And with that, he walked away.
He had assumed his rudeness would be enough to keep people at a comfortable distance. But when he left school that afternoon, Zhang Zaixin saw her again.
She was trailing behind him — and this time she was holding a small bottle of medicine.
His mother spotted her first and immediately went over: “Is that for Zaixin?”
The girl gave a small nod.
He opened his mouth, already prepared to refuse.
“Goodness, what a kind-hearted child you are,” his mother said — and clamped her hand firmly over his mouth. She asked the girl’s name, then grabbed him by the arm and marched him away.
“Zhang Zaixin, if you say one more unkind thing to anyone, I will give you a thrashing!”
He wasn’t entirely convinced: “I came to this school to study, not to say pleasant things.”
“Still arguing?” Chen Baoxiang hauled him home, and at the sight of the injuries on his face she was equal parts irritated and amused. “Beaten up like this and you still don’t want me to go confront them for you?”
“Children’s matters have children’s solutions. I don’t need your help.”
“Oh, now you know you’re a child?” Chen Baoxiang poked his cheek. “You’re usually so busy playing the adult.”
“I’m only twelve — of course I’m a child.” Zhang Zaixin turned his head aside. “And you accepted that girl’s things without even asking why. You don’t know what’s behind it.”
Chen Baoxiang shook the little bottle in her hand: “This? Tujin says you saved her today, so she wanted to thank you with this.”
Saved her?
Zhang Zaixin blinked, and after a moment’s recollection, it clicked.
So those students he’d been fighting today hadn’t been coming for him — they’d been going for the girl behind him.
He had misread the situation. And on top of that, he’d been rather unpleasant to her.
Zhang Zaixin was not someone who made mistakes — whether accidentally breaking a bowl or upsetting his parents, he had never done either. This, then, was the single mistake he made in all of his childhood.
It sat uneasy in him. Zhang Zaixin turned to his mother and asked: “When Father makes a mistake, what does he usually do to make it right?”
Chen Baoxiang stared at him, her face flushing: “You absolutely cannot learn that — you, just what kind of mistake did you make?”
“Nothing. I was just asking.” Zhang Zaixin picked up his book and used it to hide his face again.
The next day, he made a point of looking for this Tujin.
In a classroom of forty students, she was already small to begin with — and yet she had chosen the very back corner seat. When she noticed someone standing in front of her, her first instinct was to curl her arms over her own head.
---