Halfway through dinner, Lin Sen suddenly ordered half a dozen beers. Three glass cups arrived and he poured, the pale foam rushing in with a gentle gurgle.

Lin Sen slid one across to Lin Weixia, smiling as he asked, “Would you like to try some? It’s quite good.”

At the neighboring table, a boy in a baseball cap sat where his face couldn’t be clearly seen — only the sharp, clean line of his jaw was visible below the brim. He had ordered nothing but a pot of tea and was drinking it at leisure. At those words, his hand tightened around his teacup, the long, slender tendons along his arm rising taut.

“I’m allergic to alcohol,” Lin Weixia said.

Lin Sen smiled amiably and didn’t press her, pouring for himself instead. By the time the meal wore on, he was visibly drunk. Lin Weixia exhaled quietly in relief, turned to Liu Sijia, and spoke:

“Sijia, there’s something I want to tell you.”

Liu Sijia had been taking small sips of her mung bean soup, but when she looked up and met Lin Weixia’s gaze, she stilled. Those eyes were like glass beads — bright, clear, and composed, as though she had come prepared to say something of significance.

“I have something to say to you, too,” Liu Sijia said, dropping her spoon into the bowl with a clang.

“What do you think of him?” Liu Sijia tilted her chin toward Lin Sen across the table, propping her cheek on her hand, absently tapping a finger against it. “His family is extremely wealthy — new money, but still a good match for you, and he’s not bad-looking either.”

“I —”

Lin Weixia was just about to decline when Lin Sen lurched forward, gave her a sloppy grin — clearly drunk — and breathed a mouthful of alcohol straight into her face as he spoke:

“Lin classmate, how about I show you a magic trick?”

“No, thank you.”

She refused, but he persisted, crowding in close, and actually placed both hands on her shoulders, then began fishing a bank card out of his pocket, making a big show of performing his trick.

Lin Sen was drunk, and the smell coming off him couldn’t have been worse. Where he touched her, Lin Weixia felt as though a venomous snake had slithered across her skin. She instinctively tried to pull away.

Faced with Lin Sen’s verbal and physical harassment, Liu Sijia gave him a firm shove, then continued her campaign: “Weixia, he goes berserk when he’s drunk — don’t take it personally.”

“But what do you think of him, really? Today I put this whole thing together specifically for you. Not bad of me as a friend, right? I think he’s a worthwhile prospect to consider…”

Liu Sijia’s lips kept moving, and between that and the stench radiating off Lin Sen, Lin Weixia gradually stopped hearing her clearly. Her tinnitus was acting up — her right ear filled with a shrill, piercing ringing, harsh and relentless. She pressed her hands over her ears instinctively.

“Bang.” A teacup came spinning through the air in a straight line and struck Lin Sen’s hand where it rested on Lin Weixia’s. He yelped and released her immediately.

The cup grazed his hand and smashed on the ground, shattering into jagged shards with a sharp crack.

“Who the —!” Liu Sijia shot to her feet.

Of course — nothing good ever happened on this wretched street.

Liu Sijia looked in the direction it had come from. Two tables away, a boy in a black baseball cap had been sitting with his back to them the whole time. He was slightly hunched, the line of his spine rising in the middle, his neck perfectly straight.

He looked somewhat familiar.

The boy unhurriedly rose to his feet and walked toward them. Beneath the brim of the cap, a pair of dark, ink-black brows pressed down with a barely-leashed ferocity. He slowly lifted his head and gave his wrist a light roll.

It was Ban Sheng.

A jolt of alarm shot through Liu Sijia, and she reflexively stepped back.

Lin Sen could see at a glance the other boy wasn’t the type to be trifled with. But there wasn’t much to be afraid of — he’d seen wealthy kids do outrageous things and perfectly ordinary things alike. He’d done a few himself.

Lin Sen whipped off his glasses. His hand had gone a vivid red, the bruise already rising to a dark purple — a sharp, drilling pain every time he put any force on it.

“What the hell is wrong with you — are you out of your mind?!” Lin Sen charged forward.

The moment he reached him, Ban Sheng shot out one hand to intercept his arm. His eyes never wavered — steady, cutting. He twisted in a fluid reverse motion. He didn’t even blink. A sharp snap sounded — clearly audible within the radius of their table — as Lin Sen’s wrist bone was wrenched out of socket.

