On the way home after school, Zhou Ai stopped when he passed a trash can placed at an intersection.
Standing by the bin, he fished his phone out of his pocket. He glanced down at the screen, which was flashing warnings about a critically low battery and a relentless stream of unread message notifications, before using his finger to pry out the SIM card and dropping it directly into the trash.
His contact information had likely been leaked by someone in his class. Since noon, his phone had been bombarded with constant messages and calls, and the relentless activity had drained almost all of his battery life.
The SIM card was tiny, and once it hit the bottom of the bin, it was gone for good. Without hesitation, Zhou Ai put his phone away and prepared to move on.
However, before he could leave, his steps faltered abruptly. A car was parked on the side just ahead of the trash can, and Zhou Ai raised his eyes to calmly observe the car’s rearview mirror.
The mirror reflected the figures of a group of people. They were tall and dressed in a ruffian-like fashion, and they were staring straight back at him through the mirror.
They had covered more than half the distance home, moving further and further away from the school, so they no longer felt the need to hide. They appeared in front of Zhou Ai with an arrogant, provocative flair.
Zhou Ai’s reclusive nature had become a habit; he never let anyone into his field of vision, and it was only now that he realized this group had been tailing him.
Ahead was a fork in the road. To the left was the main road leading home, well-lit, equipped with surveillance cameras, and filled with a constant flow of people. To the right was a dead-end street leading toward a dilapidated residential area, where old apartment buildings stood side by side and security facilities were long neglected.
Zhou Ai only paused at the intersection for half a minute before he began to move again. He maintained the same walking speed as before and walked calmly into the right path, where the streetlights were sparse.
The further he went, the dimmer the lights became and the fewer people were around. The arrogant footsteps behind him grew more pronounced.
Zhou Ai quickened his pace imperceptibly, but the boys behind him began to walk even more slowly. Seeming confident that Zhou Ai had no way of escaping, they even began to whistle lewdly.
They were almost at the end of the dead-end street, where a high wall loomed ahead. Suddenly, Zhou Ai made a sharp turn, his figure quickly blending into one of the buildings on the side.
This area was full of old buildings from the old city district. They were built tall without elevators, and every step of the staircases was narrow and steep. The boys were unhurried, walking up the stairs while tearing off the rusted railings nearby to use as weapons.
“This brat is panicking, running into a dead end?” someone laughed mockingly.
“Never seen anyone this stupid. Trying to escape by going higher? Let’s see how he gets down once his legs are broken. Haha, damn, do honor students only use their brains for studying?”
“These stairs are built so damn cramped; I’m getting dizzy.”
The group spiraled upward until they reached the rooftop on the 9th floor. Several of them felt quite dizzy. Past the connection between the rooftop and the stairs was a half-open iron door. They saw a flash of blue and white inside.
The tall leader was impatient. He shoved the decrepit iron door open hard: “Didn’t think you, a mute, could run so fast?”
Half a wall on the rooftop temporarily blocked their line of sight. They moved with the calm assurance of hunters cornering prey, slowly circling around: “Stop hiding, little mute, I see you…”
But as they reached the open area, all they saw was a thin, long wire for hanging clothes. A blue-and-white long-sleeved school uniform, typical of the Sixth High School’s autumn attire, was hanging from it. With the strong wind on the roof, the uniform swayed, fluttering like a ghost.
Other than that, the rooftop was completely empty.
“Fuck—” The leader turned around quickly, but the iron door they had entered through suddenly slammed shut in front of them. They all clearly heard the crisp sound of a key clicking in the lock from the outside.
“Fuck! Open the door for me!” The iron door was pushed and pulled violently from the outside, clattering loudly in the silent stairwell.
Zhou Ai picked up his schoolbag from the side and slowly walked downstairs.
The sound of the iron door mixed with the boys’ cursing, but Zhou Ai left the noise behind him and turned to enter the building next door.
