Morning reading had just ended on Monday when Zhou Lan walked into the classroom carrying a stack of forms.
Outside the window, the sky had completely cleared. Sunlight spilled over the hallway railing, casting a bright, angled patch of light onto the edge of the blackboard. The relentless rain from a few days ago seemed to have vanished overnight from Linchuan. The classroom was livelier than usual; students in the back were discussing an upcoming basketball game, while others hurried to hand in late homework before the subject reps arrived.
Cheng Ye was flipping through his English textbook with his head down.
He turned the pages rapidly, one after another, looking less like he was memorizing vocabulary and more like he was checking how thick the book actually was.
Shen Zhiyao pulled his water bottle out from his desk drawer, his gaze lingering on the book in Cheng Ye’s hands for two seconds.
“What are you looking for?”
“A way to pass my English midterm.”
Cheng Ye spoke with absolute gravity. His finger stopped on the last page of the vocabulary index. He paused in silence for a moment, then shut the book.
“Turns out there isn’t one.”
Shen Zhiyao unscrewed his bottle cap. “It’s not in the textbook, but it might be in your head.”
“Right now, the only things in my head are physics formulas.”
“No wonder your English is bad.”
Cheng Ye turned his head, clearly caught off guard by the retorting reply. He stared at Shen Zhiyao for a moment before bursting into a sudden smile.
“Shen Zhiyao, have you gotten a lot wittier lately?”
Shen Zhiyao took a sip of water and didn’t reply.
Zhou Lan placed the forms on the podium and tapped the desk twice. The chatter in the classroom gradually subsided. Cheng Ye stuffed his English book back into his desk and sat up straight.
“The midterms are next Thursday and Friday,” Zhou Lan said. “After these exams, the grade level will adjust the course pacing for certain subjects. Use the next few days to thoroughly review everything we’ve covered.”
A quiet chorus of groans immediately echoed through the room.
Lin Po, slouched in the back row, was particularly vocal: “Teacher, news like that is better delivered after school!”
Zhou Lan glanced at him. “Should I tell you again individually after school, then?”
The class broke into laughter. Lin Po straightened up instantly and made a gesture of zipping his lips.
Zhou Lan didn’t press the matter, picking up the top sheet instead.
“To make review more efficient, we are setting up study partner pairs before this midterm. Two people per group, paired according to your single-subject scores from the last test. You will be responsible for helping each other in your respective strong subjects. Set aside at least half an hour every day; you can coordinate the specific time yourselves.”
Xu Zhi raised his hand. “Teacher, can deskmates pair up directly?”
“Not necessarily,” Zhou Lan said, looking down at the list. “It’s paired by test results, not seating.”
As soon as he finished speaking, whispers broke out around the classroom as students tried to guess their partners. Leaning against his chair, Cheng Ye nudged Shen Zhiyao gently with his elbow.
“What did you get in English?”
“One thirty-seven.”
Cheng Ye fell silent.
Shen Zhiyao looked at him. “What about you?”
“Can we talk about your physics first?”
“Ninety-six.”
Cheng Ye perked right back up. “Out of a hundred and ten?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not bad then,” he said. “Room for improvement.”
Noticing that Cheng Ye was deliberately dodging the question, Shen Zhiyao flipped open his workbook. “So what did you get in English?”
Cheng Ye cleared his throat. “The score isn’t important. What matters is potential.”
“How much?”
“Eighty-nine.”
Shen Zhiyao’s hand paused mid-page.
Cheng Ye added quickly, “I bubbled two multiple-choice questions wrong, or I would’ve cleared ninety.”
“English has a lot of multiple-choice questions.”
“Which makes bubbling two wrong completely normal.”
Shen Zhiyao stared at him for a moment without saying a word, though the corner of his mouth twitched slightly upward.
By the time Zhou Lan read their names, Cheng Ye was still trying to prove that an eighty-nine didn’t reflect his true ability.