“Ahh—!” Lin Sen was yanked forward by Ban Sheng, his left arm pinned behind his back, completely immobilized, his entire face flushing a livid, congested red from the pain.

“Ban Sheng!” Liu Sijia’s brow creased. “Let go of him.”

Liu Sijia’s words had absolutely no effect on Ban Sheng.

Ban Sheng dragged him along like a stray dog, Lin Sen shrieking the entire way, drawing stares from the surrounding diners. Ning Chao, who had been opening beers for a customer, called out breezily, “Nothing to worry about, everyone, enjoy your meal.”

Lin Weixia’s tinnitus had not yet subsided. She sat there with her hands pressed over both ears. The scene had descended into chaos. Ban Sheng hauled Lin Sen to a back corner, deliberately removed his watch, grabbed him by the collar, and began repeatedly slamming him into the wall. The bespectacled boy’s screaming never let up.

When he got tired of slamming, he switched to kicking. Ban Sheng delivered kick after kick with a blank expression, speaking at an unhurried, measured pace:

“Was it satisfying — putting your hands on her?”

“Anyone who touches my person,” Ban Sheng gave Lin Sen a couple of slow pats on the cheek, a flash of vicious intent crossing his face, then slammed him against the wall once more, his voice emerging slow and deliberate:

“Can just say they’re tired of living.”

Liu Sijia knew exactly what Ban Sheng was capable of. If he kept going like this, he would genuinely beat Lin Sen to death. Her face was taut with anxiety. She found Ning Chao where he was busy working. “Make him stop.”

“That’s beyond my abilities,” Ning Chao said, brushing a skewer, utterly unbothered.

“Consider it a debt I owe you!”

Liu Sijia pushed Ning Chao — and it so happened he was holding a container of chili pepper. The shove knocked him sideways off-balance, his shoulder tilting, his hand jerking, and half a canister of ground chili pepper went flying — straight onto an entire platter of meat a customer had ordered, ruining it completely.

Ning Chao bit down on his back teeth, on the verge of calling her out, but the moment he caught sight of Liu Sijia’s red-rimmed eyes, the fire went out of him. He said quietly, “I must have owed you in a past life.”

Ning Chao lit a cigarette, ducked around to the back of the stall, and spoke to Ban Sheng in a steady voice: “That’s enough. If this gets any bigger it’ll be a mess to clean up.”

Ban Sheng’s raised hand was about to come down again when Ning Chao cut straight to his weak point with a single sentence:

“Don’t you want to check on my seatmate? I think her ear was bothering her when I got here.”

That stopped Ban Sheng. He followed Ning Chao back to the stall and walked up to Lin Weixia, then grabbed her by the arm to take her away.

Ban Sheng drew her loosely against him, his broad shoulders casting a safe, sheltering shadow around her, his hand on her arm as he led her.

The look in his eyes — like she was something precious — pierced through Liu Sijia in an instant.

He hadn’t glanced at her even once.

Liu Sijia called out at the backs of the two figures making to leave: “Lin Weixia — don’t you have something to tell me?”

That slender, slight figure hesitated. Lin Weixia turned back, her gaze composed and detached: “There’s nothing I need to say.”

Lin Weixia had never looked at her that way before. No matter how coldly Lin Weixia treated others, she had always looked at Liu Sijia with nothing but patience and gentleness.

“Is that so? Then what’s this?”

Liu Sijia stepped forward and seized the keychain on Lin Weixia’s right hand, yanking at it. Lin Weixia’s thumb pressed into the corner of the little dinosaur’s tail and refused to give ground.

The two girls pulled at it, fingers going white, the backs of their hands reddening from the effort.

They stared directly at each other — nearly the same height, the wind lifting both their hair — neither willing to yield.

From a distance, it might have looked like two girls simply clasping hands.

It was impossible to say who let go first. Liu Sijia took out her phone, logged into Weibo, found Cheng Wusuan’s profile page, and thrust the screen in front of Lin Weixia’s face:

“Explain this.”

What was shoved in front of Lin Weixia’s eyes was an update Cheng Wusuan had posted — a group photo from a get-together. In it, Ban Sheng was visible only in profile, half his face hidden — his usual unbothered air; he couldn’t even be bothered to look at the camera. The others were all pulling funny poses.

