No one can live a life without ripples. If a person’s life is a book, it should have its ups and downs. Even an old man scavenging trash on the street should have small adventures, like finding a wallet in a garbage bin and wrestling with the decision to turn it into the police.
Shan Shan was no exception. She was just a somewhat special ordinary high school student.
On the second day of the snowboard big air competition at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, she woke up early, washed her face, got dressed, packed her school bag, and left…
The courtyard was quiet. The younger students were still asleep. Although it was supposed to be winter break, as a soon-to-be high school graduate preparing for college entrance exams, she had entered a crucial stage requiring extra classes during the holiday.
On her way to school, she frequently lowered her head, turning on her phone and opening WeChat. As the taxi approached the school, her irritation grew with each fruitless check for new messages.
Unlike before, this time she wasn’t waiting for a message from some jerk named Dai Duo. She stared at the Crayon Shin-chan avatar, with the last chat record frozen at her “Brother” call from 11 PM last night. The other side was as quiet as if it had been cremated.
“Tch.” Damn it. So annoying.
In the classroom, some students had already arrived. As expected, the moment Shan Shan entered, she became the center of attention, just like when she first joined the class in her freshman year.
“Shan Shan, did you watch the Winter Olympics yesterday? Oh, you must have!”
“Your brother made a mistake, what a pity.”
“We thought he’d get a good ranking!”
“It’s my first time watching the Winter Olympics, just for your brother. Ugh, isn’t it frustrating?”
“The commentators said China’s performance in snowboard big air hasn’t been ideal. In some previous Olympics, we couldn’t even qualify… Your brother making it to the finals is quite good. Will he compete in the next Olympics in Beijing?”
“The commentators said our hopes for a breakthrough medal depended on Shan Chong’s performance. Didn’t he know that? Why did he increase the difficulty so much in the second and third jumps? He should have at least secured a place in the finals! What was he thinking?”
The voices of people chattering surrounded her. The last person spoke particularly loudly, but she didn’t pay much attention to who it was.
Her mind went from initial bewilderment to growing irritation. As the frustration rushed to her head, she wanted to roar at everyone surrounding her, lamenting and regretting, to shut up—
Don’t discuss this matter with her in such a casual tone, as if they were talking about some pointless primetime TV drama!
Her lips twitched, and just as her anger reached its peak, it suddenly extinguished. She simply closed her mouth, powerless, sitting in her wheelchair.
“Alright, alright, that’s enough! What do you know? Are you sick in the head?” Shao Xing’s voice became a lifeline. Shan Shan looked up to see her friend, wearing the same undisguised impatience, pushing through the crowd and grabbing the handles of her wheelchair, rescuing her from the throng—
“Using such a casual tone to pour salt on someone’s wounds, is that fun? If you need a lesson in moral character, go back to elementary school!”
Shao Xing angrily pushed Shan Shan back to her seat.
Then the bell for morning reading rang, and the classmates who had been surrounding them dispersed, grumbling “What’s the big deal” and “Why so sensitive” with pouting faces…
They looked quite wronged.
Perhaps some of them truly had no ill intentions, which is why they felt wronged.
But Shao Xing didn’t care about that. She reached out, pinched her deskmate’s round cheeks, and forcibly turned her face away from the direction of those who were still looking back—
“Don’t mind them,” she said irritably. “Don’t even look at them!”
Shan Shan, her face fixed by her friend’s fingers, stared at the words “English” written on the blackboard under the morning reading section for a while. Then she bent down and pulled out her English textbook from her desk.
As she straightened up, the English class representative had already stood up and started leading the reading.
Amidst the English class representative’s instructions to “turn to page 130” and the rustling sound of pages being turned, Shao Xing heard a mosquito-like “thank you” from beside her.
Shao Xing turned her head to find the person next to her half-hiding her face behind the open book.
Her hair was loose behind her back; she hadn’t even braided it today, and it was a bit messy…
Her usually fair face was completely drained of color, with visible dark circles under her eyes.
She probably hadn’t slept all night.
Shao Xing felt a lump in her throat and reflexively wanted to ask, “Are you okay?” But she swallowed the words before they came out. What a stupid question—of course, she wasn’t okay.
Perhaps influenced by her hesitation, Shan Shan hesitated for a moment, then gave her a smile that looked worse than crying, and said softly, “My brother hasn’t replied on WeChat since the competition ended yesterday…”
Shao Xing: “He— What— Uh.”
Shan Shan: “I called Wang Xin—oh, that’s his coach—he’s still alive, hasn’t done anything stupid.”
Shao Xing: “…”
Shan Shan: “But he’s not replying on WeChat.”
The conversation stopped there. The words “I’m very worried about him” weren’t said, which was typical of Shan Shan’s tsundere way of speaking, but at this moment, Shao Xing wanted to tell her that the atmosphere was already in place—
Even if she didn’t say it.
The people around probably understood very well.
From morning self-study to the end of morning self-study, from the end of morning self-study to the start of the first class.
