Senior year life followed a strict routine, every day seeming to repeat the exact same path, like clockwork.
But the passing time still weighed on Fang Zhuo with a certain pressure.
What made her anxious wasn’t the college entrance exam itself, but the financial pressure that would come after it.
Her grades were severely lopsided across subjects, which left her class ranking stuck in an awkward middle ground. There was nothing to be done about it—the rural elementary school she’d attended had never taught English, and the teaching staff at her middle school hadn’t been very good either; the teacher there couldn’t even speak clear Mandarin.
Compared to the other students at A High School, English was an entirely foreign subject to her, and she had no idea where to even begin catching up. Because of this, she couldn’t qualify for the school’s scholarship.
Fortunately, her grades in other subjects were decent enough to barely make up for this gap.
Her goal was to get into a top-tier university, since the tuition there was relatively lower. If she failed to get in, it would be very difficult for her to scrape together the extra tuition money needed elsewhere.
Aside from this year’s tuition, she had just over thirteen hundred yuan left to her name. It really was stretched painfully thin.
Fang Zhuo recorded every small, scattered expense, and after staring at that final number—one that did little to inspire any sense of security—she pulled out a study guide and began grinding through practice problems.
In the evening study hall, scattered whispers drifted through the classroom.
The back door opened, and the homeroom teacher stepped in. She made a round through the classroom, and when passing by Fang Zhuo’s desk, rapped her knuckles on it lightly.
Fang Zhuo looked up and heard her ask, close to her ear, “Fang Zhuo, do you know XX Village in XX County?”
Fang Zhuo’s pen tip rested on her scratch paper. She hadn’t expected to hear that familiar place name again, and answered, “I know it. I used to live there.”
“There’s a letter at the gatehouse, forwarded here from that area. It’s been sitting there for days—whoever delivered it didn’t make clear who it was for. Since no one ever claimed it, the staff there opened it up.” The homeroom teacher said, “Come to my office and see whether it belongs to you.”
Fang Zhuo was bewildered. After her grandmother had passed away, the house had been sold off by Fang Yiming—she couldn’t imagine what could possibly need to be forwarded all the way to her school.
She got up and followed the homeroom teacher to her office.
A few students were already gathered around the desk asking questions. The homeroom teacher pulled an opened parcel bag from a drawer, had Fang Zhuo state her old address, and after confirming it matched, handed the package over to her.
The sender’s name was written as “Ye Yuncheng.” The shipping address was an underdeveloped township near A City.
The recipient was listed as her grandmother. It must have been the owner of the village’s general store who had forwarded it along to A High School.
Fang Zhuo pried the bag open with her fingers and peered inside, her eyes widening slightly.
What was inside, to her surprise, was a sum of money. Along with it was a white slip of paper.
She pulled the note out and found just a few brief lines of greeting.
It asked how Fang Zhuo had been lately, whether she was nearly an adult now, and expressed the hope that her grandmother would set this cash aside for her—an adult, after all, ought to have some money on hand.
The handwriting was neat and elegant, signed with a name and a date. It had been written back in June.
Fang Zhuo moved her finger aside and noticed a line written in even smaller handwriting in the corner.
“July 16th—the fifteenth anniversary of my sister Yaoling’s passing.”
It was likely a hope that she might go back to pay her respects at the grave.
Fang Zhuo hadn’t known exactly when Ye Yaoling had died. Instinctively, she began trying to recall what she’d been doing on July 16th.
But she found, to her surprise, that her past life had held no particular distinguishing color—she had always simply been somewhere in transit, rushing about. That day had probably been like any other, working under the blazing sun, or perhaps she’d snuck off to the library to escape the heat and read for a while.
Learning this news so suddenly left her with a hollow sense of having missed something. Her chest tightened, and a faint panic stirred in her, but if she tried to pin down the reason for it, she couldn’t quite say what it was.
Noticing her odd expression, the homeroom teacher asked, “Are you alright?”
Fang Zhuo folded the paper back up and shook her head distractedly.
The homeroom teacher asked, “Is this from a family member?”
Fang Zhuo hesitated for a moment, then said quietly, “Yes.”
