The exercise book and him
Twenty minutes after the school bell rang, the classroom of Class 7, Grade 11 finally quieted down.
Xu Ying sat at her desk, the setting sun slanting through the glass, casting a patch of orange-red light on her open notebook. Her pen nib hovered above the paper, hesitant to fall. The last physics problem was rather difficult; she bit the pen cap, her eyelashes appearing exceptionally clear in the light.
Only a few people remained in the classroom. A few girls in the back row were chatting and laughing as they packed their bags, glancing at her every now and then. Xu Ying didn't look up; she simply tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and continued working on her calculations on her draft paper.
"Xu Ying, aren't you leaving yet?" the class monitor called to her from the doorway.
"I'll wait a little longer," she replied softly, "to finish the questions."
The class monitor nodded and left. The classroom fell completely silent, with only the rustling of the sycamore trees outside the window as the wind blew.
Xu Ying finally solved the last problem and let out a soft sigh of relief. She closed her workbook, her fingertips tracing her neatly written name on the cover. This physics workbook was the one she had put the most effort into; every page was clean and tidy, and the important parts were marked in red pen.
She stood up to get some water from the water dispenser at the end of the corridor. As she stood, the chair legs scraped slightly on the floor.
"Tsk."
A distinct click of the tongue came from the back row. Xu Ying paused, but didn't turn around. She knew who it was—Lin Jia and her friends, who had harbored inexplicable hostility towards her since her first day at the school.
The water dispenser made a gurgling sound. Xu Ying held her water cup, looking out the window at the playground. The track and field team was still training; several figures moved along the track like a flock of migrating birds.
When she returned to the classroom, she immediately noticed something was wrong.
Several pieces of paper were scattered around her seat.
Xu Ying's heart suddenly raced. She walked quickly over, and the water glass made a dull thud on the table.
Her physics workbook—the notebook she had spent a week meticulously organizing—was torn into irregular pieces, as if ravaged by the claws of a wild beast. Several pages were even crumpled into balls, the ink smeared, forming ugly black stains on the paper.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she crouched down to pick up the pieces one by one. The edges of the paper were sharp, leaving a thin red mark on her index finger.
"Oops, I accidentally knocked it over." Lin Jia's voice came from behind, tinged with exaggerated apology. "Need any help, you academic genius?"
Xu Ying didn't answer. She continued picking up the pieces, not letting even the smallest scrap of paper go untouched. She could feel several girls standing behind her, like an impenetrable wall.
"What's with the pretense of being high and mighty?" another girl muttered under her breath, "She's always hanging around Zong Heng..."
Xu Ying paused for a moment. She finally understood the reason for this prank.
Xu Ying carefully collected all the fragments into her schoolbag. Her movements were slow, but determined. Some pages were torn to shreds beyond repair.
Lin Jia seemed bored by her silence, snorted, and left with her friends. The classroom door slammed shut with a loud "bang."
Xu Ying then allowed her hands to tremble more noticeably. She took a deep breath and took a new notebook out of her bag. The cover was a plain beige, exactly the same as the one she had torn up—she always prepared a spare.
As the pen drew the first line on the paper, her tears finally fell. Not tears of grievance, but angry, scalding liquid, which splashed onto the paper, forming a small, circular watermark. She quickly wiped it away with the back of her hand and continued writing.
The sky outside the window gradually darkened. When the security guard came to patrol, he was surprised to find that there were still people in the classroom.
"Hey, it's time to lock the door."
Xu Ying nodded and tidied her books. She noticed that Zong Heng's seat—his desk, which was always a mess—was unusually clean today. On the desk was an open copy of Hai Zi's poetry collection, the page stopped at a poem called "A Poem Dedicated to the Night."
She walked over as if possessed and saw that one of the lines had been lightly drawn with a pencil:
"The night gave me black eyes, but I use them to seek the light."
Xu Ying gently closed the book and put it back in the desk drawer. As she turned around, she seemed to hear footsteps at the back door, but the corridor was empty.
The early autumn evening breeze already carried a chill. Xu Ying wrapped her school uniform jacket tighter around herself; her schoolbag contained her torn homework and a new notebook.
