Wen Qianshu watched Shen Ting carry her bicycle up. After a moment of thought, she locked her own bike and went upstairs herself.
Shen Ting said goodbye to her, “Qianqian, see you.”
Wen Qianshu waved her hand. She saw Shen Ting open the door and go inside, and heard her call out to her grandmother. A dim, warm light spilled out from the doorway before being shut back in.
Wen Qianshu leaned against the wall but didn’t open her door.
The motion-sensor light on their floor had been broken for a long time. Only the light downstairs was stubbornly flickering on and off. Finally, after too long without any movement, it too went out.
Wen Qianshu tilted her head back, resting it against the wall.
2333: “Not going in again?”
Wen Qianshu: “My legs hurt from pedaling.”
2333: “Come on, you pedal this route every day.”
Wen Qianshu suddenly asked it, “In the original book, did Little Moonlight argue with the head teacher?”
2333: “Didn’t you already read through the book?”
Wen Qianshu: “Just confirming with you again.”
“No,” 2333 said. “In the book, she was always a model student. Besides changing seats, she never caused any trouble. It wasn’t as serious as you’re making it out to be.”
Wen Qianshu smiled, her tone profound. “A model student, huh.”
2333: “What do you mean?”
Wen Qianshu: “Nothing, just a thought—she and Shen Ting are actually quite similar.”
It’s just that one fights by following the rules of the outside world, while the other fights by following her own ideas. Jiang Mingyue is still just a high school student, so she doesn’t have much ability to resist things she disapproves of yet.
Wen Qianshu: “And I know why she wanted to change seats.”
2333: “Huh? Why?”
Wen Qianshu: “Because she wanted to.”
2333: “…”
2333: “Wen Qianshu!”
Wen Qianshu laughed silently, raised her eyes, and stared at the ceiling.
Because she didn’t want to sit by the window—that way, people outside could see her.
Anger at the invasion of privacy, disgust for tattling—Jiang Mingyue seemed to hate any feeling of being watched or controlled.
Misplaced anger, misplaced anger—what anger was she misplacing?
Who else had such power, to unscrupulously and irresistibly obtain another person’s privacy?
Parents.
The night crept over the buildings, seeped into the homes, and besieged the sliver of light under the door.
It was hard to say what Wen Qianshu thought of at that moment—she thought of many, many things, but they were all fractured, unable to connect, leaving only sharp edges, like a handful of broken glass embedded in the flesh of her memory.
An opened diary.
A shrill ringtone.
“Qianshu, Qianshu—”
“Wen Qianshu.” The proctor, repeatedly interrupted, called her out. Her mother was standing outside the door.
“Qianshu, why didn’t you answer the phone? An exam? You have to answer the phone even during an exam.”
“Qianshu, you have to be obedient, you have to take your medicine properly.”
Those voices were sometimes gentle and kind, sometimes hoarse and hysterical, always overlapping with the deafening ringtone. It was like a solo, or like the thinnest string of a violin being drawn by an un-rosined bow, tearing out sharp notes.
“Wen Zhengde, I heard from Xiao Li downstairs that this medicinal patch can boost the body’s yang energy and cure all diseases. One patch is only a few thousand… What do you mean it’s useless? Listen to me, Xiao Li’s family used it too, it’s definitely effective, otherwise why would they be selling it themselves… Are you listening to me… Are you just unwilling to pay?”
“Qianshu, your dad doesn’t want you to get better. Listen to Mom, only Mom loves you.”
“Mom loves you, Mom loves you so much—”
Those “peculiar” folk remedies, those “miraculous” potions.
The sharp siren of the ambulance, the people inside blaming each other.
“It’s all your fault for giving her all this random stuff to drink! She didn’t take the medicine the doctor prescribed properly, and now look, her condition is worse, isn’t it?”
“My fault? How is it my fault! Wen Zhengde, if it weren’t for you being stingy with money! The doctor doesn’t understand, this remedy is a family secret, not shared with outsiders—if you had paid enough, and Qianshu had taken enough, how could—”
“Enough, I think you’ve been driven mad by our daughter’s illness! Believing in all sorts of shady things—”
“Wen Zhengde! That’s your daughter!”
“You think my heart doesn’t ache? But the doctor said, this illness can’t be cured, it can never be cured! She can only take medicine month after month!”
Wen Qianshu, wearing an oxygen mask, just lay there listening.
