“He was a draft blowing through an open corridor. Blowing without rest, from south to north, year upon year.”
— Sherry Lab, The Ninth Year Past the Dream
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Xia Li pushed open the private room door and walked down a corridor blazing with light.
As the warm air from inside rushed out, so did a row of eyes, turning toward them all at once.
Ouyang Jing, who had been seated on the sofa, shot to her feet. She seemed momentarily at a loss, clutching Lin Qingxiao’s arm. The delight was written plainly across her face.
Nie Chuhang came over. “How did you two end up coming in together?”
“I was going to step out for some air,” Xia Li said, “and I ran into him right at the front door.”
She did not mention that Yan Sishi hadn’t known the room number and had been on the verge of going home.
Among the friends Nie Chuhang had invited, two had also attended the intensive physics competition training and knew Yan Sishi from that. They greeted him and asked if he wanted to join their card game.
Yan Sishi told them to go ahead without him — he had just arrived and would sit for a while first.
He scanned the room briefly, then settled at the far end of the long sofa.
Xia Li watched as Ouyang Jing glanced repeatedly toward where Yan Sishi was sitting, hesitating — but ultimately, it seemed, unable to summon the courage to move closer. She sat down beside Lin Qingxiao with three or four empty seats between them.
She heard Lin Qingxiao say teasingly to Ouyang Jing: “You’ve been waiting so long for him to show up, and now you’re not going to say a single word?”
That seemed to do it — Ouyang Jing couldn’t just sit there after that.
She straightened her hair and her skirt, then turned to Lin Qingxiao: “Do I look all right?”
She reached across the coffee table for a can of cola, took a slow, steadying breath — and then stood up and walked toward Yan Sishi.
It wasn’t even her situation to be in, and yet Xia Li’s chest tightened with unexpected anxiety. She bit her lower lip and watched, unable to look away.
Ouyang Jing held out the can of cola with a smile. “Would you like something to drink?”
Yan Sishi only raised his eyes slightly — barely glancing at the can of cola — and did not reach out to take it.
The pause stretched on a beat too long. The smile on Ouyang Jing’s face stiffened, degree by degree.
“Thank you.” The voice was like cool spring water, like a summer breeze — not cold, exactly, but completely without warmth.
And having said it, he took the can from her — only to set it directly back down on the coffee table.
The implication was clear: he was never going to open it.
Her expression crumpled at the edges, as though she might cry.
But Ouyang Jing tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, kept smiling, and tried again: “Would you like to request a song?”
“Not right now. Thank you.” The same tone as before.
As an observer, Xia Li felt a distant, low ache — a kind of secondhand sorrow.
She thought: probably no one could bear a rejection from Yan Sishi without feeling it keenly, not even someone as accomplished and self-assured as Ouyang Jing.
And had there not been that small favor of lending him her MP3 — a tiny thread of connection between them — she suspected her own fate would have been no different.
Ouyang Jing said nothing more. She turned around and went back to sit beside Lin Qingxiao.
She buried her face in Lin Qingxiao’s shoulder and stayed like that for a long time without lifting it again.
Was she crying?
Xia Li didn’t know.
Yan Sishi never joined in with the lively atmosphere.
He remained as he always was — somewhere at the edges of the noise.
In the private room, some people were singing, some were playing cards, someone had produced a dice cup for rounds of low-stakes betting, just for the small, pleasant thrill of it.
And Yan Sishi sat in the far corner of the long sofa and didn’t move.
He reached into the pocket of his down jacket, pulled out his iPod, and plugged in his earphones. He bowed his head, pressed a few buttons, then slipped out of his down jacket and laid it beside him, tucking the iPod into his hoodie pocket.
He had constructed an invisible boundary around himself. No one was going to breach it.
Ouyang Jing, wounded, stayed where she was. Lin Qingxiao urged her to come sing, and she had no heart for it.
She had dressed so carefully and come with such high hopes — and she had a voice good enough for the school’s annual Top Ten Singers competition. But tonight, none of it had been of any use.
Ouyang Jing’s family had a strict curfew; she couldn’t stay past nine, and she had to leave.
“Aren’t you going to stay a little longer?” Lin Qingxiao stood up to see her out.
Ouyang Jing shook her head, and stole one last look in Yan Sishi’s direction — half reluctant, half resigned. “…My dad’s car is almost at the entrance.”
“Then let me walk you down.”
When Lin Qingxiao came back from seeing Ouyang Jing off, she sat down beside Xia Li and rummaged through a bag for a packet of snacks to open.
With a small sigh, she said: “I’m glad the person I like isn’t some big, sought-after figure. Otherwise I’d be crushed too.”
Xia Li didn’t know what to say.
Liking someone who many others also liked — the moment you felt even a flicker of grievance, wasn’t that already losing?