Summer in Your Name - 60

Sheng Xia thought she must have misheard.  

She tapped play again.  

"Beg me."  

The 2-second voice message carried the chill of a glacier from another century.  

How could it be Zhang Shu?

  

Sheng Xia played it again.  

It was definitely him.

  

Come to think of it, they hadn’t seen each other in ten days.  

Hearing his voice again felt like revisiting a distant past.  

Sheng Xia didn’t know how to reply—should she pretend not to see it or just send a question mark?  

The next second, another voice message arrived. Her fingers trembled slightly as she tapped it.

This time, it was Xin Xiaohe: “I don’t know how to solve it either, so I asked Zhang Shu to take a look for you. Don’t mind him—what’s with the ‘beg me’ nonsense? It’s just a problem! Hold on, I’ll go ask Yang Linyu!” 

So Yang Linyu was back from his winter camp. She wondered how his results were.  

Sheng Xia moved on to other questions for now.

When her phone rang, Sheng Xia jumped.  

[Song Jiang is inviting you to a voice call...]  

She thought for a moment, came up blank, and accepted the call. On the other end, she heard the sound of a book being tossed onto a desk, followed by a chair scraping the floor.  

She could almost picture it: him making the call while walking out of the classroom, casually tossing his notebook or draft paper onto a table in the hallway, pulling out a chair, and sitting down.

“That question earlier, let me explain it,” he said, his tone flat.

Sheng Xia: "Huh? Oh, okay."  

She hurriedly flipped back to the question.  

Silence stretched on the other end. Sheng Xia glanced at the screen—the call was still connected.  

Then he cleared his throat and started: “This problem is mainly… look at the second line of the answer…”  

As he spoke, she followed along, scribbling on her scratch paper. After a while, he paused again. “Your signal is bad or something?”

Sheng Xia was confused. "No?”  

“Give me some reaction, then?” His tone rose slightly, edged with impatience—or maybe displeasure.  

“Um, okay.” Sheng Xia dodged the edge in his voice, replying obediently.

But what kind of reaction was she supposed to give? He was the one explaining.  

From then on, every couple of sentences, she’d toss in an “mm” at his pauses to show she was listening. 

But timing those “mm”s was tricky. Sometimes she interrupted him, and he’d stop, causing awkward silences.

In the end, she was so focused on when to “react” that she completely lost track of his explanation.

So when he asked, “Got it?” she felt a pang of guilt.  

The explanation was done, but neither hung up.

  

She could hear occasional laughter from students passing by the corridor, even the faint whistle of wind on his end.  

"I’ll…" Sheng Xia broke the silence first, but before she could say ‘hang up now’, he cut in.  

Zhang Shu: "Why are you doing such an advanced problem?"  

The sudden question threw her.  

Do you need a reason to do problems?  

“You just need to pass the huikao¹ to graduate. Americans don’t even study at this level in college. Why torture yourself with these killer questions in the middle of the night?”

(¹: Academic Proficiency Test, a high school exit exam in China.) 

When she didn’t answer, he went on, as if explaining his own question. 

"I... I still have to take the college entrance exam," she said.  

There was another long silence. Then, Zhang Shu spoke again, his voice heavier.  

“Sheng Xia, every word I’ve said before still stands.”

"What?" Sheng Xia blurted out without thinking.  

Still? Even after "Let's end this here", it still stands?  

Zhang Shu: “I told you, if you have a question, ask me. Don’t go embarrassing yourself out there.”

With a beep, everything went silent.

He had hung up.

Sheng Xia: "......"  

---  

The day before the mock exams, Sheng Xia submitted her manuscript.  

She’d done all she could—now it was up to fate.    

She couldn’t slack on the gaokao, but she still had to take the SAT. The agency signed her up for the first Saturday in May. Lu Youze had registered for the March one and had already left for Macau, skipping the first mock exam.  

Good thing she’d dragged out her language classes long enough, or she wouldn’t have been able to take the mock exam either.  

At 6 a.m., Sheng Xia entered the classroom and was shocked to find it nearly full.  

The glaring red double-digit on the countdown board sent a jolt of nerves through her.  

They were less than a hundred steps away from the fruits of summer.  

Li Shiyi was the first to spot her, she hastily cleared the papers and notebooks piled on Sheng Xia’s desk, grinning sheepishly. "Xiaxia! You’re back! Sorry, haha, I've been occupying your desk.”

"It’s fine."  

Classmates around her noticed her too, greeting her warmly.

  

"Sheng Xia, you didn’t go to Macau for the test?"  

"No."  

"I thought you and Lu Youze went together?"

“I haven’t finished prepping yet."  

