Little Garden - 5
During military training, evening self-study only lasted for two periods.
Class 1 was the only experimental class in Grade One. The principal had said that quality mattered more than quantity, and only students who had ranked in the city's top 100 in the high school entrance examination were eligible for the class. As a result, there were only thirty-seven students who made the cut. They quickly demonstrated the self-discipline expected of top students, using the material they had previewed over the summer to work through problems set before formal classes had even begun.
Li Kuiyi sat quietly at her desk too, turned slightly in her chair, chin propped on one hand, carving out a little corner of private amusement on the tabletop. She had already finished Flowers for Algernon and had moved on to another book, John Irving's The World According to Garp.
Every now and then, Zhou Fanghua would stop writing her math problems and sneak a worried glance toward her deskmate. She was genuinely baffled to see Li Kuiyi leisurely reading an outside book every evening, taking her time as though she hadn't entered the rhythm of high school studying. But then again, maybe she had already finished the entire curriculum over summer? Or maybe she simply had that much faith in her own intelligence?
Either possibility sent a chill crawling up Zhou Fanghua's spine. It was like standing before a cold pool shrouded in mist, with no way of knowing how deep it went.
Zhou Fanghua felt enormous pressure. She couldn't help but hunched her shoulders and dropped her head a little lower. Her high school entrance exam score had been a personal best, ranking ninety-sixth in the entire city. It was objectively a good result, but in this class, it put her at the very bottom. And of all people, she had been seated next to this “great Buddha.” Sigh…
High school math and physics had somehow turned impossibly difficult, as though they belonged to an entirely different world from the subjects she'd studied in middle school. Take the problem beneath her pen. She couldn't even figure out what it was asking.
Living at school was another first. It was the first time in her life she'd ever been away from home. Just yesterday, she'd even gotten into a minor disagreement with her roommates over something as stupid as phone calls home.
Then there were the red rashes spreading across her forearms. She wasn't sure whether they were from a bad sunburn during military training or the dorm being too damp, they itched so terribly that she kept wanting to scratch them. The instructor had called her out in front of everyone for it.
One grievance after another, all the frustrations she'd accumulated over the past several days seemed to weave themselves into a dense net, tightening around her until she could barely breathe.
Tears welled up in her big eyes, gathering along the rim, and then one broke free and fell onto her workbook with a soft tap, blooming into a small wet circle.
Zhou Fanghua hurriedly wiped it away. Nobody had noticed, thank god. Everyone else was buried in their own studying, Li Kuiyi had not moved from her reading position and didn't notice anything either.
When class finally ended, Zhou Fanghua couldn't hold it in anymore. She buried her face in the crook of her arm and silently let the tears come.
Li Kuiyi looked up from her book and stretched her sore arm. She glanced at her deskmate, who had already fallen asleep from exhaustion.
The phone in her desk drawer vibrated twice. She unlocked it. It was another message from Fang Zhixiao, she had sent a photo with the caption: “Ta-da! I just finished setting up my desk. How does it look? Pretty, right?”
Li Kuiyi opened the picture. The new textbooks they'd received from the past few days were neatly stacked between Doraemon-shaped bookends. Two folder racks and seven or eight pretty notebooks occupied the far right. The pen holder was stuffed with pens in every color, while an acrylic organizer contained everything from a water bottle and tissues to a little mirror, a handheld fan, medicated oil, and assorted odds and ends. The girl had practically moved her whole room to school.
This was one of Fang Zhixiao's thing. She always said, “If you want to do a good job, first make sure you have the right tools.” Studying required the right atmosphere too.
Li Kuiyi: Looks nice.
She wasn't being polite or humoring her. She genuinely thought it looked nice. Orderly things pleased her.
Fang Zhixiao: Hehe! I originally wanted to stick a picture of Su Jianlin on the organizer, but I decided against it. Too conspicuous.
Li Kuiyi: Don't be ridiculous.
The photo in question was one Fang Zhixiao had taken in secret. Her hands had shaken from nerves, so all she got was a blurry silhouette from behind. That didn't stop Fang Zhixiao from admiring it. She said it had an untouchable, hazy beauty to it.
