“There’s a new ice room shop on Jiuao Street — let’s go after school.”

That kind of thing was mostly said by Year 1 and Year 2 students. Among the Year 3 students, the atmosphere was considerably quieter. Now that they had entered the latter half of Year 3, the gossip and whispers between the girls had thinned out considerably. For most of them — the ordinary ones, the ones who had not had their paths laid out for them — the shoulders bent over their desks sank a little lower each day.

The university entrance exam had not come yet. Working hard mattered. Every extra problem solved counted.

Everyone was reaching out a hand to feel: what does my future feel like?

Because it was unknown — it was worth reaching for.

For many people, the reason they pushed themselves so hard was this:

At the very least, when it came to the university entrance exam, hard work being rewarded was not an empty promise.

The one-hundred-day countdown to the university entrance exam arrived. Shengao held a grand one-hundred-day motivational rally, inviting parents and journalists to attend. A local Nanjiang television station would also be broadcasting the event.

Beyond speeches from teachers and outstanding student representatives, there would be a red-carpet walk for all students and a signing ceremony. The school had gone to great lengths with the preparations — stage construction and setup had begun three days in advance.

Monday morning, the school broadcast started blasting rousing music loud enough to shake the walls. The moment students arrived, Old Liu was already pushing them to get their appearances in order and get downstairs to line up.

The classroom erupted into noise. Girls pulled out small mirrors to check their hair and added a touch of lip color. The boys, who had initially been indifferent, found themselves growing a little nervous in the midst of all this fuss, and started grabbing the girls’ mirrors to check whether their uniform ties were straight.

The classroom descended into chaos.

Ban Sheng was the only person in that entire scene who looked perfectly unbothered and leisurely — sitting in his seat, leaning back in his chair, playing with his drone.

“Master Ban — aren’t you nervous? You’re the student representative. You’re about to go up and give a speech,” Qiu Minghua said.

The story behind that was actually rather amusing. The school had asked Ban Sheng to speak as the outstanding student representative at the one-hundred-day sprint rally. He declined — flat-out refused.

The school insisted. Ban Sheng, sharp as ever, negotiated two days off in exchange. The school agreed.

When Qiu Minghua found out, he could only sigh with deep admiration: “Damn. Having good grades really does make everything easier.”

“I’m not nervous,” Ban Sheng said.

Bang bang— A series of knocks came from the front door of the classroom. Everyone looked over. Old Liu was rapping persistently at the door, gesturing at them to hurry up and get downstairs.

Old Liu’s eyes swept the room. Only then did Ban Sheng slowly tuck his things back into the desk.

Students streamed out in groups. Lin Weixia set down her book, pushed back her chair, and walked out. In the flow of people, she saw Li Shengran push her way to Ban Sheng’s side. Pale fingers gave the hem of his uniform shirt a light tug.

Ban Sheng turned his head and looked at her.

“Brother — your tie is crooked. Let me fix it.”

Even through the noise around them, Li Shengran’s voice came through in fragments. Fang Mo had linked her arm through Lin Weixia’s and was talking to her. Lin Weixia turned to listen, and as she did, her eye caught the tall, straight figure of the boy diagonally ahead.

Just as Li Shengran was about to reach for the tie, a forearm — veins standing out distinctly — came up. Ban Sheng simply reached up and pulled the tie off himself, tossing it back onto the desk. The clean, restrained line of his throat was exposed.

“Done,” Ban Sheng said.

Li Shengran drew her hand back, mildly embarrassed. Qiu Minghua, entirely oblivious to the undercurrents around him, was already chattering to Li Shengran: “Hey, are you walking the red carpet next to me?”

“Ha.” Li Shengran walked off without looking back.

The other boys burst out laughing, throwing their arms around Qiu Minghua’s shoulders and herding him forward. Their voices faded into the corridor ahead: “The girls in our class — every last one of them has something going on.”

Lin Weixia followed the flow of students heading out. Ban Sheng happened to pass right by her, his vertebrae clearly visible at the back of his neck — and then, with a small clatter, something fell at her feet.

It was Ban Sheng’s name tag.

