When evening self-study ended, the classroom emptied in no time, leaving only a few students on duty. Lin Tao turned out her bag and searched through her desk, looking for her keys.

Jiang Yan leaned against the wall nearby, head down, scrolling through his phone.

“Found them!” Lin Tao fished the key from the inner pocket of her bag and looked up at him. “Ready to go?”

Jiang Yan straightened up, put his phone away, and with easy, natural ease scooped up her school bag and slung it over his own hand; his other hand slipped into his pocket. “Let’s go.”

The two of them walked out one after the other. The motion-sensor light on the second floor had broken down; by the faint glow spilling in from the floors above and below, visibility was poor.

In the dim space, someone came rushing down from the upper floor; Lin Tao didn’t have time to avoid them and bumped into Jiang Yan beside her.

“Sorry about that!” The boy who had run into her disappeared quickly, leaving nothing but the receding sound of hurried footsteps.

Lin Tao rubbed her arm and moved a step to the side. In the dark, she could barely see anything. She had only taken a few steps when her foot suddenly caught on nothing, and she pitched forward.

In the fraction of a second, someone grabbed the back of her school jacket collar and yanked her upright. A familiar voice laughed quietly beside her ear. “Are you slow, or what?”

“……You want to test whether one punch from me opens up a brand new world for you?”

The laughter grew clearer and warmer. He reached up and gave her head a firm ruffle.

“Such a hopeless case.”

They came out at the bottom of the stairs. The entire Year 1 and Year 2 teaching block had already gone dark; the buildings’ outlines blurred into the night.

The Year 3 block still blazed with light, and from a distance it looked as though figures could still be seen moving past the windows.

Tree shadows swayed. An autumn moon hung behind a veil of haze — pale and thin, coolly remote. On the road, cars passed at intervals.

Word of the flasher near the school had already spread among the students. During evening self-study, homeroom teachers had all received instructions from the school administration and read out a safety notice in their respective classes, asking students who did not board at school to take the notice home for their parents to sign. It also required assurance that a parent would personally escort the student during this period; boarding students were not allowed to leave campus after evening study without the homeroom teacher’s permission.

There were not many people at the nearby bus stop in the evening — most clustered together in pairs or small groups, talking about the news with a mixture of revulsion and unease, watching the people around them with quiet wariness.

Two silhouettes, one tall and one shorter, stood off to one side.

The autumn wind was brisk. Lin Tao tugged her school jacket collar up; the back of the collar stood straight, half-covering her chin. Only the upper half of her face showed — pale and clean — and her voice came out slightly muffled. “It’s getting late. Why don’t you head home first? The bus will be here soon.”

Jiang Yan was leaning against the advertisement board behind them, head down, eyes on his phone, not looking up. “Let’s wait a bit. It’s not a big difference in time.”

Lin Tao leaned over. “What are you looking at again —”

The words died when she saw what was on his phone screen. Physics problems.

She quietly withdrew her gaze, licked her slightly dry lips, and gave a defeated sigh. “Right. The mind of a top student — beyond my understanding.”

Jiang Yan put his phone away and tucked it into the pocket of his school jacket. The smile at his lips was relaxed. “How so? Didn’t you used to say you were a top student yourself?”

“I take it back, I retract it, everything I said was nonsense.” Lin Tao tilted her chin up and idly nudged the pole beside her with her foot. “By the way — I’ve noticed you’ve been looking at physics a lot lately.”

“There’s a competition in December.”

Jiang Yan had been participating in various physics competitions since middle school, winning awards consistently. In his first year of high school he had originally planned to compete at the national level, but then — something had happened.

The memory of that time surfaced. His eyes fell slightly, and he let out a breath too quiet to notice.

Lin Tao had deep admiration for anyone strong in physics, and couldn’t help clicking her tongue softly. “So are you planning to focus on physics going forward?”

“More or less. First the competition, then a strong placement, then hopefully a direct admission offer from Qingda.” As he spoke, a face gradually took shape in his mind — Fang Hai’s face, his voice.

“Little Yan, you have to study physics hard. Get into Qingda — and finish the dream your father never got to finish.”

……

“Beep —!”

A sudden horn blast pulled Jiang Yan from the memory. He glanced sideways at Lin Tao, the question coming as casually as if he’d simply thought of it: “What about you? What do you want to do in the future?”

Lin Tao was startled, and after a few seconds, shook her head. “I don’t know.”

At their age, very few people had any real plan for the future. Most were adrift in uncertainty and taking things as they came — moving forward in a blur, without a clear direction.

Lin Tao had never made any plans for herself either — not for her studies, not for her life. She had always preferred to live in the present, without thinking too far ahead.