One by one, the streetlights lit up, lengthening and shortening her shadow. She passed a convenience store, where Halloween decorations on the glass window swayed gently in the wind.
Xu Ying suddenly felt very tired. Not physically tired, but a weariness that seeped into her bones. She stopped and took out the torn exercise book from her schoolbag.
The fragments appeared even more broken under the streetlights. She gently ran her hand over the jagged edges and suddenly noticed something—
A few pages are missing.
The most crucial pages, which contained the data for the lab report due next week, are missing.
Standing under the streetlight, Xu Ying felt a chilling anger for the first time. She wasn't angry that her notebook had been torn up, but angry that those people would trample on her efforts.
When she started walking again, her pace was much faster than usual. Once home, she went straight to her room and laid her new notebook out on the table.
The lamplight cast a warm yellow glow on the desk. Xu Ying sat in the chair, her back ramrod straight, like a bamboo stalk that refused to bend.
The rain outside the window grew heavier, and raindrops trickled down the glass, blurring the world outside. Occasionally, a flash of lightning would streak across the sky, briefly illuminating her tense profile before quickly disappearing into darkness.
A brand-new notebook lay open before her, its cover a clean, off-white, exactly like the one she had torn up. A fountain pen rested between her fingers, its nib hovering above the page, hesitant to strike.
Xu Ying stared at the blank page, but her mind was filled with the torn pieces of paper—her math notes, which she had spent a whole week organizing, the solution steps for every example problem, and every easily overlooked detail, had all been maliciously ripped apart, like crushed butterfly wings.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to put pen to paper.
Chapter 3: Advanced Applications of Trigonometric Functions
She wrote with more pressure than usual, and the ends of the strokes blurred slightly. If she wrote a wrong symbol, she immediately covered it up with correction tape, her movements so hurried that she almost tore the paper.
"What are you pretending to be, being such a good student? You're always clinging to Zong Heng, do you really think he's interested in you?"
Xu Ying ignored it and lowered her head to pack her schoolbag. Until someone "accidentally" knocked over her water cup, spilling liquid onto her notebook, staining it with ink.
She reached out to try and save him, but heard a "rip" sound.
The notebook was torn in two.
The laughter was sharp and piercing.
"Oops, my hand slipped."
Xu Ying blinked sharply, suppressing her memories.
The pen nib scratched across the paper as she rewrote the formulas, stroke by stroke, as if repairing some unseen crack. Her wrist ached, but she dared not stop—the assignment was due tomorrow, affecting the group's grade, and she couldn't let the others down.
The sound of rain grew louder and louder.
Halfway through writing, she suddenly stopped, staring at a complex example problem. In her original notes, she had marked it with an asterisk and noted three possible solutions. But now, she couldn't recall the key steps of the third solution at all.
His fingers unconsciously gripped the pen, his knuckles turning white.
Just then, the phone screen lit up.
A text message from an unknown number:
"For example 3 on page 37, the third solution requires the auxiliary angle formula; you forgot to use the square."
Xu Ying froze.
This is clearly from her notebook—but who would know?
She replied hesitantly, "Who are you?"
The other party replied instantly: "Just passing by."
The next message read: "The handwriting is too ugly to read."
That tone...
Xu Ying suddenly grabbed her schoolbag and rummaged through the fragments from the day. On the back of a tattered page, she found a line of hastily written handwriting: "The steps are too cumbersome, just use the formula directly."
The handwriting was wild and unruly, exactly like the notes someone passed in class.
Zong Heng.
Xu Ying stared at the text message for a long time, feeling as if something was stuck in her chest.
She remembered that when school ended today, the classroom was empty except for the back door, which was swaying slightly, as if someone had just pushed it open.
I recall those torn pages, their edges unusually neat, as if they had been carefully collected.
I remembered that Zongheng hadn't come to class all day.
The rain outside the window intensified, and the wind lashed against the glass, making a soft whistling sound.
She slowly typed a reply: "Thank you."
After sending it, he added, "Did you see who tore it?"
I waited for ten minutes but still didn't get a reply.
Xu Ying lowered her eyes and continued writing. But her handwriting was no longer so tight, and she no longer angrily scribbled over her mistakes.
