moonlight
As the library closing bell rang through the corridor, Lu Jinyu was staring blankly at the trading ports of the Boxer Protocol on the historical atlas.
Xu Yang's pen tip made a light sound as it scratched on the wrong answer book. He looked up and saw the other person's fingers circling the word "Tianjin". There was some indelible blue ink on the edge of the fingernail - probably from the make-up test during the day.
"Here we need to record the distribution characteristics of the treaty ports," Xu Yang said, pushing his historical notebook over. On it was a simple hand-drawn map with red markers marking the ports newly added after the treaty was signed. "They stretch from the coast to the inland, like vines climbing a tree."
Lu Jinyu poked his fingertips on the map. "But I always confuse the Treaty of Nanjing and the Treaty of Beijing. They look pretty much the same."
He suddenly put his pen down on the table, and the cap rolled to Xu Yang's hand. "How about you invent a physics memory method? Like using the law of momentum to remember the year?"
Xu Yang picked up the pen cap and handed it to him. His fingertips touched the other's warm fingertips, like touching a piece of glass in the sun.
"The Treaty of Nanjing in 1842," he wrote a number in the corner of his draft paper. "You can remember it as 'I'm going to die.' The Qing Dynasty was almost over after the treaty was signed."
Lu Jinyu burst out laughing, causing the administrator to peek out from behind the bookshelf and glare. He quickly covered his mouth, his shoulders still shaking. After a while, he leaned over and whispered, "Xu Yang, you're actually good at making jokes? I thought you only had formulas in your head."
"There are patterns in the formulas." Xu Yang opened the physics textbook, and a corner of the provincial team registration sheet tucked inside was exposed, which he quickly pressed back.
The moonlight from outside the window came in obliquely, coating the ends of Lu Jinyu's hair with a layer of silver. He suddenly discovered that there was a small mole behind the other person's ear, as if it was accidentally dotted with chalk dust.
When the closing music sounded for the second time, the two finally packed their bags.
Lu Jinyu stuffed the uneaten half of the candy into his school uniform pocket. The rustling sound of the candy wrapper was particularly clear in the empty corridor.
"Shall we go feed the cats tomorrow morning at seven?" He walked backwards, the hem of his school uniform sweeping the fallen leaves on the ground. "The third child doesn't seem to be sneezing anymore. I bought some new kitten food."
Xu Yang paused.
He was used to going to the classroom for morning reading at 6:30, but when he saw the moonlight flickering in Lu Jinyu's eyes, he nodded for some unknown reason.
"Wait for you at the playground entrance." He added, looking at the other person like a small firework that was lit, and when he turned around, he almost bumped into the bulletin board at the corner of the corridor.
The playground was still shrouded in fog the next morning. Fat Orange heard footsteps and poked his head out of the cardboard box under the sycamore tree, making a snoring sound in his throat.
Lu Jinyu squatted down to open the cat food bag, and the zipper cut his finger. As soon as the blood came out, he rubbed it on his school uniform.
"Clumsy." Xu Yang took out a mint-flavored Band-Aid from his schoolbag, and the packaging had a picture of a little bear holding a bandage.
When he grabbed Lu Jinyu's wrist, the other party shrank as if burned, but his fingertips curled up obediently, revealing the wound that was still bleeding.
"Teacher Li came to see me after the make-up test yesterday," Lu Jinyu said, his voice muffled as he stared at him wrapping the Band-Aid around his neck. "He said I've made great progress in my lab skills and asked if you were the one who taught me."
He suddenly laughed, his eyes curved into crescents. "I said, yeah, my deskmate even uses force analysis when feeding the cat. He says you have to consider friction to pour the cat food evenly."
Xu Yang put on the last circle of tape, and his fingertips inadvertently brushed across the skin on the inside of the other person's wrist, like touching the melting water of a stream in early spring.
"Spreading too much cat food will attract wild dogs." He stood up and walked towards the teaching building. He heard Lu Jinyu's footsteps catching up with him from behind, accompanied by the rustling sound of cat food bags swinging.