And it was only in this moment that she truly registered what she had already known without quite acknowledging: the young man standing before her was nothing like how he appeared on the surface — idle and carefree. He had a plan for his own life, taking it step by deliberate step, leaving the rest of them — still struggling through the heat of it all — far behind.

When she got home, Lin Tao was surprised to find both Fang Yisong and Lin Yongcheng home. She swapped her shoes for house slippers, picked up her school bag, and walked over. “Dad, Mum, what brought you both home today?”

Lin Yongcheng closed his laptop and removed his glasses. “Your Mr. Yu sent your mother a message not long ago — something about a flasher near your school. We were worried, so we both came home early.”

Lin Tao nodded and pulled the safety notice from her bag, handing it over. “Old Yu asked for a parent signature.”

She had assumed neither Fang Yisong nor Lin Yongcheng would be home, and had been planning to get Meng Xin to sign it for her tomorrow. Now that was sorted.

Fang Yisong read it over and signed her name at the parent signature line. “For now, let me arrange a driver from the company to take you to and from school. That way your father and I can stop worrying.”

“Sounds good to me. I’ll head to my room then — get some rest, both of you.” Lin Tao tucked the notice back into her bag and headed toward her room.

On the way, she glanced back at the two of them sitting in the living room with little to say to each other. Something felt faintly off — a strangeness she couldn’t quite name.

But the next second, she saw her mother peel off a wedge of mandarin orange and hold it up to her father’s mouth.

“……”

She raised an eyebrow, made a small sound of mild exasperation, and pushed open the door to her room.

Under the arrangement Fang Yisong made, with a company driver taking her to and from school, Lin Tao spent the rest of the semester in relative comfort and safety.

On winter nights, a flasher who had been appearing without warning in the area near the school and striking repeatedly was finally caught in his most recent attempt — seized by a few students from No. 10 High School who had stayed up overnight — and delivered to the police station bound and trussed that very night.

The following morning, a commendation banner arrived at the school’s administrative office from the police department.

News of the flasher’s capture had already spread through the surrounding neighbourhood; when word got out that he had been caught, the residents nearby and the school’s students and staff all celebrated with great relief, stopping just short of setting off firecrackers at the school gate.

The school administration expressed enormous praise for the few students who had shown such civic courage.

At Monday’s flag-raising ceremony, the principal had specifically prepared a speech for them, his resonant voice carrying across the sports ground through the PA system.

“……Such people are a cancer on society — the dregs of humanity. Our students of No. 10 High School had the courage to stand against evil and rid the community of harm. In them, we see the spirit of our school’s founding motto: virtue and talent combined, knowledge made action. We are proud of them!”

“Let their example inspire all of you! Please show them your appreciation!”

A thunderous wave of applause rose from below.

On the platform, Jiang Yan stood throughout with a completely blank expression. It was cold up there — the wind came at him from every direction, filling the school jacket and sending chills down his sides.

Of all things.

If he had known then that catching the man would lead to this much hassle, he never would have let Hu Hanghang talk them into giving their names, school, and class when the officers asked.

Once the principal finished, the commendation ceremony began. The school had ordered personalised certificates of civic merit — one for each of the four students involved.

The ceremony concluded with a group photograph.

“Alright everyone, look at the camera!” The photographer stood behind the tripod, checking the frame. “Three, two, one!”

Click —!

The moment was captured.

The handsome young man stood in the middle of the group, expression blank, certificate in both hands. Beside him, the school flag was caught by the wind and whipped toward his face.

At the instant the shutter pressed, he turned his head slightly and reached up to push the flag away — inadvertently revealing half his profile, features sharply defined. The red flag and his pale complexion formed a striking contrast.

Later, it was this photograph that launched Jiang Yan to the top of the most-talked-about and most-adored figures in the school fan forum for the entire city of Xicheng.

But that was a story for another time.

……

Once the ceremony was over, Jiang Yan slipped away from a group of school administrators who would not stop talking, took the side staircase, and drifted back to the classroom.

Ever since Jiang Yan had appeared from nowhere to claim first in the year during the mid-term exam, the online forum posts about him had never stopped. Now, with the civic courage incident on top of it, he had become the most talked-about student at No. 10 High School for the year.

The old rumours about him — the ones that had made people uneasy — were being buried one by one under this new reputation. Over the past while, the girls slipping love letters to Jiang Yan had practically worn a groove in Class 18’s doorstep.

Fortunately, the ceremony had just ended, so only a handful of people were in the classroom — mostly boys from the basketball group, who greeted him with a grin when he walked in. “Looking sharp out there, Yan.”

Jiang Yan waved a hand, too tired to speak, and returned to his seat, tossing the commendation certificate into his desk drawer without ceremony.

