Chapter 5

The life of senior year in high school followed a set routine, as if every day repeated the exact same path like clockwork.  

But the passage of time still brought a certain sense of pressure to Fang Zhuo.  

What she was nervous about wasn’t the college entrance exam, but the financial pressure that would follow its end.

Her grades were severely unbalanced between subjects, which caused her overall ranking to hover somewhere in the middle. There was nothing she could do about that. The rural elementary school she attended never taught English, and the teaching quality in her middle school wasn’t great either—the teachers couldn’t even speak proper Mandarin.  

Compared to other students in A High School, the subject of English was completely unfamiliar to her. She didn’t know where to even begin to catch up. Because of this, she couldn’t obtain the school’s scholarship.  

Fortunately, her grades in other subjects were decent, barely enough to make up for the gap.

Her goal was to get into a first-tier university, because their tuition fees were relatively low.  

If she failed the exam, it would be very hard for her to save up extra money for tuition.  

Aside from this senior year’s tuition, she only had a little over thirteen hundred yuan left. It was truly a bit of a stretch.

Fang Zhuo recorded all sorts of miscellaneous expenses, and after looking at the final number—which was far from providing any sense of security—she pulled out a study guide and started doing practice problems.

In the evening self-study classroom, there were scattered whispers.  

The back door opened, and the class teacher stepped in. She walked around the classroom, and when she passed by Fang Zhuo, she tapped her desk with a curled finger.  

Fang Zhuo lifted her head and heard her ask quietly by her ear, “Fang Zhuo, do you know XX County, XX Village?”  

Fang Zhuo’s pen tip paused on her scratch paper. She hadn’t expected to hear such a familiar place name, and responded, “I know. I used to live there.”  

“There’s a letter in the security room, forwarded from that place to the school. It’s been hanging there for many days. The person who delivered it didn’t say clearly who it was for. Since no one claimed it, the administrator opened the letter,” said the class teacher. “Go to my office and see if it’s yours.”

Fang Zhuo was a bit confused. After her grandmother passed away, the house had been sold by Fang Yiming. She didn’t know what could be so important as to be sent all the way to the school.

She got up and followed the class teacher to the office.

Inside, a few students were gathered around the desk asking questions. The class teacher took out an already-opened delivery bag from a drawer. After having Fang Zhuo confirm the address, and confirming it was correct, she handed the package to her.

The sender was listed as “Ye Yuncheng.”  

The shipping address was a backward township near A City.  

The recipient was her grandmother. It was probably the owner of the village’s general store who helped forward it to A High School.

Fang Zhuo opened the bag with her fingers and peeked inside, her eyes widening slightly.  

Inside was actually a sum of money. In addition, there was a white note.  

She took the note out and saw just a few very brief lines of greetings.  

It asked how Fang Zhuo had been doing lately. Asked whether she was almost of age. Hoped that her grandmother would keep the cash for Fang Zhuo—after all, adults needed to carry some money.

The handwriting was elegant and neat. The signature and date were written at the bottom.  

It was already from June.

Fang Zhuo moved her fingers aside and looked at a small line of annotation in the corner written in even smaller handwriting.  

“July 16th — Fifteenth anniversary of Yaoling Jie’s death.”  

It was probably a hope for her to return to pay respects at the grave.

Fang Zhuo didn’t know when Ye Yaoling had passed away.  

She subconsciously began recalling what she had been doing on July 16th.  

However, she was startled to realize that her past life held no particularly memorable colors—it was always a journey of rushing about.  

That day was probably like any other, working under the blazing sun. Maybe she had made time to go to the library, hiding from the heat and reading books.

Suddenly learning this information gave rise to a kind of hollow sense of having missed something.  

Her chest tightened, and she felt a bit panicked, but when she tried to grasp the reason why, she couldn’t clearly say.

The class teacher noticed something was off with her expression and asked, “Are you alright?”  

Fang Zhuo folded the letter and dazedly shook her head.  

