No one knew exactly when the class bell would ring.
The noisy corridor gradually quieted as everyone waited.
But Wen Qing showed no intention of retreating.
She knew clearly that Zhou Shixu would give her an answer.
During the silent five minutes just now, she had imagined countless outcomes.
Yet she had never guessed the answer he would actually give.
"Afraid."
The moment Zhou Shixu spoke, Wen Qing froze for an instant.
Taking advantage of her stunned pause, Zhou Shixu gently took the soy milk carton from her hands.
After tidying all the empty cartons into the paper bag, Zhou Shixu leaned down slightly, bringing his eyes level with hers:
"It's not blame. It's just fear. Fear that you'll make too many new friends, and will—"
"Will not want you anymore, is that it?"
Only after finishing the second half of his sentence did Wen Qing suddenly realize how far out of line those words were.
They were childhood friends, plain and simple—what right or standing did she have to not want him?
At most, his fear was simply a fear of being neglected, of their relationship drifting apart.
She took a step back, turned, and started to head downstairs.
The stairwell felt much emptier now.
Wen Qing kept listening for any movement from Zhou Shixu.
His words drifted softly, softly into her ears: "Yes."
Even though the distance between them had widened, and the winter air was unusually cold.
But Zhou Shixu's words held some inexplicable magic, burning her chilled earlobes until they were hot.
"Then tonight after school, I'll walk home with you."
"Okay."
In senior year, the only things as unavoidable as exams were the various meetings.
Mobilization assemblies. Award ceremonies.
Students always showed extraordinary enthusiasm for this kind of meeting.
It could be summed up in one sentence: as long as there's no class, anything goes.
Of course.
The weariness of attending meetings doesn't take until working life to develop.
It starts to sprout gradually in college.
As the weather turned cold, the mobilization assembly that was usually held on the sports field was moved into the conference hall.
Rebranded as the First Mock Exam Summary Conference plus the 150-Days-Until-Gaokao Mobilization Assembly.
To prevent students from clogging the staircases on their way up.
Classes far from the stairs sat on the outer edges and left first when it ended.
The classes right next to the stairs naturally took the middle seats—and as it happened, Class One and Class Ten were seated together.
Even though Zhou Shixu had dropped to third place in this mock exam, he was still chosen as the outstanding student representative to give a speech.
Most of the teachers simply took it for granted that he'd just been having an off day.
Not a single person called his exam results a decline in his academic ability.
Including himself—he didn't seem to care much either.
Wen Qing pulled a bag of pistachios from her pocket.
Tearing the bag open, she pressed the opening between two fingers, snapped it apart, and tossed the green kernels into her mouth.
Her gaze swept past the classes in front and landed on Zhou Shixu, who was preparing to accept his award.
She could only catch a rough glimpse of his back.
So boring.
"Wen Qing?"
She stopped what she was doing and looked toward the voice.
It was the girl she'd seen in Zhou Shixu's class last time.
"Song Qiong?" Wen Qing called her name while pointing to the seat beside her, gesturing for her to sit.
Students from Class One arrived one after another, and before Wen Qing and Song Qiong even finished greeting each other, Xu Jinqi appeared out of nowhere.
Not forgetting to grab a handful of the pistachios in her hand along the way.
Well, "a handful"—in reality, more than half the bag was plundered.
Wen Qing smacked the armrest beside her and glared at him.
All thunder, no rain.
Xu Jinqi popped three in a row into his mouth.
Wen Qing sat down huffing, split the remaining half, and handed a portion to Song Qiong.
She didn't forget to threaten Xu Jinqi either: "When Zhou Shixu comes down later, I'll have him beat you up."
"Our little Zhou would never have the heart to hit me."
That said, Xu Jinqi quietly put a small handful back.
"Your little Zhou, my foot. I'll beat you up first."
Xu Jinqi hastily changed the subject: "What are you doing over the break in a couple days?"
The school, in a rare display of mercy, was giving students a full two days off.
Though they made sure to remind students that once they came back, it would be straight through until New Year.
"Studying, obviously. With grades like mine, if I don't study I'm done for."
The lights in the venue suddenly went out, and Xu Jinqi took the opportunity to sit down behind the two of them.
Only a single lamp lit the speaker's podium.
In the darkness, the students' chattering went on endlessly.
Zhou Shixu didn't so much as furrow his brow. The light shone down from above, the shadow of his hair falling over his lashes.
Even the fingertips pinching his script looked impossibly pale, their shadow stretching from the podium all the way down to the audience.
The entire assembly hall seemed like a stage set prepared just for him.
The noise that the director had scolded into silence countless times without success—
vanished the instant he stepped up.
