The next day, when Lin Weixia arrived at school, she found that the attention and whispers centered on her had grown denser. She set down her bag, took out her sandwich to eat for breakfast, and suddenly a hugely magnified, round face appeared right in front of her — startling her heart into skipping a beat. Fang Mo tilted her head and said:

“So even a celestial being has to eat breakfast.”

Lin Weixia poked her in the forehead, her tone lightly teasing: “Yes — and in a moment, I’ll also be collecting your Chinese homework.”

Fang Mo’s eyes went wide. She slapped herself on the head and immediately spun around, muttering in a frenzy: “Oh no, oh no, I didn’t do my homework.”

Before morning reading began, the classroom was still lively as usual. Lin Weixia sat at her desk taking care of something, the faint smile she’d worn while teasing Fang Mo still lingering on her lips — until Liu Sijia and Li Shengran walked in arm in arm, and a subtle shift moved through the air.

A few of the Shengao students in their uniforms instinctively looked toward Lin Weixia, their eyes carrying a hint of sympathy alongside a trace of condescension.

Lin Weixia was unaffected. She continued organizing her homework.

During the morning exercise break, Lin Weixia went downstairs alone. Liu Sijia no longer waited for her — she was swept away by a crowd of people surrounding her like the queen she was, her long tea-brown curls shining as brightly as ever.

When it was over, Lin Weixia made her way back upstairs with the flow of students. At the landing, she happened to glance down idly, and saw Liu Sijia below with a girl hanging on her arm, the vivid curve of her red lips pulling into a smile.

Someone bumped into Lin Weixia from the side, startling her back to the present. She rested her hand on the stairwell railing, withdrew the gaze she’d fixed on Liu Sijia, and let the stream of students carry her upstairs.

The sunlight was lovely that day — warm and orange, with a certain translucence to it. Outside the door of Class Two of Year Two, many students crowded along the corridor to bask in the sun, noisy and lively. Lin Weixia stood there soaking up the light, arms resting on the railing, eyes squinted in a daydream.

Ban Sheng was leaning idly against the railing nearby, spine curving slightly so that a line of vertebrae traced gently up his back. Qiu Minghua was at his side, and the two of them were playing with a drone.

Li Shengran was painting Liu Sijia’s nails. Liu Sijia teased: “Hey, can you actually do this or not.”

“Of course I can — but we need to hurry. If Old Liu comes, he’ll definitely confiscate my nail supplies,” Li Shengran said, lightly patting her arm.

Lin Weixia’s expression remained distant, showing no reaction — yet inside, her heart was like a rice cooker that had reached its limit, constantly bubbling over, before going pop.

She had always treasured this friendship. It was just that promises made between girls in adolescence could shatter as quickly as fragile art — unless one tended to it carefully, at every turn.

Li Shengran noticed Ban Sheng nearby and called out to him with a lilt in her voice, the words carrying a hint of coyness: “Ban Sheng, this weekend Sijia and I want to go surfing at Fenghai. Do you have time to teach us?”

Beneath the girls’ expectant gazes, Ban Sheng stood holding the drone controller, chewing his gum idly without answering.

Ning Chao was there too, leaning against the wall nearby. Out of habit, he ran a hand over his buzz cut, glanced sideways at the two girls behind Lin Weixia, and spoke to Ban Sheng in an offhand tone — though the words were pointed with clear intent:

“Hey, you don’t actually think it was my girl who broke the cello string herself last night, do you? Aren’t you going to look into it?”

That single sentence made the atmosphere go strangely tense in an instant. Even the students nearby who had been playing around stopped and looked uniformly toward Ban Sheng, waiting for him to speak.

Ban Sheng’s hand stilled on the drone controller. He turned his head to look at Lin Weixia, his brow and eyes carrying a quiet, pressing weight, as he asked slowly: “Was it someone?”

“Yes.” Lin Weixia glanced back behind her.

The next second, Liu Sijia called out behind them: “Shengran, you’ve gone outside the lines with the nail polish.”

