·
The results of the Year Twelve diagnostic exam came back quickly. Jiang Jianbin could breathe easy: Li Kuiyi’s scores were holding up beautifully, ranking her in what could only be described as a league of her own within the year group. He felt that this girl had a remarkably steady disposition — there was a quality about her, a kind of effortless composure, that suggested nothing in the world could distract her from working through one maths problem after another.
At the post-exam review class meeting, Jiang Jianbin held up Li Kuiyi’s results as a model for the liberal arts students: use mathematics and English as your battering rams, then use Chinese language and the humanities subjects to seal the victory. But the students below him were thoroughly unimpressed and pointed out that a result that freakish isn’t exactly a reference point for anyone — they might as well just call her “All-Subject Deity” and at least be honest about it.
The school put up a large display board on the outer wall of the Year Twelve building — unlike the previous honor boards, this one had a large photograph of each student, with their exam score, ranking, target university, and personal motto listed below. Li Kuiyi didn’t have a personal motto as such. When the school came to collect them, several famous quotations crossed her mind and she couldn’t choose between them, so in the end she simply wrote: “Happy every day.”
She knew Year Twelve life was inevitably going to be grueling, and she hoped that when suffering couldn’t be avoided, she could at least remain as happy as possible.
When she went to see the board, however, she found that her motto had been changed to: “Happy learning every day.”
Li Kuiyi gave a helpless laugh — a feeling of something both absurd and entirely real.
Zhou Fanghua, who was beside her, asked what she was laughing at. She pointed to the motto and explained, and Zhou Fanghua also found it funny. They laughed together, and then Zhou Fanghua took her by the finger and pulled her over to the science ranking side. There were still people nearby, so she kept her voice pressed very low, almost a shy whisper: “I made the board this time too.”
Li Kuiyi looked up at the board, and her eyes lit up. Zhou Fanghua’s photograph was evidently a recent one — the resolution was sharp, and the light on her face carried the clarity of early autumn. But the shadows under her eyes and the slight tension in her expression were rendered all the more visible for it. She ranked second from the bottom on the science side — ninth in the year group — with a target university of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and a personal motto that read: Hard work is the only form of heroism I can reach.
“You’re incredible.” Li Kuiyi clasped her hand and said it with complete sincerity.
Zhou Fanghua had never made the board before, and Li Kuiyi had rarely known her exact scores and ranking — it was a matter of courtesy not to pry into other people’s results, wasn’t it? Still, she knew Zhou Fanghua had always worked extremely hard. When she’d been tutoring He Youyuan, the lights in Class One’s classroom were almost always still on after they’d finished. She’d pass by the window and look in to find Zhou Fanghua still bent over her desk, studying in silence with her head down.
Working hard wasn’t the difficult part — what was difficult was sustaining that effort without ever letting up.
“Ninth in the year group — have you considered aiming for Tsinghua or Peking University?” Li Kuiyi said, half-teasing. Based on previous years, the top five in the science ranking usually had a fairly solid chance at Tsinghua or Peking University; ninth was certainly a position worth reaching for, especially with eight months still to go before the exams.
Zhou Fanghua pressed her lips together with a smile and said “Oh, I couldn’t,” but a longing rose in her heart regardless. Over the past two years, her ranking had climbed step by step — with stretches of stagnation and setbacks, but overall, she’d improved significantly. She’d been steadily revising her targets upward, and Shanghai Jiao Tong now felt like a satisfying horizon to reach. And yet — what student doesn’t have some ambition toward Tsinghua or Peking University?
She just didn’t dare let that ambition out into the open. If she were top of the rankings like Li Kuiyi, she could state with full confidence that she intended to sit for Peking University — but right now she wasn’t there yet. Her target was visible to others, not just to herself, and she was terrified that people would think she was overreaching.
Li Kuiyi would never know: for someone of ordinary talent and ordinary courage, like Zhou Fanghua, hard work was the only lifeline she could cling to.
“Do you think you can get into a top-two university through hard work alone?” Zhou Fanghua asked with genuine curiosity.