At 2 a.m., she finally finished the last question.
As I closed the notebook, I noticed the rain outside had stopped. Moonlight filtered through the clouds, like a gentle wound.
Xu Ying rubbed her sore neck and suddenly heard a faint noise coming from downstairs.
She pushed open the window and saw a familiar figure standing under the streetlight. Zong Heng leaned against the wall, a speck of scarlet between his fingertips, smoke swirling in the moonlight.
He seemed to notice the gaze and looked up.
The two looked at each other across the night.
Xu Ying instinctively gripped the window frame tightly.
The next second, Zong Heng stubbed out his cigarette, turned around, and walked into the darkness.
Only a puddle of water remained on the ground, as if someone had stood there for a long time.
At 6:40 a.m., when Xu Ying pushed open the back door of the classroom, the lights were not yet on.
The pale blue morning light slanted in through the glass window, casting a cool hue around her seat. She instinctively reached for the bottom of the desk, but her fingertips touched something unusually thick—the exercise book that had been torn up yesterday was now neatly placed in the center of the desk.
Xu Ying was stunned.
The notebook had been carefully repaired with strips of transparent tape. The edges of the tape were trimmed extremely neatly, without any loose edges, and even pasted along the grain of the paper. If it weren't for a few reflective marks, it would be almost impossible to tell that it had been torn. She opened the inner pages, and the parts she had stayed up all night to rewrite were still there, but the torn original notes had also been restored—even the important points she had highlighted with a highlighter were not missing.
There was a bonus question on the last page, which she had left blank. Now, however, there was an extra line of messy handwriting:
"Using the Lagrange multiplier method, the result can be obtained in three steps. —Z"
The ink from the fountain pen had seeped deep, and the last stroke tore through the paper, like someone suddenly becoming frustrated as they wrote this. Xu Ying stroked the flamboyant "Z" with her fingertips when she suddenly heard a loud "clang" behind her.
Zong Heng kicked open the back door of the classroom, his school uniform jacket hanging loosely on his shoulder. He was carrying a convenience store plastic bag in his left hand, and his right index finger was wrapped in a band-aid, with suspicious yellow stains on the edge of the bandage. The moment their eyes met, he visibly stiffened, then quickly hid the plastic bag behind his back.
"What are you looking at?" He strode over, the soft clinking of iodine and cotton swabs coming from the plastic bag. "Do I have the answer on my face?"
Xu Ying didn't reply, but simply turned the workbook around and pushed it towards him. Zong Heng stared at the annotation for two seconds, then suddenly slammed the notebook shut: "You still have the nerve to hand in so many mistakes?"
As the morning light climbed onto his eyelashes, Xu Ying noticed the dark circles under his eyes.
Xu Ying stood up the moment the bell rang during recess.
She clutched the repaired notebook in her hand, the edges of the pages still shimmering with the sheen of the transparent tape, like carefully pieced-together fragments. The classroom was noisy; a few boys were playfully bumping into desks and chairs, and someone whistled at her: "Hey, is the top student in such a hurry today?"
She ignored him, her gaze fixed on the back door of the classroom—Zong Heng was walking out carrying his school uniform jacket, his back straight and languid, a section of pale white nape showing under his black T-shirt.
"Zong Heng".
Her voice wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear amidst the noise.
He paused, but didn't turn around; he simply tilted his head slightly: "Is there something you need?"
Xu Ying walked straight up to him, holding up her notebook: "Did you stick this on?"
The corridor was dimly lit, and his eyelashes cast dappled shadows beneath his eyes. Zong Heng glanced down at the notebook, then suddenly smirked, "What, is it too ugly to be seen by Xu, the academic genius?"
A passing girl chuckled, but he glanced at her and she immediately fell silent and hurried away.
Xu Ying wasn't swayed by him. She flipped to the inside page, her fingertip pointing to the line of wildly written annotation: "This was also written by you."
It is not a question.
Zong Heng narrowed his eyes. He was more than half a head taller than Xu Ying, and he leaned down slightly, his minty scent pressing down on her: "So what if it is? Your solution steps are giving me a headache."