The teacher asked, “Is it a family member?”  

Fang Zhuo hesitated for a moment and softly said, “Yes.”

While sorting through her grandmother’s belongings, she had seen a stack of envelopes with the same name on them, all empty.  

Her grandmother couldn’t read or write. Fang Zhuo had never understood who would so persistently send her letters—why were the envelopes always empty?

Her grandmother had never told her about it, and likely never told the sender anything about herself either.

In this moment, the confusion that had lingered in Fang Zhuo’s youth seemed to finally get a delayed answer.  

She had learned something about her mother. And found out that she had an uncle.

The mask of indifference that Fang Zhuo had maintained for so many years finally showed a small crack.  

More questions surged into her mind, as if she had returned to the childhood phase of curiosity about family and parents.

But as soon as this strange emotion reached her eyes, Fang Zhuo forcefully suppressed it.  

She put the letter away, nodded to the class teacher, and walked out.

People were moving through the hallway, and Fang Zhuo realized it was already between classes.  

Yan Lie was lying on his desk asleep. When Fang Zhuo sat down, his eyelids twitched slightly.  

Once everything around her quieted again, Fang Zhuo resumed working through the remaining half of her calculus problem.

She was clearly off tonight. Her thoughts kept drifting.  

Even though she had already written down several formulas, she couldn’t proceed to the next step.  

Her pen scrawled across the page in messy strokes, but she ended up making a basic mistake in the calculations and had to start all over again.

Fang Zhuo rubbed her hair in frustration, tossed the densely written scratch paper into the corner, then turned her head—only to find that Yan Lie hadn’t been asleep at all.  

He was lying on the desk, his eyes half-open lazily, gaze unfocused, pointed in Fang Zhuo’s direction.

Fang Zhuo was stunned for a moment. Her eyes met his and she forgot to look away. Seeing this, Yan Lie perked up a little and even took the initiative to ask, “Why are you secretly looking at me?”

Fang Zhuo: “…”  

So shameless that it was hard to reply.

Yan Lie raised his head and sat in a slouch, grinning. “I was just watching a lost little lamb. Do you need guidance from a wise man?”

Fang Zhuo ignored him and pulled out the answer sheet to compare with the question. She found that her train of thought was actually correct—it was just a simple calculation error. She directly fixed a few numbers back.

Just when Yan Lie thought she wouldn’t speak, Fang Zhuo suddenly asked, “Does your phone have navigation?”

“So you really are a lost little lamb?” Yan Lie chuckled, pulling his phone from his pocket and unlocking it with ease. “Do you know how to use it?”

Fang Zhuo had barely used phones with physical keyboards, let alone a touchscreen device.

Yan Lie opened the app and demonstrated how to use it, teaching her how to input an address. Even as she clumsily typed it in bit by bit, he didn’t show any impatience. When he saw the location “Li Village” on the screen, he muttered, “There’s a village like that near City A?”

Fang Zhuo tapped “Confirm,” but a prompt popped up saying there were no suitable public transit routes.

She paused, then looked at Yan Lie with a helpless and innocent gaze, bringing the phone a little closer to him.

Her long lashes blocked out the overhead fluorescent light, casting a soft shadow that dulled the coldness usually in her eyes. The way the light and shadow outlined her features made her clean and delicate face look even more slender and ethereal.

Yan Lie leaned in and caught a faint scent of milk from her hair. His eyes followed the contours of her face downward, froze, then he quickly looked away and leaned back, coughing. “Let me do it.”

He searched the navigation software for similar cases, and luckily there was an answer.

The most convenient route was to take a rural-city bus to a stop near the terminal, walk to a certain bridge, and wait for a passing minivan that came through daily. That van could take her to Li Village.

However, the van could only stop at the entrance of the village—she’d have to walk the rest of the way on her own.

Fang Zhuo memorized the route, her expression slightly grave. She thanked Yan Lie and returned the phone to him.

Yan Lie stuffed both hands into his pockets, pondered for a while, then lay back on the desk and resumed pretending to nap.

