A gust of autumn wind and fine rain swept a few withered leaves from the branches, and blew away the last lingering warmth of summer.

The children were running wild, chasing and playing in the classrooms and corridors.

The office was separated from the teaching building by a long corridor, but even that couldn’t block out the noisy clamor.

Zhu Wenshu finally finished grading yesterday’s homework. She set down her red pen and picked up a colored pencil, getting ready to trace a template for a class newsletter.

She’d barely drawn two strokes when a little girl rushed into the office, crying and shouting, “Teacher! Zhang Zhihao pulled my hair!”

Zhu Wenshu sighed, reaching out to pat the back of the little girl’s head. She turned to look and saw a chubby little boy hiding at the office door, peeking in.

Seeing Zhu Wenshu look his way, he turned to run.

“Zhang Zhihao, come in.”

She said in a stern voice.

Zhang Zhihao had no choice. He clasped his hands behind his back and shuffled in, embarrassed.

Before Zhu Wenshu could even speak, just one look from her scared him into confessing on his own: “Teacher, I didn’t pull hard!”

“You did too!” the little girl said, wiping her tears. “You messed up the braid my mom did for me!”

“I—I was just joking.”

“Waaah…”

“Zhihao.”

Zhu Wenshu waved him closer. “You hurt your classmate, and you shouldn’t make jokes that other people don’t like. Understand?”

Zhang Zhihao, hands behind his back, hung his head and said, “I understand.”

“So what should you do now?”

Zhang Zhihao pouted, turned, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Sniff… it’s, it’s okay.”

Zhu Wenshu: “Then shake hands. You two should be friendly and united from now on.”

Seeing the two chubby little hands clasp together, Zhu Wenshu forced a smile. “Go back to the classroom now. It’s raining outside, don’t go out and get soaked.”

After the two children left, Zhu Wenshu smoothed her hair and bent back down to continue drawing the newsletter.

Two minutes later.

“Teacher! Teacher! Ling Siyuan and Wang Xiaopeng are fighting!”

A crisp “snap.”

The colored pencil in Zhu Wenshu’s hand snapped clean in two from the force of her grip.

Who would have thought that in the mere twenty-five minutes of morning exercise break, this was already the fifth student to come tattling.

If it wasn’t kids snatching things from each other, it was kids arguing.

And after the arguing, along came a couple more who were actually fighting.

In these ten days as acting homeroom teacher, Zhu Wenshu felt she’d aged ten years.

And if nothing unexpected happened, she still had three more months of this to go.

At this rate, she probably wouldn’t survive until tomorrow.

“How did they end up fighting?”

Zhu Wenshu asked, turning her head.

The little boy who’d brought the news shook his head. “I don’t know, they were playing and then they just started fighting! Ling Siyuan is so fierce!”

At that moment Zhu Wenshu finally understood why, on the day the previous homeroom teacher had packed up to go on maternity leave, she’d left behind an entire box of calming tonic for her.

She took a steadying breath and got up, heading toward the classroom.

She passed through the corridor full of chasing, playing children, and climbed the stairs fraught with hidden dangers.

Before she even reached the classroom door, she could already hear the deafening racket.

“What on earth is going on here!”

She muttered, quickening her pace.

The moment she pushed open the door at the back of the classroom, all she saw was a dense mass of heads piled together in chaos, shouting and crying loud enough to blow the roof off.

“Quiet!”

Zhu Wenshu shouted. “Everyone, quiet down!”

The children on the outer edge heard her and turned around all at once, scattering in fright.

Once the crowd dispersed, Zhu Wenshu finally saw the troublemakers at the center.

The infamous, supposedly fierce Ling Siyuan—

was pinned to the ground by another child, unable to move.

“Stop it!”

Zhu Wenshu rushed in with just a few strides, and when she looked closely, she saw Ling Siyuan’s whole face was covered in blood.

“Wang Xiaopeng! Stop it right now!”

The little boy who was called out was so startled by her voice that he rolled off Ling Siyuan.

“It’s nothing serious, just a bump on the nose. It’ll be fine once the bleeding stops.”

The school nurse was well accustomed to this kind of scuffle. Without much expression, she tossed Zhu Wenshu a disinfectant wipe, gesturing for her to wipe the blood off her hands.

Hearing this, Zhu Wenshu’s wildly pounding heart finally slowed down a little.

Fortunately nothing serious had happened—Ling Siyuan had only had a nosebleed, and it was from him touching his face a couple of times that it had smeared all over.

But Zhu Wenshu wasn’t in the mood to wipe her own hands. She frowned deeply, staring at the little boy in front of her, and asked, “Why did you hit him?”

With gauze stuffed up his nose, Ling Siyuan looked rather comical.

Combined with his stubborn expression, he looked even more like a cartoon character.

“Not talking?”

Zhu Wenshu said gravely, “Making a mistake isn’t the important thing—what matters is having the right attitude about it.”

“…”

“Tell your teacher, why did you fight?”

“…”

Seeing that he simply refused to speak no matter what, Zhu Wenshu decided to try a gentler approach.

