More and more students were returning from the cafeteria, but the line going upstairs still moved slowly.
Wen Qing's gaze drifted slowly from the end of the line to the stool in Zhou Shixu's hands.
Sunlight glinted off the seat, so bright it was hard to look away.
Zhou Shixu's hands weren't particularly fair, but his knuckles were well-defined. Wen Qing kept her eyes lowered, staring at his finger joints without lifting her head.
She was afraid of his questioning.
Asking why she hadn't contacted him, asking why she had suddenly grown distant.
The line began to move forward, and Zhou Shixu, carrying her stool, started walking toward the stairway entrance.
Wen Qing watched his back and spoke up: "Class Ten."
With the stool matter settled, Sang Nianning pulled Wen Qing toward the cafeteria.
Complaints of varying volume still rose from the crowd, but Wen Qing distinctly heard a reply from behind her:
"I know."
·
The drawback of being assigned to the same campus was still obvious. Even though they had already waited by the stairs for a while, they still couldn't avoid lining up again when they reached the cafeteria.
The moment they sat down, Sang Nianning eagerly leaned in close to Wen Qing:
"What exactly is going on between you and Zhou Shixu?"
Though no one would dare gossip right next to Zhou Shixu, Wen Qing still lowered her voice:
"What do you mean? Isn't this pretty normal?"
"Something's off."
"What's off about it? It's totally normal to grow distant when you don't see each other often."
Wen Qing's chopsticks never paused for a moment, yet the rice in her tray showed no sign of diminishing.
"Anyone can grow distant, but you and Zhou Shixu absolutely won't."
Even at a low volume, the certainty in Sang Nianning's tone was unmistakable.
But she had never been one for gossip, and she only mentioned Wen Qing and Zhou Shixu's relationship in passing.
The cafeteria gradually emptied, yet only a shallow layer of rice had been eaten from Wen Qing's tray.
Before Sang Nianning could even ask, Wen Qing volunteered that the cafeteria's rice tasted bad.
It only made her seem all the more like she was trying to cover something up.
The lunch period the school allotted was never long, but because of the assembly, no one bothered checking for tardiness on the first day.
Qingcheng No. 1 High School's system had always been to reassign classes once during subject selection, once entering junior year, and once entering senior year.
So most of the students in the new class still didn't know one another.
The corridor from the cafeteria to the academic building was already filled with a jumble of voices, even more chaotic than during the morning assembly.
Precisely because they weren't familiar, the students seemed to have endless things to say to each other.
Of course, if they were familiar, the first thing to do after coming back from break would be—nap.
Seats on the first day of school were almost entirely random.
When Wen Qing arrived at the classroom that morning, she happened to run into Zheng Shiyi, her deskmate from junior year, and the two naturally sat together again.
Zheng Shiyi had come early, so they picked seats in the sixth row by the window.
Close enough to see the blackboard clearly, yet inconspicuous.
Wen Qing's seat was on the inside, and her stool had been placed back in position, exactly as it was, by Zhou Shixu.
The morning assembly had been too rushed. Now, as Wen Qing slid into her seat, her gaze drifted—deliberately or not—toward the person behind her.
"Hi, I'm Duan Huaian." As their eyes met, the boy greeted her first.
In the pause that followed, Wen Qing glanced up at the boy behind her once more.
There was nothing particularly remarkable about him—he was just very pale. Extremely pale.
Summer was scorching, and with so many students in the classroom, even two air conditioners, front and back, couldn't keep the heat at bay.
Most students were flushed red from the heat, but Duan Huaian was not.
He was simply pale—apart from the whiteness of his skin, there seemed to be no other color to be found on his cheeks.
His eyelashes were long, casting a long stretch of shadow over the pale expanse of his face.
The preparatory bell rang, and the noisy campus seemed to hit a stop button.
Of course, the stop button wasn't just the class bell—it was also the homeroom teachers arriving at each classroom.
The arrival of lunch break directly amplified the second defining trait of students returning to school after a holiday—sleepiness.
Even when the class bell rang, almost no one in the room lifted their head.
Students sitting by the door were called to carry in a round of review materials. At first, eight students were sent to move the books, and later on, nearly all the boys in the class were drafted to help.
Stack after stack of books was thumped down at the classroom door—not much of a jolt, but the sound was loud, and combined with the laughter of the students carrying them, it all came pouring in through the window to Wen Qing's ears.
She woke from her nap, rubbed her eyes, and looked out the window. Right outside was the corridor, and the pile of books kept growing, nearly blocking her view.
Just as she was about to pull her gaze back from the window, she froze in place.
Unlike the other students moving around in groups, Zhou Shixu was walking alone toward the stairway, apparently also heading down to carry books.
The stack of books outside the window gradually accumulated, and Wen Qing peered out at the corridor through the gaps.
Class 10 was on the fourth floor, in a corridor that caught the sunlight, and the afternoon sun was harshly bright. Shadows flickered, filtering through the book pages onto Wen Qing's cheek.
Perhaps because the books provided cover, her gaze didn't shy away the way it had at noon—instead, she looked at him almost straight on.
Not looking away for even an instant.
Zhou Shixu was in Class 1, where the stairway down was right outside the classroom door.
Yet right now, he appeared by the stairway near Class 10's corridor.
His pace wasn't slow—if anything, it was a little hurried.
But because Wen Qing's gaze never left him for a second, she clearly saw him glance into the classroom as he passed.
But it was only a glance.
Wen Qing suddenly remembered Sang Nianning asking her at noon why she and Zhou Shixu had grown distant over the years.
She watched him without blinking, and he only gave a single glance inside.
That glance was special—for her. An exception, made for her.
But it was only a glance.