·

Saturday’s class didn’t end until 12:30. Fang Zhuo slowly packed up her things, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and walked toward the school gate.

The main road was packed with various vehicles, and even from a hundred meters away, the blare of honking horns could be heard drifting over from the roadside.

Fang Zhuo paused at the gate, stared down the tree-lined roads on both sides but couldn’t tell the direction. She turned around and went to ask the security guard for the bus stop location, then followed the thinning crowd at a leisurely pace.

A bicycle zipped past her quickly, then slowly reversed and came back to ride alongside her.

The rider kept pace by pedaling gently. Seeing that she wasn’t even glancing his way, he whistled to get her attention.

Fang Zhuo had no choice but to turn her head and say a brief “what a coincidence” to her deskmate.

Yan Lie wore a black-and-white cap. He freed a hand to push up the brim, revealing a bright, youthful face. He grinned and said, “I thought I had the power of invisibility for a second.”

He placed one foot on the ground to steady the bike and gestured. “Heading to catch the rural bus? Hop on, I’m going that way. I’ll take you there.”

Fang Zhuo glanced at the bike’s back seat, her expression a little conflicted.

Yan Lie said, “I know the way. I’ll be faster. Don’t get there too late or you won’t be able to get back.”

Only then did Fang Zhuo walk over, cautiously climbed onto the back seat, found a footrest to balance on, and clutched the hem of Yan Lie’s shirt.

“Ready?”

Yan Lie’s voice came with the wind, carrying a faint and fresh scent of lemon. As he pressed down to shift his weight, a bit of blocked sunlight slipped out, and the bicycle shot forward.

There were still electric scooters and pedestrians around. Yan Lie weaved through the non-motorized lane like a fish in water, while Fang Zhuo sat tensely.

Her stiff posture made her sit on the back seat like a rock—firm and unmoving. Even without looking, Yan Lie could sense how unnatural she was.

His gaze lowered, landing on the hand gripping his shirt. The fabric was already wrinkled from her grip. The bloodless skin and the bluish veins clearly revealed her current state.

It felt like every muscle in her body was on high alert, her entire being bristling like a puffed-up cat.

Yan Lie chuckled, “I drive really steadily. Don’t be scared!”

Fang Zhuo gave a quick “oh,” then added in an almost too obvious attempt to cover up, “I’m not.”

Yan Lie slowed down and rode steadily along the edge of the road.

When he dropped her off at the bus stop, the bus just happened to be approaching.

Fang Zhuo hurried over to catch it. Yan Lie watched her board, then turned the bike around, ready to leave. But before he could, he saw a familiar face full of hidden bitterness in front of a huge billboard.

After having been roommates for over two years, it would be hard to pretend not to see her. Yan Lie smiled and raised a hand in greeting.

Shen Musi, unwilling to let it go, shouted, “Lie Lie! Lie Lie you’re too much! Didn’t you say you wouldn’t take anyone? Am I not your dearest little brother wandering outside destitute?!”

Yan Lie said, “Alright, how about I take you back to school?”

Shen Musi fumed, “I want to go home! I walked twenty minutes just to get here! Damn it!”

Yan Lie parked the bike behind the bus stop and walked over to comfort him, “Okay, then I’ll stay and wait with you.”

The young man was tall and well-built, his smooth skin even fairer than the average guy’s. Standing there, he was like a natural spotlight, and passersby couldn’t help but glance at him.

Shen Musi felt the temperature of the attention around him, a sour feeling rising in his chest. After a while, he sarcastically muttered, “You’ve changed.”

“I haven’t,” Yan Lie said, gesturing with his hand, “You weigh twice as much as Fang Zhuo .”

Shen Musi snapped, “That’s not true.”

A moment later, he asked, “Why does your expression look so weird?”

Yan Lie curled his lips, his eyes hazy and light under the direct sunlight, smiling. “Nothing.”

“I just realized she also hits my aesthetic points.”