Around nine in the evening, Tan Junzi had just hung up the phone to go brush her teeth and shower. She had been struggling with the final mechanics problem on her physics worksheet—drawing, erasing, and redrawing the force analysis—but she just couldn't wrap her head around it. In the end, she had called Qin Ruanshu for help. Qin Ruanshu’s voice had sounded strange over the phone, muffled and thick; when asked, she admitted she was buried under her covers reading a novel.
"I just finished *My Sunshine*. He Yichen is just too much! How can a man be so devoted? I’m absolutely devastated," Ruanshu wailed. She sounded like she had just finished a good cry, but she scrambled out of bed and picked up a pen to explain the problem to Junzi.
Explaining things over the phone wasn't as easy as being face-to-face, especially when diagrams were involved. It took nearly half an hour before Junzi finally understood the logic.
Junzi spent over twenty minutes fussing about in the bathroom. Her hair was long, so her routine was to blow-dry it until it was halfway damp, then study until eleven or twelve until it was completely dry before going to bed. She had heard somewhere that sleeping with wet hair could lead to heart disease, so she was incredibly paranoid about it. She never let her head touch the pillow if her hair was still damp.
When she returned to her room, she found Chang Ying sitting in the swivel chair at her desk. His face was like a sheet of frost, giving her a start. She had no idea how she had offended him this time.
She was carrying a towel and a bundle of her changed clothes—underwear, socks, and a T-shirt. Seeing him in her room, she immediately bunched the clothes into a messy ball so nothing could be identified.
Chang Ying’s gaze flickered toward the bundle of clothes for a split second before he looked away.
"What are you doing here? Give me a second." She hurried back to the bathroom in three quick strides, stuffed the dirty laundry into a basin, and then returned to her room.
"My ruler is missing," Chang Ying said with a stiff face, tapping his finger on the desk. "Did you forget to put it back?" He had gone home to do his physics homework, but after searching the inner pocket of his bag for ages, he couldn't find it.
Junzi thought he was making a mountain out of a molehill; from his expression, you’d think she owed him hundreds of thousands of yuan. She found it a bit funny. She had used it at school that day and forgotten to return it, absentmindedly stuffing it into her own pencil case and bringing it home.
"Oh, right." She stood beside him and picked up her pencil case. "I was using it for the worksheet just now. It’s in here..."
She rummaged through it, then rummaged some more, before finally dumping all the stationery out onto the desk. "Huh? Where did it go? It was just here."
It was only half a ruler, so Junzi hadn't taken it seriously at first. But seeing Chang Ying’s grave expression, she began to feel serious too. When she couldn't find it in the pencil case, she started to panic.
"Move aside." Junzi guiltily tugged at the swivel chair, but since Chang Ying was sitting in it, it didn't budge. Chang Ying stood up silently and stepped to the side. Junzi crouched down and crawled under the desk. "It might have fallen on the floor. Don't worry, I'll find it. Hey, you're standing in the light."
Chang Ying’s voice drifted down from above, beginning a toneless, rhythmic nagging. "That ruler has been with me since the fourth grade. It’s been almost six years... I even used it for the High School Entrance Exam..."
It was better when Chang Ying stayed silent; as soon as he started talking, Junzi felt her temples throb. She knew his old habit was acting up. She had to find this ruler today, or there would be no peace.
When they were younger, Chang Ying was even worse. On the surface, he seemed incredibly chill, like a Bactrian camel in the desert—slow, steady, and seemingly without desires. In reality, he was excessively sentimental about certain things.
Junzi remembered picking up a parrot in the neighborhood back in elementary school. It was clearly a pet; perhaps its owners didn't want it anymore and had released it, but because it had been pampered, it couldn't survive in the wild. The bird was nearly fainting from hunger when she found it. Junzi brought it home in a cardboard box.
However, her father, Tan Zhengqi, wouldn't allow pets, claiming they were unhygienic. Since Chang Ying’s parents were almost never home, Junzi brought the parrot to his house instead.
Bringing the parrot home had been Junzi’s idea, and Chang Ying had been quite disdainful at first, complaining about the smell on the balcony. But later, he was the one who did almost all the caretaking. He even named it "Tan Changchang." Yes, he even gave it Junzi’s surname.
Chang Ying had used parts and tools from his science kit to build a luxurious three-story birdhouse. Junzi had been stunned at the time as Chang Ying methodically showed her around: *this is the outer room, this is the inner room...* The most impressive part was a sliding door he had installed on the side, telling Junzi it made it easier for him to stuff hay inside. That was back in elementary school. She felt like Chang Ying was some kind of preternatural genius.
