During their school years, three things were especially popular among students: braided friendship bracelets, folded lucky stars, and handwritten lyric notebooks.
For the 1996 Spring Festival, Wen Zhiting bought Wen Xi and Zhou Jingchen each a new portable cassette player as a New Year gift. It was delicate and compact, easy to carry, and came with earphones.
But the two used them very differently.
Zhou Jingchen used his to listen to English learning tapes, while Wen Xi used hers to listen to pop songs.
The girls in class all had lyric notebooks, filled with handwritten song lyrics. Wen Xi had one too, and the pages were decorated with little hearts, flowers, and other doodles.
When Zhou Jingchen sat wearing headphones memorizing vocabulary, Wen Xi would sit beside him wearing hers, listening to songs by Xiao Hu Dui (Little Tigers). She would sing along, swaying her head and dancing.
When Zhou Jingchen asked her to keep her voice down, she would turn the volume up right beside his ear. If he said he would go sleep in the room across the hall, she would immediately sulk and ignore him the whole evening.
But the next morning she would cheerfully order him around again, asking him to serve her breakfast.
Zhou Jingchen would carefully pick out every chopped green onion from her bowl of noodles before pushing the bowl in front of her.
Wen Xi liked the flavor green onions added to soup—but she refused to actually eat them. She was an extremely picky girl.
Stuffing a big bite of noodles into her mouth, she mumbled,“I’m going dancing tonight. After school you can just take the bus home by yourself.”
“Okay,” Zhou Jingchen replied.
He lowered his head and helped her put on her socks. His slender fingers brushed lightly over the faint injury on her right foot—she had sprained it during dance practice not long ago, and it still hadn’t fully healed.
After entering Second High School, Wen Xi’s grades were still at the bottom of the class. Xiang Qin knew her daughter wasn’t academically inclined and had already started planning another path for her—to enter an arts academy in the future.
So she enrolled Wen Xi in a more professional dance class, three times a week. The tuition wasn’t cheap. Their teacher was a famous provincial dance performer who had even appeared on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala.
Just like before, sometimes Zhou Jingchen would accompany Wen Xi to practice after school. Other times Xiang Qin or Wen Zhiting would pick her up after work and take her to the dance studio.
One day, after class, Wen Xi went to the dance studio alone.
Practice ran very late that night. Wen Zhiting had originally planned to pick her up, but something urgent came up. He called the teacher and asked her to take the bus home herself.
At home, Zhou Jingchen waited and waited, but Wen Xi didn’t return. It was already dark, and he started to worry.
Leaning on his crutch, he went to wait at the gate of their residential compound.
After a long time with no sign of her, an uneasy feeling crept into his chest, so he slowly walked to the entrance of the alley to wait.
After a while, he saw a bicycle approaching from afar.
The bike stopped steadily in front of him.
It was Chen Xu.
Chen Xu smiled and greeted him,“I’ve safely delivered your sister back.”
Zhou Jingchen gave a slight nod.
Wen Xi hopped down from the back seat of the bicycle, her face blooming like a peach blossom.
“Thank you for bringing me home, Brother Chen Xu!”
“No problem. See you,” Chen Xu said with a wave before turning the bike around and riding away.
Zhou Jingchen’s eyes were shadowed as he quietly asked,
“Did Uncle Wen not come to pick you up?”
“My dad got busy and told me to take the bus. But just as I came out of the dance studio, I ran into Brother Chen Xu.”
“Brother Chen Xu is really nice. He even rode me home, and he still has a long ride back to his place.”
Left and right, it was “Brother Chen Xu” this and “Brother Chen Xu” that.
Wen Xi didn’t notice the increasingly complicated expression in the boy’s eyes beside her.
For a period of time afterward, Wen Xi suddenly became very busy.
Whenever Zhou Jingchen stayed overnight at her house, he would see her sitting at her desk folding lucky stars. The colorful plastic strips were folded into tiny stars and placed into a large transparent jar.
Wen Xi started folding them because other people were doing it.
Most students filled a jar of stars to give as gifts, but Wen Xi did it because she heard that if you fold 1,000 stars, a wish will come true.
But after folding them for a while, she got bored and eventually lost the materials somewhere.
Zhou Jingchen asked if she had finished.