After a brief pause, an even louder wave of discussion swept through.
It was the first mobilization assembly of senior year, held out on the sports field.
The sun had been brutal, and the students had been more or less impatient.
And the podium had been far too distant.
Now, in this enormous room, only that one lamp was lit.
Everyone's focus converged on that single point.
Yet Zhou Shixu's expression remained as calm as ever.
No one knew whether, from where he stood, he could even see the tangled gazes below.
An even, untroubled voice rang out.
Wen Qing tossed two more pistachios into her mouth.
Zhou Shixu was far from the audience seats, but she could clearly hear the discussions around her.
Humans really were contradictory creatures.
Right now, if anyone said one bad word about Zhou Shixu, Wen Qing might well have gotten into a fight with them.
But when everyone around her was praising him, a faint sense of loss welled up inside her, threatening to drown her.
Worried the speech might fall flat, the school leaders had specifically instructed Zhou Shixu to prepare more material this time.
Not to just say a few careless words and wrap things up like last time.
Wen Qing had always found his speeches boring.
He never got nervous, never improvised, never joked around.
He simply read off the page.
It was as if, during his turn to speak,
there was no possibility of anything unexpected ever happening.
As Zhou Shixu's final note fell, the lamp on stage went out and the house lights came on.
The converging gazes had yet to disperse.
Practically everyone watched as he walked back to his seat and sat down behind Wen Qing.
Under everyone's gaze, Zhou Shixu leaned slightly forward and reached out to take the bag of pistachios from Wen Qing's hands.
The lights went out at that very moment.
The commotion in the hall grew louder still.
Words speculating about the two of them drifted in from practically every corner, every direction.
Wen Qing didn't understand what he meant by it.
She turned her head slightly to look back.
The lights were too dim; she couldn't make out Zhou Shixu's movements at all.
The student speaking on stage, no matter how impassioned the tone, could no longer reach her ears.
Taking advantage of the darkness, Wen Qing reached her hand through the gap between the seats.
"Give me some back."
When sight is nearly lost, the other senses are amplified infinitely.
But the feeling of nut shells landing in her palm never came, as she'd expected.
Instead, a warmth touched her fingertips.
Like being brushed against, deliberately or not—or perhaps just lightly tapped.
Wen Qing instinctively curled her fingertips and pulled back.
Before her wrist could touch the gap, someone gently caught it and pulled it back.
Her palm was pressed against his knuckles, then she felt a few pistachios nudging against it.
The moment he released her wrist, Wen Qing clenched her hand and drew it back.
A grumble leapt from the back of her seat into Zhou Shixu's ears:
"Only this few? Stingy."
Just as the complaint left her mouth, Wen Qing aimed her fingertips at a pistachio and pinched at it for ages with no reaction.
She simply popped it into her mouth.
The expected feeling of biting into a shell never came; instead, the nut's fragrance spread through her mouth.
She gave the remaining few in her hand a gentle squeeze.
All of them were shelled kernels.
Wen Qing stuffed them all into her mouth at once, and before she'd even finished chewing, reached her hand back again.
Though everything around them was pitch black, Zhou Shixu somehow sensed it, and the kernels landed squarely in her palm.
"Last time. Too many will give you internal heat."
"I didn't eat that much—less than Xu Jinqi did just now."
Before Wen Qing could even respond to that, Xu Jinqi's flustered explanation to Zhou Shixu reached her ears.
As if afraid Zhou Shixu wouldn't believe it.
The conversation escalated all the way to swearing oaths.
Zhou Shixu's gaze slid past Xu Jinqi's oath-swearing fingertips to Wen Qing:
"How many more?"
Two open hands were held out in front of him.
"Ten."
The lighting was too dim for Wen Qing to see Zhou Shixu's slight frown; she simply stretched her fingertips forward a little more.
The shelled pistachios disappeared at a predictable pace.
All ten were devoured at lightning speed, and Wen Qing reached her hand back once more.
The expected touch of kernels never came.
Instead, her palm received a smack, neither light nor heavy.
A cool sensation spread past the tingling in her palm.
Wen Qing turned around, half-kneeling on her seat to look back.
The lights in the aisle happened to switch on with her movement, the glow faintly illuminating the edge of where they sat.
Zhou Shixu's eyes, carrying a hint of provocation, were reflected in her pupils.
Wen Qing leaned forward, elbows propped on the top of the seatback.
"Sit properly."
Hearing Zhou Shixu's half-commanding tone, Wen Qing glared at him.
Then, mimicking his earlier stern tone in an even more commanding voice, she said:
"Hand out."
Zhou Shixu, not understanding, extended his hand at the sound of her movement.