Sometimes she would lie on her back in the hospital bed, seeing herself reflected in her parents’ eyes, like a goldfish.
Unable to speak, emotionless, and with only a seven-second memory.
Because it couldn’t leave the water, it couldn’t go anywhere.
“Qianshu, you can’t go to gym class, you can’t participate in the sports meet. There are so many people, what if you catch something unclean?”
“Qianshu, it’s raining outside today, you can’t go to school. I’ll call in sick for you.”
“Qianshu, Qianshu, Mom loves you, Qianshu—”
Love, love—
One after another, they finally overlapped into sighs, ai, ai—
Those sighs flowed into her dreams, turning into a pair of eyes, a pair of eyes full of love. They kept multiplying, enlarging, until they filled the sky and the earth, accompanying every blink, every breath.
Thousands upon thousands of eyes, their pupils reflecting Wen Qianshu.
Reflecting only Wen Qianshu.
“I’m doing this for you, Qianshu, I’m doing it all for you.”
“I love—”
Wen Qianshu let out a breath, slightly raised her head, and then leaned back. The back of her head hit the wall with a dull thud. Pain was an interesting sensation; it could block thoughts, leaving a person with nothing but the pain itself.
2333: “What are you doing?”
Wen Qianshu: “Can’t you tell? Knocking on the door.”
2333: “With your head?”
Wen Qianshu: “Yeah.”
2333: “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
Before 2333 could flip out, the door really opened. A woman’s face appeared in the doorway. “You’re back?”
Wen Qianshu: “…”
The woman: “How come you’re back so early today?”
Wen Qianshu: “Because of the midterm exams today, I came back a bit early.”
There was no causal relationship between the two. Wen Qianshu usually came home late purely because her “legs hurt from riding the bike,” and she would stand in the hallway until the middle of the night, waiting until she estimated they were asleep before opening the door.
But the woman was successfully distracted by the word “exams.” “How did you do?”
Wen Qianshu: “Okay. There’s a parent-teacher conference this weekend.”
“Wen Qianshu’s” mother nodded, told her to come in, and handed her a small cloth pouch. “Open it and see.”
Wen Qianshu pulled open the drawstring and poured out the contents—it was a wooden amulet.
“Your Auntie Lin said this is very good. She prayed for one back then, and Lulu got into a good university.” The woman took it from her hand. “I’ll hang it on your desk for you. Be careful not to break it.”
Wen Qianshu: “Okay.”
Wen Qianshu slipped off her shoes and looked up at the woman’s profile—she looked so much like her biological mother, really so much alike, with a similar figure and similar features. Her eyes were almond-shaped but drooped, losing their shape. Her lips were pressed flat, but the corners were always turned down in an unhappy expression.
So alike.
So much so that for a moment, Wen Qianshu thought that perhaps if she hadn’t gotten sick in the past, her mother would have turned out like this.
A little superstitious, but harmlessly so. Concerned about her grades, but not overly watchful. Not arguing with her father day and night, nor spending all the family’s savings on various “folk remedies” and falling deep into debt.
If she hadn’t gotten sick in the past.
Wen Qianshu lowered her eyes. She had been avoiding these parents for as long as she had been here. She left early and returned late, waiting for Shen Ting in the hallway, waiting in the hallway until midnight. She saved all her daylight hours for school, for the classroom.
In a person’s life, these few years are split in two, half at home, half at school. But Wen Qianshu insisted on spending both halves at school.
She was trying the things she missed in her past life, everything she couldn’t achieve. She tried the high jump, tried the sports meet, tried to blend in with her classmates, tried to attend classes on time, tried all the delicious snacks that others talked about.
Jiang Mingyue had said, “Wen Qianshu, you can be more honest with me.”
How could she be honest?
Wen Qianshu had never even been honest with herself.
In her past life, her last life, what did she truly regret, and what had she never obtained, even in death?
A healthy body, a—
The woman came out of the room.
The apartment was small, cluttered, and not soundproof. Standing in the living room, you could hear the man’s loud, long snores from the bedroom.
The woman knocked on the door and shouted, “Lao Wen, stop snoring!”
The man was woken up, grunted impatiently, and rolled over, making the bed creak.
The woman said to Wen Qianshu, “Hurry and brush your teeth. Get to sleep before your dad starts snoring again.”
