Dinner time ended, and a striking notice appeared on the hallway bulletin board.

Disciplinary Action Notification Regarding School Bullying by Fu Ding and Wang Zhengye of Year 2 Class 11, written in black and white, stamped with the school’s bright red official seal.

“Hu Xiujie moved fast this time,” Che Ziming tutted. “A demerit on record plus probation. That’s not a light punishment.”

Dou Sheng glanced at the paper. “Let’s not bring up what happened tonight again. Classes are being re-shuffled tomorrow, don’t cause any more trouble for him.”

Xie Lan knew that “him” referred to Chen Ge.

Evening self-study for Year 2 consisted of two sessions, each an hour long. It wasn’t until the final bell rang that Chen Ge finally appeared, leaning in from the back door to grab his slumped backpack.

As he bent down and stood up, Xie Lan saw a bruise at the corner of his right eye through his messy hair.

He slung his bag over his shoulder, and just as he turned around, Dong Shuijing suddenly called out, “Chen Ge!”

The noisy classroom fell silent in an instant, as if all the previous ignoring and liveliness had been some kind of facade.

Chen Ge paused. “What?”

Dong Shuijing took a deep breath. “The classes haven’t been re-shuffled yet, why did you skip evening self-study? The big rankings come out tomorrow, and you’re not the only one leaving. But you packing up early has messed with everyone’s hearts.”

“Is that so?” Chen Ge said coldly. “Is my leaving the same as everyone else’s? Can you pick out anyone else who is going to the very last class?”

His words fell, and the already quiet classroom went dead silent.

Chen Ge adjusted his backpack, glanced back at her, and quickly turned away again.

“Sorry, that was harsh,” he lowered his eyes and said softly. “Let’s leave it at that. I wish everyone… bloom in your own ways, and go to higher places.”

That figure, thin to the point of sharpness, disappeared out the back door. Dong Shuijing looked down at her phone, and large teardrops instantly burst from her eyes. She let out an uncontrollable sob and buried her face in her desk.

Xie Lan opened the “Class 4: Piercing Gazes” group chat. Sure enough, he saw a light grey system notification.

“Chen Ge” has left the group chat.

It wasn’t until he walked out of the teaching building and let the cold wind hit his face that Xie Lan recovered from that heavy empathy.

He asked Dou Sheng in a low voice, “What exactly happened with Chen Ge?”

Dou Sheng hesitated, looking like he wanted to speak but stopped. Che Ziming sniffled beside them and said, “Sigh, there’s nothing that can’t be said. He was second in the city for the high school entrance exam. He used to be an existence that could stand shoulder to shoulder with Douzi as the Twin Heroes of Class 4. Good at studying, good at basketball, and he was close with our class monitor—they really almost got together. But then, in the second semester of Year 1, something happened to his dad, and his family fell apart.”

Xie Lan’s steps faltered. “Got sick and passed away?”

Dou Sheng said quietly, “Not that simple.”

Che Ziming whispered, “His dad got a life sentence for drug trafficking, leaving his wife and son with nothing but a pile of enemies. His mom struggled for a while and then got seriously ill. Basically, he hit rock bottom in every possible way. Damn it, just talking about it makes me crazy. Why does God play people like this!”

Xie Lan was stunned. The cold wind hit his back, making him shiver.

Chen Ge’s situation weighed heavily on him. Although he had only been in Class 4 for two days, he seemed to have miraculously crossed the language barrier and empathized with this group of owls.

Just as he put down his backpack at home, a message popped up in the group chat, instantly switching Xie Lan from mild sadness to deep speechlessness.

Crystal: @Renaissance Forgot to mention, the chemistry teacher wants you to see him tomorrow morning during early self-study.

Dou Sheng glanced at his phone and chuckled lowly. “Why do I feel like you’re done for?”

Xie Lan looked up at him gloomily, picked up his bag, and went upstairs.

Dou Sheng shuffled behind him in his slippers, speaking slowly, “Do you need Big Cat to accompany you, to help explain to the teacher that you can’t really read?”

“No need.” Xie Lan quickened his pace with a cold face. “Go catch your mice.”

Just as he finished speaking, his phone vibrated again.

Croissant: I forgot too… Xie Lan, the English teacher also wants you to see her tomorrow morning during early self-study. figure out how to arrange your time.

Xie Lan: “……”

Vincent: Oh wow, what a coincidence. Xie Lan, early self-study, biology teacher. Understand?

The class group, which had been dead silent all night, suddenly came alive. After a fierce round of rolling-on-the-floor-laughing owl stickers, someone asked a question about a problem, and this group of elite students started discussing it as usual.

The happiness belonged to them.

Only the pain belonged to Xie Lan alone.

Dou Sheng laughed from behind. “You can’t be in multiple places at once. How about I just go for you for one of them? We can split Chemistry and Biology?”