Before he could react, his palm received a light slap.
She believed she'd used her full strength.
But to Zhou Shixu, it felt like nothing more than a tickle on his palm.
Even the lingering sensation kept plucking at his heartstrings.
The culprit who had thrown his heart into chaos turned around with a smile the moment she succeeded.
She even hummed a tuneless melody.
The venue remained noisy throughout; with the lights off, the murmur of conversation never ceased.
After chatting with Song Qiong, Wen Qing turned around to chat with Xu Jinqi.
She even leaned across an entire row of people to chat animatedly with Zheng Shiyi at the other end.
The mobilization assembly was certainly living up to its name.
Zhou Shixu silently retracted his earlier thought that it hadn't hurt.
For a full hour.
The tingling in his palm never stopped echoing in his heart.
The three-day-long holiday arrived.
The entire campus was filled with a joyful, elated mood.
The lifelessness of the previous day was swept away entirely.
Before leaving, the homeroom teacher didn't forget to remind the students not to neglect their studies.
And so Wen Qing walked out of the classroom door with her backpack nearly bursting at the seams.
Whether she'd actually study was another matter.
But not a single book could be left behind.
Zhou Shixu walked to the landing between the fourth and fifth floors, lowered his eyes to look down, and spotted someone leaning against the railing with a backpack twice as thick as hers.
She could barely straighten her waist.
When school started, she'd no doubt complain everywhere about why she'd brought so many books.
When he reached the same landing, Zhou Shixu stepped forward, grabbed one of the shoulder straps of Wen Qing's backpack, and slipped it off her arm.
Almost the instant he made a move, Wen Qing understood his intention.
She simply went along with his motion and took the backpack off herself.
Qingcheng No. 1 High School's uniforms for summer, autumn, and winter were all blue and white.
The pink backpack now looked glaringly conspicuous in Zhou Shixu's hand.
Unlike the pale pink of the bag's body, the logo and the wide strap were cherry-blossom pink.
This brand of backpack had a 100% matching rate at school—everyone had one.
In fact, nearly every color of the same design could be found on campus.
But Wen Qing's pink was the only one no one else had ever carried.
Even this niche color somehow looked bursting with energy on her.
It perfectly offset the worn-out look that came from getting up before dawn for school.
But now, in Zhou Shixu's hand, it had an entirely different flavor.
It clashed completely with his whole persona.
As if the backpack's greatest purpose was to tell everyone around that he was already taken.
Wen Qing had always felt that a boy carrying a girl's bag was a rather intimate gesture.
Entirely different from helping move book boxes.
It seemed that Zhou Shixu walking beside her with both their backpacks proclaimed that their relationship was something out of the ordinary.
Once packed full, the backpacks were clearly not light.
But even carrying them one-handed, Zhou Shixu could still use his free hand to steady Wen Qing from time to time, keeping her from bumping into people when she drifted off too much.
"Planning to study over the break?" Taking advantage of a moment when the two of them drew close, Zhou Shixu asked, eyes lowered.
"Why else would I carry so many books? When I get home, I'm going to work like crazy and secretly out-study all of you."
As if to emphasize the word "secretly," Wen Qing's voice grew softer and softer with every word.
Anyone who didn't know better might think the two of them were plotting something big.
"Fine."
While the crowd dispersed down the stairs, the area grew sparse with people. Wen Qing hopped down the last few steps, turned, and looked at Zhou Shixu slowly descending with two backpacks in hand.
She couldn't help laughing out loud again.
Apart from the somewhat bewildering laughter, Zhou Shixu could even hear smugness in it.
"Uncle Zhou and Auntie Shi still aren't coming home?"
"Mm."
Wen Qing bounced another couple of steps, dodging the crowds around them.
"Then just come stay at my place over the break."
"Hm?"
"My mom keeps thinking the two of us are fighting. She's been nagging me every few days to make up with you already."
"So you want me to serve as proof?"
The weather was cold, and the ends of their words carried warm puffs of mist.
The crowd surged like a weave, pressing Wen Qing right up in front of Zhou Shixu.
When he spoke, he even had to bend down to ask.
Perhaps it was his breath's mist drifting across her cheek, or perhaps the wind was too strong.
Either way, a rush of heat spread across Wen Qing's face.
"I need someone else to prove that?"
Looking at her side profile with its prideful expression, Zhou Shixu said, "No, you don't."
How could she possibly need proof?
Let alone friends she hadn't made in ages.
Even complete strangers—
the moment she walked up and showed them kindness,
everyone would choose to draw close to her.
No exceptions.
Seeing Zhou Shixu lost in thought, Wen Qing waved a hand in front of his face.