Wen Qianshu agreed, pushed the door open, and squeezed into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She suddenly turned her head and saw the woman standing under the light, tidying up a few pairs of shoes on the floor that she found unsightly.
Under the warm yellow light was the silhouette of the woman bending over to tidy up.
Beyond the light was the night invading the room. The edge of the night touched the bathroom door, and inside the door was another light.
And so this line of night separated two solitary lights.
A healthy body, and a mother who had not yet been driven mad for her sake.
Wen Qianshu randomly recalled Jiang Mingyue’s words.
Wen Qianshu—
Don’t overthink—
Be more honest—
Wen Qianshu opened her mouth and suddenly said, “Mom.”
The woman looked up. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Wen Qianshu averted her gaze and said softly, “Just wanted to call you.”
If the artificial intelligence were willing to shift its focus a little, to something beyond the mission, it would have discovered that this was the first time Wen Qianshu had called her “Mom” in the two months since she entered this world line.
But 2333 didn’t notice.
The woman didn’t notice either.
In fact, the artificial intelligence was very dedicated, the kind that forgets to eat and sleep. It felt that since there was a rare holiday, Wen Qianshu should make use of it to matchmake the male and female protagonists.
But the undedicated Wen Qianshu felt that since there was a rare holiday, she should reasonably play dead—sprawled on her bed, sleeping until the world turned upside down.
“Degenerate! So degenerate!” 2333 condemned her. “Why sleep so long in life, when you’ll sleep forever in death.”
Wen Qianshu was unmoved. “Don’t just blindly imitate human speech.”
It was the monthly holiday, and the class was already crazy with excitement, but the teachers were also crazy, handing out stacks of worksheets as if printing were free.
Wen Qianshu hadn’t slept well the night before. She put her head down on her desk for a five-minute nap after class and woke up to a world of white, covered in worksheets.
Wen Qianshu poked her head out from under the papers and saw the class representatives for Chinese, Math, and English standing in front of the blackboard, writing down the number of worksheets in a line. Fang Wenyuan was handing out chemistry worksheets, and he had called on his deskmate, who was also counting papers with a pained expression.
“Is your class’s English representative here?” someone poked their head in through the front door. “Go get the English newspapers after next class.”
The class let out a miserable cry.
The next class was history. The bell rang, and the representatives who hadn’t finished handing out homework could only return to their seats dejectedly, assignments in hand.
Zhang Zisheng was already eager. “Lao Wen, hey, you do Math, Physics, Chemistry, and English, and Shen Ting and I will do Chinese, History, Politics, and Geography. We’ll swap when we’re done?”
“Lao Wen” thought of how her mom also called her dad “Lao Wen” and shivered.
“Lao Wen” refused her. “No way, I need to practice my weak subjects.”
“Lao Wen” made an enthusiastic invitation. “How about we switch? You do Math, Physics, Chemistry, and English, and I’ll do Chinese, Politics, History, and Geography?”
Zhang Zisheng waved her hands in fright. “No, no, I wouldn’t dare.”
Shen Ting couldn’t help but laugh.
Wen Qianshu turned back and continued listening to the history teacher’s lecture. The minor subject teachers at No. 1 High School were all quite fun. The history teacher’s name was Wang Fei, and he called himself the “Queen of Song of the History Department, ‘Faye Wong’,” but no student ever reminded him that he was a man.
This gentleman could rattle off historical anecdotes at will and recite event timelines backward and forward. Unfortunately, his handwriting was like wild cursive; if you didn’t listen for a moment, you couldn’t understand what he wrote on the board. He also loved to place his phone on his beer belly, to “show off my profound knowledge.”
But Zhang Zisheng had just unilaterally made an enemy of him, because he was the proctor for her math exam during the midterms. In the final minute, just as Zhang Zisheng had a breakthrough and was about to figure out a line of thought to earn a point or two, Wang Fei shouted, “One minute left.”
Shen Ting was confused. “What’s wrong with that?”
Zhang Zisheng: “Nothing. But after that, he started counting down—I mean, he opened his mouth and recited 60, 59, 58, 57…”
“At that moment, my mind went completely blank. I even started singing.”
Shen Ting: “That’s awful.”
Zhang Zisheng: “Isn’t it?”
Wen Qianshu leaned her back against the seat behind her, wanting to laugh as she listened. Who would have thought that Jiang Mingyue would also turn her head slightly and say with a deadpan expression, “I was in the same exam room as her.”