He had either noticed or he hadn’t — either way, he kept walking forward, apparently unaware. Lin Weixia sighed quietly and moved to pick it up. One of the students walking by stepped right over it.

Lin Weixia crouched down, picked it up, and called out: “Ban Sheng — your name tag.”

Ban Sheng had both hands in his pockets. He turned and bent his head to look at her. Lin Weixia’s eyes held a faint sheen of moisture as she looked straight at him, their gazes tangling together.

The corridor was crowded with everyone heading down for assembly. Lin Weixia stepped slightly to the side. She handed the name tag back to Ban Sheng. He lifted his eyes and looked at her, saying nothing.

The tag had a partial shoe print across it and the edges had been cracked from being stepped on.

Clearly unusable.

Qiu Minghua was waiting for him at the door and, not seeing him come, doubled back — and immediately blurted at what he saw:

“Master Ban, isn’t there still a whole—”

Ban Sheng turned and gave him a look. Qiu Minghua jolted, swallowed the words “big bunch of them” back down his throat, and laughed awkwardly: “Right, anyway — I’ll head down first.”

The classroom had emptied out until only the two of them were left standing there. Lin Weixia asked: “So what do we do?”

Ban Sheng spoke amid the rousing broadcast music coming from outside:

“Write it yourself.”

Lin Weixia went to her seat and found a blue marker. She stood in front of Ban Sheng holding it — he was too tall. Even though he bent down a little to accommodate her, she still felt the faint pressure of his presence.

A cool, sharp energy came off him. Lin Weixia leaned against his chest to write, the marker scratching softly across the surface, the position undeniably intimate — her arm resting against his chest, the blazing warmth of his body and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat sending a faint electric tingle running up her wrist.

Lin Weixia had only written a little — halfway through the character Ban — when she realized it was looking slightly crooked. Her elbow was getting stiff. She asked warmly: “Do you think this character looks okay?”

She felt certain it was going crooked.

Ban Sheng didn’t even glance at it:

“Looks great.”

Lin Weixia raised her head — she had only straightened up slightly — and her lips nearly grazed against the sharp point of his Adam’s apple. The charged, intimate air wrapped around both of them, and Ban Sheng’s throat moved with a small, involuntary swallow.

She looked away and put a little distance between them, focusing on writing out his name. She could feel his gaze on her face the whole time. It was making her uncomfortable: “Stop looking at me.”

Ban Sheng laughed softly and gave no indication of complying.

A moment later, a chill touched the side of her ear. Without her noticing when, Ban Sheng had reached up and taken hold of her earlobe between his fingers, kneading the soft flesh lightly.

“When did you get your ears pierced?”

The low voice vibrated close to her ear, warm breath grazing it. He was still finding time to tease her — that cold composure on his face, and yet his hands moved with complete, unhurried audacity.

Lin Weixia’s heart gave a startled lurch. Her hand jerked — and the blue marker left a streak across his white shirt. Irritation flared:

“Ban Sheng!”

“Mm.” He answered with perfect serenity.

Lin Weixia didn’t know it herself — but that exasperated outburst of hers had broken through the stiffness that had settled between them over the past several days.

“Take your shirt off. It’ll be easier for me to write on.”

“Mm.”

Lin Weixia turned to go close the classroom door. The wide rectangle of sunlight from outside disappeared. She turned back just in time to see Ban Sheng standing beneath the half-drawn blue curtain, taking off his shirt.

He lifted his hands from the collar and peeled it off unhurriedly, the picture of total nonchalance. Ban Sheng walked toward her carrying the shirt. The lean, defined lines of his abdomen carried a cool edge that was impossible to ignore, and Lin Weixia shifted her gaze away with visible awkwardness.

Ban Sheng sat nearby in nothing but his trousers, lazily playing with the end of her hair.

Scattered voices drifted in occasionally from the corridor.

Lin Weixia sat in the seat and carefully wrote on his white shirt: Year Three, Class One — Ban Sheng.

The characters she had written wrong earlier — Lin Weixia simply filled them in with a blue heart shape instead.

Ban Sheng changed back into the shirt and left with Lin Weixia, casually pocketing one of her pens on the way out.