The view was blocked by shifting figures. Ning Chao looked toward the two girls — one with her usual cool, striking expression, one with a flustered look on her face, head bowed as she pulled out a nail wipe to clean the red polish from the edges.

Ning Chao snorted at the sight.

Li Shengran’s face had gone somewhat sour. She had just opened her mouth to say something when Ban Sheng glanced at her, and she fell silent automatically.

He looked at Lin Weixia, gesturing for her to continue. Lin Weixia’s tone paused for a moment, and then she laughed lightly: “It’s not possible that someone did it. I was just too nervous on stage — I pulled too hard and snapped the string myself.”

“I’m truly sorry for breaking your instrument.”

Ban Sheng dipped his head slightly, meeting Lin Weixia’s eyes, checking: “Are you sure there was nothing?”

Lin Weixia looked back at him steadily. No one dared speak, and no one would dare to interfere with his judgment or decision.

All she had to do was say the word — say where it hurt — and he would stand up for her.

She also knew that if Ban Sheng chose to investigate, he could do so easily. Handling something like this was trivially simple for him. But Lin Weixia shook her head all the same, and held firm: “Nothing. I was just careless.”

“Ring ring ring —” The class bell rang right on time. Boys and girls filed back into the classroom one after another. Lin Weixia was just about to head back to class when Li Shengran walked past with Liu Sijia on her arm, face cold, not even glancing at Lin Weixia. With a bang, she shoved her shoulder into Lin Weixia.

Lin Weixia winced, her brow creasing with the sting.

The end-of-semester exams came quickly. Whenever a major exam arrived, the classroom atmosphere would be wound as tight as a bowstring, going even further beyond its usual intensity. Liu Sijia still talked to Lin Weixia and kept some contact, but the two of them had grown much more distant.

The people in the class could naturally see the change between them. People tended to admire the strong, and would instinctively choose sides. The group of girls were no longer as considerate as before, nowhere near as warm as they used to be, and would occasionally single her out — but Lin Weixia adapted. She always adapted to every shift in her environment.

Three days before the exams, Lin Weixia was sitting in the classroom studying when a commotion broke out in the rows ahead of her, followed by a burst of competing chatter entering her left ear, each word arriving distinctly.

“Sijia, did you get a new bag?”

“Wow, is that a limited edition? I’ve always wanted this bag but could never get my hands on one.” A girl’s voice carried pure envy.

“Of course she got a new one. About time — that old bag made her look so shabby. Some people are always eyeing what belongs to others.”

The words felt like a nudge — reminding everyone that Lin Weixia, an F-tier student, had never deserved to be their friend in the first place.

Liu Sijia cut through them with a slightly impatient tone: “Alright, stop talking about all that.”

The laughter gradually faded. The tip of Lin Weixia’s pen paused, letting a small blot bleed into the white paper. She glanced at the bag in her desk drawer — still fairly new, the Japanese-style bag Liu Sijia had given her. Lin Weixia had even hung her lucky charm from it. She drew her gaze back to her textbook and kept studying.

At noon when school let out, Fang Mo had finished tidying her books and was excitedly getting ready to go eat with her friends. She noticed Lin Weixia sitting alone at her desk doing homework and asked:

“Weixia, are you by yourself? Do you want to come with us?”

Lin Weixia smiled gently: “It’s okay, you all go ahead. I’ve just got a little bit left.”

She could manage on her own. She could walk forward in the same sunlight as a good friend, and she could also walk alone — a solitary creature, if that was what it came to.

The final exams came with rain. Winter rain in Nanjiang was always chilly and damp. That morning on her way out, Lin Weixia had changed into a misty-blue wool coat and pulled on a black beret. Her skin was pale as mutton-fat jade, her aura cool and solitary.

Before leaving, she received a text from Ban Sheng, his tone as arrogant as ever —

[Ban: Do you need me to go easy on you? Let you have the thrill of beating me just once.]

