Tao Zhi leaned against the wall sideways, her entire body hidden in the shadows, watching the two people’s awkward encounter through the glass window.
She should have rushed in immediately to pull Song Jiang away, but each time she wanted to go in, she felt like she couldn’t take that step.
Her gaze lingered on Jiang Qi Huai inside.
The young man wore the convenience store’s uniform shirt. His figure was tall and slim. As he moved, the wrinkles of his shirt were pulled taut against his frame. His sleeves were rolled up twice, and under the cold light, his skin showed an almost sickly paleness. His expression was cold and unfamiliar.
There was a sense of detachment that was completely different from how he was at school, as if he were isolated from the world.
This was another world’s Jiang Qi Huai.
This was his private world that their newly established weak connection was still far from allowing her to peek into.
The convenience store’s automatic glass doors opened and closed, fragments of their conversation drifting out faintly. Tao Zhi sighed and took out her phone to call Song Jiang.
Song Jiang answered and turned around, lowering his voice secretively: “What’s wrong? Why haven’t you come in?”
“Get out here quickly, stop embarrassing yourself,” Tao Zhi said impatiently.
Song Jiang: “Didn’t you always want to beat him up? We’re off campus now anyway.”
“I’ve already called a truce. Now I want to beat you up instead, since we’re off campus anyway.”
Song Jiang reluctantly shuffled out.
Tao Zhi hung up and put her phone in her jacket pocket. When she looked up, inside the convenience store, Jiang Qi Huai suddenly turned his head.
Their eyes met, and Tao Zhi froze for a moment.
Jiang Qi Huai’s gaze fixed on her for an instant, looking at her indifferently.
Song Jiang walked over, saying casually: “What’s wrong? Why did you call me—”
Tao Zhi grabbed his jacket sleeve and turned to leave immediately.
Her steps were hurried. Song Jiang stumbled for two steps before catching up: “Hey hey, what’s the rush? The braised food isn’t going to run away.”
Only after they had left that street did Tao Zhi slow down and turn around: “What did you two talk about?”
Song Jiang recalled: “I asked him how he wanted to die.”
“Idiot,” Tao Zhi said objectively.
“He said he gets off work in four hours,” Song Jiang said, somewhat confused. “Was he being serious or just showing off?”
Tao Zhi ignored him and calculated what time it would be in four hours — it would be dawn.
She had never seen him sleep during class either. Did this person not need sleep?
They sat at the outdoor seats of the braised food stall. Tao Zhi propped up her head, lost in thought. The food came quickly, and Song Jiang was still hung up on whether “it would seem too cowardly to run away after issuing a challenge, even though you two have called a truce.” He checked his watch for the third time and said worriedly: “Only three hours left.”
“…”
Tao Zhi put down her chopsticks and nodded: “You can sit here and wait for another three hours. The owner won’t chase you away anyway.”
Song Jiang: “What about you?”
Tao Zhi stood up and walked out, waving her hand behind her: “I’m going home to sleep.”
Song Jiang: “…”
Tao Zhi spent two days at home lying around like a salted fish, not caring whether it was day or night. She didn’t really pay attention to time, watching American TV shows and playing games when awake, sleeping when tired. The weekend passed quickly.
The aftereffect of her reversed day and night schedule was that she overslept on Monday. Aunt Zhang had to knock on her door several times before finally waking her up.
Tao Zhi got up unhurriedly to wash up and go downstairs. As she was walking out the door with toast in her mouth, the driver was just checking his watch. Tao Zhi climbed into the car and looked at him pleadingly through the rearview mirror: “Uncle Gu, in the future, for small things like me being late or leaving early, there’s no need to tell Old Tao, what do you think?”
The driver held back a laugh: “Understood, understood.”
By the time they reached school, the flag-raising ceremony had already begun. The entire school’s teachers and students were standing neatly arranged by class and grade in the playground, with Class 1 being the first in the sophomore year.
Tao Zhi walked through from the very back of the formation, passing more than ten classes before reaching Class 1’s end.
Jiang Qi Huai stood last, with Li Shuang Jiang in front of him.
Tao Zhi stood at the end of the girls’ row. The girls’ row had two fewer people than the boys’, so she happened to be next to Li Shuang Jiang. Li Shuang Jiang heard movement and turned his head: “Morning, Class Monitor.”
Tao Zhi still had an unfinished corner of toast in her mouth. She raised her hand slightly and mumbled: “Morning.”
“Did you do the weekend homework?” Li Shuang Jiang asked.
Tao Zhi finished the white soft bread, pulled off the light-colored crust, threw it in the garbage bin behind her, and asked sincerely: “What homework was assigned?”
“…The test papers handed out last Friday,” Li Shuang Jiang said. “I’m just giving you a heads up — every Monday, Wang Two gives a ten-minute quiz before class. The questions are taken from the weekend homework. If you get anything wrong, he’ll give you a similar question with different answers. If you still can’t get it right, he’ll keep giving you new ones. It’s really twisted.”
Wang Two was their class’s math teacher, Wang Jie. He was Class 3’s homeroom teacher and the grade’s math department head. He was famous for his varied methods of torturing students, and along with Wang Wrinkles, they were known as the Wang Double Killers.
Tao Zhi hadn’t heard of this approach before: “Until you get it right?”
Li Shuang Jiang: “Until you get it right.”
Tao Zhi didn’t take it seriously: “Then I’ll just not make any mistakes.”
She planned to copy from the top students.
Li Shuang Jiang saw through her plan: “Don’t even think about it. The test papers for you and the people sitting in front of you, behind you, and next to you might all have different questions.”