The open square between the Ethics Building and the Integrity Building was packed thick with people. It was one thing for journalists to point cameras at the students, but the parents were just as enthusiastic, phones raised and aimed at their own children.

The moment they came downstairs, the sun hit blazingly bright. Lin Weixia instinctively raised a hand to shield her eyes. Ban Sheng was quickly called away by the head of academic affairs.

Lin Weixia made her way into the rows of students. Old Liu was already there organizing the lines. Ning Chao caught her eye and waved, gesturing that he’d saved her a spot.

“I’m pretty good to you, seatmate,” Ning Chao said, in his habitual way of looking for credit.

Lin Weixia went over and smiled: “You are.”

Taking advantage of the moment while the teachers and department heads were doing sound checks on the stage, Ning Chao quickly fished his phone from his trouser pocket, sent the photos he had just taken to Liu Sijia, and said offhandedly:

“Never would have thought — the day would come when Shengao would embrace full countryside-chic aesthetics.”

After sending the message, Ning Chao tucked his phone away again and turned to Lin Weixia: “Seatmate, did you know Liu Sijia was sent to a facility?”

“When did that happen?” Lin Weixia’s lashes shifted.

“A while ago. She told me not to tell you.” Ning Chao replied.

“She’s scared to see you,” Ning Chao said, looking ahead with a small, quiet smile. “Did you ever think things would turn out this way?”

Lin Weixia shook her head, but said nothing more. Compared to what she herself had been through, she thought the bullying games of before were low-level and small-scale.

What Lin Weixia cared about was being locked in the storage room. But she had not expected Liu Sijia to repay it through such a violent form of self-punishment.

The teacher on stage was mid-speech delivering the one-hundred-day motivational address with tremendous enthusiasm, and while Lin Weixia and Ning Chao were still talking, the Liu Sijia they spoke of was at that very moment in the facility, sinking into despair.

Since arriving at this place, Liu Sijia’s anxiety and depression had grown heavier each day. The group of adolescents there — all struggling with anorexia — had been shut inside this suburban villa.

Every day they rotated through psychological counseling sessions, supervised meal training, group activities, and daily weigh-ins.

She was currently 168 centimeters and 36 kilograms.

This was a closed-treatment facility. No one could leave. Phone use was heavily restricted — only if you performed well, ate willingly, and consumed more than a set number of calories in a day would the staff consider letting you outside for half an hour.

Caffeine, cigarettes, and anything else that heightened anxiety or depleted energy were strictly prohibited.

In the beginning, Liu Sijia had thought about cooperating with treatment, getting better, and returning to school as soon as possible. She sat through the counseling sessions and tried to tell the therapist about what was weighing on her.

The therapist was a woman in her forties, wearing black-framed glasses, listening and making notes. It started out normally enough — but when Liu Sijia tried to open up and say that her mother didn’t love her, that her mother favored her younger half-sister:

Liu Sijia caught it — a faint, cold smile flickering at the corner of the otherwise calm therapist’s mouth.

Gone in an instant, but she had seen it.

“I think the problem is with you,” the therapist said.

After that, Liu Sijia refused to attend the therapy sessions. She rallied the other patients against the therapist’s sessions, and the staff found this girl a persistent headache.

Liu Sijia also said plainly, in front of everyone, that this was a useless, idiotic form of treatment.

She wanted to escape every moment of every day. Without pause.

She missed her bed at home, with its particular scent of roses. She wanted to breathe fresh air from outside. She wanted to go to school with her friends and be part of things again. In that moment, Liu Sijia even found herself missing Old Liu’s endless lectures.

The place was full of security cameras and high walls. Escape was nearly impossible.

The one time she managed to find a hidden corner with no cameras and no barriers — she had barely made it to the back garden before a staff member caught her and brought her back.

The staff member pinned her arms behind her back and marched her inside.

This was her sixth failed escape attempt.

Liu Sijia was forced to walk back. She raised her eyes to the gallery above, where a girl was watching everything with obvious satisfaction, smiling. Her red lips moved in a shape that was not hard to read:

Disgusting.

The girl — three years younger than her, who had been reporting her every move — caught Liu Sijia’s warning look and paled, then ran.

