Fang Zhuo stood at the entrance of the lobby, holding two umbrellas in her hand. Damp, cold air and splashing rainwater swept in through the wide-open glass doors, carried by the wind.

On her feet was a pair of worn-out canvas shoes, cracked and faded from washing, their rough surface mottled with mud from the roadside. Scattered stains marked the legs of her trousers as well. Perhaps worried about dirtying the light-colored floor tiles, she simply stood by the entrance, leaning on her umbrella.

When Fang Yiming came out from the stairwell carrying his briefcase, he saw Fang Zhuo smiling faintly as she talked with one of his colleagues.

Fang Zhuo’s skin wasn’t particularly fair, but her features were delicate, her bearing cool and clear, and combined with her tall figure, she was eye-catching just standing there.

Beneath her oversized collar, a long, pale neck was visible. Her expression as she spoke was calm and measured, her bearing composed. It made him suddenly recall a face he had nearly forgotten.

Fang Yiming was still hesitating when Fang Zhuo noticed him and spoke first: “Dad.”

At the sound of her voice, his colleague turned around, looking surprised. Fang Yiming hesitated for a moment before stepping forward and asking, “Why did you come here?” His tone gave no hint of whether he was pleased, but his words came out somewhat rushed.

“What a filial daughter!” the middle-aged woman cut in. “I didn’t even know you had such a thoughtful daughter—I thought you only had a son. The girl is really pretty, big eyes, a high nose bridge. I’ll be honest, even if she’d picked out your best features and your wife’s, she still wouldn’t have turned out this good-looking.”

Fang Yiming’s nose bridge was indeed high, but his facial features leaned hard and angular. His wife, Ms. Lu, was also rather plain-looking, and perhaps due to her temperament, her features carried a touch of sharpness. In truth, Fang Zhuo didn’t resemble either of them much.

Fang Yiming’s eyes darkened, the corner of his mouth twitching into a forced curve that revealed nothing of his expression.

Fang Zhuo said, “I look like my mother.”

The woman studied her face for a moment, then laughed and waved a hand. “It’s not as if I’ve never seen what your mother looked like when she was young. If you ask me, there’s some resemblance, sure, but you still look more like your father.”

Fang Zhuo said tactfully, “My mother’s surname was Ye.”

The woman froze for a moment, her gaze flicking toward Fang Yiming. Clearly, she hadn’t known that this colleague she’d worked alongside for over a decade had once had another wife.

Fang Yiming gave a dry laugh and explained, “She used to live in the countryside with her grandmother. She only moved here after my mother passed away. She’s a senior in high school now, and usually boards at school. Even I rarely see her.”

“Oh.” The woman was warm and talkative by nature, and at this she asked, “Have you settled in alright here?”

Fang Zhuo said, “I transferred in my second year of high school. I’ve pretty much settled in.”

The woman noticed the emblem on her school uniform and nodded. “A High School—that’s a good school, not bad at all.”

A High School wasn’t among the very top schools in A City, but it had a good reputation and a fairly high rate of university admissions.

It was just that the uniform clearly didn’t fit Fang Zhuo well, and the color was somewhat faded—likely bought secondhand. She felt a faint sense of dissonance about it, though she didn’t dwell on it.

Seeing that the two were about to keep chatting, Fang Yiming abruptly asked, “What are you doing here?”

Before Fang Zhuo could speak, his colleague answered loudly, “Do you even need to ask? She came to bring you an umbrella! Honestly, Old Fang, you’re way too rigid.”

Fang Zhuo handed over the black umbrella in her hand, head slightly lowered, looking polite and deferential. “The umbrella was left by the door at home, so I brought it over for you.”

Without a word, Fang Yiming took the umbrella, nodded a farewell to his colleague, and turned to head outside.

Outside, the rain had eased considerably, falling gently now.

Fang Yiming gripped the umbrella handle and shook it open, glancing back at Fang Zhuo. Perhaps unable to find any real reason to be upset with her, he opened his mouth and said, flatly, “I’m going to pick up your brother first. Head home on your own.”

Fang Zhuo said evenly, “Alright.”

·

Yan Lie came out of cram school, head down typing on his phone, walking quickly beneath the shop awnings along the street. When he glanced up for a moment, he saw Fang Zhuo standing motionless by the roadside.

He slowed his pace until he was less than two meters from her. She seemed unaware of him, intently watching an ordinary building across the street.

Her half-lowered eyes, on someone else, might have suggested a kind of compassionate warmth, but on Fang Zhuo’s face, they only seemed cold and distant.

The skin on the tip of her nose and her ears had reddened slightly from the cold air, lending an inexplicable touch of stubbornness to her aloof, standoffish air, while making the mockery in her faint smile all the more apparent.

Yan Lie didn’t know her well. Although they’d been classmates for about a year, the words they’d exchanged probably didn’t add up to more than ten sentences.

He had always assumed that Fang Zhuo’s standoffish, unapproachable nature meant she was moody and unpredictable. But watching her stand there quietly now, like a silent tree, carrying the detached pride of an onlooker, he realized that might not be the case.

Before he could untangle that feeling, Fang Zhuo had already noticed his presence. She pulled her gaze back, let it sweep over him once, then pressed her lips down, withdrawing that elusive, mocking smile and returning to her usual unruffled calm. She didn’t linger long before turning and walking away in silence.