While sorting through her grandmother’s belongings, she had once come across a whole stack of empty envelopes, all signed with the same name.
Her grandmother had never been able to read at all, and Fang Zhuo had never been able to figure out who could be so persistent in sending her letters, or why the envelopes had always been empty.
Her grandmother had never spoken to her about it, and surely had never written back to tell the sender anything about their situation, either.
In this moment, the confusion that had puzzled Fang Zhuo since childhood seemed to finally find a belated answer.
She now knew a little about her mother, and learned that she had an uncle she’d never known about.
The mask of indifference she had maintained for so many years showed a faint crack, and more questions came surging up in her mind. It was as if she had been carried back to that childhood period when she had been especially curious about family and parents.
But the moment that strange emotion rose to the surface of her eyes, Fang Zhuo forcefully pushed it back down.
She put the letter away, nodded to the homeroom teacher, and stepped back out the door.
Figures moved in the hallway, and only then did Fang Zhuo realize it had already become break time.
Yan Lie lay face-down on his desk, asleep. When Fang Zhuo sat down, his eyelids gave a faint flicker.
Once things had settled quietly around her again, Fang Zhuo continued working through the half-finished derivative problem in front of her.
She wasn’t quite herself tonight—her thoughts kept drifting. Several formulas had clearly already been laid out, yet she couldn’t push forward to the next step. Her pen scrawled wildly across the page, only for her to make a careless calculation error, forcing her to start over.
Fang Zhuo rubbed at her hair, tossing the scratch paper, now filled edge to edge, into the corner. As she turned her head, she discovered that Yan Lie hadn’t actually been asleep at all.
He lay face-down on his desk, eyes lazily half-open, his gaze unfocused, drifting in Fang Zhuo’s direction.
Fang Zhuo froze for a moment, locking eyes with him and forgetting to look away. Seeing this, Yan Lie perked up a little and beat her to it, asking, “Why are you secretly watching me?”
Fang Zhuo: “……” It was so shameless she couldn’t even think how to respond.
Yan Lie lifted his head, sitting up at a crooked angle, and said with a smile, “I was just watching a lost little lamb. Would she happen to need the guidance of a wise man?”
Fang Zhuo ignored him, pulling out the answer key to check the problem. She found her approach had, in fact, been correct—only a simple calculation slip—and she went ahead and corrected the numbers directly.
Just as Yan Lie was assuming she wouldn’t say anything, Fang Zhuo suddenly asked, “Does your phone have navigation?”
“So you really are a lost little lamb?” Yan Lie said, amused, pulling his phone from his pocket and unlocking it with practiced ease. “Do you know how to use one?”
Fang Zhuo had barely even used a phone with a physical keypad, let alone something as unfamiliar to her as a touchscreen.
Yan Lie demonstrated by opening the app for her, teaching her how to type. He showed no impatience even as she slowly, clumsily tapped out the address, only muttering, once he made out the place name “Li Village,” “Is there really a village like that near A City?”
Fang Zhuo tapped confirm, but the prompt that came up said no suitable bus route was available.
She paused, looking at Yan Lie with a blank, helpless expression, and leaned the phone a little closer toward him.
Her long lashes blocked the fluorescent light overhead, the shadow cast over her face softening the usual coldness in Fang Zhuo’s eyes, while the contours sharpened by the play of light made the plain, slender quality of her features all the more noticeable.
Yan Lie leaned in closer, catching a faint trace of milky scent lingering in her hair. His gaze slid down along the line of her face, then paused. He coughed once, quickly looked away, leaned his body back, and said, “Let me.”
He went straight to a search engine to look for similar questions, and luckily, there really was an answer.
The most convenient route was to first take the urban-rural bus to near its final stop, walk on foot to a certain bridge, and wait there for a minivan that passed by daily, which would then take her all the way to Li Village.
The vehicle, however, could only stop briefly at the entrance to the village—from there, she would have to find her way on foot.
Fang Zhuo memorized the route, her expression turning somewhat grave, thanked Yan Lie, and handed the phone back to him.
Yan Lie tucked both hands into his pockets, lost in thought for a moment, then went back to lying face-down on his desk, pretending to nap.
