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During military training, evening self-study consisted of only two periods.
Class One was the only advanced stream class in Year Ten. The principal had said — quality over quantity. Only students who had scored in the top one hundred citywide in their middle school exams were eligible, so the class had just thirty-seven students. They quickly demonstrated the self-discipline of top performers: even before formal lessons began, fueled by whatever preview studying they’d done over the summer, they were already working through problem sets in large quantities.
Li Kuiyi sat quietly in her seat, turned sideways slightly, propping her head on one hand, carving out a small private corner of the desk for herself — she’d finished Flowers for Algernon and was now on a new book: John Irving’s The World According to Garp.
Zhou Fanghua would occasionally pause in the middle of a maths problem, and glance with quiet unease at her desk partner. She was genuinely puzzled: every evening self-study session, Li Kuiyi sat there reading her leisure book, unhurried and untroubled, as if she hadn’t yet adjusted to the pace of high school. But then Zhou Fanghua would reconsider — what if she finished everything over the summer holidays? Or what if she simply has absolute confidence in her own ability?
Either possibility was enough to send a chill down her spine, like standing before a cold, mist-covered pool of unknown depth.
The pressure of it pressed down on Zhou Fanghua until she found herself shrinking her neck and hunching her shoulders. Her middle school exams had been an unusually strong performance — she’d placed ninety-sixth in the city — but in this classroom, she was at the very bottom. And right beside her sat this unbothered presence. Haah…
High school maths and physics had suddenly become much harder than anything she’d known before — they felt like a completely different magnitude than middle school. Take the problem in front of her now: she couldn’t even parse the question properly. Then there was boarding for the first time in her life — she’d had a small argument with a roommate yesterday over who got to make a phone call home; her arms had broken out in tiny red bumps, probably from the sun during military training or the dampness in the dormitory, and the itching was maddening, but when she’d scratched at it, the training officer had publicly called her out…
One thing after another. The accumulated weight of days’ worth of small grievances seemed to have woven itself into a suffocating net, pressing down on her all at once until she couldn’t breathe. Tears slowly gathered in her wide eyes, and when they finally brimmed over, one drop fell onto the page of her exercise book, spreading rapidly into a damp circle.
Zhou Fanghua quickly blotted it away. Fortunately, everyone around her was focused on their own work, and no one had noticed. Li Kuiyi, too, remained in her fixed reading posture, apparently unaware.
She barely made it to the end of class. By the time the bell rang, she couldn’t hold it in any longer — she buried her face in her arms and wept silently.
Li Kuiyi also looked up from her book, rolled her slightly-aching arm to stretch it, and glanced at her desk partner. Fast asleep from exhaustion, it seemed.
The phone in her desk drawer vibrated twice. She slid it open — more messages from Fang Zhixiao, along with a photo: “Ta-da! My desk all set up — pretty, right?”
She opened the image. The new textbooks that had been handed out a couple of days before were lined up neatly between a set of Doraemon-shaped bookends. Two file folders, seven or eight attractive notebooks, and a pencil case stuffed full of colorful pens were arranged on the right side. Inside an acrylic organizer sat a whole spread of extras — a water bottle, tissues, a small mirror, a handheld fan, medicated oil — as if she’d moved her entire room in.
This was Fang Zhixiao’s thing. She always said “a craftsman must first sharpen his tools,” and that studying required the right atmosphere.
Li Kuiyi: Really nice.
She wasn’t flattering her. She genuinely thought so, because she liked things that were orderly.
Fang Zhixiao: Hehe! I almost stuck a photo of Su Jianlin onto the organizer, but I decided against it — too conspicuous.
Li Kuiyi: Don’t go too far.
This so-called “photo of Su Jianlin” was a stolen shot Fang Zhixiao had taken in a moment of nervous excitement, hand trembling so badly that only a blurry silhouette remained. But this didn’t diminish Fang Zhixiao’s appreciation for it in the slightest — she said it had an elusive, hazy beauty.
Fang Zhixiao: Is Su Jianlin back at school yet?
Li Kuiyi: Probably not.
Fang Zhixiao: When he goes back, would he take the high-speed train to the city? Would he stay at your place for a few days?
Li Kuiyi: No idea. He hasn’t said.
