Chapter Text
There are memories that insist on remaining exactly as they were, untouched by time or reason. Others soften around the edges until they become almost impossible to distinguish from invention. I have spent years wondering which kind my memories of Wen Cheng Ye belong to. If I close my eyes, I can still see our classroom as it was on that Monday morning in early September. The paint peeled from the window frames in thin curls. The ceiling fans turned with a dull mechanical groan that had become so ordinary no one seemed to hear it anymore. Sunlight settled over the rows of wooden desks in pale rectangles, carrying with it the smell of chalk dust and the faint sweetness of osmanthus drifting in from the courtyard.
It was the sort of morning one forgets without effort.
Or perhaps it should have been.
Our homeroom teacher entered five minutes after the bell, carrying a stack of attendance sheets beneath one arm.
"We have a transfer student joining us today."
There was the usual rustle of curiosity. Chairs creaked. Someone in the back whispered that perhaps he had been expelled from his previous school. Another suggested his parents had moved for work. Adolescents have always possessed an extraordinary talent for constructing biographies from almost nothing.
Then he walked in.
There was nothing especially dramatic about his appearance. Looking back, I suspect I embellished him in memory because I later came to believe that first meetings ought to possess some hidden significance. They rarely do.
He was simply a boy in an immaculate uniform.
Dark hair.
Straight posture.
A face so composed that, at sixteen, I mistook composure for arrogance.
"My name is Wen Cheng Ye."
His voice was low enough that the room quieted to hear it.
"I hope we get along."
That was all.
No rehearsed smile. No nervousness. Not even the awkward self-consciousness one expects from someone standing before forty strangers. He merely bowed once and waited. I remember thinking he looked absurdly self-contained, as though the opinions of everyone around him had already been weighed and dismissed before they were even offered.
Of course, I would later discover how spectacularly wrong first impressions can be.
At the time, however, I knew only one thing.
I disliked him immediately.
"There is one empty seat," our teacher said, scanning the classroom.
My heart sank before she even spoke my name.
"...Next to Fu Xinshu."
A chorus of sympathetic laughter rose from the room.
I heard someone mutter, "Poor new kid."
I might have laughed as well, had I possessed even the slightest awareness of irony.
He placed his schoolbag beside the desk with deliberate care.
"Excuse me."
I moved my backpack from the empty chair without answering.
He thanked me anyway.
That was the first conversation we ever had.
If it can be called a conversation at all.
Looking back now, I find it strangely difficult to identify the precise moment I decided Wen Cheng Ye was my enemy.
Hatred, despite what novels insist, seldom announces itself. It accumulates quietly. A misunderstood glance. An unfortunate coincidence. A sentence left unfinished. By the time one realizes resentment has taken root, its origins have already been forgotten. Mine, as far as I remember, began with an envelope.
My only weaknesses were English and mathematics. Perhaps I had simply been studying them the wrong way all along. At least, that was what I told myself. It was easier than admitting someone else might simply be better.
Then Wen Cheng Ye arrived.
Within a month, he had taken first place in both subjects.
The teachers adored him.
"Look at Cheng Ye's paper," Mr. Liu would say, holding it up before the class. "This is what careful work looks like."
Sometimes they glanced at me as they spoke.
Sometimes they didn't have to.
I understood the comparison anyway.
Teachers have always had their favourites. They speak of fairness, yet they cannot help gravitating toward the students who make their lives easier, who win competitions, who promise prestige. The rest of us become little more than footnotes.
Perhaps that judgment was unfair.
At sixteen, however, I believed it with absolute certainty.
It was around then that my dislike hardened into something more deliberate.
I decided that, whatever happened, I would never like Wen Cheng Ye.
The following Monday, our biology teacher stopped me just before the first bell.
"Xinshu."
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Would you mind picking up the worksheets from the administrative office? They're already printed."
I nodded, more out of habit than willingness. The corridors were unusually quiet at that hour. Most students were still lingering in the courtyard, trying to delay the beginning of another school week. Sunlight spilled across the polished floor, broken only by the shadows of potted plants lined beneath the windows.
The administrative office sat at the far end of the second floor.
I knocked once before pushing the door open.
"Excuse me, I'm here to collect the biology worksheets for Class Two."
The secretary smiled and disappeared into the back room.
While I waited, someone stepped through the doorway behind me.
I didn't need to turn around.
"Fu Xinshu, right?"
His voice was low and even.
"What are you doing here?"
There was nothing particularly unfriendly about the question. Looking back, I suspect he was only making conversation. At sixteen, however, I heard indifference in every syllable.
I looked up.
He stood a little too close, forcing me to tilt my head slightly to meet his eyes. He was taller than I remembered from the classroom, though perhaps that was simply because the corridor was so narrow.
