Second year passed both quickly and slowly.
Besides the monthly exams, the school added weekly tests, rotating through Chinese, math, English, and the comprehensive humanities subjects.
The teachers all said the same thing:
“This is preparation for your senior year.”
Shao Wu’s breakfast time shrank from twenty minutes to ten, all so he could sleep those extra ten minutes.
Every morning, when he pedaled furiously to school and rushed into the classroom, he saw Yang Shuyi asleep with his head on the desk.
Yang Shuyi actually arrived early.
He was never late.
He simply came early and slept, rarely listening in class.
Two months into the semester, the teachers had mostly stopped trying to manage him.
One day, while delivering homework, Shao Wu heard Sister Shan muttering to herself.
“What is going on with his family? I call his parent and can’t even get him to come in. How busy can he possibly be?”
Shao Wu hesitated before defending Yang Shuyi.
“I think his dad drives a freight truck. He’s away on long-distance runs a lot.”
Sister Shan sighed.
“Is that so? I only heard Teacher Dong say he comes from a single-parent family. What a pity. He looks like a bright kid, but there’s nobody at home keeping an eye on him. He’s going to waste himself like this.”
Shao Wu said, “He…”
Sister Shan looked at him. “Mm?”
Shao Wu shook his head.
“He is pretty smart.”
“What good is being smart?” Sister Shan tapped the keyboard irritably. “He doesn’t study at all. It’s like he’s allergic to it! Look at him. He doesn’t go out causing trouble, he doesn’t date, he just does whatever he wants by himself every day. No matter how smart he is, he’ll still waste it.”
Shao Wu said nothing.
His fingers quietly tightened at his side.
He was not frustrated with Yang Shuyi in the way Sister Shan was.
He was simply saddened by the way everyone said Yang Shuyi was “wasting himself,” as though they had already sentenced him to a ruined life.
Years later, it would not take Shao Wu long to understand that the teachers had not been wrong at all.
If Yang Shuyi had really gone through all three years of high school like this, then his life truly might have been delayed beyond repair.
They were ordinary children from a small district.
Studying was their only real path toward changing their fate.
But there was no helping it.
Shao Wu was too young then.
Young enough to know nothing of how dangerous the world could be, young enough to believe the only “class difference” between himself and Yang Shuyi was that Yang Shuyi ate steamed buns that cost thirty fen each, while Shao Wu ate xiaomian that cost three yuan per liang.
Shao Wu walked quickly back to the classroom.
Just now, he had badly wanted to tell Sister Shan that Yang Shuyi was not completely impossible to reach.
He was not hopeless.
At the very least, whenever a teacher made him redo an assignment, he obediently did it.
The classroom was full of wailing.
The math class representative was handing out the papers from last night’s weekly test.
Math had always been the weakness of humanities students.
Just as Shao Wu entered, he heard the class representative call his name.
“Are you insane? One-forty!” Zhu Jingjing shrieked. “Let me see! Fuck, I only got seventy-seven!”
Shao Wu was immediately surrounded by Zhu Jingjing and several other girls, and the paper was quickly snatched out of his hands.
It did not matter.
Shao Wu already knew where he had lost points.
He had run out of time on the last multiple-choice question, guessed wrong, and lost five points.
For the second part of the calculus problem, his method had been correct, but he had made a numerical error and lost another five.
He had expected that when he handed in the paper yesterday.
But he could not care about any of that right now.
Sister Shan’s sigh was still echoing in his ears.
This is bad.
Shao Wu walked to Yang Shuyi’s desk.
Some students were wailing, some complaining, and some secretly delighted. The whole classroom was noisy.
Nobody noticed how tightly Shao Wu had pressed his lips together.
Yang Shuyi was asleep facedown.
The math class representative had left his paper beside him.
A bright red 53 was written across the top.
Yang Shuyi was still wearing the summer uniform.
The short-sleeved shirt hung unusually loose on him, perhaps because it had been washed too many times.
“Yang Shuyi,” Shao Wu called softly.
His heart was full of nervousness, almost as though he had not truly meant to wake him.
But Yang Shuyi’s head moved, and a moment later he sat upright.
A battered book slipped out from where he had been holding it against himself.
The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber.
“What is it?”
Yang Shuyi blinked hard.
His eyes were a little red. It looked as though he had not slept enough.
Shao Wu said, “…Uh, you got a fifty-three.”
Yang Shuyi: “?”
“Math! This. I wanted to ask you… you…”
Shao Wu actually started stammering.
“Do you know how to do these problems?”
Yang Shuyi stared at him for two seconds, then answered with complete confidence:
“If I knew how, would I have gotten fifty-three?”
Shao Wu: “Then… I’ll teach you?”
Even Shen Qi leaned over at that, looking surprised.
“Hey, did Old Dong put you two in a study group?”