The gap in the books no longer showed Zhou Shixu's back as he walked toward the stairs, and Wen Qing just rested her cheek on her hand, staring blankly through the gap at that small patch of light and shadow in the corridor.
"Wen Qing?"
Following the sound of her name, Wen Qing lifted her eyes toward the voice outside the window.
It was Duan Huaian.
Seen through the window, out in the sunlight his skin looked even paler, so much so that even his lip color seemed faint.
Seeing her gaze turn toward him, Duan Huaian spoke again: "Do you have a utility knife?"
The books were stacked together, wrapped in a thick layer of packaging paper. As he spoke, he mimed slicing through the wrapping with a knife.
"No—wait a second, I'll borrow one for you."
Most of the students were still in that groggy, just-woke-up state.
Duan Huaian stood outside the window, smiling as he watched Wen Qing shake awake the dazed Zheng Shiyi.
"Knife, knife." Wen Qing had just woken up and hadn't spoken yet; when she did, her voice had a flat, robotic quality.
Zheng Shiyi laughed at her as she took the knife out of her pencil case.
Wen Qing grabbed the unopened utility knife and advanced on Zheng Shiyi with a grin: "Laugh again and I'll silence you."
"Your Honor, the great Judge of Sunny Skies, I was wrong, please forgive me!"
"I suppose I'll let it slide, just this once. Little Zheng, no next time."
Before the words even landed, Wen Qing flipped the utility knife behind her with a flashy move and handed it to Duan Huaian, who was snickering by the window.
"Thanks."
The classroom building was five stories tall, and Class 10 was on the fourth floor.
It wasn't a low floor, so nearly all the boys in the class had been sent off to haul books.
Watching Duan Huaian unwrapping the books alone by the window, Wen Qing and Zheng Shiyi headed out to help.
"How come you're the only one unwrapping books here?" Even as she spoke, Wen Qing had already opened up a whole stack.
"Slacking off, obviously. Why did you two come out?"
"We're here out of loyalty!" Zheng Shiyi said, carrying the books Wen Qing had unwrapped into the classroom to hand them out slowly.
Students came trudging up one after another loaded with books. Hardly had one bundle been opened before another arrived.
Like game blocks endlessly stacking up.
"Why are there so many?" Wen Qing complained to Duan Huaian while glancing toward the stairwell, where people kept streaming back with books.
Duan Huaian had just turned to follow her gaze when Wen Qing's sudden turn of her head cut him off.
So fast that her hair nearly brushed his cheek.
"What's wrong? Did you see a ghost?"
Wen Qing answered Duan Huaian while lowering her head and unhurriedly unwrapping the book in her hands: "What ghost? I just saw so many people coming back that I figured we'd have to speed up, or in a minute the two of us would be drowning in a sea of knowledge."
More and more people kept returning in the hallway, and Wen Qing and Duan Huaian were wedged between two layers of towering books.
When Zhou Shixu passed by carrying books, he looked past the outermost wall of books toward the inside.
The girl who should have been staring absently at the hallway from her spot by the window wasn't there.
Before he could bother searching for her, he heard her playful laughter.
Zhou Shixu looked toward the sound. The inner side of the book wall caught no sunlight at all, while at that very moment he himself was bathed in the afternoon sun.
He saw it clearly.
As he stepped onto the last stair,
she had seen him.
She knew he was right behind her.
She still pretended he wasn't there.
Still smiled happily at someone else.
Not even a greeting, not even a glance, for him.
"Fine, fine, fine, Your Highness the Sunshine," Duan Huaian said. When he glanced back, he happened to meet the eyes of Zhou Shixu, frozen mid-step under his load of books.
Zhou Shixu returned a look at Duan Huaian's sizing-up gaze before setting off again.
Six subjects' worth of review materials—big books, small books, plus a pile of test papers—stood in front of her. Only now did Wen Qing truly feel what senior year meant.
Since it was still summer, the school had even added extra class time.
Not only was morning reading moved up ten minutes, lunch break was shortened to squeeze in another evening self-study period.
The day after the books were handed out came the placement test.
Supposedly it was to gauge the students' levels so they could better plan the review schedule.
Wen Qing, Zheng Shiyi, and the others crammed frantically for an entire afternoon and evening self-study and still couldn't make sense of it all.
The school's exam scope covered every knowledge point of high school—all the high school material.
By the end, the group had mostly given up struggling. It wasn't as if they had much foundation for the school to gauge anyway.
Back when they were still at the South Campus, home had been far away, and her parents took turns picking Wen Qing up after school.
Now senior year had been assigned to the North Campus, much closer to home.
Wen Qing dawdled her way home, thinking about all the material she hadn't finished reviewing.
Footsteps sounded at the front door.
The moment Mrs. Zhao Yuan opened the door, she saw her daughter standing there like something drained of all its life force.
"What's the matter? Why so crestfallen?"
Wen Qing tossed her backpack onto the sofa and trudged off to the bathroom to wash her hands, sulking. "Stop it, Mom. I'm pretty sure I've been set up."
"Didn't get placed in the same class as anyone you know?"
"There's an exam tomorrow, and I don't know anything."
Ms. Zhao, munching on an apple, couldn't help but laugh. "Then what's there to worry about? It's the ones who know some things but not others who should be worried."
Wen Qing picked up her backpack from the sofa, but not before grabbing an apple from the fruit plate and taking a bite as she headed toward her room. "Fair point."
"Hold on a second."
The door cracked open a sliver, and Wen Qing poked her head out, still munching on her apple.
Zhao Yuan couldn't help laughing again at the sight of her. "I've arranged it with your Auntie Shi Wan. Since you're in the North District now anyway, it's on the way, and it's not really safe for you to walk home alone at night. Starting tomorrow, you'll head home with Xiao Xu in the evenings."
Wen Qing's apple-biting motion visibly stalled.
"Huh?"