Mo Li used the various odds and ends he had collected to block the doorway, then sat down at his desk and opened his schoolbag.
In the dim light, Mo's father, rushing in with his shoes, almost fell into the stinking ditch. Before he could even rush into the house, Mo Li had already slipped into his room and hidden.
Enraged, Mr. Mo slammed his fist on the door while cursing and swearing.
Ignoring the shouts outside the door, Mo Li opened her schoolbag and carefully picked up a leaf from inside.
There were a few footprints on the yellowish-green leaf. It was the sycamore leaf that Xia Linyin had pressed between her Chinese textbooks, which Mo Li had picked up after it fell to the ground.
After carefully wiping away the footprints on the leaves, Mo Li looked at the leaves with a satisfied expression.
He looked at the leaf for a long time before putting it down and pulling out a box that he had hidden at the very back of the bed.
Upon opening the box, one finds several yogurt straws with bite marks, an empty pen refill, half an eraser, and a few strands of hair.
Mo Li put the paulownia leaves into the box, and then hid the box under the bed.
Next to the box was a large bag containing several mineral water bottles and beverage bottles. He had collected all the bottles that Xia Linyin had thrown away after finishing her drinks and kept them as precious treasures.
Like a little hamster, he dragged home little by little things related to Xia Linyin and carefully hid them away.
He was also like a pervert, collecting things that smelled of Xia Linyin and then smelling them when no one was around.
After hiding the box, Mo Li sat back down at his desk, satisfied. He took out his notebook and wrote in red pen—
"Xia Linyin, Xia Linyin, Xia Linyin, Xia Linyin..."
He wrote with such focus and seriousness, each stroke so heavy, as if he wanted to pierce the paper.
The old desk lamp flickered on and off, making one fear it might malfunction at any moment. In the cramped room, a thin boy with damp hair wrote Xia Linyin's name in a striking red pen, as if it were blood on a notebook.
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