2333: “Are you crazy? If the head teacher catches you, it’s over!”
Wen Qianshu: “Relax, we’re here to complete a mission, not to actually go to school.”
2333: “Aren’t you actually going to school?”
It didn’t believe her.
Wen Qianshu could handle the other subjects, but for Chinese, the only one she struggled with, she refused 2333’s help. Her reason was, surprisingly, that she felt “artificial intelligence isn’t good at Chinese.”
2333 felt that Wen Qianshu was even worse than an AI.
Heaven knows it was worried sick about the Chinese exam. For the first multiple-choice question, Wen Qianshu’s answer was different from the rest of the class. Even when she was wrong, she was wrong in splendid isolation.
Jiang Mingyue turned her head, glanced at Wen Qianshu, and actually took out a pencil, drawing a solid circle—placing a black stone.
2333: “?”
What are you two doing! Do you want to get scolded together!
“It’s fine.” Wen Qianshu placed a white stone on the side. “Don’t I have you, my cheat? Keep an eye on the head teacher for me. If she looks into the classroom, let me know.”
2333: “Is this how you’re supposed to use a cheat!”
“It’s really fine, we’re not talking.” Wen Qianshu blocked Jiang Mingyue’s move and placated 2333, “Besides, I wrote the solution to the final, most difficult question on the back. If the head teacher comes in, I’ll just flip it over for her to see and say we were discussing the problem and just happened to grab this piece of paper.”
2333 breathed a sigh of relief and started to monitor the head teacher’s movements. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
Wen Qianshu: “I just thought of it.”
2333 regretted it.
If 2333 had known, it wouldn’t have asked.
Wen Qianshu played casually and without any strategy, completely unable to block Jiang Mingyue. Gomoku is a fast game, and she lost several rounds in an instant. Later, when the head teacher came in, Jiang Mingyue put the paper away, flipped it over, and looked at the math problem.
2333 was stunned. “How did she know your excuse?”
Wen Qianshu: “It just proves it’s a good excuse.”
2333: “…”
When the first self-study session ended and the bell rang, Wen Qianshu leaned over. Seeing that Jiang Mingyue was still looking at the paper, she began to explain, “I wrote the solution to this problem like this at the time, but I just thought about it again and realized I missed two possible scenarios.”
“So what’s written here might not be complete.” Wen Qianshu reached her arm over Jiang Mingyue and tapped the paper with the tip of her pen. “I’ll think about it some more later and write it down for you.”
Jiang Mingyue nodded. As she held up the paper, she could see the indentations of the Gomoku grid on the back. She stared at it for a moment, then suddenly asked, “You weren’t letting me win just now?”
Wen Qianshu laughed. “Wow, how would I dare let you win? I’m just bad at it. I couldn’t win even when you were distracted.”
Distracted—
Jiang Mingyue paused slightly and looked at Wen Qianshu. “Was it that obvious?”
Wen Qianshu: “Anyway, we played Gomoku, broke the rules a little.”
The classroom, just after the bell, was as chaotic as a boiling pot, so noisy that no one could hear their voices.
Wen Qianshu smiled. “Whether the head teacher found out or not, let’s just consider it an act of rebellion.”
Jiang Mingyue lowered her eyes and said abruptly, “I think she was wrong.”
She started organizing the test papers on her desk and asked, “Just because she’s a teacher, does that mean she can just go through other people’s things like that?”
“Shouldn’t elders set a better example—” Jiang Mingyue said, stopping halfway. “I almost wish—”
Wen Qianshu: “You almost wish you had brought your phone today, and that she had found it.”
“And you think you did well on this midterm exam, so you could have retorted to her accusations, because you really do think you did very well.”
Jiang Mingyue fell silent.
Wen Qianshu propped her chin on her hand. “You’re very angry. You want to talk back to her. You want to argue with the head teacher.”
Jiang Mingyue stopped what she was doing but didn’t deny it.
2333 was shocked. “My goodness.”
In the original book, Jiang Mingyue was mostly a cold, silent observer, less like a person and more like a standard, excellent template. 2333 couldn’t understand. Except for the time Wen Qianshu had dragged her out, Jiang Mingyue had never broken any school rules. Logically, the punishment wouldn’t fall on her, and she wasn’t familiar with those boys either. Why would she be angry about this?
Jiang Mingyue pressed her lips together and said nothing.
But Wen Qianshu leaned on her desk, looking up at her. Jiang Mingyue’s gaze was lowered, so their eyes met.