The classroom had the heating on. He stripped off his jacket and dropped it to one side, then leaned back against the desk with his legs up on the bottom crossbar, phone in hand.

Before long, the classroom began to fill up again.

The noise around him picked up.

Lin Tao had stopped at the small convenience store nearby with Meng Xin on the way back and arrived a little late. “The principal called all of you to the office to chat, didn’t he? How come you didn’t go?”

“What would we even talk about.” Jiang Yan put down his phone on the desk and looked up at her.

The girl was in a good mood, clearly — smiling, her dark eyes clear and bright; her lips a healthy colour, her teeth white. Her school jacket was undone, a round-necked white knit top visible underneath, the pale column of her neck and the clean line of her collarbone showing above it.

He shifted his gaze away without drawing attention to it, his fingers tapping the surface of the desk almost reflexively. “Now that things have settled down, is someone still driving you to and from school?”

“Probably, since it’s got cold.” Lin Tao tore open a bag of milk candy and put a small handful on his desk. “Oh — how did you all just happen to catch that guy, anyway?”

“We ran into it by accident.” He unwrapped one piece and set it on her desk, then unwrapped another and put it in his own mouth.

The previous Friday, Hu Hanghang and a few others had gone to an internet café to game, and around one in the morning started feeling hungry. All of them, with nothing better to do, wandered to the stall at the entrance of the alley for a late-night snack.

Winter nights are long and dark. Across the alley, on the street beyond, there was no one in sight.

A young woman who had just finished the night shift at the convenience store changed her clothes and walked out to the bus stop across the road, unaware of the dark figure that had followed her from behind.

It happened without warning. A sudden scream cut across the alley, faintly audible from where they sat.

The boys looked at one another. In the next second, they were on their feet running toward it.

A young woman in a black down jacket had fallen to the ground. Standing in front of her was a man in a suit and dress shoes — but one look downward and the scene was repulsive.

The moment the man saw Jiang Yan and the others, he yanked up his clothes and bolted for the shadows.

Xu Yichuan stayed behind to look after the young woman. Hu Hanghang and Song Yuan took off after the man. Jiang Yan and Guan Che knew the area well, and cut off two alternate routes from either side; they finally cornered him at the busiest intersection nearby.

Lin Tao listened to the whole account, feeling her heart rate climb even though she hadn’t been there herself. “It’s lucky you all happened to be there. If you hadn’t been, it really would have been awful.”

“I still don’t understand what goes through someone’s head. How can a person do something so depraved?”

Jiang Yan had heard a little about the circumstances from the interrogation, and answered lightly, “Career stress. Pressure from work.”

“That still doesn’t make it acceptable to let it out like that.” Lin Tao spoke around the candy in her mouth, her words coming out a little muffled. “Do you ever feel pressure yourself?”

“Of course. I’m not a saint.” He glanced at her and laughed softly.

“And what do you do when you want to release it?”

“Watch TV.” He paused. “Play games.”

“……”

That actually explained something. “So all those evening dramas and that palace intrigue mobile game you play in class — they’re all for stress relief?”

“More or less. Those shows don’t take much brain power to follow.” Jiang Yan reached up to scratch behind his ear, then drew his outstretched legs back in. His knee knocked the desk, and with a mild rustling sound, the commendation certificate he’d shoved carelessly into the drawer slid out, bringing several other things with it.

The certificate landed on his legs and dropped to Lin Tao’s feet.

He reached down to pick it up; Lin Tao got there first, bending to retrieve it. “Can I have a look?”

“Go ahead.”

Lin Tao had barely opened it when she saw the small one-inch photo in the upper right corner, set against a blue background.

The young man’s expression was flat and blank. His hair was cut close to the scalp, and without hair to soften things, his features were in full view — sharply angular, the proportions of his face balanced and well-formed. The overall impression was different from the approachable ease of his appearance now; this version of him carried an edge, something slightly feral.

“When was this taken?”

Jiang Yan glanced at it briefly. “Third year of middle school.”

He had gotten into a fight and hurt his head. They shaved his hair entirely while he was in hospital; he was there for two weeks. He was discharged just in time for the end-of-school photo session and went like that.

“You were quite rebellious back then.”

Lin Tao looked up at him with a smile.

A year and more had passed. The close-cropped hair had grown out into short black hair; what had been a slight rawness and edginess in those features had softened into something warmer and more open. His complexion, as ever, remained strikingly pale.

After comparing the two versions of him, Lin Tao noticed a few pink envelopes that had also fallen to the floor. She bent down and picked those up too. “What are these?”

She turned them over — and on the front, each envelope’s seal was held closed with a small pink heart sticker.

Beneath it, in neat small handwriting:

Dear Jiang Yan, for your eyes only.