She crouched down in front of Ling Siyuan, stroking his sweat-dampened hair, and said softly, “Tell your teacher, okay? We said we’d be good friends.”

Zhu Wenshu’s voice was like the fine red bean paste oozing out of a rice ball—gentle and sweet—so much so that even the school nurse standing nearby felt her heart melting.

But the little boy, just past seven years old, remained unmoved, turning his head away without a word.

“If you keep this up…”

Zhu Wenshu said, “Teacher will have no choice but to talk to your parents.”

Calling the parents truly was the ultimate trump card.

No matter how stubborn a child was, hearing this would immediately fluster them.

His pitch-black eyes rolled around, like a black grape tumbling in place.

“I—I… Wang Xiaopeng cursed at me first!”

Zhu Wenshu asked, “What did he say to you?”

Ling Siyuan opened his mouth, on the verge of speaking, but then seemed to think of something else.

He pursed his lips, turned his head, and clammed up again like a sealed gourd.

“No matter what, we can’t solve problems with our fists.”

Beneath that gentle tone, no one could tell that Zhu Wenshu’s patience had already worn completely thin.

“If you won’t tell me, teacher really will call your parents.”

Ling Siyuan’s cheeks suddenly flushed red, his fingers fidgeting anxiously with the hem of his shirt.

After a long moment, he stammered, “M-my dad is very busy! He doesn’t have time.”

“How busy could he be?”

Zhu Wenshu asked. “No matter how busy, he should still have time to come to school once.”

“My dad is—is a doctor! He’s saving patients’ lives every day!”

“Doctors get off work sometimes too.”

Zhu Wenshu said unhurriedly, “Teacher can also go find your dad at the hospital.”

A child was still a child—when it came to lying, he couldn’t withstand being pressed.

Seeing that he was about to be exposed, he grew so anxious that the baby fat on his face trembled. He lowered his head, thought for a moment, then suddenly spoke again.

“No, no, my dad changed careers! He’s not at the hospital anymore!”

“Oh?”

“He—he became a big superstar!” Ling Siyuan said, rolling his eyes as he recalled. “He gets picked up and dropped off in super cool cars whenever he goes out! Over a hundred reporters block the entrance to his building! Hundreds of fans take his photo every day to sell for money! Teacher, you can’t see him without buying a ticket!”

“Why don’t you just say your dad is an astronaut and isn’t on Earth right now?”

Zhu Wenshu held back the urge to laugh, and as she pulled out her phone, she said, “Yuanyuan, everyone makes mistakes, and as long as you correct them you’re still a good kid. But lying is wrong.”

Opening the DingTalk parents’ group, Zhu Wenshu found the contact “Ling Siyuan’s Dad.”

The moment Ling Siyuan saw this, he jumped off the bed in a panic, but didn’t dare do anything else. He could only tug at the hem of Zhu Wenshu’s clothes with tears welling up, looking utterly pitiful.

“Teacher… please don’t tell my dad, he’ll scold me…”

Zhu Wenshu sighed, pressed the call button, and asked Ling Siyuan again.

“Then will you tell teacher why you were fighting?”

Ling Siyuan couldn’t hold it in any longer. Stammering, on the verge of tears, he said, “Wang Xiaopeng said… said my mom doesn’t want me anymore… and my dad is about to not want me either…”

“…”

Before taking over this class, Zhu Wenshu had gotten a general sense of the students’ backgrounds.

Ling Siyuan was a rather special case.

According to the previous homeroom teacher, he came from a single-parent household. The family’s financial situation was quite good, but his father was extremely busy, and it was usually a nanny-cum-tutor who looked after him and disciplined him.

Let alone picking him up from school or helping with homework—his father hadn’t even attended a single parent-teacher meeting.

When he’d enrolled last September, it had actually been the nanny who brought him.

That was really too much.

Hearing what Ling Siyuan had said, Zhu Wenshu felt both angry and heartbroken.

“All right, teacher understands. I’ll call Wang Xiaopeng over in a bit and have a word with him. But remember, no matter what happens, you shouldn’t solve it with your fists, okay?”

By the time she’d dealt with this whole matter, the sun outside had already begun to sink toward the west.

Before long, the school dismissal bell rang.

Zhu Wenshu tilted her head back, rubbed her neck, and let out a long breath.

No wonder, the first time she’d met the previous homeroom teacher, she’d assumed the woman was 38 years old, and had even wondered how she’d ended up as an “advanced maternal age” mother.

It turned out the woman was only 28.

This was truly the “blessing” that came with being a homeroom teacher.

After continuing to write her work summary in the office for a while, Zhu Wenshu found herself still uneasy about the classroom’s cleanliness, so she got up and headed toward the classroom.

By this hour, all the children at school had gradually gone home one after another.

The school, covered in doodles and drawings, was as quiet as a cartoon oil painting.

Zhu Wenshu rubbed her temples, intending to just take a quick glance and leave.

