Wen Qing almost instinctively spun around to look outside.
It seemed the cucumber distribution was still going on in the hallway, with quite a few people lingering.
Zhou Shixu didn't dodge.
The moment she turned around, he appeared right in front of her.
He made no attempt to hide the fact that he'd just overheard their conversation.
Seeing Wen Qing frozen in place, Zheng Shiyi gave her a gentle shake.
Whether it was her imagination or not, Wen Qing kept hearing faint sounds of teasing from all around.
The moment he stood up and walked into the hallway, he understood why Zhou Shixu had come.
A full half box of milk sat on the hallway floor.
Wen Qing leaned down to peek inside the box—about four or five rows.
"You divided up this much by yourself?"
"There's Xu Jinqi too. He said it was to honor you."
Wen Qing took the milk and stuffed it onto her desk row by row through the window, not forgetting to reply to Zhou Shixu as she did:
"So you're honoring me too, then?"
"Hm? Honoring you?"
Even though his tone sounded half-mocking, his expression was no different from usual—perhaps even a little distant, his thoughts impossible to read.
"Then what else? Is your reason any different from Xu Jinqi's? Why else would you give it to me?"
"Should be."
Wen Qing's hand trembled, and a row of milk cartons slammed onto the desk with a thud.
She pretended nothing had happened and straightened the row.
The summer hallway was sweltering, but the classroom had the air conditioning on, cold air blowing along the window onto Wen Qing's face.
Far from cooling her down, it felt like it was burning her cheeks instead.
Quick as a flash, the sharp-eyed Zheng Shiyi snatched two cucumbers and handed them to Wen Qing.
The cucumbers in the bag hadn't been washed yet, and their tiny white spines prickled gently against Wen Qing's palm.
Not painful, just a little ticklish.
She put the cucumbers into the cardboard box that had held the milk, and even told Zhou Shixu to bring one to Xu Jinqi.
As for the much-thought-of classmate Xu, the moment he saw the cucumber, he collapsed laughing on the spot.
·
Qingcheng No. 1 High School almost never enforced a two-day weekend policy for seniors.
Every Sunday, they were given a free afternoon.
Most boarding students went back to the dorms to wash up and tidy their things, while day students wandered around campus. Some classes would even play movies or shows like News Weekly on the Seewo whiteboard to help students relax.
Of course, none of these entertainments could compare to—playing on their phones.
Heaven only knew how entertaining a phone could be for students who'd been in class all week.
The two most strictly forbidden things in student life were dating and bringing phones to school.
But.
Fortune favors the bold, and starves the timid.
Right at the start of Sunday morning reading, Zheng Shiyi quietly sidled up to Wen Qing and asked if she'd brought her phone.
Only after confirming that everyone around them had brought theirs did Zheng Shiyi relax.
After all, there was no way they'd catch everyone and send them all home to reflect.
But before they could enjoy themselves for long, news came from Chen Zhi—inside info from the class monitor.
A thorough phone raid was coming that morning.
And it wasn't even school-organized—the whole point was that homeroom teachers could spot-check at any time.
"Spot-check? More like they're the ones having a fit."
Zheng Shiyi, busy searching for a good hiding spot, couldn't help but grumble.
After searching forever, she was at a complete loss.
Because rumor had it that Old Yang even searched through garbage bags.
At her wits' end, Wen Qing tore open a new black garbage bag and had the four of them turn off their phones and put them inside.
The garbage bag was thin—if you looked carefully, you could even make out the outlines of the phones inside.
The three of them watched helplessly as Wen Qing tied up the trash bag and put a new one in its place.
Chen Zhi couldn't help speaking up: "You're not going to throw it in the river, are you?"
Zheng Shiyi picked up on his words: "Then I think the trash can is a better option."
Duan Huaian looked at the three of them and said leisurely, "How about we just confess? Say we accidentally brought them in our pockets."
That remark was comparable to showing up late in the morning and telling the homeroom teacher the car broke down.
It was unanimously rejected by the three present.
The whole class was discussing the news of the phone search.
Unable to come up with a solution, the group wandered around the classroom gathering intel on other people's methods.
It turned out that eight out of ten people planned to hide their phones in the bathroom, and the remaining two planned to carry them on their persons and risk it.
At that rate, the bathroom would become a phone marketplace, and the homeroom teacher wouldn't even need to search—just round them all up in one sweep.
But it was only said that the search would happen in the morning; no word had spread about the exact time.
Even if they found a suitable hiding spot, there was no guarantee it would survive the whole morning.