“Shen Zhiyao and Cheng Ye. Shen Zhiyao will cover English; Cheng Ye will cover physics.”
Cheng Ye cut himself off.
He turned to Shen Zhiyao, a look of blatant surprise in his eyes.
“Us?”
Shen Zhiyao looked at the blackboard. “The teacher read it very clearly.”
“I know,” Cheng Ye said, dropping his voice. “I just think it’s quite a coincidence.”
They were already deskmates who attended class together every day, did busboy duties together, and occasionally went up to the rooftop together. Now, even their study partnership had brought them together—as if parts of life meant to be shared with others had naturally fallen onto each other instead.
Shen Zhiyao didn’t feel any aversion to it.
The thought occurred so naturally that it took him a few seconds to realize he hadn’t even stopped to consider how long this setup would last, as he used to do.
After finishing the list, Zhou Lan gave a few more instructions about the review schedule. When the bell rang, the classroom immediately surged into noise again. Some students dragged chairs over to find their partners, while others swapped test papers to check each other’s scores.
Cheng Ye spread two workbooks across the middle of their desks, planning earnestly: “Back vocabulary during lunch break, review physics during evening self-study. Sound good?”
“You’re not playing basketball during lunch?”
“Taking a break for a few days until midterms are over.”
“Does Lin Po agree?”
“He can barely save himself right now.”
Cheng Ye gestured toward the back row. Lin Po was holding a math test with a look of deep grief, listening to Xu Zhi analyze his mistakes; he clearly had no energy left for basketball.
Shen Zhiyao withdrew his gaze. “Works for me.”
Cheng Ye pulled out a pen and wrote two lines on a piece of scrap paper:
English: Teacher Shen
Physics: Teacher Cheng
He pushed the paper in front of Shen Zhiyao. “Let’s make it official.”
Shen Zhiyao glanced at it and drew a big cross over “Teacher Shen.”
Cheng Ye complained, “Why did you only cross out yours?”
“Because I didn’t agree to it.”
“Then I have to cross mine out too, or it looks like we’re not equal.”
“You can keep yours.”
“So you admit I’m a teacher?”
Shen Zhiyao pushed the scrap paper back. “I admit you’re thick-skinned.”
When the last morning class ended, most of the students headed for the cafeteria. Cheng Ye ran fast and returned within fifteen minutes, holding two cartons of milk in his hands.
He placed one of them on Shen Zhiyao’s desk.
“Tuition.”
Shen Zhiyao had just opened his English test paper. He looked up. “One carton per lesson?”
“If you can get me to score a hundred, two cartons a day.”
“I don’t drink that much.”
“Then I can pay cash.”
Shen Zhiyao ignored him, pulling out Cheng Ye’s paper from the previous English test instead.
The paper was messy. Circles were drawn all over the multiple-choice section, physics formulas were scribbled in the middle of reading passages, and an incomplete basketball hoop was drawn on the back of the essay page.
Shen Zhiyao stared at it for a moment. “What do you actually do during English class?”
“Listen to the lecture.”
“Then explain the physics formulas.”
“Inspiration struck, so I jotted them down.”
“And the basketball hoop?”
“That’s force analysis.”
Shen Zhiyao raised his eyes to look at him.
Cheng Ye lasted two seconds under his gaze before flipping the test paper over himself. “Let’s look at the missed questions first.”
Instead of starting with grammar, Shen Zhiyao had him redo a reading comprehension section.
Cheng Ye usually skimmed through questions quickly, but faced with English passages, he visibly slowed down. He would read the first paragraph, check the questions, and then flip back to the beginning when he couldn’t find the answer, his eyes shifting back and forth across lines of sentences.
Shen Zhiyao sat beside him, never rushing him.
The classroom was quiet, with only the sound of wind rustling the curtains. Sunlight poured onto the desk, washing out the pages of their workbooks.
A few minutes later, Cheng Ye picked an answer.
Shen Zhiyao asked, “Why this one?”
