremarkable — so unremarkable it didn’t even have a cap. Through the transparent barrel, it was plainly visible that the ink inside had almost run out.
It radiated absolutely nothing in the way of the energy one might expect from someone of his reputation.
When Xu Yichuan came over to slip him blank cheat sheets, he took one look at the pen and shook his head in despair. “Yan, you’re going to conquer this exam with just that thing?”
Jiang Yan slouched back in his chair, reached into his school jacket lying nearby, and shook a whole handful of black pen refills onto the desk. “You think I’m as hopeless as you?”
“…”
Top dogs were top dogs. They operated by an entirely different logic.
The exam was still ten minutes away, but the head supervisor — Li Kun, the dean of discipline — had yet to appear. People were starting to talk again.
“Where’s Blackie? Still not here?”
“You don’t think something happened, do you?”
“…Hey, where are you lot planning to go for summer break?”
“Nowhere, as far as I can tell. My mom says if I finish last again this time, she’s hiring a tutor and I won’t leave the house all summer.”
“Seriously?”
Lin Tao was getting restless. The girl who’d been sitting behind her in yesterday’s exam leaned forward and tapped her arm again. “Lin Tao, help me out again today, yeah?”
After the previous afternoon, Lin Tao had accepted the girl’s friend request. They’d exchanged a few messages on QQ that evening.
Her name was Tao Jia, and she was in Class Sixteen on the floor above.
“You really trust me that much?” Lin Tao turned to look at her. “We’re in the same exam hall. The very last exam hall. This is where everyone in first year who has the worst scores ends up.”
Tao Jia popped a candy into her mouth. “I’ve heard about you. You’re practically legendary in our class — our Chinese teacher brought you up more than once. The story about you only sitting one subject at midterms and still getting the top score for that subject.”
“…”
Lin Tao felt that only sitting one subject at midterms was perhaps not the sort of achievement most people would consider cause for celebration.
Tao Jia seemed genuinely curious — and not a little envious. “Why didn’t you show up for the rest of the exams? Don’t your parents say anything?”
Lin Tao was still working out how to answer when the door swung open and an unfamiliar teacher rushed in clutching a stack of exam papers. “Students, your dean of discipline has been called away unexpectedly, so I’ll be supervising this exam in his place. Please put away all books and materials unrelated to the exam. If you’re handing in your phone, make sure it’s switched off. I trust you’re all aware of the exam regulations — I don’t need to spell them out. Let’s keep this professional.”
The room had barely finished celebrating the news that Blackie wasn’t supervising when the new teacher picked up a piece of chalk and wrote a single large letter on the blackboard.
Z.
What was that?
Some kind of new exam policy?
The new supervisor answered the question before anyone could ask it: “Everyone rearrange your seating according to the shape of this letter.”
The room immediately erupted.
“Sir, we’ve always sat in an S-formation for exams — is there something you misunderstood about how seating arrangements work?”
“Exam papers will be distributed in two minutes. Anyone I see sitting in the wrong place when distribution begins leaves the room.” The new supervisor swept a flat gaze across the room. “One minute and fifty seconds.”
Everyone shot to their feet simultaneously.
In the shuffle of footsteps, Lin Tao caught someone muttering: “What class does this teacher even teach? I’ve never seen him before. He’s going to be as bad as Blackie.”
“God, I want to quit,” Xu Yichuan groaned — previously in the back row, now shoved all the way up to the second.
Lin Tao didn’t pay much attention. She found her assigned seat according to her exam number and sat down. Before she’d been settled three seconds, Jiang Yan came past from behind her and took the empty seat to her right.
“…”
Their eyes met. Lin Tao, fearing another ten-teeth smile, looked away first.
“Hey.” Jiang Yan called to her.
Lin Tao didn’t respond.
The supervisor gave no time for catching up. The moment the last student was seated, he began distributing the papers. Once finished, he announced crisply: “Exam begins.”
The combined science exam results would factor into the science-track class placements next semester. Lin Tao didn’t allow herself to get complacent. As usual, she skipped the physics section first — her weakest subject — and worked through the other two components.
