Positioning
Written on the Blank Page/Night Rain Green Pomelo
2025/6/28
The campus was like a steamer after the heavy rain, and the heat rising from the concrete ground distorted the outline of the teaching building in the distance.
The cicadas' chirping sound lingered in my ears, as if trying to squeeze out every last bit of the summer heat.
Xu Zhiyi walked through the corridor holding a stack of math test papers that had just been corrected, sweat dripping down her temples.
She subconsciously wanted to wipe the sweat off her face with her sleeve, but she suddenly pulled her hand back when it touched the railing.
The metal surface of the railing was hot from the scorching sun, and the heat at that moment made her fingertips numb.
She pursed her lips slightly, endured the discomfort and moved forward quickly.
As a result, the test paper in her arms almost slipped out. She hurriedly hugged it tightly, and a white mark was cut on her fingertips by the edge of the paper.
This year, Jiangchuan No. 3 Middle School produced another provincial champion in science. At the morning meeting, the principal, with a beaming face, announced that he would "press on to win," and as a result, the number of in-class tests in various subjects almost doubled.
At the corner, the back door of the classroom suddenly banged open.
An orange basketball rolled to her feet and gently hit her shoe, leaving a shallow mark.
"Sorry!" A clear male voice came from the side, and Song Chengrui came jogging over to pick up the ball, with sweat dripping from the ends of his hair.
When he bent down, Xu Zhiyi smelled a faint scent of lemon laundry detergent on his school uniform, the same brand he used at home.
"It's okay." She responded with her head down and quickened her pace towards the classroom, but she heard the boys behind her making a fuss.
"Brother Rui, the student council's ears are red!"
"Shut up, you two!" Song Chengrui cursed and laughed as he turned around, spinning the basketball around on his fingertips. "It's hot!"
Xu Zhiyi looked up and saw Song Chengrui's figure getting farther and farther away. She felt her cheeks burning.
The classroom was filled with a mixed smell of mint cooling oil and sweat, which made people feel a little uncomfortable.
Just as she was about to sit down, Zhang Ningxia pointed to another place and said, "Hey, Zhiyi, your seat is not here, it's over there!"
In the fourth row from the middle, near the aisle, her English book was already spread out in its new position.
The corner of the title page where the tape was stuck was slightly raised, like an unhealed wound.
"Why did you change positions?"
Zhang Ningxia leaned over and whispered in his ear, "It's because of that incident between Gao Xingxing and Qiu Song last time. Now all the boys and girls in the class have to sit separately."
She smiled and went to help Xu Zhiyi get the test paper. "How is it? Did you find out?"
Xu Zhiyi's forehead was covered in sweat. It was already September, and the weather was still so hot. It didn't feel like autumn at all.
She shook her head.
"Here are the test papers for the afternoon self-study class. Can you help me distribute them? I need to take a nap. I'm so sleepy."
"Hey, don't sleep, don't sleep."
Zhang Ningxia curiously asked, "Did Mr. Xu tell me who presented the flowers?"
Xu Zhiyi did not answer.
This time, No. 3 Middle School has produced a math genius, and the school will arrange an exchange meeting.
The math teacher of Grade 2 (1) class was the person in charge of this exchange meeting, so naturally the opportunity to go on stage and present flowers fell to their class.
After handing out the test papers, Zhang Ningxia bit into the popsicle, and the ice chips splashed onto the back of Gao Xingxing's hand.
"hiss--"
"Zhang Ningxia, are you blind?" Gao Xingxing jumped away, shaking his hands.
"Oh, so precious?" Zhang Ningxia rolled her eyes.
Gao Xingxing fanned herself with a folding fan and sneered, "Some people should stop wasting their time. We must choose someone with a good image to present flowers. How can someone who is shaking when speaking on stage represent the class?"
Xu Zhiyi sat in his seat and lowered his head again.
Zhang Ningxia immediately retorted, "If the student council members don't want to present flowers, are we going to ask Xie Lin to go? She left the last question on the monthly exam blank, and Old Xu was so pissed!"
"You can't even protect yourself, and you still have time to care about others!"
Gao Xingxing was so angry that stars appeared in his eyes and he threw the fan on the table with a loud bang.
"What do you care?"
Originally, Gao Xingxing and Qiu Song were deskmates. In the preparatory test at the beginning of the school year, Gao Xingxing scored full marks in the Chinese composition.
But ever since Gao Xingxing's composition fell out of Qiu Song's desk, the rumors have never stopped.
This word spread from one person to ten, and from ten to a hundred, and soon reached the ears of the head teacher. Later, the head teacher gave the class a preventive measure in advance, saying that boys and girls would no longer sit at the same table in the class, and dating was strictly prohibited. If discovered, they would be persuaded to break up.
Listening to their chattering, Xu Zhiyi sat in her new seat. Her eyelids became heavier and heavier, and when her cheek touched the cold desk, she finally fell into darkness.
In the dim light, someone fanned her gently with a textbook, and the coolness fell intermittently on the back of her neck.
She frowned and buried her face deeper in her arms.
She had a dream in which she was holding a bouquet of flowers on the podium and Xu Wangping was holding a mobile phone below the stage.
The photo of Zhou Yu'an on the screen was dazzlingly bright.
"Xu Zhiyi~"
Xu Zhiyi was sleeping soundly when someone suddenly shook her arm gently. She woke up subconsciously and reached for the mobile phone in the desk.
The phone screen lit up in the darkness, the interface still stuck on the unanswered message from last night.
[About to drive a tank]: Your dad mentioned Zhou Yuan again?
Xu Zhiyi: Well, he said...
【Xu Zhiyi】: (The other party withdraws a message)
[About to drive a tank]: What did you say?
One o'clock in the morning.