Worse still, some seniors were hit with an inspection the very first time they brought their phones to school.
An honest person tries to misbehave just once, and this is what happens.
"I think I heard the fifth floor isn't checking phones. Why is it just our class? We're doomed."
"The fifth floor isn't checking?" Hearing the girl in front finish speaking, Wen Qing leaned forward slightly and asked.
"Anyway, no one's said they're checking, especially Classes One and Two—supposedly they never check phones at all."
Wen Qing's mind spun, and a new idea popped up.
If Classes One and Two weren't being checked, she'd just stash the phones there.
Ever since the basketball game, Wen Qing and Zhou Shixu's relationship seemed to have reached a turning point—not big, not small.
They still walked home together after school, as always.
But the distance between them seemed to be slowly closing.
Close, yet not daring to get too close.
Fate seemed to always favor cowards lacking opportunities.
During break, Wen Qing carried the black bag upstairs.
"Carried" wasn't quite the word—more like hugged.
The black plastic bag was too fragile; if she carried it by hand, it probably wouldn't withstand the weight of four phones and would give out on the spot.
Wen Qing walked to the window of Class One that faced the corridor. The moment she stopped, she saw a student sitting by the window playing a game.
She didn't want to interrupt him, so she stood by the window and waited.
But before he finished his game, he was startled by the shadow standing there.
He nearly threw his phone.
The near-throw caught the attention of a large portion of the class.
Including, of course, Xu Jinqi, who had been glancing around, lost in thought.
Seeing Xu Jinqi's gaze turn toward her, Wen Qing waved, signaling him to come out.
But Xu Jinqi misunderstood, and poked Zhou Shixu, who was working on problems.
Zhou Shixu followed his pointing finger toward the window and saw Wen Qing waving for someone to come out.
His pen was set down almost instantly.
Wen Qing stood by the door, thinking about how she was going to explain things to Zhou Shixu.
Although their relationship had warmed, Wen Qing still always felt a flustered, nervous unease lingering around him.
She called this feeling the discomfort of getting close again after having been distant.
Whether that was really what it was, who could say.
There was nothing else in the black bag—the edges of the phones pressed against the inside of the bag, faintly revealing their shapes.
Zhou Shixu seemed to know that Wen Qing wouldn't come looking for him unless something was up.
Almost as soon as he stepped out the door, he stood there waiting for her to explain.
Although it was the long break, the fifth-floor corridor was nearly empty.
Voices drifted faintly up from the other floors.
Empty and quiet.
It was probably because of the commotion they'd just caused.
Quite a few students by the windows of Class 1 were looking out curiously.
Wen Qing looked at Zhou Shixu's fingertips and said, "Hold out your hand."
The bag was too thin, and the phones inside too conspicuous.
When Wen Qing handed the bag to Zhou Shixu, the back of her hand brushed almost directly against his palm.
Both of them froze for an instant.
After withdrawing her hand, Wen Qing tucked it behind her back, curling it slightly.
Zhou Shixu held the bag in both hands without making any further move. He didn't even try to feel what was inside through the thin plastic.
He simply waited.
Waited for Wen Qing to speak.
The corridor was too empty; any sound would be amplified endlessly.
Zhou Shixu's personality meant he had few connections with others.
But one could never be too careful.
What if someone jealous reported them?
Wen Qing took a step forward.
She spoke at almost the lowest volume she could manage: "Our class is doing a phone check, so I'm leaving them with you for now."
Even though Class 1 had never checked phones, Wen Qing still added, a little uneasily, "If you get caught, just say it's my phone."
"They won't. They don't check mine."
Wen Qing was about to argue with his confident tone, but then remembered how the school favored its top students.
She paused twice before speaking: "The one with the blue case in there is my phone. The password is my birthday. Feel free to play with it if you want."
It was, of course, just a polite remark. With Zhou Shixu's temperament, apart from doing problems, he had no free time at all.
Besides, a phone was such a private thing—he would never want to pry.
"Why are there so many?"
"My deskmate's and the person behind me's too. Everyone brought theirs." The moment Wen Qing spoke, her guilty gaze darted toward the aisle.
"How kind of you, indeed."
Zhou Shixu lowered his eyes, staring at her guilty look.
But his tone was so ordinary, and Wen Qing was avoiding his gaze.
Not even the faintest trace of self-mockery in his eyes could be detected.
"We're all classmates, after all. Just helping out."
"Classmates? Helping out?"
"Yep."
Then what about me?
Am I to you just another classmate who can help you out?