By the time she’d finished those, she still had more than half the allotted time remaining.
She rolled her stiff wrist and let her gaze drift without meaning to — catching Jiang Yan beside her. He’d produced a pair of glasses from somewhere and now wore them perched on his nose, looking every bit the picture of a serious student.
Over the course of their brief acquaintance, Lin Tao had noticed that the moments when he stopped writing were very short. He seemed to begin putting pen to paper almost immediately after reading a question. The scratch paper beside him was virtually untouched.
If she was being fair — Jiang Yan had decent looks. By the standards of No. 10 High, he was probably considered among the most attractive students. But from what Lin Tao had observed in their encounters so far, good looks only got a person so far. You needed a brain to match.
Time slipped by. Lin Tao pulled her attention back to her own work, but not long after she picked her pen back up, she noticed that Jiang Yan had already set his down.
He’d also taken off the glasses, shedding any trace of the scholarly air he’d had moments earlier. He looked lazy and half-awake now — like someone who hadn’t slept properly. A failing student in all but name.
Jiang Yan propped his head on his hand, gaze going unfocused. He was almost asleep when the supervisor approached and said nothing — just glanced at his answer sheet, swallowed whatever comment had been forming, and gave his desk a quiet knock.
Time wore on.
Lin Tao found herself stuck on the final physics problem — a sprawling calculation question. She’d worked through a full sheet of scratch paper and managed only one sub-part.
She rested her chin in her hand and read the problem again. No new ideas came. Idly, she glanced to her right — and found herself looking directly at Jiang Yan, who was looking right back at her.
Before she could think about what that meant, Jiang Yan reached over and deliberately moved his answer sheet to the far side of his desk. Then, just to be certain, he placed his exam paper face-down on top of it.
“…”
The only problem is that I’d need to actually be able to see it from here.
When the exam ended, the room split between relief and dread.
Lin Tao was still quietly furious over Jiang Yan’s behavior during the science exam and had fully intended to settle the score once the English exam was done.
Except Jiang Yan didn’t show up for the afternoon English exam. He simply wasn’t there. Neither were the other three.
Lin Tao was absolutely livid.
By the time summer break arrived and she brought it up with Meng Xin, she was still fuming. “Every time I think of him, I want to explode.”
On the other side of the call, Meng Xin was scrolling through a flood of posts about the two of them on the school’s online forum —
Breaking: Top Dog Jiang Yan Does Something Scandalous to a Girl in Front of Everyone!
Heartbroken: The Top Dog Actually Likes Girls! Whatever Happened to Our Pact to be Together Forever?
Posts like these had been pinned to the top of No. 10 High’s school forum since the day after the science exam. Lin Tao, who rarely checked forums, mostly knew about them through the occasional screenshot Meng Xin sent.
“Look at this one.” Even now, Meng Xin was screenshotting another comment and sending it over. “Hahaha — someone’s saying you skipped midterms because you went with Jiang Yan to get his teeth fixed.”
“…”
“The creative capacity of today’s students is operating on a truly cosmic scale.” Meng Xin was laughing constantly. “Though honestly — you really were something, managing to ride your bike into a ditch. That takes talent. And then getting a concussion out of it — Lin Tao, I am in awe.”
“…”
Lin Tao had made peace with the reality that she had terrible balance. She’d started learning to ride a bike in primary school and still couldn’t manage more than a meter without wobbling.
Other girls in middle school had been peacefully cycling down leafy paths with boys their age, sun-dappled and serene. Lin Tao had been clinging to the back of her father’s motorbike with wind biting her face.
A genuinely painful youth.
Meng Xin was howling with laughter on the other end.
For one brief moment, Lin Tao seriously contemplated climbing through the connection and delivering a well-deserved thump. When Meng Xin finally calmed down, Lin Tao set her jaw. “I’ve made a decision.”
“What decision?”
“I’m going to learn to ride a bike this summer.”
“Please. Is being alive not enough for you?”