Xu Ying suddenly grabbed his left wrist.
Zong Heng visibly stiffened. His wrist had distinct knuckles, was warmer than she had imagined, and his pulse pounded in her palm like that of a trapped beast.
"Let go." His voice turned serious.
She didn't loosen her grip; instead, she pressed her thumb against the edge of the band-aid on his index finger. The cheap adhesive tape had peeled off, revealing the reddened skin underneath.
“It’s from the glue corroding it,” she said softly. “Medical tape wouldn’t do that.”
Zong Heng abruptly pulled his hand back. The band-aid was ripped off, revealing a red and swollen wound on his fingertip, with solidified glue residue around the edges.
"You fucking..." His ears suddenly turned red, and he put his injured hand into his pocket. "Checking up on me?"
Xu Ying took a small metal box out of the side pocket of her schoolbag.
“Medicated petroleum jelly.” She unscrewed the cap, and the jelly had a faint minty scent. “The glue is toxic and will rot the skin.”
Zong Heng stared at the metal box, his Adam's apple bobbing. A girl's scream came from the end of the corridor; someone had knocked over a water glass, the water trickling down to their feet.
He suddenly laughed: "Xu Ying, do you know what you're doing?"
She stuffed the tin box into his school uniform pocket.
"Why did those people tear up my notebook?" she asked directly.
Zong Heng's smile faded. He leaned back against the windowsill, sunlight filtering through his messy hair and casting dappled shadows on his face.
“You’re saying you seduced me,” he scoffed. “You’re saying I passed you notes and took you home—you’re quite the storyteller.”
Xu Ying clenched her notebook tightly. The pages rustled softly in her palm.
"So you're here to clarify?"
"Otherwise what?" Zong Heng straightened up, his shadow completely enveloping her. "I hate being blamed the most."
His scent wafted towards her, carrying a faint smell of tobacco and the bitterness of glue. Xu Ying looked up and saw his eyes clearly for the first time up close—the amber irises were almost transparent in the sunlight, while the pupils were a deep, unfathomable black.
“But you’ve been sticking it on for four hours,” she suddenly said.
Zong Heng's expression froze.
“The math homework had 32 pages, which were torn into an average of 6 pieces, totaling 192 pieces.” Xu Ying held the notebook up to the light. “The transparent tape was used to avoid the writing at all the joints, and the error in each splicing was less than 0.5 millimeters.”
She looked him straight in the eye: "This isn't just doing it on a whim, it's obsessive-compulsive disorder."
The corridor suddenly fell silent.
Zong Heng's eyelashes trembled. He reached out and snatched back the notebook, his movements rough but careful to avoid the wound.
"Is it any of your business?" He turned to leave.
Xu Ying's voice followed: "A Poem Dedicated to the Night".
Zong Heng stopped in his tracks.
“You didn’t come to class yesterday,” she continued, “but you were on that page of Hai Zi’s poetry collection.”
The dull thud of a basketball hitting the ground echoed from the distant playground. Zong Heng's shoulders tensed and then relaxed. When he turned around, there was something in his eyes she had never seen before.
"Xu Ying." He called her by her full name for the first time. "Knowing too much about some things can bring bad luck."
She took a step forward, tiptoed closer to his ear, and said, "Like when you stay up all night gluing homework, or like—"
Zong Heng suddenly grabbed her chin.
Their breaths mingled. Xu Ying could smell the lingering glue on his fingers, mixed with the rusty sweetness of blood.
“Or, for example,” he said, stroking her chin with his thumb, his voice so low only she could hear, “I fucking like you?”
The school bell rang loudly.
Zong Heng released his grip and slapped the notebook back into her arms. Xu Ying noticed his bright red ear tips as he turned around, and the half-open metal box peeking out of his pocket.
At the end of the corridor, the girl who had torn up her notebook watched this scene in horror. Zong Heng stopped as he passed by and patted the girl's shoulder with his injured hand.
"Next time you touch her things," he smiled innocently, "I'll stick your fingers to the wall one by one."
The girl fell to the ground.