“You not talking is already sharing the burden for me.” Xie Lan rejected him coldly.

He couldn’t help but wonder how he had thought this person sounded comfortable to listen to when they first met. Clearly, he made people want to look for a knife.

Bedroom door closed, the world was finally quiet.

Xie Lan took a shower and sat at his desk with damp hair, flipping open the chemical compounds list he had half-memorized.

A plane tree leaf fell out of the notebook. It was the same one Dou Sheng had played with in class, one side written with “Filial Your Way to Power,” the other with “Missed by a Billion.” Xie Lan felt his fist harden just looking at it. He tossed the thing aside, put on his headphones, and started studying.

His playlist was mostly anime songs, and he had even released quite a few violin covers himself. During the two years Xiao Langjing was hospitalized, he uploaded a video every week to give her something to look forward to in the hospital. He became popular very quickly, and by the time Xiao Langjing passed away, he already had over three million followers.

In a flash, another two years had passed. Even now, Xie Lan occasionally received messages from fans asking why he suddenly stopped posting videos. Actually, he just didn’t feel the drive anymore. That person was gone; it was like the most important audience member had left the venue. The remaining clamor of the crowd was not something he cared about.

The seemingly simple two pages of “Summary of Nitrogenous Compounds” in the study guide took Xie Lan over an hour to memorize every Chinese character. After finishing, he stretched and grabbed his cup to go out for some water.

Zhao Wenying was not home again. The entire second floor was dark. There wasn’t a sliver of light under Dou Sheng’s door; he was probably asleep.

Xie Lan walked lightly, holding his cup and groping his way downstairs in the dark.

On the first floor, only a light in the entryway was left on for the hostess who had daily social engagements. Xie Lan found the kitchen by that dim light. Just as he was feeling the wall for the light switch, a low human voice suddenly sounded from the entryway.

“Uh dun kno if y’all ken unnerstan, y’all melon babies are dumb as hay-ell, but dis video uh gotta make, ya kno? T’day our topic is dialect vlog, uh take y’all to see mah school late at night.”

Xie Lan: “……”

It sounded like Dou Sheng’s voice, but it didn’t sound like human language. It was like Chinese, yet also like Japanese, or even German. Anyway, Xie Lan couldn’t understand a single word and briefly suspected Dou Sheng was reciting the bottom rows of the periodic table.

He put down his water cup and walked over silently.

Dou Sheng was sitting on the shoe cabinet by the entrance putting on his shoes, holding a camera in his hand, the screen flipped to record himself.

Xie Lan walked into the frame from behind him without a sound.

“Holy shit!!”

Dou Sheng threw the camera directly. If it hadn’t been on a strap around his neck, another one would have been smashed.

“……” Xie Lan was bewildered. “You scare way too easily, don’t you?”

Dou Sheng glared at him. “Do you know how terrifying that moment in the viewfinder was just now? If this were a livestream, you would’ve sent a few hundred people away instantly.”

“Sent away?” Xie Lan didn’t understand. “Sent where?”

“To the underworld!” Dou Sheng said grumpily, then turned his head and laughed in exasperation. “Hey, why aren’t you sleeping in the middle of the night?”

“I should be asking you that.” Xie Lan glanced at him. “What language were you speaking just now?”

“The Chinese language you admire.” Dou Sheng put on his shoes. “I’m trying to make a dialect mashup video. I learned Shaanxi accent, Shanghai accent, Sichuan accent, Guangdong accent from the internet. Basically blending the essence of dialects from north and south of the river, representing people living on 9.6 million square kilometers of land. Once I open my mouth, it’s the entire Chinese nation.”

North and south of the river, Chinese nation… Xie Lan was stunned listening to it. Thinking about it carefully, he had to admit he was a bit impressed.

“That’s very meaningful. What do you plan to film?”

After receiving praise, Dou Sheng snapped his fingers. “Mainly going to film the school. Do you want to come along?”

It was almost eleven o’clock at night.

But Xie Lan said yes with almost no hesitation.

It was only a ten-minute taxi ride from home to school. The night view was beautiful. Looking along the river to the other side of the city, there was less of the bustle of high-rise buildings compared to this side; the old city district had a quaint and steady charm.

Hearing the subtle mechanical sound of the lens zooming beside him, Xie Lan suddenly remembered something.

“Don’t you only record ASMR, and without showing your face at that?”

Dou Sheng’s fiddling with the camera paused, then he said casually, “Aren’t I trying to overcome camera shyness? Just filming myself first, not uploading it. Thinking like that reduces the pressure a lot.”

Xie Lan let out an ‘Oh’. “Understood.”

Actually, he could understand that feeling. He didn’t really like being on camera either. Before, when he made videos, he would choose the dim light of sunset in his room and use a projector to cast a dynamic wallpaper on the wall. He would stand between the projector and the wall to play the violin, with the camera facing the wall. In the lens, there was only a silhouette playing quietly amidst the fluctuating light and shadow.