The parrot passed away when they were in the eighth grade. Chang Ying had solemnly consulted an old almanac to find an "auspicious day for burial" and asked Junzi to help him bury it in a flowerbed in the neighborhood. He had chosen the spot specifically, saying it was the place where the parrot used to sing every day, so now it could sing there forever. Junzi had even recorded that sentiment in her notebook of "beautiful phrases."
At first, Junzi didn't think Chang Ying was particularly heartbroken. But one day, as they walked home past a street vendor selling birds, Junzi pointed at a parrot and asked if he wanted to raise another one. "This one looks just like Changchang; they're both budgies."
Chang Ying had replied, "I'm never raising a parrot again in this life. There was only one Changchang. Once it's dead, it's dead. No other parrot can replace it."
He wasn't crying when he said it, but his eyes gave off a sense of forced bravado. Looking at him made Junzi’s heart ache. *Chang Ying is just a little boy,* she had sighed inwardly, her maternal instincts surging.
Snapping back to the present, Junzi felt around under the desk. After a few minutes, she poked her head out, looking apologetic.
"It seems to be gone. I lost it."
Chang Ying stared at her intently. He took a sharp breath, and his eyes visibly reddened.
Junzi was startled. She immediately reached out and opened her palm. "I was teasing! It’s right here."
The broken half of the ruler lay in her hand.
Chang Ying slowly took it, blew the dust off, and said nothing.
Seeing him like this made Junzi panic. She had never seen Chang Ying cry; the last time his eyes had been red was when Changchang died.
She scrambled to get up... and then.
*Thud!* Her head slammed into the underside of the desk, and she fell back hard on her backside.
The impact was no joke. As she sat on the floor, she felt like Changchang was flying in circles around her head, singing.
She closed her eyes, then opened them; Changchang was still there.
She closed them again, then opened them; Changchang was gone, but Chang Ying’s face was right in front of her.
Chang Ying had crouched down, boxing her in under the desk.
He looked like he had just showered too; his hair was damp. The space under the desk was filled with the fragrance of Head & Shoulders and Rejoice. Junzi used Head & Shoulders; Chang Ying used Rejoice.
Only the desk lamp was on in Junzi’s room. Its yellow light pooled on the desktop, leaving the rest of the room dim, and the space under the desk even darker, bathed in a hazy amber glow. She could only see the silhouette of the boy’s face and a pair of dark, deep eyes.
Junzi swallowed hard. They stared at each other. Chang Ying wasn't smiling, but he wasn't angry either.
The atmosphere felt different. She felt her whole body trembling, though she wasn't actually moving. It was her heart that was trembling. Her limbs felt weak; she couldn't stand, couldn't speak, and could barely breathe.
In the next instant, Chang Ying leaned in toward her. She instinctively tried to recoil, but the radiator was behind her.
The expected *clang* of her head hitting the radiator never came. Instead, there was a dull thud.
Chang Ying had wrapped his long arm halfway around her, cushioning the back of her head with his hand.
A strange chuckle escaped his throat—restrained, yet with a hint of playfulness.
"Was hitting your forehead not enough? You want to crack your skull too? You weren't that smart to begin with." As he spoke, he slowly backed out, giving her space.
Chang Ying reached in and pulled the dazed Junzi out from under the desk. He half-lifted her up, kicked the swivel chair over, and sat her down in it.
Junzi looked up at him. Chang Ying had already returned to normal. He looked perfectly composed, as if nothing had happened—fresh and innocent.
"Um—" Junzi tried to find something to say.
Before she could speak, Chang Ying lightly tapped her forehead with the half-ruler. "I'm going back. You should get some rest too."
As he reached the door, he pulled it nearly shut and added, "Your method for the last physics problem was right, but your answer was wrong. Calculate it again. The final answer should be 5.8 meters per second."
"Wait, what!?" Junzi immediately grabbed her worksheet and started checking it.
That night, after the lights were out, a thought suddenly occurred to Junzi in the darkness: *If I hadn't pulled back then, what was Chang Ying going to do?*
To act so strangely over a broken ruler... the minds of boys were truly hard to read.
***
Tongcheng was located in the Central Plains, but its climate leaned toward the north. Aside from the definitive boundary of the Qinling-Huaihe line found in textbooks, the presence of central heating was the second most important standard for judging North versus South. By that metric, Tongcheng was a northern city.