What had caught Liu Sijia’s eye when she was about to like the post was the baseball cap Ban Sheng wore — with a small dinosaur motif on it.

In a flash, she had remembered the little dinosaur charm on Lin Weixia’s phone. So — they were a matching pair.

“Today that’s exactly what I came to tell you,” Lin Weixia said, looking at her. “You didn’t give me a chance, Sijia.”

She had wanted to tell Liu Sijia all along that she and Ban Sheng had made a commitment to each other.

Liu Sijia’s expression froze. Her eyes reddened, her jaw set, turning sharp and severe:

“You think I don’t know how many times you’ve been sneaking around behind my back? Do you take me for a fool? I knew him first!”

Ban Sheng was in the middle of tilting his neck to wipe off a dark smear of blood from the back of one hand. He let out a quiet, cold laugh at that — it was unclear whether he was laughing at the first half of what she said or the second.

When had she first started to notice?

Ban Sheng walking her home. Lin Weixia going to his place to practice the cello. And that time at the sports equipment room… Did she really think she hadn’t known?

Every time Ban Sheng’s gaze wound around Lin Weixia, whenever the two of them locked eyes — no matter how loudly Liu Sijia dressed, no matter what cold-toned perfume she wore — Ban Sheng never turned his head even once.

When they walked together, and Lin Weixia’s snow-white wrist would go red for a moment, Liu Sijia’s eyes would sting.

He had touched her.

He had grabbed her.

For all this time, she had felt like the character in that fable from the language textbook — the one who plugged their ears while trying to steal the bell.

Everyone else knew.

Only she had been pretending she didn’t.

Liu Sijia seemed to lose control of herself. She kept shoving Lin Weixia’s shoulder, words tumbling out: “You came to Shengao — who was it that brought you into the inner circle? Did you think without my approval you could live and study here as peacefully as you do now? At Shengao I’ve dragged you into everything — had the housekeeper make two bento boxes, bought you gifts, set you up with a guy — no one has ever gotten that treatment from me except you. What does friendship mean to you? Aren’t you just a fake, Lin Weixia?”

Raindrops struck her face — each one stinging. Lin Weixia let her push, her right shoulder aching, nails digging into her palm until she was wincing — and then, in the midst of the silence and the clamor, she finally spoke:

“No matter what you do to me, I won’t get angry, because I consider you my friend. But you don’t feel the same way, Sijia. I have no athletic ability at all — I didn’t want to join the basketball club. I love the cello deeply, but my family’s finances aren’t good, and my family strongly objected to it, so when the school offered free after-school clubs, the one I most wanted to join was the cello club.

“Mystery novels aren’t the only thing I like.”

“My phone has always been on for you. Every time something happens to you, you call in the middle of the night to talk, and no matter how late it is, I always pick up — even when what you’re venting about is something small. But when something happens to me and I call you needing you there — if you’re busy, you won’t pick up, and by the time you have space to listen, my feelings have already passed.”

Life always throws things at you. Sometimes, when the negativity piles up and you feel completely adrift, you instinctively want to reach for that one close girlfriend nearby.

You just want her to say: Weixia, don’t be sad — let’s go out together tomorrow.

Something that simple. But whenever she needed her, she was never there — the call either wouldn’t connect, or she’d get a dismissive one-line reply: I’m out.

Lin Weixia was, by nature, calm and self-possessed — even when angry she expressed herself in measured, even tones. But this time, the further she spoke the more her voice began to tremble, like a tonsillitis patient for whom every word tore at the throat.

“Our relationship is unequal. Even today — you introducing a match to me — your thinking was that someone like him is more than enough for a deaf girl from a family like mine. In this friendship, you hold the upper hand. This whole relationship, it has always been you watching me.”

Liu Sijia stood frozen, blindsided. She had never imagined that the warm, drowsy voice she heard whenever she called late at night — the voice that always reassured her — also carried grievances hidden inside it.

Why hadn’t she said anything?

Why had she always been the one to give in?

But the anger and pride of feeling deceived surged like a crashing current. Right now all she felt was fury. Liu Sijia’s eyes went red:

“I forgot to mention — that poetry competition, the spot was mine. I felt sorry for you and chose to step aside and give it to you of my own accord. Did you really think you could have won it on your own?”