Fang Zhixiao: Has Su Jianlin started school yet?
Li Kuiyi: Probably not.
Fang Zhixiao: So when he leaves for school, he'll take the high-speed rail into the city, right? Will he stay at your place for a few days while he's there?
Li Kuiyi: I don't know. He didn't say.
Fang Zhixiao: Then ask him!
Li Kuiyi: You have his contact information. Ask him yourself.
Fang Zhixiao: I don't dare. He's so cold. You ask him for me.
Li Kuiyi: I don't want to.
Fang Zhixiao: Stop pretending. You're just scared.
Li Kuiyi: I'm not!
The “high and aloof flower”, as everyone called Su Jianlin, was someone who could be admired from afar but never touched. At only nineteen, he was as cold as frost and snow accumulated over a thousand years. Li Kuiyi had known him for ten years and had never once seen him warm toward anyone. With every relationship in his life, he offered only the bare minimum of courtesy. Beyond that, nothing but distance and indifference.
Li Kuiyi remembered the day she found out her high school entrance examination results. She had logged into her QQ account on the computer and sent him the good news. He had replied with only one word: Congratulations
One bare word, without even a punctuation mark.
The bell rang for the next period. Li Kuiyi slid her phone into her bag and patted Zhou Fanghua's shoulder. “Wake up. Don't sleep. Class is starting.”
Zhou Fanghua: “…”
She didn't even know whether she should keep crying anymore.
Pretending she'd just woken up, Zhou Fanghua rubbed her tears hard against her arm before slowly lifting her head. She glanced to the side. Li Kuiyi had already resumed her usual pose, back in her book, motionless as an old monk in meditation.
Zhou Fanghua felt a sudden pang of envy. She was the exact opposite of Li Kuiyi, someone who was extremely susceptible to the influence of the people around her. If she was working on an English paper and noticed everyone else doing math, a spike of anxiety would hit her, as though everyone else were about to leave her math skills hopelessly behind. Then she'd replace the English paper in her hands with a math worksheet.
She was a terrible chameleon.
Her grades weren't as good as other people's, and now even her mindset wasn't as good. Zhou Fanghua grew even more dejected, and the tears she'd finally managed to dry up threatened to spill again.
And tears, unfortunately, always brought company that was a runny nose. Zhou Fanghua quickly grabbed some tissues and wiped them both at once. Before long, a small pile of crumpled tissues had gathered on her desk.
Li Kuiyi finally noticed something off. She turned to look at the pile of tissues and asked, bewildered, “Do you have a cold?”
Zhou Fanghua: “…”
Li Kuiyi's puzzled gaze slowly moved upward, only then did she notice Zhou Fanghua's eyes were swollen, tear marks still visible beneath them, and several strands of hair clinging to her cheek. She looked so pitiful, Li Kuiyi sucked in a breath, suddenly became flustered. “You…”
They were still in evening self-study, so she swallowed everything she had meant to say, grabbed a sticky note, and wrote quickly: "Don't cry."
She drew a smiley face beneath it and slid it over.
Honestly, without that smiley face, Zhou Fanghua wouldn't have realized Li Kuiyi was meant to comfort her.
Li Kuiyi was truly bad at comforting people. It was much harder than solving a math problem. In the span of a few seconds, she wracked her brain until she remembered that whenever Fang Zhixiao was upset, she always dealt with it by eating a huge meal. So she wrote another sentence on the sticky note.
“Want to get late-night snacks at the cafeteria after school?"
Zhou Fanghua, desperate for warmth and someone to talk to, blinked her tear-washed eyes rapidly and nodded.
Li Kuiyi secretly breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that her deskmate, like Fang Zhixiao, was easy to cheer up.
When the dismissal bell rang, Li Kuiyi packed her schoolbag and first sent Fang Zhixiao a message.
“I’m going to the cafeteria for a late-night snack with my deskmate. Want to come?”
Fang Zhixiao: You found someone new that fast?
Li Kuiyi: No. We're friends.
Fang Zhixiao: The way you said that… really gives scumbag energy.