"What are you thinking about? You're even frowning."
"There's a problem I can't solve."
Mentioning Wen Qing actually piqued her interest: "So there are problems even you can't solve? Can't you understand the answer either?"
"There's no answer. It just says 'omitted.'"
Walking out of the school gate, Wen Qing stood at Zhou Shixu's side, separated from him by their bulky backpacks.
"The person who wrote this problem is way too devious. Could it be that the problem is actually unsolvable, and he never expected anyone to actually work on it?"
"Probably not."
Yellowed leaves, curled at the edges and showing no trace of life, drifted down along the road.
Wen Qing stepped on them as she walked.
The rustling filled the air.
Seeing that Zhou Shixu's expression was still somewhat grave, Wen Qing spoke up again:
"Or maybe there's another possibility—this problem is just a dead end. Maybe even the person who wrote it can't solve it. Just stop thinking about it."
"If I can't solve it now, and I run into it on an exam, do I just give up?"
For once, their lines of thinking diverged.
Wen Qing stuck to her own view:
"But you can't solve it now, and there's nothing else you can do about it anyway."
Zhou Shixu stopped in his tracks.
His footsteps had always been so light they made no sound, and with Wen Qing absorbed in stomping on leaves, she only noticed he'd fallen behind after they'd drifted some distance apart.
A long stretch of road lay between them.
Wen Qing raised her hand and crooked her fingers, gesturing for him to hurry over.
Zhou Shixu's words drifted into her ears as he approached:
"You can brute-force it. If it gets solved, it gets solved. If not, give up."
Wen Qing tilted her head, looking past his hair into his eyes:
"Didn't you just say, what if you run into it on the exam? Could you really bear to just give up?"
The two of them stood frozen in place for a long while.
Wen Qing thought she wouldn't get an answer, and in her head she was still wondering why Zhou Shixu cared so much about a single problem.
A very, very soft voice washed over her wandering mind.
Like a sigh of resignation:
"I couldn't bear to."
The holiday arrived right on schedule.
At school there was always the cafeteria, so even if the Zhou family's housekeeper neglected her duties, it didn't matter much.
Now, with a three-day holiday coming up, Ms. Zhao had been worried since early in the morning that Zhou Shixu wouldn't get any meals at home.
She painted him, right in front of Wen Qing, as a pitiful figure—starving alone at home because of a wicked housekeeper who couldn't be bothered to cook, and too afraid to even tell his parents.
If Wen Qing hadn't been in close contact with him lately, she would have believed every word.
Someone really ought to wean Ms. Zhao off those melodramatic short dramas.
【BuQingYuan: Want dumplings?】
Zhou Shixu had just finished one practice paper when the special notification chime for her messages sounded in his ear.
Wen Qing's message suited her username perfectly.
Unlike most people, who changed their avatars constantly but never their usernames.
Wen Qing's username changed with her mood.
But her avatar had almost never changed.
It was a little sun drawn in crayon.
The strokes were so childish that she'd probably forgotten where it came from herself.
【Zhou: Let's see.】
【BuQingYuan: [Photo] zip.】
When he opened the photo, it wasn't just plump white dumplings that met his eyes.
The photographer's hand peeked out on the right side, dusted with white flour.
【Zhou: Don't get it on your face.】
【BuQingYuan: As if. I'm standing really far from the table.】
【Zhou: On your hand. Don't get it in your eyes.】
【BuQingYuan: I'm wearing glasses. [Photo] zip.】
Wen Qing wasn't nearsighted, and Zhou Shixu had almost never seen her wear glasses.
Clear-framed, the glasses were so big they nearly covered half her face, the whole frame propped up on the bridge of her nose.
It looked like she'd been amused by her own bespectacled reflection while taking the selfie.
Squinting, she saw that the smile in this photo was almost overflowing.
Not only the glasses—even the pajamas were a style Zhou Shixu had never seen before.
The heating at the Wen family's home seemed to be turned up high; she was wearing only a thin velvet nightgown.
The moment the photo opened, Zhou Shixu took just one glance before abruptly flipping the screen face-down on the desk.
The force was so great that the desk trembled for an instant.
Wen Qing believed she had sent a rather nice photo, but Zhou Shixu didn't reply for a long while.
Having sulked on her own for a while, she picked up her phone again.
【Not-Quite-Qing: Hello? Reply to my message.】
【Not-Quite-Qing: Ms. Zhao is asking if you want dumplings.】
After waiting even longer, all the dumplings on the table had already been assembled, yet the phone never buzzed again.
【Not-Quite-Qing: If you don't reply, I'll assume you've fainted from hunger.】
Wen Qing's father set the glass container down right beneath her typing fingers.
