Fu Xinshu had monolids, and when he was stunned, his drooping eyelashes would cover his eyes.

After hearing the question, his pupils dilated slightly, and a panicked expression showed through his eyelashes.

But soon, Lin Wanxing saw him lightly furrow his brows, his expression bewildered. Several times he opened his mouth, wanting to say something about what he wanted, or perhaps about goals for the future.

But these things Fu Xinshu wanted to say, under her attentive gaze, he couldn’t bring himself to voice any of them.

In the end, the student looked very dejected. Probably because he had many things to say, but ultimately lacked the courage.

Fu Xinshu picked up his jacket draped over the chair, silently stood up, and left, without even saying “Goodbye, teacher.”

Lin Wanxing watched his retreating figure and didn’t call him back.

The field that had been so tense just minutes ago now returned to its usual quietness. It was the time when the sky had completely darkened, but this time, there were no more sounds of kicking balls or enthusiastic shouts from the field. Everything was like a beach after the tide had receded, leaving a hollow expanse of sand full of depressions, gray and bleak.

At first, Lin Wanxing also wondered if she had been too harsh on Fu Xinshu.

She could well understand the students’ troubles. Although on the surface they were unwilling to accept restraints, deep in their hearts they urgently needed someone to tell them what to do. Not only that, they also needed someone to help make plans, provide daily supervision, give feedback, and offer encouragement and comfort.

But she didn’t want to do that, or rather, what she wanted to do wasn’t just limited to these things.

Her thoughts were complex. She could hear the occasional sound of vehicles rolling over the asphalt road outside the field. The streetlights standing at the top of the stands were worn out from years of use, but the light was more gentle because of its dimness. Sitting in such a vast and empty place, the sky above the field seemed even more serene.

A faint sound of breathing came through, and Lin Wanxing looked to her side.

Wang Fa had maintained a leaning sitting position from beginning to end, never inserting himself into her conversations with the students.

He gazed into the distance as if emptying himself of everything, his profile sharp and handsome. Lin Wanxing couldn’t understand why Wang Fa liked to sit in the stands and space out, but when the city night fell and the field lights dimly rose, you could feel that peaceful sensation of wind sweeping across the lawn.

Only one or two stars could be seen clearly in the sky, with the city lights projecting upward, creating a faint halo.

You could think about nothing at all.

Time passed, and anyway, neither she nor Wang Fa seemed to mind this prolonged silence.

Lin Wanxing felt a bit of pleasure in emptying her mind. This was a feeling difficult to describe, without so much opposition between people and events. She didn’t know how the students would be in the future; perhaps everyone would return to the state of strangers who didn’t interfere with each other.

The sky grew darker, and the wind cooler. Just as Lin Wanxing thought it was about time to return to the dormitory, Wang Fa suddenly lightly touched her.

Lin Wanxing looked in the direction he indicated, and at the gap of the side gate of the stadium in the distance, someone was standing there.

The streetlights were dim, and looking hazily, outside the side door was a boy with a buzz cut. He was tall and sturdy, wearing slippers, and when their gazes inadvertently connected, the boy seemed suddenly frozen as if by a spell.

It took about ten seconds or so before Lin Wanxing realized that the person sneakily standing outside the side gate of the stadium was Qin Ao.

It would be a lie to say she wasn’t surprised. Just an hour or two ago, the boy had been confrontational, storming off angrily, and that anger still seemed to linger in the night breeze around the stands. Only now, the scent in the night breeze had changed to grilled skewers.

Lin Wanxing had never imagined that after an argument, a boy like Qin Ao would take the initiative to come back.

He had probably been through quite a long internal struggle. Qin Ao, carrying a plastic bag, walked up to the stands.

From a distance, Lin Wanxing could already smell the cumin lamb skewers. Sure enough, Qin Ao’s first words upon coming up were: “I came out to buy a barbecue for my dad, just passing by.”

The implication was that he didn’t specifically come back to see them.

Lin Wanxing made a couple of acknowledging sounds, watching the student attempt to cover embarrassment with righteousness, feeling a strange emotion in her heart.

This time, she and Wang Fa were quite in sync. Wang Fa moved over one seat, making room between them for Qin Ao.

Then Lin Wanxing smoothly took the bag of skewers from Qin Ao’s hand and rummaged through it. Inside were fried pork tenderloin, lamb skewers, chicken wings, grilled corn, and the like, packed full.

With lightning speed, she picked a small tenderloin skewer, and before Qin Ao could protest, she passed the bag across him to Wang Fa.

The coach was never polite when eating and directly picked what looked like the most expensive chicken wing. Just like that, they started to enjoy the skewers on the stands by the field, as if no one else was around. The only regret was that there was no Coca-Cola.

At first, Qin Ao kept saying that those were things he bought for his father, but Wang Fa had already started eating, leaving Qin Ao no room to speak.

In the end, the student also gave up and silently began to eat.

That night, Lin Wanxing and Wang Fa walked Qin Ao home, and along the way bought another portion of barbecue.

The night seemed to have reached the end of summer, and they tacitly avoided mentioning anything that had happened earlier.

The next day, what Lin Wanxing didn’t expect was that more students, in ways similar to Qin Ao, began to hover around her.

The first to come were Yu Ming and Lin Lu, the two brothers. Lin Lu took out a box of Terun Su milk from his pocket, saying he couldn’t finish it at breakfast, and directly placed it on her windowsill. Yu Ming contributed a tea egg. The two dropped these off and ran, giving her no chance to refuse.

Lin Wanxing opened the tea egg bag and found an eggshell that hadn’t been thrown away. It was very obvious that Yu Ming had also saved some from his rations…

Lin Wanxing felt that her eating barbecue with Wang Fa last night must have given Qin Ao some misunderstanding.