“…”
Lin Tao hung up.
Meng Xin sent message after message. Don’t forget to get a comprehensive insurance policy. Actually, get one for the bike too — it doesn’t deserve what you’ll put it through.
That poor bike.
Seriously though — have you considered just learning to drive instead? At least a car has airbags.
Lin Tao blocked her.
Lin Tao was someone who meant what she said. The very next morning she went downstairs to the bike storage, retrieved her two-wheeler, and got to work.
An entire morning of wobbly attempts later, she could only manage to go in circles.
When her father came home that evening, Lin Tao brought it up. “Dad — when you have a free weekend, will you teach me to ride properly?”
Her father lowered his newspaper. “Ride what? The bus is perfectly fine — safe, comfortable, cool in summer, warm in winter.”
“…”
She gave up asking for help. The following morning she was back in the courtyard downstairs on her own, experimenting.
She kept at it for over half a month. By then, the younger kids who’d started learning alongside her were already ferrying passengers on their bikes. Lin Tao still hadn’t managed to lift both feet off the ground.
She didn’t give up. And at last, a few days before summer break ended, she managed it — a successful solo ride. It lasted slightly more than a meter. A modest achievement by any measure, but progress was progress.
That evening, she called Meng Xin out to the courtyard to witness her triumph.
Meng Xin: “…”
She really struggled to reconcile this person with the school’s academic prize-winner.
“You know what they say — a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I think I’m basically ready to ride to school.” Lin Tao sat on the bike with both feet touching the ground, giving the pedals the occasional push.
The wheels rolled slowly forward. Meng Xin walked alongside her, keeping pace.
They passed near a patch of grass. Without warning, a dog shot out from the side. Lin Tao had no time to swerve — her feet instinctively clamped down, the bike lurched forward, and she lost her balance entirely, tumbling off.
“Lin Tao!” Meng Xin ran over and pulled her up. “Are you alright?”
“My arm — ow.” Lin Tao felt tears threatening, though not of the crying kind.
She’d spent more than a month learning to ride a bike. She hadn’t quite learned the bike. But she had, with great success, managed to fracture her right arm.
Congratulations all around.
Lin Tao spent a week in the hospital. The day she was discharged, No. 10 High’s new semester had just begun. Since she had to go to school that day anyway to sort out her class assignment, her father drove her there directly from the hospital.
The new semester — and the new courtyard were buzzing with the usual noise of a school coming back to life.
Lin Tao found her name on the placement board in the courtyard: Year Two, Class Eighteen. A new class in a new building in the new teaching wing.
Passing the sports field, she saw first-years doing military training drills. The sight of them made her feel vividly, gratefully alive.
She arrived a little late. By the time she found her classroom, the new homeroom teacher was already at the front going through arrangements. She knocked on the open door. “Sorry — may I come in?”
Every head in the room swiveled toward the door. A few girls who recognized her immediately started whispering to each other.
The new homeroom teacher’s expression shifted with concern when he saw her arm in a cast. “Come in, come in — what happened to your arm?”
Lin Tao wasn’t about to admit she’d fractured it learning to ride a bike. She offered a suitably vague explanation: “I wasn’t careful. Had a fall.”
The teacher didn’t press. “Right, go ahead and find a—”
Before he could finish, another knock came from the doorway.
“Excuse me.”
The whole class turned to look again — and this time, the room broke into laughter.
Lin Tao didn’t understand. She turned around.
Jiang Yan stood at the door in a white T-shirt and black shorts, bare-calved, bag hanging from his right hand, the light behind him silhouetting his frame.
His left arm was in a cast.
“…”
In the moment Lin Tao registered that it was Jiang Yan, the part of her that had felt vividly, gratefully alive —
died all over again.
Author’s Note: — Jiang Yan: AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH SHE’S GOING TO WEAR MY CLOTHES!!!!!! (Utterly screaming!!!!)
Jiang Yan: That’s basically the same as sharing a bed!!!!!!!!!!!
Lin Tao: …???????
Red envelopes today too!!