"When are you going?"  

"May, probably."  

“If it were me, I wouldn’t even bother with the mock exam. So stressful…”  

When Zhang Shu walked into the classroom, he heard a crowd chattering excitedly.

His gaze landed immediately on the girl standing quietly by her desk.  

Lately, the weather had been scorching, and he’d wondered how she could still wear knit sweaters every day.

She had all sorts of sweaters in different colors.  

Buying the same style in different colors—that kind of lazy habit was usually a guy thing, rare for a girl.

 

Today was different. She’d switched to a short-sleeved school uniform, her arms, hidden all winter, now strikingly pale.  

Sheng Xia glanced up and met his eyes. 

He must’ve just gotten a haircut—his fringe was much shorter, faintly revealing sharp, sword-like brows.

And beneath those brows, his eyes were anything but happy.  

For some reason, the laughter and chatter died down, everyone tacitly stepping back to give the two staring at each other some space.  

Sheng Xia looked away first, sitting down to organize all the recent assignments handed out.  

In half a month, the papers had piled up almost as thick as One Hundred Years of Solitude…  

It felt like it would take a hundred years to finish, lonely indeed. 

As exam time approached, the class monitor directed everyone to rearrange the desks.  

Sheng Xia and Li Shiyi helped each other move their desks into place.

  

"Thanks for covering for me while I was gone," Sheng Xia said apologetically.  

Even after taking most of her books home, her desk was still heavy. She’d been absent for two weeks—that meant two rounds of seat-rotation.  

Li Shiyi waved her hand dismissively. "No, no, no, I didn't move it. Every time, Zhang Shu came over and did it..."  

Sheng Xia’s eyes lit up for a moment, then her long lashes trembled, and she lowered her gaze.

Li Shiyi pursed her lips, falling silent.

  

Who didn’t know that the ‘class couple’ had split over their future plans? After the oath rally, many had seen that Sheng Xia’s family was no ordinary one— even Lu Youze’s father treated her father with deference.  

Honestly, everyone thought it was a shame.

But what could they do?

  

Plenty of couples broke up after graduation. Better to end things early than dragging out a doomed relationship.  

---

She hadn’t done a full set of practice questions in a while, so Sheng Xia felt out of practice, especially in math and science. She could already tell she’d bombed those. English, though, was a breeze thanks to her TOEFL classes. Even the cloze tests, which used to give her headaches, felt manageable, and she was pretty confident about them.  

The first mock exam was a city-wide joint test, graded uniformly. All the teachers were off grading, so the weekend turned into self-study—real self-study, the attendance was optional.

Sheng Xia had been running herself ragged, lost in a blur of days and nights, her mind still swimming in poetry and songs. She decided to give herself a Saturday off.

Well, not exactly a day off—she just slept in a bit, studied at home, helped Wang Lianhua with lunch, and headed to her agency for classes in the evening.  

Wang Lianhua assumed she was just resting for the weekend and even advised her not to go to school so late at night.

At the door, Sheng Xia turned back and asked, “Mom, if I could get into a school better than Nanli University but it’s far from home, what should I do?”

Wang Lianhua was clearly caught off guard but answered firmly, “That depends on the school. If it’s only slightly better, Nanli’s still the best choice. It’s got better job prospects, and your network will be full of classmates..."

“Okay, got it.”

She closed the door and left, leaving Wang Lianhua standing in the house, lost in thought.  

---

The sky hung low, clouds chaotic, the rain falling without reason.  

It was clearly March, yet the rain was anything but gentle, pouring down in torrents.

Sheng Xia stood under the eaves, glad she hadn’t ridden her bike or she’d be drenched.  

She had to take a taxi.

The rain was too heavy, streetlights blurred in the mist. The intersection was gridlocked, horns blaring incessantly. 

Two ambulances, lights flashing, wailed in vain, unable to move. A doctor leaned out from the passenger seat, yelling, “Move! Move!”

He shouted into his phone, “Request traffic police to clear the way! Hurry!”

“Miss, mind if we take a detour to clear a path for the ambulances behind us?” the taxi driver asked.

Sheng Xia readily agreed, “Sure, of course. We should hurry!”

The driver struggled to merge left, horns blaring as cars made way. The ambulances roared past, splashing mud in their wake.  

“Oh man. Wonder what emergency is making them rush like this,” he sighed.

“Two ambulances? Probably an accident. Bad weather today—bet it’s a car crash…”

 

The driver muttered to himself, his tone tinged with sympathy but mostly the casual chatter of an outsider.

By the time Sheng Xia finished her class, it was already past nine. The rain had eased.  

