·
At half past nine, Fang Zhixiao made her fashionably late arrival.
She was on the shorter side, wearing overalls and her hair in a high ponytail. She came bouncing toward Li Kuiyi like a little coiled spring, and after clinging to her in a hug for a good while, she planted a firm kiss on Li Kuiyi’s cheek.
Li Kuiyi raised a hand and wiped her face.
Fang Zhixiao immediately wailed: “What’s that supposed to mean?! You’re disgusted by me?”
Li Kuiyi said nothing, just pressed her lips together and smiled.
Fang Zhixiao’s grandmother had come along too, waiting down by the spectator stands. The old woman didn’t quite follow the teasing between young people, and seeing what had happened, she quickly interjected: “Xiao Xiao, don’t go picking on other people.”
“Who’s picking on who?” Fang Zhixiao pouted, took Li Kuiyi’s hand, and led her down the steps. “Grandma, whose side are you on? I’m your own granddaughter!”
Grandma said, in complete seriousness: “I side with whoever’s right.”
Li Kuiyi was thoroughly amused by the grandmother and granddaughter. She was, in truth, very familiar with Fang Zhixiao’s whole family. Throughout the three years of boarding in middle school, she’d spent many weekends at their home — first enjoying a delicious dinner cooked by Fang Zhixiao’s father, then the two of them would squeeze into Fang Zhixiao’s small bed for the night, and the next day head to the city library together to do homework.
At first, Li Kuiyi had felt awkward imposing. But Fang Zhixiao’s family were all so warm and welcoming. Her mother had even bought a gift especially for her and offered her heartfelt thanks: “It’s all thanks to you helping Xiao Xiao with her tutoring — her maths went from failing to over a hundred and ten points. That’s entirely your doing.”
After the middle school exam results came out, Fang Zhixiao’s whole family had taken Li Kuiyi out for a proper dinner at a restaurant. As they put it: without her help, Fang Zhixiao would never have gotten into No. 1 Middle School.
Li Kuiyi had been embarrassed by the praise, quite certain that Fang Zhixiao had been embellishing things enormously when talking about her at home. In truth, Fang Zhixiao was diligent enough — she just tended to be scattered, jumping from topic to topic, getting muddled by the end. All Li Kuiyi had done was nudge her in the right direction: how to build a framework for her knowledge, how to think from the examiner’s perspective when approaching a problem.
Fang Zhixiao always said she had “a pair of all-seeing eyes” — in other words, one glance at a problem and she already knew which method to use. This particular gift remained something Fang Zhixiao envied to this day.
“Oh right, the good-looking guy — is he already gone?” Fang Zhixiao stood on her tiptoes, scanning the gymnasium, and asked with mild disappointment.
“Yes, already gone.” Li Kuiyi nodded, and thought back to how He Youyuan had left. “And he stormed off in a foul mood, so I’m warning you — he might have a bad temper.”
In matters of good-looking boys, Fang Zhixiao was always exceptionally tolerant: “It’s fine — good things come to those who wait. Seeing him again this afternoon is just as good. Besides — so what if a handsome guy has a bit of a temper?”
Li Kuiyi was left with nothing to say. It was Fang Zhixiao’s grandmother who had half-caught the gist of what her granddaughter was on about and began to advise: “When it comes to people, you must never judge by appearances alone. No matter how fine-looking someone is, if they have a rotten—”
After Fang Zhixiao finished signing in, the two of them sorted out their meal cards and day-student passes, then took a wander through the new school with grandma in tow. No. 1 was a large campus — red-brick buildings glimpsed through the gaps in lush green canopies, sunlight filtering through the leaves to fall in dappled patches across the tree-lined paths. Along the way there was a lake, a pavilion, a wisteria-draped corridor, a fountain, and an ornamental rockery…
That rockery was impressively tall — nearly level with the third floor of the teaching building — and its surface, perpetually damp from the fountain spray, had accumulated a thick coat of moss. It looked enormously slippery. Li Kuiyi found herself thinking, rather suddenly, that the school-wide disciplinary notice issued to He Youyuan had been entirely fair.
Walking at the grandmother’s pace, they went slowly, and by the time they’d done a full circuit of the grounds, it was nearly eleven o’clock. Grandma had no interest in the fried skewers, flatbreads, and spicy noodles that teenagers tended to eat around school — she climbed onto a bus and headed home on her own. Fang Zhixiao then dragged Li Kuiyi to a place called “Rao’s Sour and Spicy Glass Noodles,” which she’d seen recommended by a senior on the school’s online forum. Absolutely incredible, the review had said.
Whether it was incredible or not, Li Kuiyi couldn’t say — all she knew was that the chili in this place was the real thing. It was so spicy her lips went red, her eyes went red, her cheeks went red, and her brain went blank. Fang Zhixiao looked at her sitting there in a rare daze and burst out laughing: “You’re such a lightweight, Little Crayon Sunflower!”
They went to a bubble tea shop after and each got an iced lemon water. The tea shop had air conditioning, and they ended up staying until one in the afternoon before ambling unhurriedly toward the teaching building.