Wen Qianshu grinned. “Are you still upset? How about I go borrow a couple of comics right now, and we can report each other?”
“There’s still time—” She tilted her head to look at the clock and added, “still time to have an argument with the teacher, write a self-criticism, and then do our homework.”
2333: “!”
Is that the point?
Is the point that there’s still time to do homework?
Jiang Mingyue looked down at her and, after a moment, said.
“Okay.”
2333 was scared out of its wits. It couldn’t figure out what these two were planning to do. Just as it was about to stop Wen Qianshu, it heard laughter.
The two of them looked at each other and laughed out loud at the same time.
The smile was fleeting. Jiang Mingyue quickly suppressed it, looking away as she asked, “They might even call our parents—are your parents easy to talk to?”
Wen Qianshu hadn’t expected her to ask this and suddenly stiffened.
In a daze, she saw a sea of blood, pale white lights, a hospital bed, and a crying woman.
“Qianshu, Mom loves you, Mom loves you so much—”
“In this world, only Mom loves you—”
Her loss of composure lasted only a moment. Wen Qianshu quickly forced her stiff lips into a smile and then laughed, “Of course.”
Of course they weren’t.
Jiang Mingyue looked at her, and for a split second, Wen Qianshu felt as if she had seen through her smile, because Jiang Mingyue pressed on, “Of course?”
Wen Qianshu was still smiling. “Of course.”
Jiang Mingyue was silent for a moment, then suddenly asked, “Is that so?”
Wen Qianshu sat up straight, wrapped her arms around herself, and leaned back slightly—she knew it was a defensive posture, but she couldn’t help it. Just as she knew Jiang Mingyue had only mentioned it unintentionally, yet had accidentally hit the bullseye. But that tiny bit of pain was enough to make all her thorns stand on end.
So she showed her thorns, wanting everyone to hurt together.
Wen Qianshu: “Do you know why you feel upset?”
Jiang Mingyue: “I don’t know.”
Wen Qianshu: “Because you’re misdirecting your anger.”
Wen Qianshu half-lowered her gaze and smiled. Unlike before, this smile carried a hint of mockery and a defensive sharpness. “No matter how people change, they never stop deceiving themselves. That goes for love, and for anger.”
“Are you really upset because of the head teacher?” Wen Qianshu opened her eyes and looked at her. “Or are you projecting? You’ve put yourself in their shoes. So, who is your ‘head teacher’?”
Wen Qianshu: “Who makes you feel like you’re being watched, and who is invading your privacy?”
Wen Qianshu added the final sentence: “Are your parents—easy to talk to?”
Jiang Mingyue shot to her feet. Her face was pale, her expression icy.
It was break time, and the room was filled with the clamor of voices—laughter, chatter, and complaints were incessant.
The deep night, the bright lights, the reflections of people on the classroom windows.
Reflected along with the people were test papers, notebooks, scratch paper, and students walking by to get water or throw away trash.
Piles of textbooks, scratch paper on the desks, tissue boxes, water cups.
And the lights, very bright, overlapped with the moon outside the window, illuminating the lively yet unreal atmosphere in the classroom.
The bell for class suddenly rang, and the class representative shouted at the top of their lungs, “Class is starting.”
Students returned to their seats in twos and threes, diving back into the sea of practice problems.
The liveliness quickly dissipated, leaving only silence.
Before the class representative could speak, Jiang Mingyue relaxed and sat back down in her seat.
Naturally, she didn’t answer Wen Qianshu’s question, nor did she speak to her again. In a way, they were a perfect pair of deskmates, exposing each other’s vulnerabilities while both having heavy emotional defenses.
After having their sore spots poked, they both became angry out of embarrassment.
Wen Qianshu rested her head on her hand and started doing her homework.
She felt a rare sense of annoyance—annoyed by Jiang Mingyue’s question, and also by her own counterattack. If she hadn’t immediately poked at Jiang Mingyue’s wound, she might have been able to hide her own.
Wen Qianshu: “2333.”
2333, still dazed by the previous conversation and unable to recover, replied, “Huh?”
Wen Qianshu: “Forget it, it’s nothing.”
2333: “Ha?”
Wen Qianshu had wanted to ask 2333 about Jiang Mingyue’s family situation, but then she remembered Jiang Mingyue’s anger about “invading privacy” and ultimately decided against it.
They endured like this for one whole class period.
During that time, Jiang Mingyue just did her homework, not speaking another word or passing any notes.