When he didn't reply for a long while, Wen Qing withdrew her gaze and looked up at him.
Their eyes met in an instant.
The hurt and desolation he hadn't managed to hide in time were reflected clearly in Wen Qing's eyes.
But only for a moment.
Zhou Shixu concealed the emotions in his eyes so quickly that Wen Qing could find no reason to ask about them.
"Then I'll come find you to get them back when free activity starts this afternoon."
Wen Qing headed downstairs just as the preparatory bell rang.
The black bag still lay open in Zhou Shixu's palm as he watched her figure descend the stairs and disappear into the distance.
The self-mockery in his eyes outweighed the desolation.
By the fourth period of the morning, there was still no sign of a phone check in Class 10.
Watching the class monitor, who had spread the news, keep forcing apologetic smiles—
the homeroom teacher finally sauntered into the classroom at the start of fourth period, carrying his notebook and glass water cup.
The other classes were in session, so he couldn't chase all the students out into the corridor.
So Old Yang resorted to psychological tactics.
He walked up to each student one by one and asked if they had brought a phone.
Naturally.
Everyone said no.
Then he selectively spot-checked based on his mood.
Those picked had to step out while their desks were searched.
Every phone check, one or two unlucky souls would get caught.
Their phones confiscated, their parents called.
But since the afternoon was free activity, today's punishment was far lighter than usual.
The phones were simply confiscated and returned to the students at the end of the semester.
That's what they said, but somehow parents always found out their kids had brought phones to school.
The more open-minded parents would just laugh it off.
The less open-minded ones might make their kid crawl to school the next day.
They were students, after all.
Everyone harbored a fear of doing anything that violated the code of a good student.
And yet it was thrilling.
When the homeroom teacher marched off to the office with two phones and two caught students, the entire class let out a collective sigh of relief.
The gloom hanging over the classroom seemed to have been blown away.
The weather had already turned cool.
The school had long since shut off all the air conditioning except in the teachers' offices via central control.
With the AC off, the lingering summer heat crept back in.
The classroom carried a festive air of having survived a disaster.
Zheng Shiyi nearly jumped up to hug Wen Qing.
Meanwhile, the person being hugged took a dazed half-eternity to even react.
Her mind was still turning over the emotion in Zhou Shixu's eyes.
The math problem under her pen twisted through several turns without yielding a solution.
Yet the moment she flipped open the answer book, everything clicked.
It was such a simple line of thinking.
Why couldn't she ever make that leap?
The moment the free-activity bell rang, classmates bolted out of the room.
The basketball courts, ping-pong tables, badminton courts, even the soccer field on the playground were all swarmed and fought over.
Students who didn't go out to exercise or stroll stayed in the classroom, secretly playing on their phones or watching movies.
When Wen Qing reached Class One, the first thing that caught her eye was the movie playing on the Seewo whiteboard.
She stood at the door and peered inside.
Zhou Shixu wasn't at his seat.
Her heart instantly went "thud."
She'd even already figured out how she would confess to Class One's homeroom teacher—that it was her phone.
But the moment she turned to head downstairs, she found Zhou Shixu waiting for her at the stairway corner just outside Class One's door.
Most of the students had already flooded downstairs.
Figures in twos and threes drifted past Zhou Shixu's eyes.
He simply stared at the ground.
As if lost in thought.
Or as if buffering his emotions.
Even if she didn't want to believe it, she had to admit it.
From half a flight of stairs away, she could see his detachment from everything around him.
Wen Qing came down and stopped in front of Zhou Shixu.
Then she bent slightly, tilting her head to meet his eyes.
The distance between them didn't lessen with her bending down.
If anything—perhaps it was the lighting—it seemed as though the light refracting off the sun made Zhou Shixu's eyes suddenly brighten.
Wen Qing lowered her gaze to his fingertips, but didn't see the black bag she'd expected.
"Where's the phone?"
"The bag was too thin. It's in the classroom."
During free-activity time, the school's supervision of students was fairly lax.
Many students would simply wander in and take a seat wherever a class's whiteboard was showing something good.
The most packed rooms were inevitably the ones playing short videos.
There was always some student with a way to get the school's WiFi password.
Some even went so far as to risk it all and connect to their own phone hotspots.
Because Class One was playing a movie, not many students remained in the room.
Wen Qing slipped into the classroom slowly behind Zhou Shixu.
Along the way, she startled dozens of phone-playing classmates.
The black plastic bag sat brazenly right there in his desk.