[About to drive a tank]: Fell asleep?
She looked up dazedly and saw her deskmate whispering, "Can you let me see your English notes? I didn't copy some of them completely."
Xu Zhiyi breathed a sigh of relief, "Okay."
She reached her fingers into the desk pocket, stuffed the phone in there, and then flipped through the English book in two or three clicks. She had given a special instruction beforehand.
"Just flip through the table of contents. I got stuck on the previous page, so don't worry about it."
Although my deskmate was confused, he still nodded obediently.
Five minutes after the bell rang, the classroom door was casually pushed open.
The boy tied his school uniform jacket around his waist, his short sleeves were loose and wrinkled, his body was covered with weeds, and he walked into the classroom with a playful smile on his face.
"Song Chengrui, you're late."
The boy looked at the girl on the podium, holding a wet copy of "Five Years of College Entrance Examination" in his hand: "Zheng Yan's book fell into the pool, and I rescued it. Is this considered bravery?"
Suddenly, there was a burst of laughter in the classroom, and the girl on the stage was so angry that she clenched the pen of the ballpoint pen and sneered.
"Five rescues in one week, Song Chengrui, you're a modern-day Lei Feng, right?"
Amidst the laughter, Xu Zhiyi noticed the scratch on the boy's wrist.
She subconsciously reached for the Band-Aid in her desk, then quickly pulled back.
Just as the boy was about to speak, he heard the girl's angry voice.
"Take your name!"
Song Chengrui sat lazily in his seat, not caring about these things at all.
But just as he took off his clothes, he accidentally swept the textbooks on the desk of the person behind him. In an instant, there was a loud rustling sound and all the textbooks scattered on the ground.
"I'm sorry."
Song Chengrui looked up at Xu Zhiyi and quickly bent down to pick up the book on the ground for her.
"Never mind. It's okay."
But Xu Zhiyi seemed a little nervous. He quickly squatted down, reached out to grab the textbook and prepared to put it in his arms.
However, while picking up the textbook, Song Chengrui stared at the textbook for a long time with a frown, and his fingertips rubbed the curled tape with some curiosity.
"What's stuck on this page? A cheat sheet?"
Xu Zhiyi snatched the textbook back quickly, and hurriedly took out a piece of paper to wipe the dust off the textbook to hide his inner panic.
"Nothing, just clinging to each other for fun."
Song Chengrui looked at her thoughtfully, then turned around.
She didn't breathe a sigh of relief until the other person turned his head and his eyes no longer stopped on Xu Zhiyi.
All I heard was Xie Lin warning Song Chengrui in a bad mood again.
"Song Chengrui, be quiet in class, understand?"
Song Chengrui looked at him dismissively, "The fox is relying on the tiger's might~"
Song Chengrui is Xie Lin's neighbor, and the two have been incompatible since childhood.
Originally, the two were not in the same class in their first year of high school, but they were separated into different classes in the second semester of their high school. They both chose the same subjects. Now, they are like water and fire.
It was common for the two to quarrel every now and then. Everyone treated it as a funny thing, but Xu Zhiyi took it to heart. She particularly admired Song Chengrui's character, who could talk about anything.
But she just couldn't utter a word.
This time the seats were changed temporarily by the head teacher, and she didn't hear anything about it beforehand.
However, this time Song Chengrui sat in front of her, and she seemed to be one step closer to him.
She didn't know when it started, but she began to pay attention to Song Chengrui.
Perhaps, it was because Song Chengrui was always ranked behind her in school, or perhaps, it was because Song Chengrui was always willing to help her with duty, or perhaps, she saw another self in Song Chengrui.
One who can never reveal his true self.
Xu Zhiyi tore off the tape, and the pencil hovered over the title page for a long time, and finally only wrote the two words "brave".
She smiled slightly and quickly erased the writing with an eraser.
When the tape was put back on, the words were blurred, just like the words she always put to her mouth and swallowed.
She quietly wrote a small "10" on the eraser and slowly closed the textbook.
After doing all this, she looked up and met Song Chengrui's eyes.
In an instant, her scalp began to tingle.
"You..." Xu Zhiyi covered the textbook directly, "Why are you peeking?"
She was so nervous that she stuttered a little. Could it be that he saw everything she had just written?
Song Chengrui glanced at her math textbook, quickly adjusted her gaze, reached out, and held a sticky note between her fingertips.
"Is this yours? I just found it on the ground."
"Is your scoring system quite special?"
The blue and black handwriting on the yellow mango-shaped sticky note quickly made Xu Zhiyi's eardrums buzz, and the handwriting on the sticky note seemed to be magnified ten times.
Song Chengrui's fingertips were still pinching the corner of the paper, and she could even see the grass debris stuck in the cracks of his fingernails.
"No! This is Zhang Ningxia's random writing..."
Her voice trailed off and she snatched the sticky note.
Then she caught a glimpse of Song Chengrui raising his eyebrows.
When the other person turned around, Xu Zhiyi finally breathed a sigh of relief and opened the wrinkled sticky note in his hand.
Her breath stopped. This was what Zhang Ningxia wrote yesterday: "What do you think of Song Chengrui?"
The pencil-written reply below was blurred, leaving only a "X" depression embedded in the paper texture, and half a footprint printed on the paper.
Xu Zhiyi tore the sticky note into pieces and held the fragments in her palm. Her nails pinched her palm so hard that it hurt, but she didn't dare to look up at all.
Xu Zhiyi touched the eraser in his hand, opened the cover of the textbook, and erased harder.
She couldn't leave a trace.
Perhaps she rubbed too hard, and the paper cracked slightly.
A sudden chuckle came from the front row.
She froze and looked up to see Song Chengrui throwing a mango sticky note at her.
The new, blank kind.
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