A whole box of raw dumplings, neatly arranged.
Wen Qing threw on a thick, plush robe, took the glass container, and headed out the door.
Coming out of the heated home, the air was suddenly biting cold.
The residual warmth on the glass container faded from warm to cool, feeling less like glass and more like a block of ice.
It was too cold outside, so she didn't even ring the doorbell—she punched in the passcode and went straight into the Zhou family's villa.
070428
For as long as Wen Qing could remember, the Zhou family's passcode had never changed.
She had wondered for a long time what those digits stood for.
It wasn't anyone's birthday, nor any special date.
She'd even asked Zhou's father and mother during a dinner gathering once; both gave the same answer—it was a passcode Zhou Shixu had set, and they didn't know its meaning either.
The moment she opened the door, a wave of heat rushed onto Wen Qing's cheeks.
What followed was a sense of coldness.
Not because of the temperature.
It was a feeling of emptiness, devoid of any human presence.
Wen Qing hadn't been to the Zhou home in a long time.
The last time was during the New Year gathering. Recalling the scene of a crowd clustered together made the present scene feel all the more desolate.
At lunchtime, the whole house showed no trace of life or cooking.
No need to guess.
Zhou Shixu had once again let the auntie who made lunch go pick up her grandson.
Though he seemed aloof and indifferent on the surface, Wen Qing knew he had one big flaw.
To put it crudely—
he was a soft touch.
As long as it wasn't anything major, if someone begged him a few times, he could always agree with ease.
But Xu Jinqi often said:
Zhou Shixu was only a soft touch when it came to Wen Qing.
For everything else, he simply didn't care.
Whatever.
Doesn't matter.
When Wen Qing asked Xu Jinqi why, he would just smile and say nothing, pretending to understand what he didn't.
Wen Qing didn't believe a word of his claims.
How could anyone in this world understand Zhou Shixu better than she did?
The kitchen was unusually clean.
There wasn't even a trace of vegetables or fruit to be found.
No need to guess—at most, Zhou Shixu had eaten two slices of bread and drunk some milk that morning.
Lunch probably wasn't even on the horizon yet.
Wen Qing set the glass container of dumplings in the kitchen.
She hadn't yet mastered a way to boil dumplings without breaking them.
Almost no need to guess.
Zhou Shixu was one hundred percent in the study, grinding through practice problems.
To outsiders, his academic performance seemed effortless.
But as long as it was vacation, not a single day passed without him doing problems.
"Knock knock knock~"
Three knocks, no response.
Wen Qing pressed down the door handle, opened it, and went in.
A stack of test papers lay on the study's main desk.
The usually immaculate pages were now creased and wrinkled.
As if someone had suddenly grabbed them and let go.
The fountain pen had rolled off the desk as well.
The ink from the pen tip spread across the floor.
Wen Qing looked around twice, full circles, but couldn't find any trace of Zhou Shixu.
At this hour, she couldn't think of anywhere else he might be besides the study.
He couldn't really have passed out from hunger at home like she'd said, could he?
At the mere thought of that possibility, Wen Qing's whole body tensed up.
Her footsteps quickened without her realizing it.
She practically dashed to the bedroom door.
Without even knocking, she pushed the door open and walked right in.
The room was clean and tidy, without a trace of any strange odor.
And yet Wen Qing felt as if Zhou Shixu's presence was about to swallow her whole.
Unexpectedly, there was no one in the bedroom either.
Wen Qing had already braced herself for the possibility of finding him collapsed on the floor.
She was about to start searching slowly from the first floor up to the third.
The house was so quiet that her footsteps seemed to be the only sound.
Anxiously, she made her way to the third floor.
Things were not as she had expected.
The hallway was completely empty.
Instead, the sound of trickling water drifted through the air.
Following the sound, Wen Qing stopped outside the bathroom door.
As a child, she had often stayed at the Zhou household, so she was fairly familiar with the villa's layout.
But at noon, it was hardly the time for a shower.
Especially not in the depths of winter.
Wen Qing's quirky train of thought kicked in once again.
She began wondering whether Zhou Shixu had collapsed to the floor the instant he turned on the faucet.
She even crouched down to check whether any water had spilled and pooled on the floor.
Wen Qing didn't dare barge in through the door.
If she went in and Zhou Shixu really was taking a shower, Wen Qing couldn't imagine what expression she would use to face him afterward.
The bathroom door was sealed tight—no light even leaked through the gap.
Wen Qing pressed herself against the door, straining to make out the sounds inside.
Before she could figure out whether anyone was showering in there, a wave of heated, ragged breathing flooded into her ears.