“Gut feeling.”
“Which sentence gave you that feeling?”
Cheng Ye looked back at the article and pointed to a line in the middle of the second paragraph.
Shen Zhiyao circled the sentence. “There’s a shift in tone here. The front part is the author’s original view; the attitude changes after that.”
“So I should choose based on what comes after?”
“Yeah.”
“But I don’t know this word.”
“You can infer the meaning from context.”
Shen Zhiyao took Cheng Ye’s pen, wrote down two key words in the margin, and connected them with a line. His handwriting was clean, fine, and steady, standing in sharp contrast to the scattered symbols on Cheng Ye’s paper.
Cheng Ye looked down at it for a moment, then asked out of nowhere, “Do you do reading sections like this, too?”
“Like what?”
“Breaking down every sentence.”
“Not every sentence. Just finding the useful parts.”
“Then how do you know which parts are useful?”
Shen Zhiyao paused briefly. “You just know once you do enough of them.”
Cheng Ye sighed. “How is that any different from my dad saying, ‘Once you eat enough meals, you’ll naturally learn how to cook’?”
“There’s a difference.”
“What difference?”
“I’ll teach you.”
The moment the words left his mouth, Shen Zhiyao fell silent himself.
The sentence hadn’t been thought through; it had slipped out naturally alongside the growing ease between them. Cheng Ye was taken aback for a moment, too, before leaning his arm on the edge of the desk and looking at him with a grin.
“Then I’ll be in your hands, Teacher Shen.”
This time, Shen Zhiyao didn’t correct the title. He simply lowered his eyes and pushed the next reading passage over to him.
Before the lunch break ended, Cheng Ye completed three reading passages.
He got three wrong on the first one, two wrong on the second, and only one wrong on the third. He held the test paper up toward the light outside the window, his tone laced with unmistakable pride.
“Talk about fast progress, right?”
“Repeating the same method three times isn’t considered fast.”
“Teacher Shen, do you need to submit an application before you compliment someone?”
“Yeah.”
“To whom?”
Shen Zhiyao put his pen away. “Depends on your midterm score.”
Cheng Ye pushed the milk a bit closer. “Consider this an advance payment on half of it.”
Shen Zhiyao looked down at the carton of milk, ultimately not pushing it back.
When evening self-study started, the two swapped roles.
Cheng Ye teaching physics was completely different from him doing English problems. He barely needed to look at the answer key; a single glance at the prompt was enough for him to sketch out a diagram on scrap paper.
“Don’t plug into formulas right away for this problem,” he said. “First, imagine there’s a car sliding down an incline.”
Shen Zhiyao looked at the incline he had drawn. “The problem says it’s a wooden block.”
“A wooden block lacks immersion.”
“And a car doesn’t?”
“Of course.” Cheng Ye added two wheels to the top of the incline. “Look, as it comes down from here, gravity splits into two directions—one along the incline, one perpendicular to it. Friction goes upward, so”
He drew arrows on the diagram as he spoke.
Cheng Ye’s handwriting wasn’t neat, but his lines were drawn with great precision. Under his explanation, complex problems seemed to take on tangible forms, no longer remaining cold letters and numbers on a test paper.
Shen Zhiyao wasn’t unfamiliar with physics to begin with, but because the curriculum pacing differed before and after his transfer, a few chapters hadn’t connected smoothly. He was used to catching up on his own by reading, but he rarely listened to someone break things down like this.
“Why can’t we use conservation of mechanical energy directly here?” he asked.
“Because friction is doing work.”
“The problem didn’t state that the incline was rough.”
Cheng Ye tapped the last line of the prompt with the tip of his pen. “It says ‘velocity decreases’ right here. If the incline were frictionless, it wouldn’t slow down for no reason.”
Shen Zhiyao looked at the spot he was pointing to and nodded after a moment.
Cheng Ye leaned back against his chair. “Get it now?”
“Yeah.”
“Then do the next one.”