Since the start of autumn, the locals had been counting down the days until the heat was turned on. For students, autumn didn't just mean switching to long-sleeved uniforms; it also meant that midterm exams were approaching.
But for Liu Kan, midterms took a backseat to something else: the first day of Sagittarius was his birthday.
Boys generally didn't care much about birthdays, but this year, Liu Kan had other plans.
After class, Liu Kan ran excitedly to Class 1 and leaned over Tan Junzi’s desk.
"Sister Tan, I need to tell you something," Liu Kan whispered, leaning close.
Suddenly, a politics textbook was shoved between them, blocking Liu Kan’s face from Junzi.
"If you have something to say, just say it. Why do you have to get so close?" Chang Ying, who had been napping, suddenly woke up and spoke through the book. Once Liu Kan straightened up slightly, Chang Ying pulled the book away.
"What is it?" Junzi pulled out her books for the next period and used an eraser to casually wipe the spot where Liu Kan had been leaning.
"My birthday is coming up. This weekend, I want to invite everyone over to my place. Whoa, Sister Tan, is that really necessary? Using an eraser on the desk?" Liu Kan complained.
"You're actually a Sagittarius?" Junzi remarked offhandedly, brushing the eraser shavings away—right onto Liu Kan’s uniform.
"Yeah? I guess. I didn't know I was a Sagittarius." Liu Kan seemed distracted. Seeing Qin Ke entering the classroom in the distance, he hurried to the point. "Anyway, isn't Yuan Guo your best friend? I want you to bring her along. Can you ask her for me?"
"?" Junzi stopped what she was doing and rejected him without a second thought. "No way. That would be so weird. She definitely won't come."
"Please! Sister Tan? Sister Tan~" Seeing Qin Ke getting closer and closer, Liu Kan looked like he was about to drop to his knees.
"Liu Kan, is there something wrong with your brain? Who goes to their ex-boyfriend's birthday party? You're crazy." Junzi looked at him as if he were mentally impaired.
"Cough... to be precise, she's my ex-ex-ex-girlfriend." Liu Kan looked deflated. School had been in session for less than two months, and Yuan Guo had already become famous on the school's online forum, just as expected.
Junzi felt a bit of sympathy for him, but she didn't budge. " I'm not asking her. Yuan Guo will definitely say no. I don't even need to ask to know that."
"Don't say it so—!" Liu Kan tried to cover Junzi’s mouth, but after receiving a sharp look from Chang Ying, he immediately pulled his hand back. "Don't say her name so loud!" he hissed. Behind him, Qin Ke walked past with a yawn.
"Fine, fine. If you won't help, forget it. I'm leaving. Anyway, Saturday night, okay?" Liu Kan said, reluctantly leaving Junzi’s desk. He looked down and realized his collar was covered in eraser shavings.
After Liu Kan left, Qin Ke poked Junzi’s back with the end of his pen.
Junzi turned around. "The Chinese teacher just handed back the tests. Here’s yours."
Qin Ke didn't take the test. Instead, with lightning speed, he pulled a can of drink from his pocket and balanced it on top of her head.
Junzi froze with the drink on her head. The newly awakened Chang Ying froze. Zhang Da, who had just walked in through the back door, also froze.
"Guess what it is. If you get it right, you can drink it," Qin Ke said, propping his chin on his hand.
"?" Junzi’s lips moved, but no sound came out.
"Correct, it's soy milk. Congratulations, you guessed right. Here." Qin Ke took the Vitasoy off her head and stuffed it into her hand.
"Why are you suddenly giving me soy milk?" Junzi was completely bewildered, but she instinctively reached for the plastic straw taped to the side of the carton.
"Hmm, let me think." Qin Ke made up a reason on the spot. "Out of the four of us..." He pointed to himself, Junzi, Chang Ying, and Zhang Da, who sat in a square formation.
"You're the shortest."
"*Cough!*" Junzi choked on her first sip. "Is that even a fair comparison!?"
***
**Glossary**
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
---|---|---
何以笙箫默 | My Sunshine | A famous Chinese romance novel (also known as *Silent Separation*).
何以琛 | He Yichen | The male lead of the novel *My Sunshine*.
海飞丝 | Head & Shoulders | A popular brand of anti-dandruff shampoo.
飘柔 | Rejoice | A popular brand of hair care products (P&G brand).
谈唱唱 | Tan Changchang | The name of the parrot; "Chang" means to sing.
射手座 | Sagittarius | The zodiac sign.
维它豆奶 | Vitasoy | A popular brand of soy milk.