“I don’t know.” Li Kuiyi shook her head. “The line between effort and natural ability is too blurry — you can’t really run a controlled experiment to compare. And in the university entrance process, it’s not only the human factor that matters — timing and circumstance count for a great deal too.”
Could she even guarantee she’d get into Peking University? She couldn’t. From her vantage point that looked like the high ground, she was still treading carefully, still nervous.
Li Kuiyi couldn’t help letting her mind wander one step further: what if she didn’t get into Peking University next year — what then? Accept another university, or repeat the year and try again? She wasn’t sure she could even articulate what Peking University meant to her — perhaps it was the best Chinese Literature department, perhaps it was prestige, perhaps a scholarship, perhaps a better future path……
She thought of something He Youyuan had said during that English speech competition: “Perhaps what shines so brilliantly isn’t the ideal itself, but the self that is forged through the pursuit of it — the effort, conviction, and knowledge gained in chasing Tsinghua or Peking University may matter more than the acceptance letter itself.”
Really? Li Kuiyi asked herself honestly.
At the time, she had agreed with those words completely. But now, standing at the gates of the college entrance exam, she suddenly found that she wanted that outcome — the actual result — very badly. She really, truly wanted it.
That night at home, after finishing her homework, Li Kuiyi took out her phone, replied to He Youyuan’s usual barrage of messages, and then asked: “What are you up to?”
It was a while before He Youyuan replied: “Not back in the dormitory yet — watching a teacher critique my roommate’s painting. The one called Zhu Xincheng.”
Li Kuiyi thought he was in the middle of class, so she’d best not disturb him, and replied “Oh, stay busy” before turning off her phone to shower. When she came back and was about to ask if he was done, she found even more messages waiting from him.
He Youyuan: Not busy.
A moment later.
He Youyuan: I’m watching my roommate’s critique. I’m not busy.
A bit later.
He Youyuan: What’s going on? I said I’m not busy — we can talk.
And a bit after that.
He Youyuan: Fine. Best if you never message me again. I’m dying of busyness over here.
Li Kuiyi: “……”
She checked the time, and realized her shower had only taken ten minutes. How had this person managed to work himself up in ten minutes?
Li Kuiyi explained: “I went to shower just now.”
He Youyuan replied instantly: “Then you still owe me an apology.”
His pettiness was something else.
Li Kuiyi: Sorry.
He Youyuan: I’ll grudgingly accept it.
He Youyuan: I’ll tell you something — Zhu Xincheng just got absolutely torn apart by the teacher because he went and roughed in the sketch all wrong. Let me send you a look.
He Youyuan: [image]
He Youyuan: [image]
He Youyuan: You can see it, right?
Li Kuiyi: Yeah, I can clearly see that you’re not “grudging” about anything at all.
He Youyuan: ……
He Youyuan: I don’t want to like you anymore. You’re genuinely quite mean to me.
This person was truly so immature — he was always saying “I don’t like you anymore,” like a preschool child who hadn’t outgrown the phrase.
Li Kuiyi held down the voice message button, let out an artificially regretful sigh: “Well, what can we do then? I suppose you’d better ‘grudgingly’ keep liking me?”
He Youyuan listened to the voice message and thought he was going to lose his mind. He genuinely couldn’t out-maneuver her — then again, how could he possibly out-maneuver someone whose Chinese score was consistently above 130? Little rhetorical tricks were completely in her control, perfectly calibrated to set something off in his bloodstream in wave after wave. He could even picture the expression on her face as she said it: serious, with just a small flash of sly mischief; innocent, with a subtle, almost imperceptible sense of control. If she were standing in front of him right now, he wouldn’t be able to help himself — he’d bow his head and kiss her.
Without thinking, he ran his tongue over his lip, then pressed them together. His mouth turned a little red.
After a moment, he typed back slowly: “Li Kuiyi — you know the saying, ‘revenge is a dish best served ten years cold,’ right?”
He’s completely lost it, Li Kuiyi thought. She’d clearly been humoring him, so why was he talking about revenge?