“…What do you mean?”
“It means that for every quiz, Wang Two prepares four different sets of questions. You never know which set you’ll get.”
Tao Zhi: “…”
Tao Zhi hadn’t expected to face such a cruel test in just the second week of school. She didn’t know how she would survive the remaining two years in Class 1.
Every day was a battle of wits with teachers from various subjects.
And she had to face awkward classmates.
Throughout the afternoon, during every subject’s group discussion, the atmosphere in the last group of the first row in Class 2-1 was somewhat strange.
Fu Xi Ling didn’t talk much to begin with, and Jiang Qi Huai might as well have been mute. During last week’s group discussions, it was only Tao Zhi asking some strange questions that made the atmosphere less awkward.
Like how to solve square roots, and what the chemical equation for calcium carbonate was.
But this week, Tao Zhi wasn’t even talking anymore. She wasn’t laying on her desk either, just propping her elbow on her narrow chair back. Whenever she accidentally touched Jiang Qi Huai’s desk, she would pull back.
Because of what happened over the weekend, she felt uncomfortable.
She wanted to explain, but felt like anything she might say would be strange.
After chemistry class in the morning, Tao Zhi gathered her courage again. She turned around, tapped her fingertips on the chair back, glanced at the person behind her who was looking down at his vocabulary list, and hesitated to speak.
“If you want something, just say it directly,” Jiang Qi Huai suddenly spoke.
Tao Zhi blinked: “Hm?”
“You’ve been fidgeting all morning,” Jiang Qi Huai looked up, “What do you need to ask me for?”
“…What do you mean ‘ask you for something,’” Tao Zhi didn’t understand why this person could make people angry just by opening his mouth. She narrowed her eyes in displeasure, “When have I ever asked you for anything?”
“Have you figured out how you’re going to cheat on the math test?” Jiang Qi Huai asked in return.
“He gives a new question for each wrong answer, right? Then I’ll just get them all wrong,” Tao Zhi said carelessly. “Can he outlast me?”
“…”
Impressive.
Jiang Qi Huai stopped talking and looked back down at his book.
Tao Zhi wasn’t as awkward as she had been in the morning anymore. She asked with genuine curiosity: “Don’t you need to sleep?”
Jiang Qi Huai turned a page in his book, clearly understanding her question: “I only have night shifts on weekends.”
Since he brought it up directly, Tao Zhi started feeling uncomfortable again.
She cleared her throat and asked, pretending not to know: “Did you end up fighting with Timely Rain that day?”
“No.”
Tao Zhi looked at his indifferent manner and felt curious again: “Can you really fight?”
Jiang Qi Huai looked up: “Want to try?”
“You really want to tear up the peace treaty,” Tao Zhi reached out her hand to him, “Give me back my sincerity.”
It took Jiang Qi Huai a moment to realize that by peace treaty, she meant that gingerbread man with “truce” written on it.
Sincerity probably referred to the same thing.
He nodded and said calmly: “You wrote ‘truce’ and then immediately sent someone to ask me how I wanted to die.”
Tao Zhi threw Song Jiang under the bus without hesitation: “I didn’t tell him to ask that. He just likes to fight,” Tao Zhi said very seriously. “Sometimes when he’s walking down the street, he’ll just randomly punch someone without saying a word. No one knows why.”
Jiang Qi Huai: “…”
Fu Xi Ling, who had been eavesdropping from the side: “…”
Downstairs in Class 8, Song Jiang was bragging to someone when he suddenly sneezed.
“Think once, curse twice — who’s thinking about me?” Song Jiang wondered aloud.
The last morning class was math. Sure enough, Wang Two walked in carrying several stacks of test papers, with a book tucked under his arm. He handed the papers to the first row of each group: “Stop chatting, it’s test time. Let’s see those terrible homework assignments you turned in. My middle school son wouldn’t make that many mistakes.”
Tao Zhi took the papers passed back by Li Shuang Jiang and looked.
There were three papers left, and sure enough, each one was different.
She randomly picked one and glanced at it from the beginning. There were five questions in total, all long-form problems that didn’t even give a chance to guess the answers.
The test lasted fifteen minutes.
Wang Two kept time at the front, and when time was up, he tapped the blackboard with his triangle ruler: “Alright, stop writing. You can’t even finish these simple problems in fifteen minutes? Pass the papers from back to front. Li Shuang Jiang, the person behind you has been waiting forever.”
Li Shuang Jiang finished writing the last question, put down his pen, and turned around to take Tao Zhi’s paper. He glanced at it.
Tao Zhi’s paper was turned in exactly as she had received it, except for adding her name at the top — all the problems below were completely blank.
Li Shuang Jiang: “…”
As expected of the class monitor.
Tao Zhi had one hand raised forward and one hand reaching back, waiting for two seconds before feeling Jiang Qi Huai’s paper gently tap her palm.
She took it, and just as she was about to pass it forward, she caught sight of a sticky note on top.
The gingerbread man had been folded, cut in half at the waist, with an added crease.
Tao Zhi took the sticky note and passed the test paper forward, then turned around: “What does this mean?”
“Your sincerity,” Jiang Qi Huai said.
He really gave it back to her?
“Are you declaring war on me? I already said I didn’t tell Timely Rain to come mess with you, how can you be so—” Tao Zhi was saying as she angrily unfolded the small note, then suddenly stopped.
On the little figure, below her scrawled “truce,” two characters had been added.
They weren’t in her handwriting. The characters were slightly slanted, with sharp strokes, the vertical lines and left-falling strokes drawn very long.
— Approved.
Tao Zhi: “…?”
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