But standing in the corridor and looking inside, with the sky darkening and the autumn wind blowing, she saw a faint light shining on a little boy, making him look especially lonely and pitiful.

“Ling Siyuan?”

Zhu Wenshu was startled, and her first reaction was to wonder whether she’d said something today that had hurt the child.

“Why haven’t you gone home yet?”

Ling Siyuan, slumped over his desk in the corner, said dully, “No one came to pick me up.”

Zhu Wenshu immediately raised her hand to check her watch.

“It’s already five thirty. Where’s your parent?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you have a nanny? Didn’t she come?”

Ling Siyuan rubbed his eyes, his voice especially low and hoarse. “I don’t know…”

“…”

Zhu Wenshu didn’t know what to say about this child’s family anymore.

“Don’t stay in the classroom alone. Come to the office and do some homework. Teacher will wait with you.”

Ling Siyuan nodded, put on his backpack, and followed Zhu Wenshu.

On the way back to the office, Zhu Wenshu called both Ling Siyuan’s nanny and his father.

Absurdly, neither call went through.

She had Ling Siyuan do his homework at the neighboring teacher’s desk, and as she sat down, she looked closely at the little boy.

On his fair, delicate face, his thick eyelashes drooped down, casting a faint shadow—he looked as adorable as a little girl.

Sigh, and yet his parents could bear to neglect him like this.

Before long, another half hour had passed.

Zhu Wenshu had already tried six or seven times to reach Ling Siyuan’s parent, but none of the calls had gone through.

By this hour, even the teachers working overtime had all left, and the child was still pitifully waiting for someone to pick him up.

Watching her phone battery run low, Zhu Wenshu had completely lost her patience—she was even more anxious than Ling Siyuan himself.

If she hadn’t happened to stop by the classroom today, would this child really have been left waiting alone?

What if he’d run outside by himself and something had happened to him?

With the sky about to go dark, the child hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and it was raining outside, chilly—staying in the office indefinitely wasn’t a solution either.

Zhu Wenshu took Ling Siyuan’s hand and sighed softly.

“Are you cold? Let teacher take you home first, okay?”

A child alone outside would never feel entirely safe—he nodded and began packing up his school bag.

Ling Siyuan’s home wasn’t far from school, only a few kilometers away, but traffic was unusually congested today, and the taxi took nearly half an hour to get there.

On the way up to walk him to his door, Zhu Wenshu looked at the upscale residential complex, and the more she thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.

That someone could leave a child alone at school and not bother to check on him at all.

Being this irresponsible—how could he call himself a father?

But then she reconsidered.

A single father earning a living to support the family truly wasn’t easy—he probably assumed that leaving everything to the nanny meant all was fine.

But no matter how busy, he should still balance work and family.

She mulled it over for a long time, feeling it necessary to find an opportunity to have a proper talk with this single father.

Just as she was hesitating, Zhu Wenshu suddenly received a call from the nanny.

“Teacher Zhu?” the nanny said anxiously. “Is Ling Siyuan still at school?”

Zhu Wenshu: “…Look at what time it is before you’re calling. I’ve already brought him to the front door.”

“Oh! Thank goodness! You scared me to death!”

The nanny said, raising her voice, “It’s all my fault! I was in a bit of an accident on the road just now, but I’ve already sorted it out. I’m so sorry for the trouble. The boy’s father happens to be home today—if you hand him over to his father, I’ll feel at ease!”

The child’s father was actually home?

Zhu Wenshu blinked.

She’d just been thinking of finding a chance to talk to him, and here the chance had come so quickly.

“All right, I understand.”

Hanging up the phone, Zhu Wenshu patted Ling Siyuan’s head. “Auntie says your dad is home today. Teacher will have a chat with him while I’m at it. Is there anything you’d like teacher to say for you?”

These words meant something quite different in Ling Siyuan’s ears.

His whole body gave a start.

Talking to his dad—wasn’t that basically tattling on him?!

What if his dad found out he’d been fighting at school today…

Just then the elevator arrived at the 28th floor, and as the doors opened, Ling Siyuan tensed all over. He immediately trotted a couple of steps to block Zhu Wenshu’s way and bowed deeply.

“I—I don’t have anything I want to say! Thank you, teacher, for taking me home! Goodbye, teacher!”

Zhu Wenshu wasn’t in the mood at the moment to call out Ling Siyuan’s little scheme. She just casually said, “Teacher isn’t here to scold you,” and reached out to press the doorbell.

The “ding-dong” rang out twice, especially clear in the empty entrance hallway.

“Teacher, don’t, don’t…”

Just then, a man’s voice came through the video doorbell’s speaker.

“Who is it?”

Both Zhu Wenshu and Ling Siyuan froze for a moment.

It was just a single word, yet Zhu Wenshu felt as though her eardrum had been lightly tickled.

Even through the faint static of the speaker, the clarity of that voice couldn’t be masked.

Zhu Wenshu glanced quickly at Ling Siyuan.

She hadn’t expected this single father’s voice to sound so pleasant.

And it sounded so young, too.