A rainstorm had passed a few days prior, drizzling away the lingering heat of late summer.
The sky cleared up on Monday morning, but Zhou Ai was uncharacteristically late. When he arrived at the school gate, over twenty other late students had already gathered there. The latecomers were making a restless ruckus, and the security guards were busy helping the teacher on duty maintain order.
As soon as Zhou Ai reached the gate, the duty teacher approached him with a registration log in hand. The teacher’s patience, worn thin from the morning’s chaos, was at its limit. He gave a fleeting glance at the dark circles under Zhou Ai’s eyes, frowned, and asked, “Which class are you in?”
Even though he was nearly twenty minutes late, Zhou Ai’s breathing remained steady, and his expression was flat, devoid of any signs of anxiety. Hearing the teacher’s question, he lifted a hand to unclip the name tag from his school uniform. The teacher caught a glimpse of it, recorded his name with a pen, and then looked up at him again, asking, “You’re in Class 1?”
Zhou Ai was dressed in the full autumn school uniform. Standing in the morning light of late summer, he looked clean and orderly. At the question, he merely nodded, but he did not speak, nor did he display any sense of shame or embarrassment. To a teacher with little patience, this cold silence was nothing more than an arrogant, uncooperative attitude.
The teacher’s brow furrowed even tighter. “What kind of attitude is that—”
At that moment, just before the teacher could flare up, a loud shout broke out from the crowd behind him: “Hey! Damn it! Xun-ge, why did you suddenly kick me for?”
No one in the line responded, but the teacher’s attention was instantly diverted. Zhou Ai also subconsciously looked over. A few paces away, a boy with an explosive, frizzy hairstyle had been kicked out from the otherwise sloppy line. Caught off guard, the boy stumbled forward a few steps before steadying himself. He rubbed his eyes, patted his thigh, and turned back to question someone in the line with a bewildered expression.
The teacher’s frustration, which had been building all morning, finally exploded. He strode over, shouting, “What are you people doing?! You can’t even stand in line correctly? School has only been back for a few weeks, and you’re late on a Monday! It’s you! You were trying to climb the wall to get in earlier, weren’t you?! Where is your uniform? And what kind of hairstyle is that? What’s stuffed in your pockets? Which class are you in? Who is your homeroom teacher?…”
The teacher unleashed a torrent of scolding, causing most of the students to clamp their mouths shut and shrink back into line. Zhou Ai merely gave a light look before averting his gaze. He lowered his head, quietly vanishing back into the noisy, restless crowd.
“Sigh… Teacher, it was an accident, truly an accident… I left my uniform in the classroom last week, I’ll put it on as soon as I get inside! My hair… I woke up late and didn’t comb it… I can’t help it, it’s naturally curly… don’t you think?” The frizzy-haired boy held up one hand while covering his pocket with the other, pleading with a playful, cheeky smile. As he spoke, scattered laughter erupted from the crowd.
After this chaotic string of excuses, the teacher gave an impatient punishment: “Since you have so much excess energy this early in the morning, you can go run ten laps on the playground during the flag-raising ceremony!”
As soon as the words fell, gloating sounds arose from the line. The frizzy-haired boy seemed to seize the opportunity to talk to someone: “Damn, Xun-ge, save me! Help me out, help me out!”
In the line of late students, almost everyone’s eyes were glued to the frizzy-haired boy who was jumping around. Only Zhou Ai stood silent and still, as if he were separated from them by another dimension. Yet, upon hearing that, his brow furrowed slightly.
Immediately afterward, Zhou Ai heard a colder, deeper male voice from nearby, asking with visible impatience: “Are you still unweaned?”
A small ripple of laughter spread through the line, and the situation became even more uncontrollable. The frizzy-haired boy cursed back over the background noise of the mockery: “Laugh your ass off! Hey, Teacher—”
The teacher could no longer tolerate it. With a cold face, he pulled all the instigators out of the line: “Since you enjoy talking, laughing, and causing trouble so much, you can all go join him on the playground! You can talk to your heart’s content there! Don’t think that just because you’re from Class 21, the school can’t discipline you! No matter how rowdy or unruly you are, since you’re students at No. 6 Middle School, you must follow the school rules!”
Zhou Ai stood in place, with several empty spots to his side. Beside him, separated by those empty spaces, stood a boy wearing a black T-shirt.
Someone in the line that had been pulled out shouted with a laugh: “That guy leaning his head to the side, you were talking too! What are you looking at? Stop looking! That’s right, it’s him, Teacher, you missed him! Hurry up and pull him out!”