Finally, the evening self-study session was over. Wen Qianshu had been sitting all day; her back ached and she felt dizzy. She stood up, tossed her pens into her pencil case, and decided not to even take her schoolbag home—after a full day of exams, she really didn’t want to write anymore.
Shen Ting had the same idea and didn’t bring her bag either.
Jiang Mingyue moved aside to let her out.
Jiang Mingyue didn’t say goodbye today.
Wen Qianshu thought to herself. The more she thought, the more she felt she had said too much. Jiang Mingyue hadn’t brought it up on purpose, so why did she have to poke back? Great, now there wasn’t even a “goodbye.”
Time was a catalyst; the more she thought, the more annoyed she became.
Wen Qianshu paused. She looked at Jiang Mingyue, who was packing up with her head down, opened her mouth but couldn’t say anything, and went with Shen Ting to the bike shed. Wen Qianshu’s bike was the same model as Shen Ting’s, with a crossbar in the front. When she straddled it, her feet couldn’t touch the ground, and the bike creaked and groaned as if it would breathe its last in the next second.
The campus was bustling and noisy, with students in groups of two or three walking and laughing together. Riding bikes wasn’t allowed on school grounds, so the two of them pushed their bikes, struggling to make their way through the crowd.
Who knew that after walking for just a short while, Wen Qianshu would suddenly see Jiang Mingyue again. She was wearing her schoolbag and talking to a short-haired girl beside her—no, it seemed the other girl was doing all the talking, while Jiang Mingyue walked with her back straight, not saying a word.
The light sprinkled on her hair, sliding down the strands and brushing past her snow-white neck. It was dim and hazy, carrying a hint of false tenderness.
Beautiful.
Damn beautiful.
Wen Qianshu pushed her bike, following behind for a while, then suddenly turned to Shen Ting and said, “Wait for me at the newsstand. I need to go say something.”
Shen Ting: “Okay.”
Wen Qianshu: “Excuse me, please make way.”
She pushed her bike through the crowd, caught up to Jiang Mingyue, and tapped her on the shoulder. “Deskmate, can I talk to you for a sec?”
Jiang Mingyue stopped and said to the short-haired girl, “You go on ahead. I’ll see you at the school gate.”
The short-haired girl was none other than the tiger-like girl from Class 6. She glanced at Wen Qianshu and said with a grin, “Okay.”
Wen Qianshu led Jiang Mingyue back against the crowd, squeezing their way to a small grove of trees—No. 1 High School’s landscaping was so good that there were small groves everywhere. But luckily, this spot was close to the school gate, so there were fewer couples around.
Wen Qianshu gripped her handlebars and said, “I’m sorry.”
With her free hand, she tugged at the corner of her clothes and deliberately put on a carefree smile. “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
Jiang Mingyue was taken aback, then, as if realizing something, she interrupted, “No, I’m not angry.”
Wen Qianshu was bewildered. “Then you were?”
Jiang Mingyue: “My thoughts were just a bit messy. I used the last class period to sort them out.”
Jiang Mingyue: “I thought—I don’t know how to explain it to you—I thought I wouldn’t bring these emotions to school.”
“You don’t have to explain, I know.” Wen Qianshu unconsciously breathed a sigh of relief, gripping the handlebars and staring at them as if they were something novel she had never seen before. “You can’t just separate those things.”
“I have a friend.” Wen Qianshu picked at the grip on her handlebars. “Her relationship with her mother is very bad, terrible in fact. She’s the same way; sometimes she just keeps thinking about it, unable to stop.”
“Later, someone told her.” Wen Qianshu frowned, noticing she had picked off a large piece of the handlebar grip. “Study, go to school, and get out of the family home. Don’t be trapped in a small space. Go meet more people, go see a bigger world.”
“Then one day, when you look back, maybe you’ll think it was no big deal, or maybe you’ll never be able to let it go. But no matter what, at least you tried.”
How strange. It seemed to be her own thought, yet it also seemed to be something a doctor had said back then.
That person stood before her hospital bed, wearing a white coat. They leaned down, and above their mask was a pair of cool, light-colored eyes.
She seemed to have said something else—
She also said—
“Okay.”
Jiang Mingyue said, “I will.”
Wen Qianshu shuddered and snapped back to her senses.
What was she doing? Jiang Mingyue wasn’t the Wen Qianshu of the past. Her family situation wasn’t necessarily as bad as Wen Qianshu’s had been, and of course, Jiang Mingyue knew what to do. In the book, no one had discovered this about her. She didn’t argue with the teacher, never bothered with the male and female protagonists, and just studied very hard to get into a good university.