As she was about to call a taxi, she spotted an unexpected figure in the lobby: Zou Weiping.

  

“I was working late at the office next door. Your dad asked me to take you home,” Zou Weiping explained.  

Sheng Xia politely declined, "You don't have to; I can just take a taxi back.”

Zou Weiping insisted, "There was a violent attack nearby today. The suspect’s a nutcase on the loose. Your dad’s worried about you going home alone.”

“...Alright.”

In the car, Sheng Xia pulled out her phone to check the news. Zou Weiping chatted casually from the front seat. “Today, some brave young man stepped up heroically. They say he’s from your Affiliated High School.”

Sheng Xia was stunned, connecting it to what she’d heard earlier. “The violent attack?”

“Yes.”

“Is he okay?” Sheng Xia asked with concern.

“Not sure yet. I heard he was stabbed.”

Zou Weiping continued, “This evening, a crazy man went around slashing people with a knife. He injured a cashier at a convenience store, then ran out onto the street. People were fleeing everywhere. Guy’s clearly out to hurt society, going where the crowds were. He ended up barging into a bookstore, stabbed the owner, then went after students reading inside…”

Sheng Xia grew tenser with every word. “Bookstore? Which one?”

The only crowded, roadside bookstore around here was Yifang Bookstore. Was the owner hurt? And which classmate? She’d never run into anyone from Affiliated High School at Yifang Bookstore. 

“I don’t remember exactly. Your dad just mentioned it briefly. No police report yet, so we can’t spread rumors,” Zou Weiping said. “This could blow up into a huge public mess if it’s not handled right.”

Sheng Xia quickly opened her class group chat, thinking they would surely be talking about it.

For some reason, her heart raced, an uneasy feeling creeping in.

The chat had 99+ messages.

Her heart sank as she tapped in.

The chat was a flood of panic, messages scrolling by like a rapid stream, too fast too read. 

“Fuck, God! This can't be real?"

“Hopes he’s okay!”

“Sending prayers! Heavens, please don't envy the talented¹!”

(¹: A Chinese ancient belief about how exceptional people attract divine jealousy, often resulting in early end.)

“Shut up, what are you saying? He’ll be fine!”

“Psychos like that should just explode! What's the point of doing this?”

“Zhang Shu! Oh god, Brother Shu, don't do this to me!”

“I’m crying. Tell me this isn’t true!”

“God, please!”

“Any updates? Anyone with family at the hospital?”

“I’ll ask my aunt!”

“Don’t panic, everyone. Brother Shu is such a great person, he’ll be fine. Heaven wouldn’t let him down!”  

“Brother Shu, you have to be okay!”

"No new update, the police have everything locked down. Can’t get any info!”

“Old Wang, go ask the school, hurry!”

“Brother Shu, please be okay…”

……

Sheng Xia felt something piercing through her throat, unyielding and suffocating.

Her eyes locked onto two words: Zhang Shu.

Her trembling hands scrolled up through the messages. New messages kept pushing her back to the bottom. She kept scrolling, hands shaking, lips trembling, heart quaking. Her nose stung, eyes burning, tears welling up.

Zou Weiping, alarmed, pulled over and moved to the back seat, hesitant but asking, “Is it… a close classmate?”

Sheng Xia stared at the chat windows filled with an endless stream of Zhang Shu, Brother Shu, and tears finally broke free. 

Stabbed?  

How could this happen?  

How could it be him?  

Why was he at Yifang Bookstore?

Sheng Xia slowly raised her head, meeting Zou Weiping’s worried gaze. For the first time, in front of this woman who was both familiar yet unfamiliar, Sheng Xia’s composure shattered completely, “No…”

Zou Weiping exhaled slightly, gently rubbing Sheng Xia’s back to comfort her.

After a long pause, Sheng Xia’s voice came, almost broken: “Not a classmate… it’s… someone I really, really like…”

Zou Weiping froze, looking at the devastated girl, at a loss.

She had no kids and didn’t know how to comfort one. She could only pull Sheng Xia into an embrace, rubbing her back to calm her while calling Sheng Mingfeng. “Any updates on today’s incident? Find out fast… Don’t ask, just hurry!”

Sheng Xia couldn't hear what Zou Weiping was saying anymore. Her head was buzzing.

Yifang Bookstore…  

Violent attack…  

Heroic act…  

Stabbed…  

Zhang Shu…

She swallowed hard, regaining a sliver of steady breathing, then searching Zhang Sujin's number and dialed it.

Throughout her time in Afternoon Care, she had never once made a request and had never called this number.

Beep, beep, beep—

No one answered.

If it was really Zhang Shu, then at this moment, Zhang Sujin would be too busy to care about anything else.