It even clashed with the neat, tidy arrangement of books around it.
Wen Qing's gaze shifted to the inside of the desk.
The bag's opening was still tied in two dead knots.
He hadn't opened it.
Was it disinterest, or indifference?
After sitting back down at his seat, Zhou Shixu didn't immediately take out the bag for Wen Qing.
Instead, he opened the problem set on the left side of his desk and started solving.
Normally, Wen Qing would have been happy to watch him solve problems while watching a movie.
But right now, three people downstairs were eagerly waiting for their phones.
Her outstretched hand crossed over the moving pen tip and appeared in front of Zhou Shixu.
He put down his pen, the back of his hand brushing past Wen Qing's wrist.
At the moment of light contact, Wen Qing immediately withdrew her hand.
Their fingertips brushed together briefly.
Wen Qing's outstretched hand curled slightly.
Zhou Shixu hung the plastic bag on her palm.
It was almost like fleeing.
Wen Qing grabbed the bag and hurried downstairs.
She didn't even have time to hug him.
After bringing the phones back to class, Wen Qing sneaked upstairs again with a stack of math practice papers.
Xu Jinqi, quite conveniently, wasn't at her seat.
The first-round review was already more than halfway done.
Although she had only worked through five practice papers, Wen Qing had already noticed her own shortcomings.
She lacked problem-solving intuition—she didn't know where to start analyzing a question.
To put it in her math teacher's words: she simply hadn't done enough problems.
So she sat at Xu Jinqi's seat, slowly working through the problems.
When she got tired, she would turn her head to glance at Zhou Shixu.
Actually, the seat Zhou Shixu had switched to was just one row back.
The temporary deskmate he had sat next to for only two classes by pure chance was now sitting right in front of Wen Qing.
At first, Wen Qing just worked through problems slowly and didn't pay much attention.
Until a lollipop slowly rose up from below the desk.
Fujiya strawberry flavor.
When the little girl with twin pigtails appeared above the desk, Wen Qing couldn't hold back a smile.
Then the girl in the front seat turned around, holding the candy out to her with both hands.
A timid voice emerged: "This is a return gift."
"Hm?" Wen Qing didn't understand what she meant, a puzzled sound escaping her lips.
"I mean, last time you gave me a strip of candy, it was really good, thank you. This is a return gift."
Wen Qing smiled and quickly took it from her hands.
"Then I'll accept it. Can I ask your name?"
"Song Qiong. Song as in Tang-Song, and Qiong is the jade radical plus jing."
Wen Qing put the candy in her pocket, resting her arms on the desk and leaning forward slightly as she replied:
"That name sounds like a heroine from a wuxia tale."
But the person in front of her went still the moment the words left her mouth.
Song Qiong froze for a moment upon hearing Wen Qing's words.
Everyone's name almost always had its own story behind it.
Song Qiong was no exception.
Song Qiong.
"Song qiong"—"sending off poverty."
Her impoverished family circumstances always surfaced whenever people around her called her name.
Until someone spoke up in front of her for the first time with surprise in their voice.
Not detecting the origin of her name through the homophone.
But saying it with a smile.
Wow, your name sounds just like a heroine from a wuxia tale!
Wen Qing reached out and waved gently in front of Song Qiong.
As if afraid of embarrassing her, Wen Qing changed the subject in a tone of feigned sadness:
"So sad—you haven't even asked my name yet."
Even with that tone, the smile in her eyes was about to overflow.
Song Qiong came back to her senses and looked earnestly into Wen Qing's eyes:
"Wen Qing. Wen as in warm, Qing as in sunny day. I know it."
Not expecting to be so well-known, Wen Qing tilted her head slightly in surprise:
"Even though I know I'm quite capable, am I really that famous?"
"I saw you on the honor roll last time."
The slightly smug expression on Wen Qing's face vanished the instant she heard Song Qiong's reply.
"Does that photo look like me?"
The moment the words landed, Wen Qing stared straight at Song Qiong, her every word and gesture screaming: Please say it doesn't, I'm begging you, say it, say it!
God only knew how ugly Wen Qing thought that photo was.
The school's photography skills had never been any good.
"It doesn't really look like you either. Last time I heard someone call your name, so I remembered it."
"Oh, I see."
Their conversation fell almost word for word into Zhou Shixu's ears.
The pen in his hand paused for a long while.
He barely needed to guess to know what Song Qiong would say next.
"Then can we be friends?"
Sure enough.
Word for word.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wen Qing, who was about to agree.
Just how many more friends was she going to make?