098 | (Ninety-seven) The Happy Exchange Rate
In Jincheng in October, the wind stops and blows again, and the rain comes and goes.
The ginkgo leaves carpeted the steps in yellow, and even on a rainy day, they looked like a patch of sunlight, shimmering and dazzling.
When the last hibiscus blooms, the Virginia creeper sheds its green coat and dons a red one, autumn comes to an end, and the chill of early winter beckons from afar.
Xie Qingyan wore a thick winter coat over her school uniform, along with a fluffy rabbit fur scarf. Her fair face was buried in the snow-white fur collar, like a white sail at sunrise on the sea, hiding in the morning mist, revealing only a corner of the blue sky and the edge of the red clouds. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that these were her blinking eyes and her frostbitten face.
Her mouth must also be hidden, and when she breathes, she exhales soft white breath. Seeing her is like seeing a flower through the mist. Only when you get closer and closer do you realize her charming and innocent cuteness.
Of course, these scenes are limited to specific times and locations, and can only be seen at Lingquan Mountain.
At school, the constellation Mao existed only outside the mist, as if separated by clouds.
The two maintained the appearance of unfamiliarity, as if their intimate moments in the dead of night were just a dream.
As Su Xingmao had predicted, their physical intimacy was met with her cold indifference under the bed, and Xie Qingyan always avoided him at school.
If anyone mentions him, they will inevitably hear her scoff and sneer, and an anonymous ID will appear on the confession wall to launch a fierce attack on him.
Such as abuse of power, teacher collaborator, and smuggling.
One day, the question "Doesn't anyone think Su Xingmao from Class 8 is pretentious?" became a popular submission on the confession wall.
In response, a helpful classmate forwarded the message to Su Xingmao, the protagonist of the story.
Su Xingmao pushed his phone away and calmly looked away.
Looking back across the mountains and seas of books.
In the corner of the classroom, Xie Qingyan's voice reached him faster than her figure. It was a strange feeling; in the noisy environment, he was able to naturally distinguish her laughter.
Without even looking at her, when I pick up my pen to write with my back to her, the crisp, slightly grainy laughter behind me will be the first thing I hear.
It's like someone playing a flute by the sea. The sea is noisy, with waves, howling wind, and the incessant cries of seagulls... Who isn't noisy? There are many and varied sounds to hear, but he can only hear the flute's notes; everything else is just indistinct white noise.
Only she remained clear in the world.
When their eyes occasionally met, Xie Qingyan would quickly look away, chatting and laughing with the male classmates around her as if nothing had happened.
She had a beautiful smile; her lips parted, and her white teeth shimmered under the light, like a glowing jellyfish.
Su Xingmao didn't understand why their exchange rate for happiness was unequal.
It seemed to take him longer than anyone else for her happiness to belong to him for even a fleeting moment.
Su Xingmao turned around, gripped the pen tightly, and stared at the messy scrap paper.
His past life was like these stacks of blue manuscript papers. He would turn a page every day, and sometimes before he even had a chance to write anything, the day would just pass by in a blur.
But one day, bold and vibrant colors appeared on the rough draft paper.
He tried to erase it, but the color was too deep, too heavy. He struggled to turn to the next page, but the clean paper was already marked by the marks of past pen strokes. He panicked and tried to rewrite it, tearing off page after page, but the writing took root and was always imprinted on the next page, the next, the next two pages... Was the deeply etched figure written on paper or engraved in his heart? Who can say for sure?
The traces of the day before yesterday haven't been erased, and yesterday's strokes have fallen again. Dense characters, bits and pieces of memories, are written haphazardly and piled up together.
More and more, denser and denser.
The paper was endless, the writing was indelible, and day after day, the number of pages had long since become uncountable.
What followed was no longer a true handwriting; the color faded, but the blank spaces still retained raised marks that could not be erased even with a strong eraser. They only crumpled and wrinkled the page, etching it deeper into memory.
Even rotten paper is unforgettable.
That's not enough.
He thought.
For several days, rumors have been circulating in Class 8 of Grade 11 that Xie Qingyan and the class monitor have a bad relationship. As for the cause, there are many versions.
Zhou Hanyu heard that after the results of the October monthly exam were released, the class monitor suggested to the homeroom teacher that students help each other out and rotate seats.
So Xie Qingyan was moved from the last row, where he could stack his books high enough to doze off, to the second row below the podium, right next to the class monitor, Su Xingmao. He was often the first to be urged to hand in his homework, and before long, a grudge was formed between them.
Xie Qingyan was furious about the seat reassignment. First of all, she and Zheng Hui, her close friend and fellow student who had shared a deep revolutionary friendship, were forcibly separated, one on the left and one on the right, like Asia and North America, worlds apart, separated by a vast ocean. They could only look at each other with bitter tears during the ten-minute break between classes.
Before, when I played on my phone during class, I could at least exchange information with Zheng Hui. Now that there's no one watching me, let alone playing on my phone, if I even daydream a little, I'll immediately be subjected to the teacher's 360-degree, piercing gaze.
Xie Qingyan had no choice but to put in half her effort to listen attentively to the lecture, even though most of the time she was listening to gibberish.
Fortunately, there's someone else providing after-school tutoring...
The effect was immediate; in the November monthly exam, she jumped from the bottom three to the bottom eleventh.
When the results came out, Zhou Hanyu looked at her like she was a monster: "Damn it, Xie Qingyan, did you cheat? Confess honestly, did you cheat?"
Xie Qingyan looked at the score of nearly 100 on the test paper. This was the first time she had passed math since the second semester of her first year of high school. She felt smug: "Was this that hard? Couldn't I have gotten this score on my own?"
—On the weekend before the exam, she underwent intensive training in a very humiliating manner.
At the cost of a swollen, red bottom from being slapped, she reluctantly memorized the key points and exam questions that Su Xingmao had highlighted for her…
Zhou Hanyu stared at her, her eyes filled with suspicion: "Your mom hired a tutor for you? I don't believe it..."
"Believe it or not!" Xie Qingyan happily put away the report card.
Back home, even the usually strict Ms. Xie Jinyu broke into a smile, praising her for her significant progress and relenting, saying that if she could get into the top twenty in her class at the end of the semester, she would invite Zhang Fulan back to China so the three of them could spend the New Year together.
As she grew up, Xie Qingyan would sometimes stay in China to be with Xie Jinyu during the Spring Festival, and sometimes fly to France to see Zhang Fulan. What about the three of them for the New Year? She sniffed. It was so far away, as far away as an old childhood dream.
Xie Qingyan turned her back, pursing her lips indifferently: "...What kind of reward is this? You'd be better off giving me a huge, huge, huge red envelope."
My heart is already flying to two months from now, full of anticipation.
With her grades soaring and a bright future ahead, Xie Qingyan was in a great mood throughout December.
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