That was more or less impossible. Even if he held back, it wouldn’t change the outcome — unless Ban Sheng simply didn’t sit the exam. Lin Weixia didn’t reply. She took her umbrella and headed out the door. The moment she stepped outside, she ran into Ban Sheng, who had already been waiting outside to walk with her to school.

Ban Sheng was wearing a black coat. The side profile of his jaw traced a clean, fluid line. His thumb was rubbing at the knuckle on the back of his left hand. He was smoking, cheeks slightly hollow.

Rakishly handsome in a way that defied logic — enough to draw stares from passersby.

The moment he spotted Lin Weixia, Ban Sheng stubbed out the cigarette and walked over with breakfast in hand. He swept a look over her outfit today, and an expression of meaningful amusement crossed his face — though his tone was perfectly serious:

“Today we don’t look like siblings.”

Lin Weixia looked at him in puzzlement: “Huh?”

“We look like a couple.”

……

Three days of rain, one after another. When the final subject was over, the rain was still falling — but the semester was done.

It hadn’t been entirely without something to show for itself.

Lin Weixia walked out hugging her white exam folder. Through the distance and the crowd, she spotted Liu Sijia at once, surrounded by people.

Liu Sijia said something to the others, and they left one by one. Lin Weixia took her umbrella and walked toward Liu Sijia. Liu Sijia stood there with her arms crossed. Neither of them said anything.

Liu Sijia crossed her arms, glanced sideways at Lin Weixia, and spoke first: “I didn’t do that thing.”

“I know,” Lin Weixia said, her tone unhurried.

The two of them faced each other in silence. Lin Weixia added softly: “Thank you for looking after me this semester, Sijia.”

The rain picked up slightly. Lin Weixia opened her umbrella and stepped quickly into the curtain of rain woven from fine threads of water. Droplets struck the white translucent umbrella canopy and spun outward into small, blooming flowers.

Winter break came quickly, arriving just as the New Year approached. Red lanterns hung everywhere along the streets of Nanjiang, and foot traffic grew heavier by the day. Her aunt had signed Gao Hang up for three different tutoring programs, which had the boy — a teenager in the thick of adolescence who wanted nothing more than to play video games all day — complaining endlessly to anyone who would listen.

Because the year-end was near and her aunt’s shop was too busy to manage alone, she called Lin Weixia over to help. Lin Weixia’s daily tasks were handling the register and making fresh-cut fruit and other odd jobs. It looked easy enough, but by the end of a full day she was exhausted, her back and legs aching.

Throughout the entire winter break, Lin Weixia was barely in contact with anyone. Ban Sheng had gone abroad and would occasionally send her a few photos.

Two days before the New Year, the fruit shop finally closed for the holiday. On New Year’s Eve, after the reunion dinner, her aunt gave each of them a big red envelope. Gao Hang glanced at Lin Weixia’s noticeably thicker envelope and feigned indignation: “Mom, why is big sister’s envelope fatter than mine?”

Her aunt was carrying a dish and, without a second thought, gave the back of his head a smack, scolding: “You have the nerve to complain — how long has your sister been working hard at the shop this break? And what have you done? I bet the keyboard in your room is practically glazed over from so much gaming.”

Gao Hang immediately started clowning around to lighten the mood, and with the sounds of the New Year’s Eve special program on television in the background, the atmosphere was warm and cheerful. After helping clean up the dishes and chopsticks, Lin Weixia grabbed her change of clothes and headed to the bathroom. As she passed by, she happened to glance at her phone lying on the blue bedsheet and found the screen lighting up repeatedly.

Lin Weixia picked up her phone and sat on the edge of the bed, logged into WeChat, and found New Year’s greetings from Fang Mo and Ning Chao — she smiled and replied to each of them in turn. The class group chat was buzzing with activity too, and Old Liu had even uncharacteristically sent a shower of red envelopes.

Lin Weixia was about to close out her phone screen when her eyes caught Liu Sijia’s name appearing in her chat window. She tapped in and found a long string of New Year’s blessings — the kind clearly copied and pasted from somewhere online. Before she’d even finished reading it, the message was recalled. The chat window went blank.