I said nothing.
Neither did he.
He merely waited.
There was something unnerving about the way Wen Cheng Ye looked at people. Not intensely, nor with any trace of judgment. He simply watched, patient enough to let silence fill whatever space words failed to occupy. At the time, I mistook that patience for arrogance.
Fortunately, the secretary returned before either of us had to speak again.
"Here are the biology worksheets."
She placed the stack of papers into my arms.
"Thank you."
I nodded politely.
Without another glance, I stepped past Wen Cheng Ye as though he were little more than another piece of school furniture—a notice board, perhaps, or one of the potted plants lining the corridor.
He didn't stop me.
He didn't call my name.
When I reached the end of the hallway, I looked back only once.
He was still standing outside the office.
For a brief moment, I had the absurd impression that he wanted to say something.
Then the secretary handed him a folder, and whatever that thought had been disappeared before it ever reached me. I continued back toward the classroom. The corridors had begun to fill with students. Conversations overlapped one another, lockers slammed shut, footsteps echoed against the tiled floor. The school had awakened completely while I was away.
By the time I reached our classroom, my arms were beginning to ache beneath the weight of the biology worksheets.
Someone called my name.
"Fu."
I looked up.
Jiang Tian Yu was leaning against the doorframe, one hand tucked into the pocket of his uniform.
"There you are." He smiled—a warm, effortless smile that seemed to belong to someone entirely at ease with the world. "Let me help you."
Before I could refuse, he lifted nearly half the stack from my arms.
"These teachers always print enough paper to start a forest," he muttered.
I laughed despite myself.
"I was thinking the same thing."
Together, we carried the worksheets into the classroom.
It was a small thing.
So small, in fact, that I scarcely thought about it again.
Only much later would I realize how often my memories chose the most convenient witness over the person who had quietly made those moments possible.
As Jiang Tian Yu set the papers on the teacher's desk, I happened to glance toward the corridor.
Wen Cheng Ye was still there.
He had stopped only briefly before continuing toward the stairwell, the folder tucked neatly beneath one arm.
For an instant, our eyes met.
Then he inclined his head—so slightly I might have imagined it—and walked away.
At the time, I assumed he simply had somewhere else to be.
I would become very good at assuming things about Wen Cheng Ye.
I returned to my seat and let the stack of worksheets fall onto my desk with more force than was strictly necessary.
The classroom had not yet settled into the restless silence that always preceded a lesson. Conversations drifted from one corner to another, interrupted by bursts of laughter and the scrape of chairs across the floor. Two girls behind me were arguing over an English grammar question from last week's quiz. Someone near the windows was trying, unsuccessfully, to convince his friends that the mathematics exam had been unfair.
It was the sort of noise one eventually stopped hearing.
I rested my forehead against my folded arms and turned toward the window.
Outside, the trees swayed gently in the late morning breeze. Sunlight filtered through the leaves in broken patches, scattering across the classroom floor. It was brighter than usual. Bright enough that I closed my eyes for a moment, if only to escape the glare.
When I opened them again, someone was sitting beside me.
Not Wen Cheng Ye.
Jiang Tian Yu had taken his seat.
He was leaning back comfortably, one arm draped over the back of the chair that belonged, technically, to Cheng Ye.
"What?" I asked.
Jiang Tian Yu grinned as though the answer were obvious.
"Nothing." He shrugged. "You looked bored."
I frowned.
"So your solution was to bother me?"
"Exactly."
Before I could reply, he reached into the pocket of his blazer and placed a carton of strawberry milk on my desk.
"I bought two."
"I don't even like strawberry."
"I know." His smile widened. "That's why I got chocolate too."
He produced a second carton with a small flourish, as if he had just completed a particularly impressive magic trick.
Despite myself, I laughed.
When I turned back toward the window, Wen Cheng Ye was standing in the corridor.
He wasn't speaking to anyone. For reasons I couldn't explain, I looked at him just as he looked at me.
Our eyes met.
It lasted no more than a second.
Long enough for a question to form, though not long enough for an answer.
Was he looking at me?
If he was, why?
Before I could decide, he lowered his gaze and continued down the corridor, disappearing into the slow current of students moving between classrooms. I dismissed the thought almost immediately. Coincidences are easier to believe than intentions.
Especially when the person in question is someone you've already decided not to understand.
The bell rang.
As though responding to a rehearsed cue, conversations dissolved into whispers before disappearing altogether. Chairs scraped against the floor as everyone returned to their seats.
Jiang Tian Yu stood, stretching lazily.
"I'll see you after class."
"Yeah."
He gave the back of my chair a light tap before walking away.
The carton of chocolate milk remained on my desk.
For a moment, I considered drinking it.