The old residential buildings were built close together. The moment Zhou Ai appeared on the roof of the adjacent building, the group pulling at the iron door noticed him and quickly shifted their target.
The wind on the roof was strong, blowing Zhou Ai’s hair up and swirling it into soft arcs. His short-sleeved school uniform was also lifted, rippling like waves in the wind. His face looked almost translucent under the moonlight, with a bead of sweat on his forehead dried by the wind.
Zhou Ai stood in the wind, his schoolbag resting on a bench nearby, looking calmly at the group opposite.
“Are you looking for death?” The people standing on the edge of the opposite roof asked fiercely, separated by a two-meter gap between the buildings.
“If you don’t want to die, get down here and open the door for us! Give us the key!”
“Bro, he’s a mute. Can he even understand you?”
“He’s a mute, but his brain works fine!”
“Who’s to say? Didn’t that person say… say he has mental problems? That he’s not normal?”
“I think your brain is the one with problems. How the hell does a ‘mental patient’ rank first in exams?”
Zhou Ai stood in the moonlight, watching their anxiety and irritability. It was as if he had finished enjoying the show, so he took paper and a pen out of his bag. He bowed his head and wrote two large characters on his draft paper, then held it up to show the people opposite.
The two large characters on the page were “Hu Cheng.” Because the strokes were simple, the people opposite could see the outline of the characters clearly even in the dim moonlight.
Zhou Ai simply held the paper up and did nothing else. The people opposite denied it hurriedly: “Who is Hu Cheng? I don’t know him,” he asked the person beside him: “Do you know him? Who knows Hu Cheng?”
The group shook their heads.
Zhou Ai was clutching a key in his palm, which glinted silver in the moonlight.
The man saw the key and seemed to realize something suddenly, laughing knowingly: “You want to know who sent us to deal with you? Then just ask! It doesn’t matter anyway. After all, at your Sixth High School, this is no secret.”
“Do you know Chen Xunfeng?” The boy stretched his neck forward, as if to close the distance between him and Zhou Ai. He said: “It’s him. He’s the one who found us to teach you a lesson. He’s quite arrogant in your school, right? You didn’t even know he disliked you? I heard… someone just mentioned you in front of him, and he smashed things in a rage. Seems he really… hates you a lot.”
Fine rain began to drift from the sky. Zhou Ai lowered his head to put the paper and pen back into his bag. He had only come up to verify his guess; now that it was verified, he didn’t want to waste any more time and prepared to leave.
Before he left, the people opposite grew anxious and shouted at him. Zhou Ai seemed to remember something, threw the key in his palm toward the opposite rooftop with a slight flick of his wrist, and then left the rooftop without looking back.
As he walked down the stairs, he could still hear the sluggish reactions of those people—”Bro, the key, the key… damn it, how are we supposed to open the door from the inside!”
When Zhou Ai returned to the intersection, the rain had grown heavier.
He disliked the sticky feeling of being caught in the rain, so he looked around to find a convenience store to buy an umbrella, as he was still some distance from home.
“Zhou Ai!” Suddenly, a male voice called his name anxiously from a distance. The boy’s voice was obscured by the curtain of rain, sounding a bit blurred.
Zhou Ai stopped in his tracks, turned his head slightly, and watched the boy running over holding an umbrella.
Chen Siliu held up a large umbrella. Upon seeing Zhou Ai, he clearly let out a sigh of relief and held the umbrella over Zhou Ai’s head: “Finally found you. Why aren’t you home yet at this hour?”
Zhou Ai stood where he was, slowly looking away. His eyelashes drooped, shielding the emotions in his eyes, and he resumed walking forward.
Chen Siliu walked beside him, holding the umbrella. Seeing the thin T-shirt Zhou Ai was wearing, he frowned: “Why are you wearing so little? Where is your jacket?”
He took off his own shirt-jacket to drape it over Zhou Ai, but Zhou Ai avoided it imperceptibly, refusing the gesture.