“Sure,” she replied.
He Youyuan seemed to have genuinely been provoked, because he gnashed his way through a voice message: “Just you wait.”
What did I tell you — completely unhinged.
Li Kuiyi couldn’t be bothered to spar with him, and changed the subject: “Let me ask you something — if you didn’t get into the Central Academy of Fine Arts, would you be upset?”
As soon as she’d sent it, she thought: that’s a pointless question. Of course he’d be upset.
He Youyuan replied directly: “Don’t say things like that — it’s bad luck.”
There it was. He’d be upset — in fact, he was already at the point of refusing to let himself even think about it.
Li Kuiyi sent him the passage he’d said at the speech competition: “That’s not what you used to say.”
He Youyuan replied without any shame whatsoever: “Am I not allowed to have ordinary human desires? I might as well become a monk.”
Although He Youyuan’s answer was pure deflection, something in Li Kuiyi settled and released in that moment. She thought: ultimately, the ideal still has to come down to earth. Coming down to earth doesn’t mean getting covered in dust — it means existing as something that helps a person live better. The stronger she became in how she lived, the more command she’d have over her own resources — like drawing a power card in Werewolf, which lets you become a more awake, eyes-open player in the world.
The simplest example: if she one day became a year group director like Chen Guoming, and one of her students wrote “Happy every day” as their motto, she would not change it to “Happy learning every day.”
She’d say: I wish you happiness.
Setting the phone down, Li Kuiyi thought of Liu Xinzhao. They must be the same kind of person, she and her teacher. She still remembered: Liu Xinzhao had written under her very first journal entry: “Rather than wishing you to become a better version of yourself, I would rather wish you to more fully become yourself.”
So that was what it had meant.
This understanding came slow, sudden, and late.
In that instant, Li Kuiyi felt their spirits drawing very close. She thought of a Charlie Chaplin film she’d watched in English class — Modern Times — about the dehumanizing effects of mechanized production and industrialization. Perhaps in this era, she too was only a tiny screw in the machine, one of the world’s most replaceable, NPC-like little figures — and yet this small, inconsequential existence was her whole life. Who would ever see what made her different? And that was precisely why she needed friends — not the “convenient companion” kind of friends, but the kind who truly saw each other. So, among the mass-produced multitudes of the world, they saw each other’s quietly glowing individuality; with the smallest of connections, they held out against the cold and indifferent winds of the age, dissolved the void that each individual carried inside them in this great wide world.
She decided to be brave one more time.
Li Kuiyi picked up her phone and sent Fang Zhixiao a QQ message: “Want to go eat Rao’s spicy rice noodles together tomorrow? You go grab a table first.”
She absolutely had to have a proper conversation with her.
While waiting for Fang Zhixiao to reply, Li Kuiyi turned her phone over and over in her hand, her mind still circling back to Liu Xinzhao’s words. Seized by some nameless impulse, she stopped, opened the browser on her phone, and typed into the search bar: “Liu Xinzhao, Beijing Normal University.”
Results did come up — many of them — but as Li Kuiyi scrolled through, nothing seemed specifically relevant.
She thought for a moment, then logged onto the school’s official website and searched the “Faculty” section. Sure enough, she found Liu Xinzhao’s name there, and looking closely, it mentioned that she was also a graduate of their school — the class of 2002.
In those days, to have tested into Beijing Normal University would have made you an outstanding graduate without question. So Li Kuiyi went to the “Outstanding Alumni” section and filtered the year to 2002.
But for some reason, as she skimmed through the names of graduates from that year, she couldn’t find Liu Xinzhao.
Li Kuiyi spread her fingers to zoom in on the screen, going through the names, photographs, and university admissions one by one.
Eventually she found a photograph — a slightly blurry one — of a girl in a plain T-shirt and jeans, holding a Beijing Normal University acceptance letter, her expression young and unguarded, with a bookish quality to it. The girl looked somewhat similar to Liu Xinzhao.
But the girl’s name was not Liu Xinzhao. It was Zhang Qiannan.