Instead, I slipped it into my schoolbag, telling myself I'd save it for later.
A chair shifted beside me.
Wen Cheng Ye had returned.
He placed a textbook neatly on his desk, took out a pen, and opened his notebook to a clean page. Not once did he look in my direction. Not once did he speak.
If anything, it was as though I ceased to exist the moment he sat down.
Strangely enough, I found that more irritating than if he had said something.
The lesson began.
Like every ordinary school day, it ended before I realized how little of it I would remember—and how stubbornly one insignificant moment would refuse to leave me.
At the time, I believed it was simply another Monday.
Memory, however, has never been particularly interesting in ordinary days.
One memory, however, has remained strangely intact.
It was sometime in late autumn.
My grandmother fell ill rather suddenly. Not seriously, as it turned out, but enough that she could scarcely leave her bed without assistance. I stayed home.
At the time, my phone had been broken for nearly a week. The screen had gone black after I dropped it onto the pavement outside the bus station, and repairing it seemed an unnecessary expense. Without it, I had no way of contacting the school. Around noon, there was a knock at the door.
When I opened it, Qin Ao stood outside with Ms. Lin, our teacher, and Coach Wang Fa. Between them were several bags of fruit, a carton of milk, and enough groceries to feed my grandmother for days.
Ms.. Lin smiled gently.
"We heard your grandmother wasn't feeling well."
Coach Wang Fa added, "Don't worry about school. Just take care of your family."
I thanked them, though I was too surprised to say much else.
After they left, I remember standing in the doorway for quite some time. I kept wondering how they had known. The thought crossed my mind more than once. Yet, for reasons I cannot explain, I never asked.
Perhaps I assumed the answer would present itself eventually. Most things, I believed then, did.
The following morning, I returned to school.
As I unpacked my bag, Qin Ao looked over from the next row.
"Feeling better?"
"My grandma is."
"That's good." He smiled. "You should thank Tian Yu."
I looked up.
"...For what?"
"He was the one who told the teachers what happened."
"I guess he somehow found out your phone was broken too."
I nodded slowly.
"I'll thank him later."
And so I did.
It never occurred to me to ask a far simpler question.
How had Jiang Tian Yu known in the first place?
The question crossed my mind only briefly.
Like so many questions at sixteen, I allowed it to disappear before it had the chance to become inconvenient.
By the time the final bell rang, I had already decided to thank him.
After packing my books into my bag, I stopped by the school canteen and bought two packets of shrimp crackers—the only snack I had ever seen Tian Yu willingly share.
He was standing just outside the school gate, hands in the pockets of his blazer, waiting for his family's driver.
"Tian Yu."
He turned.
Without much ceremony, I held the snacks out to him. "This is for you."
He blinked. "What for?"
"For telling the teachers about my grandma."
His brows drew together ever so slightly. Then he laughed. "You didn't have to."
"I know."
There was an awkward pause.
"...Thanks."
I nodded, satisfied that the debt had been repaid. Without waiting for another response, I turned and walked away. I never looked back. Perhaps if I had, I would have noticed the puzzled expression on his face. Perhaps I would have asked why he looked as though he wanted to correct me.
But I didn't.
For years, I became astonishingly good at walking away before anyone had the opportunity to tell me I was wrong.
Looking back now, I sometimes wonder whether our lives are shaped less by the mistakes we make than by the questions we never bother to ask. It is an uncomfortable thought.
Especially for someone who has built an entire life upon certainty.
The last thing I remember before waking in the hospital was snow. Not the accident itself. Memory, mercifully or cruelly, had erased the sound of the impact. What remained was strangely quiet.
I remember crossing the road after leaving the university library, my backpack heavier than usual with borrowed books I would later return weeks overdue.
Then—
Headlights.
A horn.
The sensation of falling.
After that, only white.
Snow drifted across the pavement in slow, silent spirals, settling over my coat as though trying to convince the world I had always belonged there. Somewhere beyond the whiteness stood a figure. I couldn't make out the face. Only the outline of someone running toward me.
Then everything disappeared.
The first thing I heard was the ticking of a clock.
Not voices.
Not footsteps.
Only the steady rhythm of passing seconds.
When I opened my eyes, the room was dark except for a narrow strip of moonlight stretching across the hospital floor.
For a long while, I lay perfectly still, uncertain whether I was awake or merely dreaming another memory.
The smell of antiseptic settled the question for me.
Hospitals have a way of announcing themselves without words.
I turned my head.
Someone was asleep beside my bed.
His arms rested on the mattress, his forehead leaning against them as though exhaustion had overtaken him without permission.
I blinked once.
Then again.
The image refused to disappear.
Wen Cheng Ye.
Of all the people I expected to see when I woke, he would have been the last.