The morning self-study classroom was filled with the aroma of soy milk and buns. Lu Jinyu pushed a meat bun to Xu Yang's desk. The oil paper bag was printed with the breakfast shop's kitten logo, which looked somewhat similar to the crooked-eyed cat pattern on his T-shirt.
"My mom gave it to me. She said it helps my brain work faster." He lowered his voice and, while the head teacher turned around to write on the blackboard, stuffed a piece of candy into Xu Yang's hand. "Lemon flavor, refreshing."
Xu Yang held the candy in his hand, and the plastic wrapper left a shallow mark on his palm.
He looked at the back of Lu Jinyu's head as it turned back. There were some cat food crumbs on his hair, like falling snowflakes.
The leaves of the sycamore tree outside the window were blown away by the wind, revealing a vague carving on the trunk. The names of the couple that Teacher Li mentioned had long been integrated into the tree grain.
During the break, the boy with glasses came over with a physics test paper, pointing at the last big question with a confused look on his face.
Just as Xu Yang was about to speak, Lu Jinyu suddenly snatched the paper away: "I know how to do this! Use the law of conservation of energy to convert the slider's kinetic energy into potential energy..." His voice became quieter as he spoke, and finally, he scratched his head and handed the paper back, "It still doesn't seem right."
When Xu Yang took the test paper, his fingertips touched the warmth left by Lu Jinyu on the paper.
When he was drawing the force analysis diagram, the other person leaned very close, and his breath swept across his ear, with the sour and sweet smell of lemon candy.
"We have to consider the work done by friction here," he said, pushing the diagram over. "Just like when Fatty Orange climbs a tree, he has to overcome the resistance of the bark."
Lu Jinyu's ears turned red, and he suddenly reached out and rubbed his hair, just like he did last night.
"Thanks, my deskmate." When he turned around and ran back to the team, the sycamore leaves stuck to the back of his school uniform fell to the ground and were blown by the wind to Xu Yang's feet.
The laboratory was unusually quiet during lunch break. The sunlight filtered through the blinds, creating a grid on the floor, like an unfinished math problem.
Xu Yang was organizing the experimental equipment, and Lu Jinyu was squatting in the corner changing the cat litter for the kitten - this was their agreement, whoever was distracted in the library yesterday would be responsible for cleaning the cat litter today.
"Do you think we should put the kitten up for adoption when it grows up?" Lu Jinyu poured the dirty sand into the garbage bag, a little dust on the tip of his nose. "He's always wandering around the school. It would be terrible if the dean found out." He suddenly pointed at the smallest one. "This one is just like you, always hiding in the corner. How about calling it Xu Xiaoyang?"
Xu Yang nearly dropped the beaker he was wiping. He looked at the kitten napping with its eyes closed. Its fur was orange with a hint of white, and it did resemble his washed-out school uniform.
"The one who always steals the milk is called Lu Xiaoyu." He lowered his head and continued to wipe the beaker. He heard Lu Jinyu's suppressed laughter behind him, like a covered bell.
In the afternoon physics class, we were talking about electromagnetic induction. Teacher Li drew magnetic lines of force on the blackboard, and chalk dust fell onto the lesson plan on the podium.
Lu Jinyu drew a kitten on the back of the draft paper. With just a few strokes, he drew an orange cat chasing the magnetic lines, with its tail curved like a sine curve.
Xu Yang nudged his arm with his elbow, but the other person pushed the paper toward him and wrote a line of small words next to the cat's paw: "Is the direction of the magnetic field in this question the same as the direction of the cat's paw?"
It suddenly started raining when school was over. The big raindrops hit the glass windows, leaving blurry water marks.
Lu Jinyu searched his schoolbag but couldn't find the umbrella. Just as he was getting worried, he saw Xu Yang take out a black umbrella from the locker. There was a faded cat-shaped pendant hanging on the umbrella handle.
"Let's go together?" Xu Yang handed the umbrella to him, and the pendant swayed gently in the rain.
The two of them squeezed under the same umbrella and walked towards the library. The rain wet half of Xu Yang's shoulder, and the dark wet marks on his school uniform looked like spread ink.