Chen Siliu was long accustomed to how things were between them. In the eyes of Chen Siliu’s parents, Zhou Ai was a cold, hard stone that could not be moved, but Chen Siliu felt that Zhou Ai’s emotions were more delicate and sensitive than most. It was just that, because of his upbringing, Zhou Ai was used to using a cold shell to express his resistance.
Like just now, as he approached through the rain, he caught a flicker of disappointment in Zhou Ai’s eyes that he hadn’t managed to hide in time.
But he didn’t know what Zhou Ai was disappointed about. He thought Zhou Ai had been expecting his father who favored his younger brother to pick him up in the rain. He could only tentatively offer comfort: “Yesterday, your father contacted me and said your monthly exam results were out. I don’t have many classes these past two days, so he asked me to come over today to help you with your end-of-month review.”
“I waited at your house for a long time this afternoon, but you didn’t come back. When it started raining, your father was going to send the driver to pick you up at school, but I said you were probably already on your way and that I would come to get you… Zhou Ai, your father actually cares about you. It’s just that it might not be as obvious as it is for your little brother.”
Damp and chilled, Zhou Ai walked under the umbrella. His side profile was pale, and he looked straight ahead with a blank expression, as if he hadn’t heard a word.
At the intersection, traffic flowed like a river. Chen Siliu gently supported Zhou Ai’s shoulder: “Wait a moment, the light is about to turn red.”
Zhou Ai had been standing quietly beside him, but suddenly, he seemed to notice something. He tilted his head slightly to look across the street, his gaze fixing and not moving again. Zhou Ai rarely held his gaze on any person or object for long. Finding this odd, Chen Siliu followed his gaze.
On the other side of the road, a group of pedestrians stood holding umbrellas, waiting for the red light. The light from the streetlamps appeared blurry and distant in the rain. Among the crowd, only one boy was not holding an umbrella.
The boy stood in the rain, wearing the Sixth High School uniform jacket over a black T-shirt. His upper body was completely drenched, yet he didn’t look bedraggled in the slightest. He possessed a rare, striking face. In the rain, his cold, stern features appeared even sharper, his contours becoming more profound.
The boy was also looking across the curtain of rain at Zhou Ai, his black eyes filled with an intensity that pierced the distance an earnestness that didn’t match his cold appearance.
Chen Siliu, standing nearby, could feel their gazes as if they were tangible. Oblivious to everyone else, they connected quietly in the rain, deep and long, as if stretching across a distant time and space.
Then, it was Zhou Ai who broke eye contact first. He lowered his eyelashes slightly, blocking all emotion in an instant.
The boy across the way only then shifted his eyes from Zhou Ai. Once he looked away, there was no more earnestness in those black eyes; they turned abruptly and locked onto Chen Siliu.
Under the directness of that gaze, Chen Siliu frowned subconsciously.
Traffic passed between them, briefly blocking the view. Chen Siliu felt puzzled, his brow remaining furrowed, but by the time he looked again, the boy who had been standing there was gone.
The boy’s gaze had been utterly unfriendly. Chen Siliu looked down at Zhou Ai beside him: “Do you know that boy who was standing across the street? Is he from your school?”
Zhou Ai kept his eyes lowered, appearing to be thinking, but he gave Chen Siliu no reaction.
That boy didn’t seem like a good person. Taking into account Zhou Ai’s personality and his special circumstances, Chen Siliu offered a subtle warning while walking with the crowd toward the other side: “Zhou Ai, at school, if you notice anyone bullying you, you can tell me.”
Zhou Ai’s expression remained calm, as if he hadn’t heard, but after they crossed the road, he moved out from under the umbrella.
Finally seeing a shop with its lights on, he walked inside. Half a minute later, when Zhou Ai walked back out, he was holding a new umbrella in his hand.
Is there anything else you would like me to help you with today?