“Aren’t you going to ask if I have other questions first?”
“People who truly understand will ask on their own,” Cheng Ye said with a chuckle. “And you already asked just now.”
Shen Zhiyao held his pen, not moving right away.
He noticed that although Cheng Ye usually spoke nonchalantly, he was surprisingly patient when explaining problems. He wouldn’t show impatience just because a question was simple, nor would he simply write down the answer for someone to copy. He would try several different explanations until Shen Zhiyao truly understood.
Just like many of the things Cheng Ye did every day.
They seemed offhand on the surface, but every step was carried out with extraordinary earnestness.
Halfway through evening self-study, Zhou Lan came in through the back door to do rounds.
When she passed by them, she paused to look at the English test paper and physics workbook on their desks.
“How is the partnership going?”
Cheng Ye answered immediately, “Exceptionally well. Shen Zhiyao has already successfully raised my English score by six points.”
Zhou Lan asked, “The midterms haven’t happened yet—how do you know it went up by six points?”
“I missed three fewer questions on those three reading passages just now compared to the first time. That’s two points per question.”
“Looks like you haven’t slacked on math, either.”
Zhou Lan chuckled, then looked at Shen Zhiyao. “What about physics?”
Shen Zhiyao said, “He explains it very clearly.”
Cheng Ye had been acting like it was all natural just a moment ago, but hearing this assessment made him go quiet for a second.
Zhou Lan nodded. “Peer tutoring isn’t a one-way street. Being able to clearly explain what you know is also a form of review. Keep at it.”
After she left, Cheng Ye tapped the desk lightly with his pen.
“Say that again.”
Shen Zhiyao didn’t look up. “What?”
“What you just said.”
“Forgot.”
“You clearly said I explain it very clearly.”
“The teacher asked, so I just gave an objective evaluation.”
“An objective evaluation can be repeated.”
Shen Zhiyao wrote down his answer in his workbook. “Next problem.”
Looking at Shen Zhiyao’s slightly reddened eartips, Cheng Ye didn’t press him further. He suppressed the smile in his voice and lowered his head to draw diagrams again.
Over the next few days, their routine gradually solidified.
English during lunch break, physics during evening self-study. Cheng Ye prepared his missed-question log in advance every day, while Shen Zhiyao picked out reading passages for him during class breaks. Sometimes when Cheng Ye went to the office to submit homework, he would return to find a sheet filled with key vocabulary notes placed neatly on his desk; sometimes before Shen Zhiyao even opened his workbook, Cheng Ye would have a sharpened pencil and a ruler placed right by his hand.
They hadn’t explicitly agreed on these details, yet both had come to know what the other needed next.
On Wednesday noon, when Shen Zhiyao returned from the office, Cheng Ye hadn’t shown up yet.
He sat in his seat, flipped open his English paper, and waited for a few minutes.
The lunch break bell had already rung, and the classroom was growing quiet. Lin Po was sleeping face-down on his desk in the back row, while Xu Zhi wore headphones, memorizing words. Outside the window, footsteps of students running past occasionally echoed before quickly fading down the stairwell.
Shen Zhiyao glanced at the doorway.
Cheng Ye usually returned earlier than he did.
After two more minutes passed, he pulled out his phone and opened their chat box.
Their last message was still stuck on the previous night.
Cheng Ye had sent a photo of scrap paper filled with physics formulas, asking if he had worked out the final problem. Shen Zhiyao had replied with the answer, and Cheng Ye had responded with an exaggerated clapping emoji.
Shen Zhiyao’s finger rested on the input box.
He wanted to ask where Cheng Ye was, but then felt that since he was only a few minutes late, there was no need to send a message specifically for it.
Just as he was about to set his phone down, the back door was pushed open.
Cheng Ye walked in carrying a stack of homework notebooks, the hair over his forehead slightly tousled by the wind. He set the notebooks on the podium and walked quickly back to his seat.