Lu Jinyu leaned closer to him, his shoulders slightly sore from the pressure of the umbrella ribs, but he heard the other party say, "Don't squeeze over here, the cat bed will get wet."
Under the eaves of the library, Fat Orange was stuffing the kitten deep into a cardboard box, its tail twitching anxiously. Lu Jinyu squatted down and covered the box with a plastic bag. Xu Yang held up an umbrella to shield them from the rain. Raindrops rolled down the edge of the umbrella and formed small puddles at their feet.
"Let's build a shed for them tomorrow," Lu Jinyu suddenly said, his fingertips scratching the wet cardboard, "Use the old wooden boards from the laboratory."
The chemistry paper in the evening study session was particularly difficult, and the last inference question had Lu Jinyu scratching his head.
Xu Yang pushed over his draft paper, on which the reaction conditions were marked with pens of different colors, like a colorful map.
"The catalyst here is MnO," he pointed to one step, "just like the fat orange, without it the kitten can't grow up."
Lu Jinyu stared at the draft paper for a long time, then suddenly laughed out loud. "Xu Yang, you can't stop talking about cats these days." As he lowered his head to write, the ends of his hair brushed against the back of Xu Yang's hand, scratching it gently like a feather. "But this is good. It's much easier to understand than Teacher Li's 'reciting reaction formulas is like reciting Tang poetry.'"
The rain had not stopped when the museum closed. The two of them walked on the wet runway with umbrellas, and the sound of their footsteps was particularly clear in the rainy night.
Lu Jinyu suddenly remembered something and took out a small iron box from his schoolbag, which contained half a box of White Rabbit milk candy.
"Here you go," he stuffed the tin into Xu Yang's hands, "My mom said eating sweet things can improve your accuracy."
Xu Yang held the box of candy in his hand, and the edges of the iron box hurt his palm a little.
He looked at Lu Jinyu's profile blurred by the rain and fog, and suddenly remembered the thin wound on the other's wrist this morning, which probably had a thin scab at this moment.
"Let's go see a movie after the midterm exam?" He heard his own voice drifting away in the rain. "I heard there's a movie about physics competitions."
Lu Jinyu paused, turning the umbrella handle half a circle in his hand. "Okay," he said, his voice a little amused, like the sky washed by rain. "But I have to wait until I pass history, otherwise my mom won't let me."
The lights at the entrance of the dormitory building emitted a warm yellow light in the rain. Lu Jinyu took the umbrella handed to him by Xu Yang and saw that the dark wet marks on the other's shoulders had not dried yet.
"Give me your school uniform tomorrow," he said suddenly, pinching the handle of his umbrella with his fingertips. "My mom knows how to use the dryer. It's faster than hanging it in the hallway."
Xu Yang nodded and watched Lu Jinyu running into the building with his wet schoolbag. The grass debris on the back of his school uniform flashed in the light.
He looked down at the tin box in his hand. The sweet aroma of the toffee mixed with the smell of rain slowly spread in the humid air.
The rain was still falling, hitting the empty runway, making a rustling sound.
Xu Yang stood under the eaves and saw Fat Orange sticking his head out of the cardboard box. Rainwater dripped through the cracks in the box and formed small puddles on the ground, reflecting the lights of the dormitory building in the distance, like stars scattered on the ground.
He took out a piece of candy and peeled it open, the sweetness slowly melting on his tongue.
Suddenly I remembered the crooked kittens on Lu Jinyu's draft paper, the mole behind his ear that looked like a dot of chalk dust, and the sentence in the experiment manual: "Data is the conscience of the experiment" - it turns out that some things are more important than precise formulas, just like the sweetness on the tip of my tongue at this moment, and the unfinished words in the rain.
The lights in the school went out one by one, only the emergency light at the end of the corridor was still on, casting a thin line of light on the wet ground.
Xu Yang stuffed the unfinished candy into his school uniform pocket. The rustling sound of the candy wrapper was particularly clear in the silent night, as if someone was whispering unfinished words in his ear.
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