Fang Zhixiao: Whatever. You two go eat. I'm going home to watch my drama. Just don't do anything to betray me.
Anything that would betray her… Li Kuiyi was still pondering that phrase when Zhou Fanghua finished packing and gently hooked an arm through hers, saying in a small, shy voice, "Let's go."
Oh.
Got it.
Li Kuiyi walked the whole way with the tense posture of a guilty thief. It wasn't until they reached the food counter and Zhou Fanghua released her arm to order their meals that she finally relax.
Military training burned through a lot of energy, and fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds were at an age when they were growing fast and getting hungry easily. So the cafeteria was busy with freshmen in camouflage uniforms refueling.
Li Kuiyi and Zhou Fanghua went for Yangchun noodles. Each bowl held barely two forkfuls of noodles, with a light but savory broth and a scattering of bright green scallions on top. It was perfect for a late-night snack. Li Kuiyi wanted to add a fried egg, so she told Zhou Fanghua to go find them a table first.
But Zhou Fanghua had barely gone a few steps when Li Kuiyi heard her cry out in surprise, followed by the clatter of a tray and noodle bowl crashing to the floor.
The noise drew countless curious heads, people craning their necks to see what had happened. Li Kuiyi spun around in shock and found Zhou Fanghua frantically pulling tissues from her schoolbag, repeatedly saying, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” Standing directly in front of her was He Youyuan.
His hands were still tucked into his pockets, his camouflage jacket slung over one shoulder. He stood there without a word, looking effortlessly cool, if you ignored the noodle soup soaking through his shirt, pants, and shoes. Most impressively, those two forkfuls of noodles had landed squarely on his shoe.
For Zhou Fanghua, this really was a case of one disaster following another.
Li Kuiyi set her tray down on the nearest table and hurried over to Zhou Fanghua. “Are you okay?” Zhou Fanghua shook her head, choking back sobs, and kept pushing tissues into the other person's hands.
“What about you? Did you get burned?” Li Kuiyi looked up at He Youyuan.
He Youyuan hadn't expected to run into Prickly Pineapple here, of all places. He was beginning to think the two of them were simply fated to clash. Although she was asking whether he'd been burned, there wasn't the slightest trace of concern in her eyes. She looked like a judge presiding over a case, and this was just another dispute to mediate.
His irritation reached its peak. He curled his lips into a mocking smile. “I did. Of course I did.”
So you want to mediate? Fine. See if I let you.
But Li Kuiyi simply pointed toward the sinks at the cafeteria entrance. “Then you'd better go rinse it off.”
He Youyuan: “…”
So annoying.
All that pent-up frustration had nowhere to go and no choice but to swallow itself whole. He stared hard at the calm, composed face in front of him and, almost like a child throwing a tantrum, said, “I'm not going!”
Li Kuiyi hadn't expected him to refuse. She couldn't understand it. How could anyone in this world be so unreasonable?
Just then, the cafeteria cleaning lady arrived with her broom and bucket. “Oh my goodness, how did you manage to be so careless?”
Everyone instinctively stepped aside. The woman picked up the broken bowl and tray, then cleaned up the noodles and spilled broth. Before long, the floor returned to its polished shine, as if nothing had happened. The only remaining evidence of the accident was still clinging to He Youyuan.
Zhou Fanghua timidly reached out and said softly, “Um, I can wash your clothes for you… They'll be dry overnight, it won't affect your military training tomorrow.”
"So I should walk back naked?" He Youyuan shot back immediately, his tone practically begging to be punched.
Zhou Fanghua belatedly realised how badly that had come out. Her face turned bright red, and she waved her hands. “I, I didn't…”
Her voice was already on the verge of tears.
He Youyuan hated seeing other people cry. He drew a breath of pure exasperation, deciding to accept his bad luck. If he kept standing around here, people would think he was bullying two girls. He was just about to say, “Forget it,” when Prickly Pineapple suddenly spoke.
“Then we'll compensate you with a tube of burn ointment and thirty-seven yuan and fifty cents. Does that work?”
Thirty-seven yuan and fifty cents?
He Youyuan froze.
Wait. What's with that extremely specific amount of compensation?
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