“The English teacher asked me to help haul test papers at the last minute,” he said. “Have you been waiting long?”
“No.”
Shen Zhiyao placed his phone face down on the desk.
Cheng Ye sat down. His gaze landed on the test paper already spread out in front of Shen Zhiyao, then shifted to the unopened carton of milk at the corner of the desk.
“Why haven’t you drunk it yet today?”
“Not thirsty.”
“Shall we start?”
“Mm.”
Cheng Ye pulled out a pen and lowered his head to read the first passage.
Sitting beside him, Shen Zhiyao suddenly realized that he had been waiting for him just now.
Not because of the tutoring task assigned by the teacher, nor because the midterms were approaching.
Simply because at this time, Cheng Ye was supposed to be sitting right here.
The thought made him feel a bit unaccustomed, yet it didn’t make him want to pull back.
The breeze outside drifted through the half-open window, fluttering a corner of the test paper. Cheng Ye reached out to hold the paper down, sliding the carton of milk toward him while he was at it.
“Drink it first, or you’ll forget again in a bit.”
Shen Zhiyao glanced at him, then unwrapped the straw.
The day before the midterms, the two finished their final study session together.
Cheng Ye’s English correction notebook had accumulated over ten pages of notes, and Shen Zhiyao’s physics workbook was filled with numerous new diagrams. There were inclines, cars, ropes drawn like springs by Cheng Ye, and even a temporary bridge built just to explain a force distribution problem clearly.
Flipping through the final page, Cheng Ye let out a long sigh of relief.
“If I still fail tomorrow, it’s just proof that English and I aren’t meant to be.”
“You got a hundred and four on yesterday’s practice test.”
“Practice tests don’t count.”
“Why?”
“Because you picked the questions. You might have had an emotional bias toward me.”
Shen Zhiyao capped his pen. “Test questions don’t have emotions.”
“The person choosing them does.”
“I wasn’t biased either.”
Cheng Ye turned his face to look at him. “Really?”
Shen Zhiyao met his gaze for two seconds before shifting his eyes away. “At least not when it comes to scores.”
Cheng Ye froze for a moment.
Shen Zhiyao was already looking down and tidying his desk, as if those words had been said offhandedly. But as Cheng Ye watched him slide his correction log into his desk, the corners of his mouth slowly curved up.
“Then I’ll work hard to score higher,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to waste Teacher Shen’s bias over these past few days.”
“I said I wasn’t.”
“What I heard was ‘not when it comes to scores’.”
Shen Zhiyao didn’t explain.
After evening self-study ended, the two walked out of the classroom together. The hallway was crowded, light spilling across the rows of railings, while a few lamps still glowed on the distant field.
At the stairwell, Cheng Ye suddenly stopped.
“After the English exam tomorrow, wait for me at the entrance of the exam room for a sec.”
Shen Zhiyao asked, “Is something up?”
“Compare answers.”
“Don’t you usually hate comparing answers after an exam?”
“I used to dislike it,” Cheng Ye said. “Now that someone’s taught me, I ought to let him know the results right away.”
Students brushed past them, bringing a flurry of noisy footsteps.
Shen Zhiyao stood in place, taking in Cheng Ye’s matter-of-fact expression, before saying after a moment, “Got it.”
Cheng Ye smiled. “Then it’s a deal.”
They walked downstairs together.
Moonlight fell into the shadows of the trees in front of the teaching building. The wind blowing from the direction of the sports field already carried the slightly warm air of early summer.
That evening, after finishing his last set of physics problems, Shen Zhiyao opened his blue logbook.
He wrote down the date on a new page, then glanced out the window.
The weather was clear; there were no clouds in the night sky.
Holding his pen, he paused for a moment before adding a line after the weather entry:
Cheng Ye memorized twenty-six words today.
After writing it, he remembered that three of those words were ones Cheng Ye had still been misspelling right up until school ended, so he added another sentence behind it:
And three more that will need to continue tomorrow.