Lately, Dong Ming had been planning to organize study groups, mainly to encourage the regular academic students to help the special-admission students.
“Ah, mm.” Shao Wu answered vaguely. “I’ll… just explain a few problems to him.”
“Perfect! I’ll listen too!”
Shen Qi immediately grabbed her pen and paper.
Yang Shuyi looked at Shao Wu, then at Shen Qi, his face full of confusion.
But he still said, “Then go ahead.”
The break during evening self-study lasted fifteen minutes, enough time to explain several simple multiple-choice questions.
“Here, draw an auxiliary line perpendicular to this edge…”
Shao Wu drew a faint pencil line across Yang Shuyi’s test paper.
“So these two lines are perpendicular bisectors of each other.”
Shao Wu cautiously turned his face a little.
The corner of Yang Shuyi’s eye was red. Shao Wu did not know whether it was because Yang Shuyi had just rubbed it.
“Yang Shuyi, do you understand?”
Yang Shuyi frowned, sounding tired.
“Mm.”
Shen Qi said from beside them, “I get it! Why didn’t I think of drawing the auxiliary line that way?”
Before long, the bell rang.
Shao Wu reluctantly returned to his own seat.
After sitting down, he could not resist looking back.
Yang Shuyi had already put his head down again, the test paper carelessly trapped beneath his arm.
Shao Wu suspected Yang Shuyi had not understood at all.
But Shen Qi had been listening with such enthusiasm that Yang Shuyi had probably felt awkward interrupting.
Or perhaps he simply did not care whether he understood.
Shao Wu reached into his schoolbag.
Inside the compartment at the bottom, his fingertips touched a hard corner.
Three sheets of A4 paper had been stacked together and folded in half.
Shao Wu did not even dare take them out.
He was afraid Zhu Jingjing might see.
Because this was too strange.
Only after the final bell rang and everyone rushed outside did Shao Wu take out the three sheets and slowly stand.
They were all still growing and got hungry quickly. Everyone was eager to get home for a late-night snack.
Only a few students on cleaning duty remained in the classroom.
“Yang Shuyi,” Shao Wu called again.
“Mm? More problems?”
Yang Shuyi stayed facedown, his voice muffled.
“…There isn’t enough time today. I’ll give you my scratch paper. Look over it when you get home first, okay?”
Yang Shuyi turned his head, revealing half his face from the crook of his arm.
The classroom’s fluorescent light fell across his face. The shadow of his eyelashes slanted over the bridge of his nose, stretched long by the light.
Yang Shuyi took the papers and unfolded them.
After several silent seconds, he asked, “This is scratch paper?”
“Ah. Yeah.”
Shao Wu’s voice was very quiet because he felt terribly guilty.
Yang Shuyi stood, holding the papers.
“Did Old Dong tell you to tutor me?”
“Mm.”
With just that one syllable, Shao Wu felt as though his heart might leap out of his chest.
Yang Shuyi said nothing.
He frowned at the scratch paper in his hands.
During those ten-odd seconds, Shao Wu nearly broke down and confessed everything.
Old Dong didn’t arrange it.
I volunteered.
I wanted to teach you.
“Thank you.”
But Yang Shuyi suddenly spoke first.
He looked at Shao Wu, deliberately slowed his words, and said very seriously,
“But you don’t have to tutor me. Really. It’s a waste of your time.”
Shao Wu’s heart rose because of one sentence, then sank because of the next.
“But this, I’ll look at.”
Yang Shuyi smiled and stuffed Shao Wu’s scratch paper into his schoolbag together with his math test.
Those three sheets of A4 paper were filled with Shao Wu’s neat scratch work.
Neat scratch work.
The words themselves were almost contradictory.
Whose math scratch paper was not a chaotic mess?
Math exams were already pressed for time. Students often could not even finish the problems, so who would waste time making their scratch work neat?
But Shao Wu’s was neat.
Problems one, two, three, four, and five were arranged in order, each given its own little space, with the calculations written carefully inside.
Calling it scratch paper was almost dishonest.
It was practically an answer key.
Because of those three sheets, Shao Wu had not finished the final multiple-choice question on his own test.
At the time, he had thought:
If I write it like this, Yang Shuyi should be able to understand it.
Did Yang Shuyi know Shao Wu had made that scratch paper especially for him?
Shao Wu hoped he knew.
And hoped he did not.
“Shao Wu!”
Shao Wu jerked his head up.
To his surprise, Yang Shuyi was striding back toward him.
Hadn’t he gone home?
Why had he come back?
“Do you eat lianggao?” Yang Shuyi asked. “I’ll treat you.”
Elio’s Notes: Xiaomian (小面) is a Chongqing-style noodle dish. A liang (两) is a traditional unit of weight, roughly 50 grams, commonly used to size noodle portions.
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