Xu Ying lowered her head and opened her notebook. In the crevice of the last page, she found a withered ginkgo leaf—a scene from yesterday's rainstorm on campus, and on its veins, someone had carved two tiny words with a needle:
"Fool."
Ten minutes after the school bell rang, most of the students had already left the classroom. Xu Ying slowly packed her schoolbag, glancing to the side—Zong Heng's seat was empty, with several uncapped ballpoint pens scattered on the desk, along with his ever-read "Hai Zi Poetry Collection."
She pursed her lips, tore a corner from her notebook, paused for two seconds with her pen nib hovering over the paper, and finally wrote:
"The glue is toxic; use solid glue next time."
Her handwriting was so neat it was almost rigid, as if she were deliberately trying to conceal some emotion. She pulled a box of cartoon bandages from a compartment in her backpack—originally bought to treat her blistered heels—and gently slipped it into Zong Heng's drawer. The bandages had a grinning Shiba Inu printed on the packaging, completely incongruous with his fierce demeanor.
Just as Xu Ying was about to leave, the back door of the classroom was suddenly kicked open.
"Hey, still here?" Zong Heng swaggered in, carrying a half-empty bottle of iced cola, his school uniform jacket casually draped over his shoulder, a fresh scrape visible on his collarbone. He glanced at Xu Ying standing next to his seat, raising an eyebrow: "Going through my things?"
"No." She instinctively tightened her grip on the backpack strap, her nails digging crescent-shaped marks into her palm. "It's just..."
Zong Heng had already walked to the table and pulled open the drawer with a clatter. Band-aids and notes lay gleaming on top of the "Five-Year College Entrance Examination, Three-Year Simulation" book—the book looked brand new, as if it had just been taken off the bookstore shelf.
The air froze for three seconds.
He picked up the note with two fingers and suddenly chuckled, "Teacher Xu is meddling quite a bit, isn't she?" A drop of water from the Coke bottle dripped onto the paper, creating a small patch of blue ink.
Xu Ying turned to leave, but heard the sound of pages turning behind her. Zong Heng folded the crumpled piece of paper twice and stuffed it into the title page of the poetry collection.
The next morning, Xu Ying found a flattened mint in her desk.
The candy wrapper was a familiar light green—exactly the same one Zongheng had given her when they bumped into each other on the rooftop last week. The candy itself had melted a bit, sticking stickily to the wrapper, as if it had been held in someone's hand for a long time.
She looked up to her right. Zong Heng was slumped over the table, catching up on sleep, the spinous process on the back of his neck particularly clear in the morning light. His left fingertips were still stained with fountain pen ink, while his right hand was protectively cradling a poetry collection on the corner of the table.
The English teacher suddenly called on him: "Zong Heng! You read this passage."
The class fell silent. The boy in the second-to-last row nudged Zong Heng in the back. He looked up abruptly, a tuft of hair sticking up on his forehead. Xu Ying saw him reflexively reach for the poetry collection, as if looking for some clue.
"Page 53." She lowered her voice and pushed the textbook to the right.
Zong Heng paused for a moment, then suddenly grinned. He stood up and began to read aloud in his signature lazy tone. To everyone's surprise, his pronunciation was actually quite standard, even with a hint of British accent.
"Thank you for your kindness." After reading the last sentence, he sat down casually and touched Xu Ying's wrist under the desk.
A brand new mint was placed in her palm.
The women's restroom during lunch break is always a breeding ground for rumors.
"I heard about that transfer student in Class 7..."
"Just pretending to be high and mighty, it's all because of..."
Xu Ying stood in the cubicle, breathing very softly. The laughter outside was suddenly interrupted by a screeching drag—it sounded like someone had kicked over a mop bucket.
"Zong Heng?! This is the women's restroom..."
"What," the familiar voice said with a chilling laugh, "do you want me to take off my pants to prove my identity?"
After a flurry of hurried footsteps faded into the distance, Xu Ying pushed open the stall door. Zong Heng was leaning against the sink smoking, and immediately stubbed out his cigarette when he saw her come out.
"What they said..."
"It's fake." He interrupted her, pulling the box of Shiba Inu bandages from his pocket. "Thanks for this."
