That single “oh” held habitual indifference, and an infinite, careless disregard for other people.
Every feeling compressed itself into arms that held the book more tightly. Face burning, Jiang Du hugged it to herself and walked stiffly ahead toward the restrooms.
On the note, in neat handwriting, was a small map — earnestly drawn, though rather terrible to look at, as though someone had tried very hard but lacked any talent for it.
Wei Qingyue suddenly laughed. It was a thin, faintly mocking smile. He scanned it briefly, then stepped forward and crouched to pick up something that had slipped from the girl’s book.
A sanitary pad in a pink wrapper.
He examined it for a few seconds. When he understood what it was, an expression came over his face that defied description.
Wei Qingyue set it on the corridor windowsill. If the girl wasn’t completely oblivious, she would come back for it.
He went to the girls’ dormitory building. Near the honeysuckle bushes, without any difficulty, he located the plastic bag. The jacket was neatly folded. When he opened it, the first thing that hit him was the strong smell of laundry detergent.
When he got back to the dormitory, Wei Qingyue noticed that the jacket was streaked with very visible, very committed patches of undissolved detergent — never rinsed out fully, leaving stripe after white stripe, looking rather like dried sweat stains.
He laughed again.
He got out a basin and rinsed it several times on his own until it was clean.
Military training lasted only a week — not long. But this autumn proved troublesome. No one was certain who started it, but somehow red-eye disease spread through the students, and the bacteria moved with extraordinary speed. By the fourth day of training, twenty people in the class had already come down with it.
Teacher Xu reminded everyone of the precautions. Everyone’s most hoped-for outcome — training suspended — showed no sign of materializing. All they could do was peer at one another’s eyelids and administer eye drops in turns.
Jiang Du didn’t catch it. Neither did Wang Jingjing. But the girl sitting in front of them had come down with it, which kept everyone on edge.
“Class Representative,” the girl in front — Chen Huiming — turned around to Jiang Du with a grin. She never used her name, always just “Class Representative.” She picked up Jiang Du’s pencil case, rubbing her own infected eye with her finger and then deliberately wiping it on the case: “You have such a strange immune system — you couldn’t do military training, but you haven’t caught the red-eye disease. We all figured you’d be the first one sick! I’m going to infect you — then we’ll all be even.”
Chen Huiming said it half-jokingly, smiling the whole time, making it look like pure mischief. Jiang Du felt a stab of anxiety but didn’t know how to say anything. She could only force out a stiff, dry half-smile and watch helplessly as Chen Huiming deliberately ran her hands all over the pencil case.
When she finished, she turned back around, visibly satisfied. Jiang Du opened her mouth, then closed it. In the end she said nothing. How could a new classmate do something like this? She let herself feel quietly disappointed for a moment and nothing more.
Outside, the early autumn evening breeze moved past. It sounded almost like a sigh.
Jiang Du eventually, thanks to Chen Huiming’s dedicated efforts, caught the eye infection. Her eyes became gummy and kept tearing up. Wang Jingjing pinned her down on the bed and administered eye drops three times a day without fail, completely unbothered by the risk of catching it herself.
And then she turned around and gave Chen Huiming a thorough dressing-down — Wang Jingjing was not doing this halfway. She told Chen Huiming she wasn’t much in stature but had more than her share of mean tricks. Chen Huiming burst into tears.
“Oh, spare me — you infected someone on purpose and now you’re crying? How shameless is that!” Wang Jingjing stood there rolling her eyes.
Jiang Du tugged softly at the hem of Wang Jingjing’s shirt, trying to get her to stop. Wang Jingjing curled her lip and told Chen Huiming that if she pulled anything like this again, she would personally throw her mattress through the window of the boys’ dormitory opposite.
The onlookers erupted again. The boys in that direction started calling out: “Wang Jingjing, you’d better make good on that — do it or you’re not Chinese!”
Only Zhang Xiaoqiang was earnestly trying to mediate.
The class was in uproar. The noise got so loud it carried next door to Class One. Their interim class monitor came and knocked on the back window: “Hey — keep it down. Some of us are actually trying to study.”
Class One was, by default, understood to be the highest-ranking class. Being told off like that stung. The boys in the back bristled — “It’s not even a class period right now. We can’t even talk?” The class monitor gave them a look that plainly said “this is why Class Two has no standards,” shrugged, and left.
Fifteen or sixteen years old — the most rebellious age. After being so nakedly looked down upon by Class One, the defiance in the room spiked. Training meant no new lessons yet. The boys began deliberately banging on their desks and belting out the military training songs at full volume.
Before long, a face everyone recognized appeared at the back window.
“Your class is genuinely very noisy. Please keep it down.” Wei Qingyue happened to be standing right at the window where Jiang Du sat, delivering the words with cool detachment. The faint impatience on his face landed on every person in the room with a strange, wordless weight.
The classroom went silent at once.
At the sound of that voice, a rush of something tangled and dense rose inside Jiang Du’s chest — she couldn’t name it. Her heartbeat slipped out of her control.
Something warm rushed up into her nose and spilled slowly downward. Every autumn when the air turned dry, Jiang Du was prone to nosebleeds. She recognized the feeling. She had no choice but to tilt her head back, groping blindly in her drawer for tissue.
What Wei Qingyue saw was a pale girl’s snow-white face, scattered with a string of red. Adolescence was unpredictable and strange like that. His mind instantly conjured the pink, private, feminine thing from earlier.
Jiang Du sensed eyes landing on her face. It was Wei Qingyue. In an instant, the world inside her head started to roar — all she wanted was to escape this moment as fast as possible. She seized a pack of tissues and bolted out of the classroom as though on pure instinct.
The hallway gleamed spotless — not a scrap of paper on the floor. With each drip that fell, a small red flower bloomed against the pale surface. Wei Qingyue watched Jiang Du run past him.
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