·
Saturday’s classes didn’t end until 12:30. Fang Zhuo unhurriedly packed up the things on her desk, slung her backpack on, and headed toward the school gate.
The main road was packed with all sorts of vehicles. Even from a hundred meters away, the honking drifting over from the roadside could still be heard.
Fang Zhuo paused at the gate for a moment, looking at the similar tree-lined roads on either side and unable to tell which direction to go. She turned back to ask the gatekeeper for directions to the bus stop, then walked slowly along, following the gradually thinning crowd.
A bicycle sped past her, then slowly circled back, falling into pace beside her.
The rider, pedaling and reining in his speed, noticed she wasn’t even glancing his way, and gave a whistle to get her attention.
Fang Zhuo had no choice but to turn her face and say to her desk-mate, “What a coincidence.”
Yan Lie, wearing a black-and-white cap, freed one hand to push up the brim, revealing the bold, youthful face beneath, and laughed, “And here I thought I had the ability to turn invisible.”
He planted one foot on the ground, stopping the bike, and gestured. “Heading to catch the urban-rural bus? Hop on, I’m headed that way anyway—I’ll take you there.”
Fang Zhuo glanced at the back seat of his bike, her gaze showing a bit of inner conflict.
Yan Lie said, “I know the roads, I’ll be faster than you. Don’t get there too late, or you won’t be able to make it back.”
Only then did Fang Zhuo walk over, carefully climbing onto the back seat, finding a foothold on the frame, and gripping tightly onto the hem of Yan Lie’s jacket.
“Ready?”
Yan Lie’s voice carried back on the wind, mingled with a faint, refreshing scent of lemon. He shifted his weight down, letting a sliver of previously blocked sunlight through, and the bike shot forward.
With electric scooters and pedestrians nearby, Yan Lie wove through the non-motorized lane as nimbly as a fish, while Fang Zhuo grew quite tense.
Her rigid posture pressed down on the back seat as steady and unyielding as a stone. Even without turning his head, Yan Lie could sense how stiff she was.
His gaze dropped, taking in the hands clenched around the hem of his jacket. The fabric had already been wrinkled from her grip, and her bloodless skin and the pale blue veins beneath it made her current state unmistakably clear.
It looked as if every muscle in her body had tensed to bursting, every hair standing on end.
Yan Lie laughed despite himself. “I ride super steady, you don’t need to be scared!”
Fang Zhuo gave an “oh,” then added, in a way that only made it more obvious, “I’m not.”
Yan Lie slowed down regardless, riding at a steady pace near the curb.
By the time he got her to the bus stop sign, the bus happened to be pulling up from ahead.
Fang Zhuo hurried over and got on. Yan Lie watched her board, then turned his bike around to leave, only to spot, in front of a giant billboard, a face brimming with resentment.
Having been roommates for over two years, it would be a bit much to pretend not to see him after locking eyes like this. Yan Lie smiled and raised a hand in greeting.
Shen Musi, unwilling to let it go, wailed loudly, “Lielie! Lielie, you’re too much! Weren’t you the one who never gives anyone rides? Aren’t I your long-lost little brother?!”
Yan Lie said, “Alright, alright, want me to give you a ride back to school instead?”
Shen Musi exploded with rage. “I’m trying to get home! It took me twenty minutes just to walk here! Damn it!”
Yan Lie parked his bike behind the bus stop sign and walked over to placate him. “Alright then, I’ll wait for the bus with you.”
The young man was tall, his build lean and well-defined, his skin noticeably fairer than that of an average guy. Standing there, he was like a natural light source—passersby couldn’t help but glance over.
Shen Musi noticed an uptick in warm glances drifting their way, a touch of envy stirring in him, and after a moment said, sourly, “You’ve changed.”
“I haven’t.” Yan Lie made a gesture with his hand. “You’re twice Fang Zhuo’s weight.”
Shen Musi: “That’s not true.”
A moment later, he asked again, “Why’s your expression so weird?”
Yan Lie curled up the corner of his mouth, his eyes turning a hazy, pale shade under the direct sunlight, and said with a smile, “Nothing.”
“Turns out she’s my type too.”