Fang Zhixiao: Just ask him!
Li Kuiyi: You have his contact info, don’t you? Ask him yourself.
Fang Zhixiao: I’m scared. He’s so cold — can you ask for me?
Li Kuiyi: I don’t want to ask.
Fang Zhixiao: Stop being stubborn. The truth is you don’t dare.
Li Kuiyi: Of course I dare!
As for “unattainable ideals” — they were best admired from afar. Take Su Jianlin: nineteen years old, and cold as frost that had settled over a thousand years. In the ten years Li Kuiyi had known him, she had never once seen him show warmth toward anyone. With every relationship, he maintained only the minimum necessary courtesy, and beyond that, nothing but detachment and distance.
Li Kuiyi remembered that on the day her exam results came in, she had logged into her messaging account on the computer and shared the good news with him. His entire reply had been: Congratulations.
Two bare words. Not even a punctuation mark.
The bell for the next period rang. Li Kuiyi tucked her phone into her bag and tapped Zhou Fanghua on the shoulder: “Wake up — the bell’s gone, class is starting.”
Zhou Fanghua: “…”
She didn’t even know whether to keep crying or not.
Adopting the look of someone just waking from sleep, she wiped her arm roughly across her face to get rid of the tears, then slowly raised her head. She glanced sideways — Li Kuiyi had already resumed her position, book in hand.
Motionless. Like a monk in deep meditation.
Zhou Fanghua was overcome by a sudden wave of envy, because she was Li Kuiyi’s complete opposite — she was the sort of person who was extremely susceptible to the people around her. If she was working through an English test paper while everyone else was doing maths, she would feel a powerful, irrational anxiety, convinced she was falling behind in maths with every passing minute, and she’d end up swapping the English paper for a maths exercise book.
I’m like a really terrible chameleon.
Her grades were worse than everyone else’s, and now it turned out her mindset was worse too. Zhou Fanghua sank even deeper into gloom. The tears she’d only just managed to stop were threatening to come back.
To make things worse, tears always brought a runny nose. Zhou Fanghua pulled out a tissue, dabbing at her eyes and nose. Before long, a pile of ten or so crumpled tissues had accumulated on her desk.
Li Kuiyi finally noticed something was off. She turned to look at her desk partner, stared blankly at the small heap of tissues, and asked, “Are you coming down with a cold?”
Zhou Fanghua: “…”
Her gaze drifted upward and Li Kuiyi now saw that Zhou Fanghua’s eyes were slightly swollen, the skin beneath streaked with the traces of tears, a few strands of hair stuck to the side of her face. She looked thoroughly pitiful. Li Kuiyi drew a sharp breath, suddenly unsure what to do with herself: “You…”
Remembering they were in the middle of evening self-study, Li Kuiyi swallowed every word she’d been about to say, and instead quickly scrawled a few characters on a sticky note, which she slid over: Don’t cry.
Followed by a small drawn smiley face.
In all honesty, without that smiley face, Zhou Fanghua wouldn’t have been able to tell it was meant as comfort.
Li Kuiyi was genuinely hopeless at offering comfort — this was far harder than any maths problem. In the few seconds she had, she wrung every last bit from her brain, then suddenly remembered that whenever Fang Zhixiao was upset, her solution was always to go and eat something. So she wrote another sticky note and pushed it over: Do you want to go to the canteen for a late-night snack after class?
What Zhou Fanghua needed most right then was warmth and someone to talk to. Her big, watery eyes blinked — and she nodded.
Li Kuiyi let out a quiet, private breath of relief, silently grateful that her desk partner, like Fang Zhixiao, was easy to console.
After the bell rang to end evening study, Li Kuiyi packed up her bag and sent Fang Zhixiao a message first: “I’m going to the canteen with my desk partner for a late snack — do you want to come?”
Fang Zhixiao: You’ve already found someone new, have you?
Li Kuiyi: It’s not like that. We’re just normal friends.
Fang Zhixiao: The way you said that… really gives off cheating boyfriend energy.
Fang Zhixiao: Whatever, you two go ahead. I’m staying home to watch my show. Just don’t do anything to make me feel betrayed.