Class One’s classroom was on the ground floor. Class Twelve was on the third floor. Under normal circumstances, Fang Zhixiao would have griped about the stairs — but she was in unusually high spirits today. “Wait for me after school!” she called back as she went sprinting up the staircase. “Yay, off to look at the good-looking guy!”
The simple joys of someone obsessed with pretty faces.
Li Kuiyi shook her head helplessly and turned to go into her own classroom. Only four or five students had arrived so far, scattered at various desks, very quiet, still wrapped in the initial shyness of strangers. Li Kuiyi chose a seat by the window — she’d observed from outside that this particular window looked directly onto a small garden, and the garden had a shallow decorative pond in it. Rather a pleasant view.
She pulled a book from her schoolbag, and just then, the phone tucked in the inner pocket vibrated once.
Fang Zhixiao: The good-looking guy isn’t here yet QAQ.
Li Kuiyi: He’ll come eventually.
Just then, a crisp set of footsteps came down the corridor and into the classroom — tap, tap, tap, the rhythm light and even, like raindrops falling in steady succession from the eaves.
Everyone looked up.
It was the strikingly beautiful girl. She walked in arm in arm with another female classmate. After making a small survey of the room, she pointed to the third row in the middle section and said, “Let’s sit here — this spot is the easiest for the teacher to see.”
The words themselves seemed ordinary enough, but sitting with them for a moment, they were really quite bold.
It seemed that sometime after adolescence began, most people’s goal had quietly shifted to “not being noticed.” Hiding imperfect bodies beneath oversized clothes; going quietly mad in journals and online diaries rather than allowing the outside world in; like a young tree growing in all directions at once, suddenly turning inward to prune itself.
This is probably the awakening of self-awareness, Li Kuiyi thought — the sense that the whole world is an audience, yet you yourself haven’t reached the standard worthy of their scrutiny, and so you want to disappear.
Then what was this confident girl in front of her?
Complete and absolute certainty in herself — I am good, I am perfect, so you may all look at me.
Like a flawless pearl, luminous and commanding.
Once the Pearl Girl had settled into her seat, she went quiet too, pulling out her phone and typing rapidly, as if in the middle of a conversation with someone. Li Kuiyi brought her attention back to her own book: a leisure read she’d brought along — Flowers for Algernon.
She was always deeply absorbed when reading, and though the classroom gradually filled with noise and movement, she noticed none of it. Only when someone dropped into the seat beside her with a thump did she surface from the pages.
It was the girl with straight-cut bangs, a hairband, and the large eyes. Seeing Li Kuiyi look over, she gave a shy smile: “Hi, my name is Zhou Fanghua.”
Li Kuiyi: “…”
So Zhou Fanghua was a girl.
“Hi. I’m Li Kuiyi.”
“You’re our city’s top scorer from the middle school exam!” Zhou Fanghua’s eyes widened further, her expression one of mild astonishment.
A boy in the row ahead had overheard and spun around: “Wow, first place — what an honor to meet you.” He extended a hand. “Hi, I’m Pan Junmeng.”
Li Kuiyi: “…”
Why on earth was Pan Junmeng a boy?!
Li Kuiyi checked the time on her phone — three minutes to two o’clock. The screen was filled with a string of unread messages from Fang Zhixiao.
Fang Zhixiao: He’s SO good-looking!!
Fang Zhixiao: The second he walked in I knew he was the one you meant!
Fang Zhixiao: He’s sitting diagonally behind me!!!
Fang Zhixiao: I can see him out of the corner of my eye!
Then, a few minutes later:
Fang Zhixiao: His name is He Youyuan!
Fang Zhixiao: Even his name sounds good!
Fang Zhixiao: I think I’m in love.
Li Kuiyi: Congratulations!
She looked out across the classroom — it was packed now, a sea of heads. At that moment, the form teacher walked in carrying a stack of name lists and handbooks. Li Kuiyi tucked her phone into the desk drawer.
The classroom went quiet quickly. The form teacher set her things on the podium, and smiled: “Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Liu Xinzhao, your form teacher and Chinese language teacher. I’ll be with you all for the first half of Year Ten.”
“Why only half a year?” a student asked, puzzled.
Liu Xinzhao replied, “Because, of course, at the end of the first semester, we’ll be splitting into Arts and Sciences streams.”
“Oh—” The announcement sent a ripple of shock through the room. Students looked at each other. “Already? I thought that didn’t happen until Year Eleven?”
One student, who clearly knew the lay of the land, explained: “No. 1 has always done it this way — the split happens at the end of Year Ten, first semester.”
Liu Xinzhao tapped the podium to bring the room back to quiet. “So your results in every monthly exam, mid-terms, and finals this first semester will all be factored into future class placements — they’ll determine whether you qualify to enter the advanced stream again.”
She delivered this with a serene smile, but the effect was immediate: the room fell utterly silent, as if a pin had dropped.
“There’s no need to look so alarmed,” Liu Xinzhao added warmly. “The exams are still at least a month away. Right now, a fresh new high school experience is waiting for you. For instance—”
The whole class held their breath in anticipation.
“Military training!”