Not wanting him to know she had quit halfway again, she lied and said yes.
Whenever Wen Xi lied, she unconsciously touched the tip of her nose. Zhou Jingchen noticed.
He asked if she had given them away.
“Yes,” she said.
Zhou Jingchen lowered his eyes and didn’t ask who she gave them to.
From that moment on, he spoke even less than before and focused almost entirely on his studies.
In the second half of the semester, Wen Xi suddenly grew taller and became more slender. At the same time, her female physical features began to develop.
Most of the girls in class were going through puberty. When they ran, their chests bounced, which made them embarrassed during physical education class.
Xiang Qin bought Wen Xi several training bras in pink, white, and pale yellow.
One evening after dinner, Wen Xi curled up on the sofa, hugging Xiang Qin’s waist and chatting while lying in her arms.
“Mom, the girls in my class all hunch their backs when they walk, afraid people will notice.”
Xiang Qin stroked her hair gently.“That’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a normal part of growing up.”
“There’s a girl in my class named Li Na. She studies well and is very quiet. But she’s tall and strong, and her chest is big. Some people secretly mock her, calling her ‘big-boobs girl’ and saying disgusting things like men must have touched her to make them that big.”
“Oh my, those awful girls!” Xiang Qin sighed.“You must never laugh at her. Those people are either immature or ignorant. As girls grow older, their chests develop—it’s a sign the body is becoming healthier and more mature. Every girl goes through it.”
“I know. Our dance teacher told us the same thing.”
The next day they had PE class.
While running, Li Na kept her shoulders hunched and was scolded by the teacher, who told her to straighten up.
Because she was tall and sturdy, her chest bounced noticeably when she ran. Many students laughed at her, and her face turned as red as an apple.
Wen Xi couldn’t stand it.
She took off her jacket and threw it on the ground, tucking the hem of her T-shirt into her pants, revealing her slim waist and chest.
Several boys on the field whistled at her, and Chen Xu, who was playing basketball nearby, noticed as well.
Most girls their age tried to hide these changes by wearing loose jackets or hunching their backs.
But Wen Xi openly showed it—she was the first.
She shouted angrily at the crowd:
“What are you staring at? Your mom and sisters have them too!”
“You’re ignorant, boring, and stupid! If your brains worked properly, you wouldn’t be laughing at us!”
“Can’t you grow up too? Is something wrong with your body?”
“My chest is bigger than your tiny matchstick thing, so what!”
“And some of you girls—you’re girls too, yet you mock other girls. Are you brain-damaged? I hope you never develop!”
Her blunt words were like a barrage of cannon fire, leaving everyone speechless.
From the stands, Zhou Jingchen held a textbook in his arms, pressing his fist to his lips as he laughed so hard his shoulders shook.
As Wen Xi passed him, she flicked her ponytail proudly and winked.
Because the running formation had become chaotic, the PE teacher punished the entire class with an extra 800 meters.
After school, Wen Xi was too tired to speak.
She had danced for three hours the night before, and then ran so much today that her legs trembled.
On the bus there were no seats.
Someone gave up a seat for Zhou Jingchen. As soon as he sat down, Wen Xi grabbed his backpack from his lap and sat sideways on his legs.
Zhou Jingchen’s thighs instantly tensed, and his breathing grew heavier. His hands didn’t know where to go.
Seeing the surprised looks around them, Wen Xi clasped her hands with a bright smile and explained,
“My little brother, my little brother!”
Afraid she might fall, Zhou Jingchen gently wrapped an arm around her waist.
“Why don’t you take the seat? I can stand,” he murmured.
“That wouldn’t be right. The seat was given to you.” She tilted her head and touched his cheek.“Little brother, my legs hurt today. Let me sit like this for a while, okay?”
Her scent filled his nose—sweet and soft, like fresh milk or summer ice cream.
As the bus bumped along, her soft hair occasionally brushed the tip of his nose.
He closed his eyes slightly and tightened his arm around her waist…
Mainly so she wouldn’t fall.
What no one except Zhou Jingchen knew was that two days later, Wen Xi secretly placed a small note and two brand-new bras into Li Na’s backpack. She had asked Xiang Qin to help buy them.
The note read:
“For the cutest girl. This isn’t something to be ashamed of. We’re all the same.”