Ning Chao, still not having received a reply from Liu Sijia, rallied himself and squinted up at the teacher on stage. The sun was growing hotter. Ning Chao reached up to rub the back of his neck — the heat made it itch.

The teacher on stage said the word dream, and Ning Chao stood there in the crowd, drifting: what was a dream, anyway?

When the teacher’s address ended, the outstanding student representative speeches began. Ban Sheng was the first to go up. The students who had been half-dozing snapped awake and nudged each other.

“Ban Sheng’s on stage.”

“Your ideal boyfriend is about to speak.”

The school’s most talked-about figure had appeared, and attention sharpened. Students focused, curious to see what kind of speech this person would give — rebellious, or the usual platitudes?

When Ban Sheng came out in his white shirt and black trousers, a ripple of murmuring broke out from the teachers’ section. He had no tie. His collar was open, a stretch of collarbone showing — the picture of complete indifference.

He hadn’t brought a speech either.

Nothing about him looked like an outstanding student representative.

Old Liu nearly needed someone to come revive him. Amid the buzz of voices, Ban Sheng reached up and tapped the microphone. The sound system emitted a sharp, resonant feedback tone.

“Fellow students, teachers — good morning.”

“It is an honor to speak as a student representative. To avoid taking up too much of your time, I’ll keep it brief.”

The boy’s voice was low, carrying that cool edge particular to youth. Everyone looked up at him. Ban Sheng stood on the stage with an expression that was neither arrogant nor falsely modest — his bearing certain and composed. The young man spoke slowly:

“I came across a passage in a book once — I neither believe in nor care for things that are easily within reach, quick, instinctive, improvised, or vague. I believe in the steady, calm, quietly fierce power of persistence. Finally — to reach the unreachable stars. I wish everyone success in the university entrance exam: may you each reach the star that is yours, and have a perfect summer.”

After he stepped down, there was a moment of complete silence from the crowd — then applause broke out and rolled on without stopping. Cheers and shouts followed in waves. Lin Weixia raised her eyes to the boy on the stage in the distance.

Golden light poured over Ban Sheng. His head and neck were straight, his gaze composed and commanding.

The future, as he seemed to see it, held nothing that was impossible.

He seemed to carry light with him always — steady and self-possessed, clear-headed, a natural thinker, with a broad perspective and a way of seeing things that was entirely his own.

Her feelings were complicated. Lin Weixia watched him in silence. The voices of the girls around her drifted into her ears, full of longing.

“Year 3 is almost over — I’ve had a crush on him for three years.”

“If only he were my person. If he so much as looked at me twice, I could be happy for the rest of my life.”

“If only I could end up at the same university as someone like him.”

When all the speeches were done, the red-carpet walk began. Old Liu led the students along the carpet as the sound of red balloons popping burst out in rapid succession, and cameras clicked continuously.

“This is so tacky — why are even the balloons red.”

“You don’t get it — it’s for good luck in the exam.”

“It looks like the banquet scenes back in my hometown — so many people.”

“Ha, and a little bit like a wedding, hahaha.”

Lin Weixia was moving slowly along when, all at once, something cool touched the back of her hand. A boy’s long fingers grazed hers, the knuckle bone pressing slightly.

It was Ban Sheng.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked her.

Lin Weixia’s thoughts came back. She tilted her face up to look at him. The sun was falling on both of them just then, and her sharp eyes caught something on his shirt — where the characters of his name had been written, where the pinyin Bansheng should have appeared, she had forgotten to write it.

Now, Ban Sheng had added pinyin himself:

Linweixia

班盛

The characters of his name had been written with the marker — vivid and clearly visible. The pinyin Linweixia had been added by him in water-based pen, temporary and faint enough that you had to look carefully to find it.

He had just stood up in front of the entire school — teachers and students alike — and delivered a speech while wearing a shirt with both their names on it.

Her heart lurched completely out of her control. Lin Weixia’s throat felt dry. She asked: “What is this?”

Ban Sheng’s Adam’s apple moved slowly up and down. He looked at her directly and said, softly:

“What else could it be.”

Writing her into his future.

Wanting everyone to know.

Though maybe — if only he knew, that would be enough too.