“Laughable.”

At the time, the recommended slot for the competition had been earmarked for Liu Sijia from the start. Later, the head teacher had come to her looking uncomfortable, saying Lin Weixia had also put herself forward for the opportunity and asked her to choose. The teacher was more afraid of offending a girl from Liu Sijia’s kind of family.

Liu Sijia had withdrawn without hesitation, leaving the place for Lin Weixia. She knew Lin Weixia was short on money and wanted the prize. She knew she wanted to prove herself.

Liu Sijia had wanted her to thrive.

Lin Weixia was taken aback. Something sour and aching filled her chest, like a water-soaked balloon sinking steadily lower. For a brief moment her voice caught: “On the day of the cello performance, I saw you cut my strings.”

“Whether you believe it or not — I was jealous of you.”

Liu Sijia went still, her eyes full of disbelief. After saying those words, Lin Weixia slowly rose and turned away, walking forward with her back to Liu Sijia. The ripple on her face dissolved; that cool, composed expression settled back into its usual stillness.

Lin Weixia turned over in her mind what she had just said to Liu Sijia.

She resented the way Liu Sijia set terms from on high — and her own inability to do anything but comply.

She was jealous of the way Liu Sijia openly clung to others, did as she pleased, and made everyone bend to her.

She envied a temperament the polar opposite of her own — concealing nothing, hiding no ambition.

She wanted to be like her — living freely and at ease, able to chase her dreams without apology.

She had pretended not to see Liu Sijia destroy her strings, and even helped cover for her when she pinned it on someone else.

Because she was her friend.

No matter how much she complained in private, she still wanted to stand up for her in front of others.

A good friend is —

Liu Sijia had many faults and little quirks. She really should stop putting up with her next time. Yet whenever she heard someone else speak badly of her, she couldn’t help but argue back.

Those flaws, those little tempers — only I get to say anything about them.

None of you are allowed.

Friendship between girls is complicated — sometimes full of maneuvering and rivalry. You hate something she did today, and then tomorrow it’s simple and easy again: you insist on eating out together, you have to have matching things.

When did it get like this? This friendship, like quicksand — the more tightly you tried to hold it, the faster it slipped through your fingers. All that remained in the end, heavy and inert at the bottom, was a sediment of discontent, grievances, and comparisons.

That’s what it was now.

The friendship between them was like quicksand — it seemed the tighter you held on, the more was lost.

In truth, what the two of them had been fighting over wasn’t the dinosaur keychain. It could have been anything.

They both understood that.

In the struggle just now, no one could remember who had let go first. Lin Weixia’s right thumb was still numb, and there was a hollow feeling in her chest alongside it.

The sky grew darker and darker. The wind picked up. Dense clouds coiled together in a heavy mass, pressing downward, as though a violent storm was on its way. Ban Sheng followed unhurriedly behind the girl, ready in case anything happened.

But Lin Weixia appeared to be fine. She shuffled forward at a slow, dawdling pace, then halfway along suddenly crouched down and buried her face in her knees.

Ban Sheng quickened his step, his tall, upright silhouette falling over her. He half-crouched in front of her, one knee on the ground, arm crooked, his broad palm coming up to cup Lin Weixia’s pale face. Her dense lashes grazed lightly against his palm.

His palm was warm and damp.

She was crying.

Ban Sheng’s brows drew together. It was the first time he had seen her cry. Something inside him felt blocked, as though something had lodged there. She had been tormented by Zheng Zhaoxing at school to that degree and hadn’t shed a single tear — Ban Sheng reached out and pulled her to her feet, and looked at her.

Lin Weixia’s tears kept falling, her eyes growing redder and redder. He said nothing. The more earnestly he looked at her like that, the more Lin Weixia wept. She made a soft, kitten-like sound, her nose tip pink, and the boy’s throat moved involuntarily.

Ban Sheng raised a hand, the pad of his finger brushing away her tears. Then his thumb swept aside the fine strands of hair at her brow. At the same time he felt a slight urge to laugh — his girl was being a little silly right now — and let out a low, quiet sound of amusement. Lin Weixia glared at him, but his tone was entirely sincere in its coaxing:

“All right — how did I end up with such a cry-prone little butterfly?”