Xu Ying noticed that the abrasions on his collarbone had been covered with bandages—but they were pure flesh-colored, not the kind she had given him.
As if sensing her confusion, Zong Heng suddenly leaned down. His warm breath brushed against her ear: "That box is too cute, I can't bear to use it."
The math class representative exclaimed in surprise as they collected homework before evening self-study: "Zong Heng, you actually handed in your homework?!"
The boy in the last row didn't even look up: "Blind? That's not my handwriting."
The whole class turned around. Zong Heng's name was indeed on the workbook, but the solution steps were as neat as printed text—except for the last major question, next to which someone had made a bold, red-pen annotation:
"Step three is redundant; direct substitution is more time-saving. —Z"
Xu Ying's ears suddenly burned. She recognized the notes she had left in her notebook yesterday while rewriting them. And now, Zong Heng had not only copied her answers verbatim, but also... imitated her handwriting?
The class representative flipped to the first page, her expression turning even more horrified: "This is the parent's signature..."
"I signed it." Zong Heng finally looked up, his gaze sweeping across half the classroom before landing precisely on Xu Ying. "Any objections?"
The setting sun slanted in through the west window, making the box of mints next to his textbooks sparkle.
After the student on duty left, Xu Ying inexplicably walked towards Zong Heng's seat:
Hai Zi's poetry collection lay open on the table, right on the page with the diary entry. Pencil annotations were squeezed into the margins:
Sister, tonight I don't care about humanity, I only want you.
Below, a crooked line is drawn, pointing to another handwriting—
"Pretentious."
But what truly took her breath away was what was tucked under the next page: three flattened mint wrappers, a Shiba Inu band-aid package, and... the melted mint she had thrown away that morning.
The sound of a key turning came from the back door of the classroom. In her panic, Xu Ying knocked over a book of poems, and a photograph floated out—a blurry image of her standing in the corner of the podium at last year's sports meet, as if it had been secretly captured with a telephoto lens.
Zong Heng's voice rang out from behind: "Caught red-handed, Xu."
Zong Heng's voice was deep and tinged with a hint of mockery, as if he had long expected her to rummage through his things.
Xu Ying stood frozen in place, her fingertips still clutching the photograph, her heart pounding so hard it felt like it would burst from her chest. In the photo, she was wearing a blue and white school uniform, standing in the sunlight, blurry as if captured in a hasty snapshot.
She took a deep breath and turned around—
Zong Heng leaned against the doorframe, his school uniform collar slightly open, and a small corner of the band-aid on his collarbone curled up. He twirled a keychain in his hand, the metallic clinking sound particularly clear in the empty classroom.
"This is..." Xu Ying held up the photo, her voice trembling slightly.
"Evidence." He strode over, snatched the photo, and his fingertips brushed lightly against the back of her hand. "Proof that some good student secretly went through other people's things."
Xu Ying's ears burned: "I just..."
"Just what?" Zong Heng took a step closer, his body still warm from the outdoor sun. "Curious about the school bully's personal belongings?"
She instinctively stepped back, her calf bumping against the desk, and the book "Hai Zi's Poetry Collection" slammed shut.
Zong Heng suddenly smiled.
He raised his hand, gently lifting her chin with his index finger, forcing her to look directly at him: "Xu Ying, do you know—"
The back door of the classroom was suddenly pushed open.
"Who's still in the classroom?" The footsteps of the teacher on duty approached from afar.
Zong Heng clicked his tongue and quickly opened the window: "Let's go."
Before Xu Ying could react, he had already grabbed her wrist. The next second, she was pulled out of the window and landed on the path behind the teaching building.
As the sun sets, the shadows of the trees sway gently.
Zong Heng didn't let go of her hand; instead, he gripped it even tighter. He looked down at her, his voice slightly hoarse: "I haven't finished what I was saying."
Xu Ying held her breath.
"Do you know," he said, pulling the melted and then solidified peppermint candy from his pocket with his other hand, "that you have to take responsibility for peeping into other people's secrets?"
A gust of wind swept through the treetops, startling a few sparrows into flight.
The school bell rang in the distance, signaling the end of get out of class, and his eyes were even darker than the twilight.
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