Make her feel betrayed… Li Kuiyi was still turning that over in her head when Zhou Fanghua finished packing her own bag and reached over to gently take her arm, murmuring shyly, “Let’s go.”
Ah. Understood.
Li Kuiyi felt like a guilty criminal the entire walk there, her whole body rigid with tension — and only when they reached the canteen serving windows and Zhou Fanghua let go of her arm to go order, did she finally exhale.
Demand was high during military training, and fifteen and sixteen year olds in the middle of a growth spurt were always hungry. So the canteen was reasonably busy — Year Ten students in camouflage uniforms coming to refuel. Li Kuiyi and Zhou Fanghua had come for plain noodle soup. Just two small mouthfuls of noodles in a bowl, the broth light and clear yet full of flavor, scattered with bright green spring onion — perfect as a late-night snack. Li Kuiyi wanted to add a fried egg, so she told Zhou Fanghua to go find a table first.
Before Zhou Fanghua had gone more than a few steps, Li Kuiyi heard her let out a startled gasp — followed by the crash and clatter of a tray and bowl hitting the floor.
The sound drew a wave of heads turning to stare. Li Kuiyi also spun around in surprise, and found Zhou Fanghua frantically digging through her bag for tissues, repeating “sorry, sorry, sorry” in a rush — while the person standing opposite her said nothing. It was He Youyuan.
His hands were still in his trouser pockets, his camouflage jacket draped over his shoulders, standing there without a word — which would have looked quite cool, if one ignored the fact that his camouflage T-shirt, trousers, and shoes had all been thoroughly splashed with noodle soup. Particularly those two mouthfuls of noodles, which had landed squarely on top of his shoes without so much as grazing the sides.
For Zhou Fanghua, this was very much a case of misfortune piling onto misfortune.
Li Kuiyi set her tray down at the nearest surface, hurried over to Zhou Fanghua’s side, and said, “Are you alright?” Zhou Fanghua sobbed and shook her head. Li Kuiyi kept handing tissues over toward the person on the other side.
“What about you — did you get burned?” Li Kuiyi looked up at He Youyuan.
He Youyuan had not expected to run into the prickly-faced pineapple here. He couldn’t help but wonder if they were cosmically opposed. And though her mouth was asking whether he’d been burned, her eyes held not a shred of actual concern for him — she looked more like a judge there to mediate a dispute.
His irritation, already simmering, peaked. He pulled the corner of his lip into a contemptuous little curve: “Yes. Of course I did.”
Oh, you want to mediate, do you? Then I’m not going to make it easy for you.
“Then you should go rinse it off quickly.” Li Kuiyi gestured toward the washbasin near the canteen entrance.
He Youyuan: “…”
Infuriating.
The fire in his chest had nowhere to go and was being forced back in on itself. He fixed his gaze hard on the composed, self-possessed face in front of him, stubborn as if he were digging in his heels: “I’m not going!”
Li Kuiyi hadn’t expected him to refuse. She genuinely could not comprehend how a person could be so completely unreasonable.
At that moment, the canteen cleaning attendant walked over with her tools: “Oh my, how did this happen!”
Everyone automatically stepped aside to give her room. The attendant swept up the broken bowl fragments and the fallen tray, mopped up the spilled noodles and broth. The floor came up clean and smooth again. Only He Youyuan still wore the evidence of the incident all over him.
Zhou Fanghua stretched out a tentative hand, and said, voice small: “Um — I could wash your clothes for you. They’d be dry overnight, so it wouldn’t affect your training tomorrow.”
“Are you saying I should walk back in nothing?” He Youyuan shot back at once, his tone perfectly designed to invite a smack.
Only then did Zhou Fanghua realize what she’d inadvertently implied. Her face flooded crimson as she waved her hands frantically: “I — I didn’t mean—”
Her voice was on the verge of breaking into tears.
He Youyuan had a very low tolerance for watching people cry. He took a deep, impatient breath, resigned to cutting his losses — if he kept standing here, people would think he was bullying two girls. He was just about to say “forget it” when the prickly-faced pineapple spoke: “Then how about we compensate you with one tube of burn ointment and thirty-seven yuan and fifty cents — would that work?”
Thirty-seven yuan and fifty cents? He Youyuan stopped short.
That’s… a very strange number for compensation.