Wen Qianshu really laughed.
Wang Fei: “This student, you’re smiling so brightly. Why don’t you stand up and recite the founding dates of each dynasty.”
Wen Qianshu’s smile froze on her face. “2333?”
2333 retaliated, “No, I’m not cheating for you.”
After history class, the head teacher was already waiting outside. She came in and shouted, “Nobody move! Wait until all the homework is handed out, your things are packed, and the big cleanup is done before you leave!”
Before the parent-teacher conference, it was a tradition at No. 1 High School to have a thorough cleaning, which the student life department would also inspect. In the head teacher’s own words: “The school doesn’t want parents to come and see a pigsty.”
Wen Qianshu quickly stuffed all her books into her desk drawer and turned to see Jiang Mingyue with her head down, looking at a few notebooks in her hand. Those notebooks didn’t look like homework notebooks, and Jiang Mingyue usually didn’t take them out.
Wen Qianshu suddenly spoke up, “My drawer still has space. If it’s inconvenient for you, you can put them here?”
Jiang Mingyue lowered her eyes, looking at her own obviously empty drawer, and then at Wen Qianshu’s bulging one.
Wen Qianshu followed her gaze, smiled, and took the notebooks directly from her. She pulled a thick book out of her drawer, placed the notebooks at the very back, covered them with worksheets, and then hid them with other books.
Wen Qianshu stuffed the thick book into her schoolbag, shaking it a couple of times to force it in. Then she covered her mouth with her hand and whispered to Jiang Mingyue, “Perfect, I was going to take it home to study secretly.”
Jiang Mingyue: “That’s a Xinhua Dictionary.”
Wen Qianshu: “Oh, right.”
But Wen Qianshu always had a reason. “I love Chinese. I’m going to memorize the dictionary.”
2333: “…”
I wonder what the Chinese teacher would think.
The head teacher went to get the labor committee member to assign tasks. Wen Qianshu was by the window, so she was assigned the windows, while Jiang Mingyue was assigned the tiles below. The student life committee member also brought steel wool and laundry detergent, poured water on the floor, and had people scrub the floor with their shoes.
Wen Qianshu was very excited.
2333 had no idea what this person’s excitement was about. She leaped onto the desk like a monkey, took another step out, and hung outside to wipe the windows. The head teacher was talking to the math representative, and when she suddenly looked up, she was nearly scared to death. “Wen Qianshu!”
“Get down from there!”
Wen Qianshu was pulled down. The head teacher repeatedly explained that she was not allowed to lean out the window or do anything dangerous. She looked at Wen Qianshu, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, then put on a stern face and scolded, “If you’re so eager to climb high, find someone to hold you steady and go clean the lampshades.”
Wen Qianshu: “Okay!”
2333: “What on earth are you so excited about!”
The person originally assigned to clean the lampshades was the class monitor, Yu Sheng, the tallest in the class. But he couldn’t handle his fear of heights; his legs would go weak just standing on a desk, and he’d crouch there for ages, unable to get up. Seeing Wen Qianshu charge over, he was delighted and quickly jumped down. “Brave warrior, please.”
The “brave warrior” nodded at him. “Prime Minister, you may rise.”
But as it turned out, the labor committee member’s arrangement was correct; height was truly an insurmountable obstacle. Wen Qianshu, standing on the desk, couldn’t reach the light at all. Just as Yu Sheng was panicking and about to get up himself, Jiang Mingyue said, “Make way.”
Yu Sheng moved aside, and Wen Qianshu also subconsciously shifted her feet. She then saw Jiang Mingyue lift a stool and place it on the desk.
Yu Sheng: “Isn’t that too dangerous?”
Wen Qianshu: “Relax, don’t worry about the details—”
As she held the stool steady and looked down, she saw Jiang Mingyue looking up.
The air smelled of laundry detergent. In Jiang Mingyue’s slightly upturned hair, there were faint, damp traces of sweat.
“This is so dangerous,” Wen Qianshu smiled. “Good deskmate, you have to hold the desk steady.”
Jiang Mingyue: “Mm, I will.”
Author’s Notes:
I should still mark this:
No medicine can cure all diseases!
If you are sick, please go to a regular hospital! Please trust doctors!
OOC Theater 1:
Wen Qianshu: 2333, you’ve changed.
2333: Pfft.
OOC Theater 2:
Yu Sheng: ??