She couldn’t bother her now..…

Sheng Xia wiped her tears, clearing her vision, and remembered adding Yifang Bookstore’s customer service on WeChat when she got a membership. She quickly opened WeChat and found the contact.

She saw a mass message from 7 p.m.:

[Dear Yifang Bookstore Members: Due to a violent incident today, our store is temporarily closed. We will notify you of reopening details. We apologize for the inconvenience.]

It was true. Yifang Bookstore.  

She couldn’t fool herself anymore—the news was real.

She tried calling their customer service line. Busy…

In the class group chat, someone shared a Weibo link.

[#YifangBookstore #NanliStabbing] Terrifying. I was at the newsstand across the street, and saw the young man next to me sprint over…] 

Sheng Xia's throat closed up. Those words felt like needles, piercing straight into her.

The post included a video. Even without playing it, the thumbnail showed a familiar scene: Yifang Bookstore from across the street, and a running figure in a black T-shirt, etched into her memory.

The post had over ten thousand reposts. She didn’t have the courage to play it yet, so she scrolled through the comments.  

[Is this the power of youth…?]

—Everyone else just stood there? Only he acted like a man? 

—Coolest back ever.

—Truly cool, from body to soul.

—The world becomes more beautiful because of young people who step up.

[He has to be okay! @NanliPolice, hurry up and release a statement. Are you guys simply incompetent?]

—@NanliPolice, come take the heat. 

—Did they catch that psycho? Death penalty, damn it! 

—He harmed a future top-scorer, can ‘he’s crazy’ just excuse it? This world’s insane.

[I heard he’s the potential top scorer for Nanli this year, oh my god!]

—Yeah, he has always been number one in our school, he's basically untouchable in the city-wide exams.

 —Also the school heartthrob, unreal levels of awesome.  

  

—Wasn’t he not first last semester?

—Shut up, he’s forever number one!

—Please be safe. My secret crush. I haven’t told you yet.  

—So talented, so noble. A true pillar of the society. Please don’t let anything happen…

—That's right. You guys don't know how amazing he is. 

[Why the hell are you filming? Go help!]

—If it were you, would you dare to?

—Truth is, it’s hard to step up.  

Sheng Xia, still trembling, tapped the video. She couldn’t believe this was happening in her life, to someone so close to her…

Screams and chatter filled the air, a mix of fear and chaos, suffocating from the first second.

Yet all those making noise were just bystanders. Only Zhang Shu rushed forward without a word.

The road was jammed with drivers stopping to ‘watch the show’, horns blaring in frustration.

Zhang Shu wove through the chaos, heavy rain drenching him instantly. His clothes clung to his body, his usually fluffy hair plastered flat, looking utterly disheveled. With a long stride, he leaped over the median barrier, sprinting full speed, pushing through the crowd into the bookstore.

Charging into danger without hesitation. 

The footage, zoomed in from a distance, was shaky and blurry.

Through the glass window, a tall man wielded a cleaver in one hand, a fruit knife in the other, swinging wildly, ferocious and unhinged. People fled in panic as he charged toward a window seat.

A girl in a white dress sat there, reading a book with her head down. For some reason, she seemed oblivious to the chaos and didn't react at all.

Just as the blade arced down, a figure grabbed the man's wrist from behind and yanked him backwards.

Both of them lost balance and crashed to the ground.

The rest of the scene was out of frame.  

How the struggle unfolded, how he got hurt, where he was injured—no one but those in the bookstore and the camera knew.

The video cut off abruptly amid gasps of "Oh shit—”

They panicked. They sympathized. They watched.

Yet not one of them stepped up to help the young man.

They hit records, chasing clout, feeding gossip.  

Cold as ice.

Sheng Xia shook uncontrollably, as if plunged into an icy abyss, losing all feeling.

Zou Weiping’s hand kept rubbing her shoulder, soothing. “Don’t worry, wait for your dad’s news. It’ll be okay, it’ll be fine. Heaven protects brave, kind kids.”

Sheng Xia nodded desperately, clinging to Zou Weiping’s words, praying they’d come true.  

Those two ambulances earlier, rushing so urgently, were carrying him. 

Where was he hurt? How bad was it? Was he conscious?  

She’d passed by him, broken and bleeding, so close.

Yet she’d felt nothing, calm as still water, unaware of his pain.

Stabbed…  

Where? Were there other injuries?

It must hurt so much.  

A-Shu, does it hurt?

A-Shu, please… I haven’t told you how much I like you, how hard I’ve been trying, how I’ve never given up…

A-Shu…

Please…

Please, please…

I’m begging you.

---

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