Yan Lie’s phone was still held up midair as he watched her retreating figure, feeling that her strange temperament had somehow become a little clearer to him.

Because he himself often wore that same expression toward a certain someone.

·

Fang Zhuo sat on the sofa, while her brother in name only crouched in front of the coffee table not far away, watching television. He held the remote in one hand while looking down at his phone, his gaze sweeping over the variety show on screen only now and then.

Outside the window, the rain had not quite stopped—fine, scattered drops slanting down, falling tirelessly.

Before long, Ms. Lu came home from work. Upon opening the door and seeing Fang Zhuo, she paused for a moment while changing her shoes, then called out her son’s name and loudly urged him to go do his homework. Without sparing Fang Zhuo another glance, she turned and walked into the kitchen to help Fang Yiming cook.

The noise of the range hood mixed with their low murmuring drifted out, not quite clear, occasionally punctuated by the clatter of dishware as Ms. Lu set the plates down with irritation.

Half an hour later, a drawn-out call came from the kitchen, summoning Fang Xiaodi to come eat.

Three sets of bowls and chopsticks were laid out on the table. The family of three sat together at one end of the rectangular table, beginning their own idle chatter over dinner.

On the variety show, the guests were playing some game, their exaggerated laughter set against the rambling conversation in real life, lending an extra touch of absurdity to the whole scene.

Fang Zhuo wanted to laugh.

When she had first arrived, Ms. Lu hadn’t welcomed her either, but back then this household hadn’t drawn such clear lines. It seemed Ms. Lu’s patience had completely run out over the wasted year that had passed.

Fang Zhuo sat on the sofa a little longer, and when the show cut to commercials, she got up, walked over to the dining table, sat down in the empty wooden chair, and quietly stared at them.

Perhaps uncomfortable under her gaze, Fang Yiming opened his mouth to say something, only to be interrupted by Ms. Lu reaching to pick up some food.

The boy, head bowed over his food, turned and glared at Fang Zhuo. His eyes held the fierceness of a young wolf cub. Apparently too disdainful to bother with her, he clicked his tongue, turned back around, and shifted his seat a little farther from her.

Fang Zhuo’s eyelids flickered. She smoothed out the fingers resting on her knee and blinked, expressionless.

She spoke. “This semester’s tuition hasn’t been paid yet.”

Fang Yiming tilted his chin toward Ms. Lu. “I told you to withdraw the money this afternoon. Did you bring it?”

“No need to rush.” Ms. Lu spoke in a soft, slow voice that should have sounded gentle, but always carried an undertone that made people uncomfortable, coming out sounding sarcastic instead. She said, “That matter I discussed with you before—have you thought it over?”

Fang Zhuo said, calm but resolute, “No.”

“It’s for your own good, too.” Ms. Lu’s chopsticks poked around in her plate as she carefully measured her tone. “I pulled a lot of strings to arrange this for you. If you go to No. 3 High School, the school will give you special attention. If you get into a top-tier university next year, all three years of tuition get refunded. And if your grades are good, the scholarship each semester is several thousand yuan. You can’t keep up with the others at A High School. Your teacher even called me last time to say your foundation is too weak.”

Fang Yiming remained silent the whole time.

Ms. Lu set down her chopsticks. “Don’t look at him. Look at me.”

Fang Zhuo turned her gaze toward her and repeated, “No.”

Fang Zhuo had never seen her own mother. For as long as she could remember, she had lived in the countryside with her grandmother.

Her grandmother hadn’t particularly liked her, and likewise hadn’t particularly liked Fang Yiming. She rarely showed Fang Zhuo much concern, seldom spoke to her, and certainly never discussed her mother with her. Fang Zhuo had only learned her mother’s full name from her birth certificate.

But her grandmother had never stopped her from going to school. Fang Zhuo’s tuition had been saved up from her grandmother’s land-loss insurance payments.

Sensing that her own death was approaching, she had gathered up every farm egg in the house, tucked a red cloth bundle against her body, and silently led Fang Zhuo, hobbling, to the school her granddaughter attended at the time.

No one knew what she had said to the school administrators, but in the end the homeroom teacher personally took Fang Zhuo to pull strings at A High School, arranging for her to take an exception exam. Only after passing did she transfer to that school.

By every measure, A High School was a good school, while No. 3 High School was a third-rate one—over the past two years, only a single-digit number of its students had cleared the cutoff for top-tier universities.

Fang Zhuo said, her tone hardening, “Give me the tuition money.”

In truth, Fang Zhuo had always understood. She was like a tumbleweed drifting through the desert—blown by the wind, she went wherever it carried her, wandering everywhere, welcomed nowhere.

Except the desert was vast and boundless, while her world was narrow and cramped, hemmed in on both sides by towering walls.

She despised that kind of life—lightless, lonely, and barren.

She wanted to climb over those high walls and gaze up at a sea of stars; she wanted to push through layer upon layer of shadow and step into the sun’s light.

As she grew up, countless people had looked at her with pity or sympathy, patted her shoulder, and told her, “You need to study hard.”

And so, in her world, studying was the only road open to her.

Either accept her fate, or study.

She had crawled and struggled her way to this point on sheer stubbornness alone, and she would let no one ruin her life now.