As these words fell, the person beside Zhou Ai slowly stepped out of line. In Zhou Ai’s peripheral vision, he could see the back of the boy wearing the black short-sleeved shirt.
Seeing this, the frizzy-haired boy jumped up and down excitedly: “Damn, Xun-ge, I’ve got him pinned down for you, let’s beat him up later! My Xun-ge just did a self-reflection under the national flag last week, and you’re messing with him again!”
The boy who had stepped out looked as if he hadn’t fully woken up. Wearily, he reached up to rub the back of his neck. He didn’t look at the two boys clinging to each other; instead, his empty school bag, which had been slung over his shoulder, landed precisely on their backs.
By the time Zhou Ai returned to Class 1, Grade 10, the flag-raising ceremony was already over. The class monitor, a composed girl, had come to lead him away from the gate. She didn’t say much on the way, but halfway there, she was called away by the homeroom teacher to collect some supplies, leaving Zhou Ai to return to the classroom alone.
The morning light of late summer and early autumn was gentle. It was the break between classes, and the back door of Class 1 was wide open.
As Zhou Ai stepped into the classroom, a boy roared at him: “Hey! You! How many conduct points did you cost our class for being late today?”
Zhou Ai acted as if he hadn’t heard a word, walking toward his seat with an expressionless face.
Someone else chuckled and chimed in: “Hu Cheng, are you still dreaming? He’s a mute; he might not be able to hear you either. Do you think he’ll answer you if you ask him a hundred times?”
The whole class erupted in laughter. Zhou Ai sat back down in his seat by the window and noticed a steaming breakfast sitting on his desk. He remembered clearly that these unexplained breakfasts were usually tucked away in his desk bin.
His deskmate, Jiang Wenyi, who had been the top student of the grade during entrance exams and was currently the study commissioner, stared at him. Amidst the laughter of the boys, he deliberately asked in a loud voice: “Zhou Ai, your lateness today has already cost Class 1 points. The school strictly forbids eating in the classroom. What, you want to commit another offense and cost us even more? I’ve been curious this whole time, you didn’t even have an entrance exam score; how on earth were you assigned to Class 1?”
Zhou Ai, who had been silent the whole way, finally moved. He abruptly stood up from his seat, startling Jiang Wenyi.
“What, you want to fight—”
Jiang Wenyi didn’t finish his sentence because Zhou Ai hadn’t even looked at him. He simply picked up the breakfast, walked two steps, and tossed it directly into the trash can at the back of the room. The container made a clattering sound as it hit the empty bin. The classroom fell silent for a fleeting moment.
The brief silence was quickly shattered by another grinning boy: “Hey, study commissioner, Teacher Qin said at the start of the term that we should ‘take extra care’ of Comrade Zhou Ai. Maybe it’s been years since Class 1 recruited a disabled student, so he has ‘special privileges.’ How dare you stop him from eating breakfast?”
Zhou Ai was a mute a socially awkward, unlikable, gloomy mute. He was like a patch of damp moss growing in the corner of Class 1. When he was brought to school by his parents at the start of the term, the homeroom teacher had privately asked the class to look after him.
But Zhou Ai was far too reclusive. He rejected any goodwill, curiosity, or “kindness” from others. He used a shell of cold indifference to block out everything. More than a month into the term, he had not participated in any personal activities, didn’t talk to his classmates, and his face was forever frozen in a cold, stiff mask. Consequently, instead of integrating into the class, he had become the target of exclusion and harassment by everyone in Class 1.
Jiang Wenyi, feeling that he had lost the upper hand, sneered, his voice growing louder: “I didn’t stop him from eating breakfast. He can eat whatever he wants! Doesn’t our class have 20 conduct points left for this month? Is that enough for him to eat breakfast for a while? And besides, who knows where this breakfast came from? A mute with a ‘dog-licker’ stuffing food in his desk every day? Did you guys send this to him?” He asked the whole class as he stood up.
The class only laughed. Occasionally, someone would deny it, and the boy who was mocking him along chimed in from his seat in the front row, spinning his book: “He’s handsome, after all! And a pitiful little mute; hasn’t everyone been calling him the ‘Mute Princess’? Someone’s bound to send him things.”
The preparatory bell for class rang, and the banter came to a temporary halt. Zhou Ai had been minding his own business since he entered the room. He went to hand in his homework to the respective representatives. Only two of them took it with cold expressions; the others claimed they had already reported him to the teacher for not writing it before the flag-raising ceremony: “We thought you weren’t coming, so we told the teacher you didn’t do it and didn’t hand it in.”