Later, Xie Lan felt that atmosphere was too ethereal, so he placed a small table in the foreground. On the table, he placed a plane tree leaf—the plane tree leaf from her childhood that Xiao Langjing reminisced about every day in her hospital bed.

Xie Lan spaced out for a moment. When he came back to reality, they had arrived at the school. Dou Sheng opened the door and got out, babbling inhuman language to the camera again.

Just sounds inhuman, Xie Lan thought to himself. It contains the essence of traditional culture, worthy of respect.

The security guard gave them twenty minutes. The campus was very quiet late at night. Looking out, the main teaching building, auxiliary building, laboratory building, and administration building were all silent in the darkness. Only a few lights were still on in the dormitory buildings in the distance.

After finishing a string of inhuman language, Dou Sheng switched to Mandarin and said to Xie Lan, “Let’s go straight to the Administration Building. It’s great for filming night scenes.”

It was Xie Lan’s first time in the Administration Building. Upon entering, he found it different from what he had imagined. The center was open from the first to the sixth floor, planted with landscape trees. The corridors were circular, and looking up gave the illusion of infinite space.

While waiting for the elevator, Dou Sheng held the camera and introduced the glass display case behind him. Xie Lan couldn’t understand, but he could follow Dou Sheng’s lens to judge where he was in the introduction.

Behind the glass case on the left were group photos of every entering and graduating class. The entrance photos were taken by class. Dou Sheng searched for a while, and finally pointed a finger at one of them in the lens. “Dis one, uh was dis hansum a year an’ a half ago too, ya kno.”

Xie Lan recognized everyone in Class 4 at a glance.

The little owls in the photo looked very green, staring at the camera with piercing gazes. Compared to other classes, they really were “spirited” from the very beginning.

Xie Lan found Dou Sheng standing in the middle of the last row. Dou Sheng wasn’t much different from now, still with that slightly nonchalant yet youthful smile. To his left was Dai You, who looked gentle and refined even back then, then Che Ziming looking like a stunned hedgehog, and then Yu Fei, who even then had a look on his face like ‘what is the joy in life, what is the pain in death.’

Standing to Dou Sheng’s right was a handsome boy, tall and thin, smiling brightly, with light in his eyes.

Xie Lan found him familiar. After a moment, he suddenly realized—it was Chen Ge.

He felt mixed emotions again and sighed silently.

Dou Sheng developed a ten-thousand-word description based on a single photo. He spoke more to the camera in five minutes than he had all day. Redefining camera shyness.

The experience of listening to a cow play the zither¹ was too surreal; Xie Lan was exhausted just listening.

“Hey.” Dou Sheng suddenly turned the lens toward him and smiled. “I’ve been meaning to ask, why were you so set on coming back to China? I’m just filming casually, won’t post it online.”

The surroundings quieted down. In the empty corridor, there was only the sound of the camera autofocusing.

Xie Lan didn’t know why he didn’t dodge the camera. Maybe because he was truly relaxed in this moment.

Zhao Wenying must have mentioned his mother to Dou Sheng. Even if she didn’t get to it the day she picked him up, she would have instructed him by now.

But he didn’t feel there was anything he couldn’t mention. He told the truth, “My mom decided to apply to UK schools with my dad after taking the Gaokao (college entrance exam). Actually, she had already received an acceptance letter. That letter was her regret.”

Dou Sheng was stunned. “So you want to get that acceptance letter again for her, to attend the university she didn’t go to?”

Xie Lan gave a confirmation. “Pretty much.”

“That’s kind of touching,” Dou Sheng whispered. “So that’s how it is. Can I tell my mom this? She’s quite curious too, but she definitely won’t tell anyone else.”

Xie Lan turned around. “Whatever.”

After a while, Dou Sheng asked again, “By the way, which school did your mom get accepted to?”

Xie Lan looked up, his gaze sweeping over the admission letters from past years in another glass display case. He lifted the corner of his lips and pointed to the purple one on the left side of the first row.

“……”

Dou Sheng slowly lowered the camera.

He hesitated for a moment, then whispered, “That… is going to be a bit difficult for you.”

Xie Lan: “?”

“I’m telling the truth, ah,” Dou Sheng said. “This isn’t a matter of practicing Chinese a little bit. For someone like you who doesn’t recognize many big characters, you at least have to start memorizing directly from the dictionary.”

“……”

Xie Lan’s smile gradually disappeared.

He was silent for a long time, and finally couldn’t help but ask sincerely: “Have you ever been beaten up growing up?”

---

Translation Notes:

1. “Cow playing the zither” (對牛彈琴): An idiom meaning to cast pearls before swine or talk to someone who cannot appreciate/understand what you are saying. Here, Xie Lan is the “cow” listening to Dou Sheng’s dialect mix. ↩︎