A moment later, Liu Sijia sent a single message, in her characteristic cool tone: “Slipped. Mass message.”

Whether it was a genuine accidental group send that had gone to her as well, or a tentative gesture toward reconciliation — Lin Weixia didn’t know. She typed out her reply carefully: [Sijia, Happy New Year.]

After sending the message, Lin Weixia went to take her shower. When she came out, she was wearing soft cotton pajamas, the skin along her neck and collarbone flushed pink from the steam.

She used her right hand to keep wrapping her wet hair in a white towel, and with her other hand picked up her phone and settled at the desk by the window. Only then did she see the string of messages Fang Mo had sent half an hour ago.

Fang Mo: [Ahhhh, did you see Ban Sheng’s Moments post?!]

Then Fang Mo had immediately sent a screenshot. Lin Weixia tapped it open. It turned out to be a screenshot of Qiu Minghua’s Moments — a post from a user with the display name “ban” and a completely black profile picture, who had shared a photo of the night sky with the caption: Waiting for someone to wish me a Happy New Year.

The location tag read: Canada. The phrasing carried an indeterminate kind of ambiguity that invited endless speculation. Qiu Minghua and Ban Sheng’s mutual friends were flooding the comments with everything from teasing to cheerful chaos.

A: [Who’s “someone”?]

B: [Happy New Year, I’m “someone.”]

C: [Wow, Ban Sheng, you’re in Canada! Happy New Year!]

Qiu Minghua had blurred the screenshot and sent it to a private group chat, intending to stir up chaos — and sure enough, it spread from one person to ten, and from ten to a hundred, until even classmates who didn’t have Ban Sheng on WeChat knew about it.

Fang Mo continued her gossip: [Weixia, could “someone” be… you?? Hehehe.]

Lin Weixia’s lashes dropped and fluttered slightly. The next second, a notification appeared in her message bar. She tapped it open — it was from Ban Sheng, in his characteristic nonchalant tone. He said:

[Hey, “someone.”]

Lin Weixia gripped her phone and started to feel the casing grow warm. Water droplets kept dripping from her hair onto the phone screen. He hadn’t spoken a word out loud — it was just text — yet somehow it translated automatically into a low, resonant voice reverberating in her ears.

She typed something in the reply box and deleted it. Typed again, and deleted again.

On Ban Sheng’s end, the phone displayed “the other party is typing” — on and off, like someone trying to hold back but failing. He was driven to distraction by the sight of it. Unable to stand it, he pressed the voice message button and sent a voice message over.

The moment she pressed play, a slightly hoarse male voice filled the room, carrying an air of patient, quiet resignation:

[It’s New Year’s today. I’m alone overseas.]

[All I want is for you to wish me a Happy New Year.]

Lin Weixia thought of the photo Ban Sheng had just sent — a grey, lightless sky, not a single star to be seen. Nothing like back home, where fireworks were bursting over the river bay, brilliant and festive.

She was typing a reply when water from her hair dripped onto the screen, and the input method wouldn’t switch to Chinese characters. Lin Weixia simply pressed the voice message button and sent a voice message instead.

A soft, warm female voice traveled through an unsteady signal. She spoke with a hint of seriousness, her tone earnest:

— Happy New Year, Ban Sheng.

Then Lin Weixia went to blow-dry her hair. When she came back and checked her messages, she found that Ban Sheng hadn’t replied. A nameless feeling settled in her chest — she couldn’t quite name it, but she didn’t dwell on it.

She scrolled through her phone, and suddenly her finger stopped. She stared at a small patch of the screen for a long, long time. Then her whole body fell backward onto the bed.

Outside the window, the sweet fragrance of the fruit trees drifted into the air, little by little seeping in through the gap, pouring into her nose — warm and tingling, slowly pressing against the sealed walls of her heart, until it was soft and buzzing.

Her arm lay at her side. The phone screen in her tightly held hand lit up, and on it was a notification: the other party had changed their display name. Ban Sheng’s WeChat name now read:

Heard It

Like a message meant for no one else in the world — and known to no one but her.