Wen Qianshu rubbed her temples, feeling a headache coming on. She couldn’t figure out if she was possessed or what today, and could only attribute all this abnormality to the mother from her previous life.
No matter how much time passed, regardless of whether they were living or dead, they were always tormenting each other.
Neither would let the other go.
Wen Qianshu waved her hand, deciding it was not a good day for talking. “I’ll be going then.”
But Jiang Mingyue spoke up, “The friend you mentioned, who is it?”
Wen Qianshu finally gave a tug and accidentally ripped off the piece of the handlebar grip. She looked at Jiang Mingyue, at her light-colored pupils. However, Jiang Mingyue quickly added, “Whenever someone says ‘I have a friend,’ it’s always made up, isn’t it?”
In that instant, Wen Qianshu thought, Jiang Mingyue knows.
She knew this person was Wen Qianshu, and she also knew Wen Qianshu didn’t want to say it.
So Wen Qianshu took the easy way out and smiled. “You found me out.”
“Mm,” Jiang Mingyue said. “She must be a very good girl.”
Wen Qianshu let out a laugh. “I already said it was made up.”
“Yes,” Jiang Mingyue said. “It’s made up.”
They walked out side by side, heading towards the school gate. The campus was mostly empty by now, and it was much easier to push their bikes.
As they neared the school gate and could already see the short-haired girl, Jiang Mingyue suddenly said, “If I’m angry, I’ll say so.”
Wen Qianshu didn’t understand. “What?”
Jiang Mingyue: “If I get angry, I’ll tell you. Today I was just a bit upset and forgot to say goodbye. Don’t overthink it.”
Wen Qianshu’s pupils contracted, and she laughed. “What overthinking? I wasn’t overthinking anything. What is there to overthink?”
“Mm.” Jiang Mingyue turned her head to the side, revealing a very faint smile. “Goodbye.”
Wen Qianshu waved subconsciously. “Goodbye.”
Then she watched Jiang Mingyue walk towards the other girl.
She saw Jiang Mingyue’s long hair flutter and remembered that very faint smile.
It was strangely beautiful.
The night was deep, and a light breeze rustled the leaves as it passed.
In a daze, Wen Qianshu realized that under the dim streetlights, the tenderness that arose was not false, but real.
A real bit of tenderness.
The night wind was a bit cold, but fortunately, pedaling the bike helped her warm up.
Wen Qianshu soon met up with Shen Ting and listened to her chatter all the way, talking about class gossip, food, and teachers.
Wen Qianshu was a bit distracted, but she still smiled and responded.
When they stopped at a red light, however, 2333 hesitated before speaking. “You—”
Looking at the data it held, it discovered that Wen Qianshu had attempted suicide three times in her first year of high school, ending up in the hospital each time. But later, for some unknown reason, she stopped. After that, she stumbled through high school, went to university, and intermittently changed jobs, paid off debts, and sought treatment. She also taught herself several languages and had visited several countries.
The reason it said “for some unknown reason” was because Wen Qianshu’s records from that period were missing. When 2333 tried to ask the main system, it was told “access denied.”
Strange. Why would it be denied access?
“You think it’s tragic, right?” Wen Qianshu said. “Actually, my mom also liked to read my diary. If I’d known, I would have burned it last year.”
The first half of the sentence made 2333’s heart skip a beat, while the second half made it go “Huh?”
Wen Qianshu was worried. “Sigh, I died too suddenly. I didn’t have time to burn my diary.”
“The diary I’ve been keeping since elementary school.”
Great. Now all the sentimental melancholy and cringey, self-important phrases she’d written since elementary school would be exposed.
I hope no one suspects it was murder. Otherwise, if the police officers check the diary, it would be no different from them checking a computer’s hard drive.
If Wen Qianshu were still in that world, even if she were dead and nailed in her coffin, she would shout from her grave with her decaying vocal cords: “Please burn my diary!”
2333: “You’ve been worried about this the whole time?”
Wen Qianshu: “What else?”
2333: “…”
2333 swore that if it sympathized with Wen Qianshu for even one more second, it was an idiot!
Author’s Notes:
2333: “You’ve already lost 14 points in Chinese!”
Wen Qianshu: “Shut up.”
As is my habit, the protagonists I write are not good people. Don’t believe everything Wen Qianshu says.
Also, suicide is very bad! It’s very painful! Absolutely do not imitate it!
