The head teacher of the second year of junior high school was姓胡.
He taught mathematics and wore a pair of square-framed glasses.
He always carried his arms behind his back when walking.
On the first day of school, he held a seating chart in his hand, stood on the platform, and called out a name.
One person went up to claim their seat.
“Qin Jianjun, third row by the window.”
“Wang Fuzi, second row.”
Bian Feifei listened intently.
She heard a long list of names, all of them boys.
Their seats were all in the front, by the window, bright and spacious.
When it was time to call the girls’ names, there were no many good seats left in the classroom.
“Bian Feifei.”
“Here.”
“The last row, behind the door.”
The desks and chairs in the last row were the oldest in the class.
The tabletops were pitted and covered with names and dirty words.
Facing the back door, it was drafty in winter and smelled strongly in summer.
She sat down, and the table shook.
She used her knees to steady it.
Under the deep scratch on the tabletop, there was a stroke of “恨” (hate) slanting across it.
When she got closer to look, it was a crooked and distorted “恨” character, as if someone had carved it with a knife one stroke at a time.
She pulled out her cuff and quietly covered the scratch, as if covering something shameful.
She looked back at the row in front.
Qin Jianjun was sitting in the third row by the window, looking down at his book, in a natural manner.
She recognized him.
He was good at math and was regarded as a treasure by the head teacher.
The head teacher walked past him and bent down to look at his test paper and nodded.
In the first class, the head teacher asked a question.
He first called two boys from the front row.
They couldn’t answer, and he didn’t get angry.
He said, “Think again.” When it was the last row’s turn, he glanced and said, “The one in the last row, don’t get distracted.”
Bian Feifei had a problem with a question on the test paper.
She clenched her pen, and her palm was covered in sweat.
She actually wanted to ask, but she didn’t dare.
The people in the front row couldn’t answer either.
If she asked the wrong question, it would make everyone laugh to death.
Once in a math test, she got over seventy points, higher than usual.
When the test paper was handed out, the head teacher passed by her seat and glanced, saying, “Did you copy it?”
“Didn’t copy it.” She whispered.
“If you didn’t copy, how could you get this score?” He said and turned away. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Some people laughed in the class.
Bian Feifei lowered her head, her face burning red, but she couldn’t refute a single word.
She did well, but it felt like she had done something wrong.
From then on, she dared not speak in class.
She curled her body into that shadow, wrote her notes densely, stared at the blackboard, but seemed to be non-existent.
She discovered that there was one advantage to sitting in the last row – no one could see you.
Whether your grades were good or not, whether your eyes were red from crying the night before, no one knew.
But there was also a disadvantage.
The disadvantage was that even you yourself would almost forget that you were sitting in this classroom.
That winter was cold, and the gap at the back door was large, allowing the wind to blow in.
She wrapped her hands in the sleeves of her coat, and her toes were numb from the cold.
The classmates by the window in the front row were enjoying the sun and the warm air slowly spreading from the radiator – that radiator was newly installed and only installed in the front half of the room.
Occasionally, a wisp of white mist would rise from the gap in the radiator, rising slowly and then dissipating in the air, never reaching the back.
She looked at that warmth for a long time.
When the bell rang for the end of class, Qin Jianjun turned around, four or five rows away, and looked at her.
There was no expression in that gaze, but she inexplicably felt as if someone had gently poked her.
She said to herself: One day, I will sit in the front.
Not to bask in the sun, but to let the head teacher know that those in the last row can also do math.
She wrote this sentence on the hidden notebook, one stroke at a time, very heavily.