“Uggghhhh—” A collective groan swept the room.
“Life can’t get worse than military training! Unless—” Liu Xinzhao smiled with a mischievous glint in her eye, “—we first have each student come to the front and introduce themselves for one minute.”
The howls that followed could have lifted the roof.
“The form teacher is really something, isn’t she,” Zhou Fanghua whispered, leaning toward Li Kuiyi.
Li Kuiyi nodded in agreement. Pan Junmeng, however, suddenly spun around and chimed in: “If a form teacher acts friendly but still gets great results from her students, watch out — she’s probably formidable.”
He’d barely finished speaking when Liu Xinzhao said pleasantly, “Right then — let’s start the self-introductions with Pan Junmeng.”
Li Kuiyi and Zhou Fanghua exchanged a glance, both immediately falling silent.
Pan Junmeng, yanked to the front without warning, scratched the back of his head and stumbled through: “Hi everyone, my name is Pan Junmeng — yeah, I know, it sounds a bit like a girl’s name, hehe…”
Everyone laughed politely.
“Um, I like watching movies, listening to music, sometimes I play games…” He glanced nervously at Liu Xinzhao and immediately corrected himself, “But I definitely don’t get addicted to them! That’s it, thank you.”
“Does anyone feel like that was a full minute?” Liu Xinzhao asked.
“NO!” the class roared back with enormous enthusiasm.
“It seems like they’re not letting you off the hook!”
And so Pan Junmeng stood at the front and rambled through anything he could think of — including the fact that his family of three had a cat and a dog — until he’d finally scraped together a full minute. The rest of the class quickly started drafting their own introductions in their heads, planning to strategically cough and stall to stretch out the time.
Li Kuiyi was also someone who dreaded self-introductions — bluntly put, there simply wasn’t very much about herself that was interesting. So when her turn came, she made herself the punchline: “Hi everyone, I’m Li Kuiyi. Though a lot of people are more used to calling me just Li Kui.”
Self-deprecation is always the fastest way to warm a room. The class smiled beneath her, easing noticeably.
“So, my hobbies are drinking, eating meat, and gambling. I’m completely devoted to the great cause of my sworn brother Song Jiang, plus reading and listening to music. As for the books I like — definitely not Water Margin or Quell the Bandits, because the ending for someone with my name is much too tragic. I prefer Yu Hua, Zhang Ailing, and Franz Kafka — I like watching other people suffer. My all-time favorite song is The Heroic Song, though I keep up with the times and also listen to Zhou Jielun and One Direction…”
Li Kuiyi said all of this with an absolutely straight face and an unhurried pace. A bizarre self-introduction delivered with such measured gravity somehow only made it funnier.
Though she, like everyone else, had only introduced her name and a few interests, she managed, very naturally, to fill the full minute.
Thank you, Li Kui. Amen.
When she returned to her seat, Pan Junmeng turned around and sighed admiringly: “You must never struggle with word count in essays…”
Li Kuiyi only half-listened to the others’ introductions after that. The one thing that did satisfy her was that the beautiful girl did indeed turn out to be named Xia Leyi — who said she liked cosplay and reading birth charts.
Once everyone had introduced themselves, Liu Xinzhao selected a class president, since someone was needed to coordinate everything during military training. Only Xia Leyi raised her hand. She was accordingly elected, uncontested.
Military training uniforms were handed out. After a few final announcements, Liu Xinzhao dismissed the class. But she called Li Kuiyi aside to mention that the day military training ended would also be the opening ceremony, and as the school’s top-ranked student, she was expected to speak on behalf of the entire student body. Liu Xinzhao asked her to write a speech in the meantime.
Li Kuiyi agreed, said goodbye to Liu Xinzhao, and settled in to wait for Fang Zhixiao.
Fang Zhixiao sent one more message: “Li Kui, I’ve been heartbroken.”
Li Kuiyi: ?
Li Kuiyi: That was fast.
He Youyuan probably has a girlfriend, Li Kuiyi thought.
She waited almost half an hour before Class Twelve finally let out. Fang Zhixiao threw herself into Li Kuiyi’s arms and said in a muffled, deflated voice, “The good-looking guy is different from what I imagined.”
“How so?” Li Kuiyi asked.
“He was sitting by the window, right? And there was a bit of plaster that had chipped off the wall right there, so he crumbled up a piece of chalk, mixed it with water, and patched up the wall — the form teacher was up at the front talking and he was down there patching the wall… and then the form teacher had him stand at the front of the class.”
“That’s… actually kind of thoughtful,” Li Kuiyi said, at a loss for how else to respond.
“You don’t get it.” Fang Zhixiao’s mouth crumpled. “I fell for an unattainable ideal — not a kind-hearted guy who goes around patching walls.”
“It’s alright. There are plenty of fish in the sea.” Li Kuiyi patted Fang Zhixiao’s shoulder in consolation.
“Right!” Fang Zhixiao clenched her fist, and the light came back into her eyes. “I’ve decided I’m going back to liking Su Jianlin!”
Su Jianlin — Li Kuiyi’s young uncle. A truly unattainable ideal.