Sure enough, at noon, Zheng Feiyang gave her two oranges. They were green, looking like the skin was still very hard, as if they had just been picked from somewhere, their origin quite suspicious. Chen Weidong came by and made some directive comments about jump rope equipment being too messy and damaged equipment not being repaired in time.

The most ridiculous was Qi Liang, who brought an English workbook to ask her about a close reading comprehension question. Lin Wanxing flipped through the workbook that was blank both before and after, pointing at the question Qi Liang had specifically shown her, asked: “Why suddenly ask about this passage?”

“Because I saw the word ‘women’ in this reading,” Qi Liang said.

“So?” Lin Wanxing looked at him suspiciously.

“This passage talks about the impact of women’s emotions on aging, you should take a look,” Qi Liang said.

Lin Wanxing immediately said angrily: “Nonsense, this is talking about women’s schools!”

“I told you, you need to watch your emotions,” Qi Liang patted her shoulder with two fingers, comforting her.

In short, Lin Wanxing was very clear that the students coming around her in various ways were probably some strange form of testing the waters. She wasn’t angry, she wasn’t even clear why the boys thought she was angry—perhaps this was just a male way of thinking. But as more and more people hovered around her, Lin Wanxing found it both annoying and amusing, so she decided to pretend to be serious and tense, to maintain teacher dignity.

Finally, in the evening, Lin Wanxing saw Fu Xinshu.

Unprecedentedly, all the students of the school soccer team appeared outside her equipment management room, even Zhi Hui and Zheng Ren who usually didn’t come to training. The tall students were either sitting or squatting, their faces reddened by the sun, making the small open space very crowded.

This was the scene Lin Wanxing saw when she came out to lock the door.

Several class dismissal bells rang, but the open area became even quieter, with the osmanthus tree branches swaying, enclosed by flower beds. Even for someone as non-socially anxious as Lin Wanxing, she was momentarily stunned facing all those faces waiting at the door, not knowing what to say.

“Ahem, we’ve sent a representative to talk to you,” at this moment, Qin Ao, who was sitting majestically on the flower bed, spoke up, then forcefully pushed Fu Xinshu.

Fu Xinshu stumbled forward from the push. He was still wearing his oversized school uniform with the zipper pulled to the top, revealing a slender white neck, looking particularly serious and neat.

“Teacher Lin,” Fu Xinshu began very earnestly, “I’ve thought very seriously about the question you asked me yesterday.”

“Hmm,” Lin Wanxing twirled the key in her hand, waiting for him to speak.

Unexpectedly, Fu Xinshu, as the representative negotiator, under everyone’s gaze, got stuck again.

Qin Ao, frustrated by Fu Xinshu’s inability to speak up, stood up from the flower bed, patted Fu Xinshu to step aside, and then looked down at her.

The boy’s eyes were sharp, with a decisive air: “We’ve discussed it and feel you have too many things in your head.”

“Huh?” Lin Wanxing didn’t understand.

“We can’t figure out what you want to do, but we agree with the principle of ‘you do what you want to do,’ so you can look at test papers in the stands,” Qin Ao said generously.

There was a long silence of about ten seconds.

Finally, Qin Ao’s irritated voice broke the silence: “If you don’t speak, I feel awkward.”

“Do I need to say something?” Lin Wanxing felt a mix of emotions for the first time, “Don’t think too highly of me, I don’t have that much experience either.”

Lin Wanxing was indeed helpless, as this was her first time—first time as a teacher, first time leading so many students, first time thinking about how to talk to students.

“I know you mean well for us. We’ll follow you for tutoring. You can manage us if you want to, although we might not necessarily listen to you, but we’ll try to restrain ourselves…” By the end, Qin Ao spoke very reluctantly. In any case, actively requesting tutoring was more like a kind of compromise they made after trying to understand her thoughts. “So don’t overthink it, and don’t expect us to understand everything. Let’s just make do with what we have. Anyway…”

Qin Ao paused here. Lin Wanxing was about to respond when she heard him say,

“Anyway, yesterday was our fault, we’re sorry.”

Time seemed to freeze for a moment.

It wasn’t the season for osmanthus flowers to bloom, but standing under the lush tree shade, being stared at by the youth’s determined yet aggressive gaze, Lin Wanxing seemed to feel a passionate breeze sweep by. She hadn’t expected this.

“I didn’t mean to manage you either.”

This sentence floated gently through Lin Wanxing’s mind, hovering at her throat, almost a reflexive response she was about to utter.

But facing the students who had mustered up the courage to appear before her, she suddenly felt she shouldn’t say that.

Many thoughts and emotions scattered in Lin Wanxing’s mind.

Indeed, she had always believed that students should have free space and time to explore their inner selves and what they truly want. After all, from childhood to adulthood, they were accustomed to receiving different instructions to do this and that, without many opportunities to think about “what I want.”

But when she explicitly told the students they were free and could do whatever they wanted, they became anxious. Lin Wanxing could well understand this timidity. The world is too big, with countless choices, and when you look toward the future, the uncertainty of it can consume anyone.

So, while the children said they were unwilling, they urgently needed someone to “manage” them. Fu Xinshu was like this, and so was Qin Ao…

This kind of management itself contradicted what Lin Wanxing believed in. She didn’t want to “manage” them, but faced with the students’ almost pleading attitude, she couldn’t bring herself to refuse.

People are extremely complex creatures. Most people aren’t that good, nor are they that bad. Just like most so-called principles, there aren’t that many “must do this” and “absolutely cannot do that.”

Finally, Lin Wanxing sighed slightly and made a compromise that the students couldn’t understand.

“I understand,” she said.