Zhou Ai showed no extra reaction to these rejections. He simply took his homework to hand it in himself. As he left the classroom, he bumped into the class monitor, who was returning with a stack of new exercise books. She glanced at the familiar test papers in Zhou Ai’s hand and then at the atmosphere in the room. She set her things on the table and gave Zhou Ai a comforting smile: “The teachers are all in a meeting, so there’s no one in the office. The flag-raising ceremony was hurried, and I didn’t hand in my homework either. Give it to me; I’ll hand it in for you after class.”
The sun had come out, and Zhou Ai narrowed his eyes against the glare at the doorway. He didn’t give the homework to the class monitor; he just shook his head coldly and turned back to his seat.
Someone saw this and immediately clicked their tongue: “Look at that, how arrogant!”
“Hilarious, he doesn’t even appreciate it. Class monitor, you just led this ‘Mute Princess’ back from the school gate, and he doesn’t even know how to be grateful. At the start of the term, we were all so careful and took such good care of him, but look at him, he’s so high and mighty, ignoring everyone! What is he pretending to be? Out of 45 students in the class, he’s the only one without an entrance grade. How does he deserve to be in Class 1?!”
The class monitor interrupted them coldly from the podium as she handed out the exercise books: “Everyone keeps saying Class 1, Class 1—is this the quality of Class 1 students? Class is about to start; that’s enough. If you keep acting up, go cause trouble in front of Teacher Qin.”
The bell for the official start of class rang. It was the second period Chinese class. Zhou Ai was sitting at his desk when, suddenly, a cup full of dark brown tea was tipped over from the side, spilling all over his desk.
Although Zhou Ai reacted quickly, pulling his hand away and standing up, the hot tea quickly soaked through the open book on his desk and slipped along the smooth edge of the table, splashing onto Zhou Ai’s clothes.
Steam rose into the air. Jiang Wenyi slowly set down the empty thermos and said lightly, “Oops, sorry, my hand slipped.”
Zhou Ai didn’t even look at him. By now, the commotion had drawn the attention of those sitting nearby. A few turned to scan them, and the middle-aged female teacher conducting the class from the podium stopped, looking up to ask what was going on. In the chaos, only the girl sitting in front of Zhou Ai pulled out a thick stack of paper and pressed it onto his desk to absorb the water.
The Chinese teacher walked over, saw his soaked chest, and frowned. She told him to go to the restroom to handle it quickly. Zhou Ai bowed his head to indicate thanks and hurried out the back door.
The teaching buildings of No. 6 Middle School were arranged in parallel, connected by corridors on every floor.
The school uniform was primarily blue and white, so the large brown stain on Zhou Ai’s chest was particularly conspicuous. He exited the back door of the classroom. In his peripheral vision, he could see a tall boy standing in the corridor of the opposite building. Despite the school’s strict regulations, the boy was flamboyantly wearing a black top.
Zhou Ai didn’t look over; he walked straight into the restroom at the end of the corridor.
It was late September, the end of summer and beginning of autumn, the last week of class before the National Day holiday. The morning wind already carried a hint of chill.
Zhou Ai took off his long-sleeved uniform jacket by the sink. The hot tea had been voluminous, and the athletic-style jacket was thin; the short-sleeved shirt underneath was stained with yellow-brown liquid. He lowered his head and rubbed the tea stains on his jacket by the sink, rinsing it with water, then used the long-sleeved cuff to pat the water stains on his short-sleeved shirt.
The quiet and noise of the campus were dictated by time. Being in the middle of class, the restroom at the end of the corridor was exceptionally quiet, which was why the sound of the door being pushed open was so abrupt.
Zhou Ai was scrubbing his clothes at the sink when someone suddenly passed behind him, bringing a gust of the morning wind.
The morning sun rose, and the pale golden light leapt through the window, scattering across the white porcelain tiles of the washbasin and between Zhou Ai’s slender, pale fingers.
Zhou Ai lowered his head to wring the water from his jacket. The shadow of the boy who had just entered flashed across the mirror in front of him, finally stopping at the faucet at the very end. The faucet was turned on, and the sound of trickling water filled the air.
But soon, footsteps came from outside the restroom again, followed by someone running in quickly while talking: “Damn, Xun-ge, you have to pee? You dare to run out openly even though Old Li is making you stand in punishment?” The boisterous voice was very distinctive it was the frizzy-haired boy from the morning.
The boy was walking recklessly, not watching where he was going. As he spoke, he slammed straight into Zhou Ai, who was wringing out his water at the door.
Zhou Ai had just taken off his jacket and was wearing only his short-sleeved shirt. Caught off guard, his elbow was slammed heavily against the sharp edge of the washbasin, and he instantly felt the friction of the rough porcelain against his skin.