The physics teacher was eloquently lecturing on the podium, mentioning parabolas and horizontal pursuit problems at the worst possible time…
But Shan Shan wasn’t listening at all.
She just kept lowering her head to check her phone every three minutes. How distracted was she? Even the unread messages from someone saved as “Just a Barking Dog” in her contacts, which usually wouldn’t last five minutes unread, had piled up to over twenty, probably writing some kind of essay…
Shan Shan didn’t even look at them.
Her bright black pupils just silently stared at the Crayon Shin-chan avatar floating on the chat window, looking once, confirming it was still quiet as a chicken, then turning off the screen and locking the phone.
Shao Xing sighed.
Just as she was about to say something, a note was passed from behind, addressed to Shan Shan.
Shao Xing was a bit wary and opened it directly to read. The content of the note was oddly strange—
[Do you think your brother is embarrassing, is that why you’re reacting so strongly? You don’t need to care too much about failing at the Olympics. After all, no one watches the Winter Olympics anyway.]
After the class split in the second year of high school, classmate relationships weren’t as close as before. The top students always seemed to attract some inexplicable malice from a few people…
Shao Xing looked up and saw it was a boy who had just squeezed into their class from a regular class in the last monthly exam. He was looking back at them now, smiling.
It wasn’t clear what he was proud of, and it wasn’t purely aggressive. He probably just thought his teasing was funny, just teasing a girl.
Perhaps like pulling a little girl’s pigtails in first grade…
Not malicious at all?
Shao Xing’s head hurt. She pressed down on the note, intending to tear it up, but when she turned her head, she found the person next to her had already leaned over. Her black eyes moved slightly, reading the words on the note.
Shan Shan was silent.
Shao Xing said, “Don’t mind them, you hear me?”
Shan Shan pulled her head back and continued to look down at her phone.
At this moment, the bell for class dismissal rang.
The first class break was for morning exercises, so the “Athletes’ March” started playing outside.
“Shan Shan, did you see the note? Answer me!”
Along with the teacher announcing the end of class, the boy’s voice rose.
Shan Shan gave him a dull glance and then looked away.
Just then, she saw her phone screen light up. Three consecutive unread messages suddenly appeared on the lock screen. Her heart stopped for a few seconds.
She reached out to pick up the phone.
[Chong: Didn’t do well in the competition.]
[Chong: Sorry.]
[Chong: About the prosthetic, we’ll have to wait a bit longer.]
“…”
Her finger hovered over the reply bar for a long time, but her mind was blank. She didn’t know what to say.
She always bared her teeth and showed her claws at people who said she and Shan Chong were siblings, shouting “We’re not siblings!” the loudest, always fiercely arguing—
But they were siblings.
They were siblings after all.
It was as if someone had opened up her chest, taken out her heart, and pushed it onto a high platform, exposed without any cover to the disappointed and regretful gazes…
Those gazes were knives.
She felt it too.
Like the dull pain of being slowly sliced.
“Shan Shan, tell us, was your brother’s poor performance yesterday because he got cocky after being hyped up by the media?”
The grating voice came from beside her.
It was as if something in her mind went “crack” and broke.
The “Athletes’ March” outside was so loud—
Just like the screams of other classmates in the classroom, intertwined with the sounds of desks, chairs, and wheelchairs falling, creating a chaotic scene.
Shan Shan’s mother never imagined she’d have the chance to be called to school by the homeroom teacher because of Shan Shan—
For fighting.
… Fighting. Shan Shan.
How surreal.
Arriving at the guidance office, she saw her daughter wearing the winter school uniform, wrapped in an old, worn-down long down jacket, head lowered, curled up in the corner.
Her hair was a bit messy, and her eyes were red, looking pitifully wretched.
Hearing the sound, she raised her head, and glanced at her mother, her round eyes that were usually full of spirit now clear black and white, but looking unusually empty.
With a hoarse voice, she called out “Mom.”
She wasn’t crying.
But her voice sounded more pitiful than if she were wailing.
Shan Shan’s mother walked over, bent down, raised her hand to straighten her daughter’s messy school uniform collar and hair, rubbed her head gently, and said softly, “How did you end up fighting with your classmates?”
The girl pressed her lips together without speaking, her black eyes looking at her.
She handed the phone she had been holding, now warm, to her mother.
“Tell Shan Chong to take back what he said,” she said, grinding her back teeth, rudely calling her brother by his full name—
“Mom, tell him if he says such bullshit again, he’ll be in a wheelchair for life.”
With a “plop,” a huge teardrop fell onto the pleated skirt of her school uniform. The waterproof material caused the teardrop to roll to the hem of the skirt before slowly spreading, turning the fabric a deep blue.
“I’d rather be in a wheelchair for life…”
The tears she had been holding back finally broke through. She cried until her face was red, like a panicked young beast burrowing into her mother’s embrace, speaking unclearly—
“I’d rather be in a wheelchair for life than hear a single word of apology from my brother.”