Wang Jingjing asked Wei Qingyue why he hadn't come to school, and then said, "Let's chat on QQ, writing letters is actually quite a hassle."

When this message came through, Wei Qingyue smiled. He replied to her:

I thought you liked writing letters to me.

Wang Jingjing thought, 'Such an old-fashioned way of communicating, I only used that for pen pals in elementary school.' She clattered away and typed a line of words:

Afraid of distracting the top student from his studies.

The two of them chatted dryly like this. After just a few words, Wei Qingyue said he had to go offline, saying, "Talk later."

That "talk later" indeed took a very, very long time. It dragged on until the final exams. Wang Jingjing would ask "Are you there?" online whenever she had the chance, but Wei Qingyue never wrote back. Of course, his "talk later" never happened either.

"Is Wei Qingyue doing this on purpose to keep me hanging? He doesn't even reply to my messages, so why did he have me add him?" Wang Jingjing complained while eating snacks. In the dorm room, she was the only one lying in her quilt, her bed covered in potato chip crumbs, flicking them away from time to time.

She couldn't understand. Since they had added each other as friends, what couldn't they say online? Why write letters? It was so unnecessary.

Jiang Du listened quietly, an indescribable feeling in her heart. To be precise, for a fleeting moment, she was happy to hear that Wei Qingyue was not in frequent contact with Wang Jingjing. But this happiness was shameful, and inevitably despicable.

"Maybe he'd rather you write back to him," Jiang Du said, pretending to be calm as she organized her wardrobe.

"I really don't know what to write. I mean, if we're just chatting, a line here and a line there, I'm great at that. But asking me to write a letter, that's so hard!" Wang Jingjing got tired of lying on her stomach, tossed her snacks aside, and lay flat on her back with her limbs spread out. "I really want to be in a relationship, a relationship with Wei Qingyue!"

Jiang Du wouldn't even dare to think such blatant words, but Wang Jingjing would. Not only did she dare to think them, she dared to say them. Even if she didn't actually feel that much desire in her heart, she could display a thousand times the enthusiasm. Jiang Du was her complete opposite; she would always try to maintain her composure, to at least appear indifferent on the surface.

She didn't know if she was being very hypocritical. Compared to Wang Jingjing, she certainly wasn't as open and forthright.

"Being in a relationship..." Jiang Du admitted that this term was distant and dreamlike to her. In a tentative tone, she asked quietly, "What exactly is it about?"

Wang Jingjing flipped over with a whoosh, poking half her head out, and said brazenly, "It's holding hands, kissing, you know? Some of the girls in our school, especially the art students, are not virgins anymore."

Jiang Du's face instantly turned bright red with embarrassment. She didn't know what she was embarrassed about. She shut the wardrobe door and turned the key, the keychain on it rattling loudly.

Wang Jingjing was really so bold. Jiang Du's heart was pounding wildly.

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of their other roommates.

However, as the end of the semester approached, everyone was seriously reviewing for the exams. Although Wang Jingjing would grumble from time to time, she knew to focus on important matters most of the time. Jiang Du wanted to persuade her several times, "You should write back to Wei Qingyue before the break," but in the end, she couldn't bring herself to say the words.

It was surprisingly cold during the two days of exams. Jiang Du was sensitive to the cold, and with single desks, plus the bad weather, after sitting in the classroom for two hours, her entire body was freezing, and her feet were numb.

She wasn't wearing the cotton-padded shoes her Grandma had made. How to put it... she also had a young girl's desire to look pretty. The shoes her Grandma made were very warm, but they looked so bulky, so thick, almost like an aircraft carrier.

Sigh, people inevitably become less pure as they grow up. When she was little, she was proud of her Grandma's craftsmanship and felt so pretty wearing new cotton-padded shoes. Now it had become, "It's fine, Grandma, I'm not cold. These will do."

But her feet were really freezing. Jiang Du held out until the last exam, feeling like her feet weren't even hers anymore.

It was so cold, yet Lin Haiyang was the boldest. After the exams ended and everyone returned to their own classrooms, Teacher Xiao Xu arranged for people to clean up and went over the holiday precautions. The moment the teacher left, Lin Haiyang, as if by magic, threw a pile of wood shavings onto the floor at the front of the classroom.

He took the lead, and a few boys went to the school's small grove to find dry branches. They started a fire, and everyone was quite happy. The boys took off their shoes and propped their feet up one by one to warm them by the fire.

Jiang Du voluntarily stayed behind for cleaning duty. Watching them fool around, she smiled without a word, silently sweeping the floor and arranging the desks and chairs by herself. The others started working but soon went to warm themselves by the fire.

"You guys have some nerve, burning this in the classroom. Aren't you afraid the dean's office will come after you!" Zhang Xiaoqiang said with a laugh as she joined the group of boys. The crowd was talking and laughing. In the end, it was Lin Haiyang who pulled Jiang Du over, snatched the broom from her hand, and said, "What are you sweeping for? The guys will sweep later. Come warm yourself by the fire. I can see you're so cold you can barely hold the broom!"

Jiang Du wanted to refuse, but she couldn't resist Lin Haiyang's enthusiasm. As she got close to the fire, a comforting wave of warmth indeed washed over her face, making her want to get closer instinctively. She tipped a stool on its side and squeezed in with everyone, listening to them talk about their holiday plans.

She was shy and became reserved in a crowd, not knowing how to interject. She listened attentively to what others were saying, secretly thinking about what she could say next. By the time she finally mustered the courage, the sentence she had prepared was already out of place. The topic of conversation had long since jumped elsewhere, and there was no way to squeeze it in, not even by cutting it short.

"Jiang Du, are you going out during the holiday? A new amusement park just opened near Central Park. Oh, right, I heard the Municipal Library has heating this winter." Zhang Xiaoqiang, seeing her silence, took the initiative to speak to her. Jiang Du smiled at her gratefully and said, "I might have to go back to my hometown during the holiday."

"Back to your hometown? Your hometown is where your grandma..." Zhang Xiaoqiang was exceptionally sharp. Before she could finish, she suddenly remembered something. That's right, at the beginning of the school year, she and the class president had collected the personal information forms. Because Jiang Du had the highest score in Chinese, she had paid special attention to hers. In the family relations section, there were no parents listed.

At the time, her heart had skipped a beat when she saw it. She had gone home and told her parents that there was a very pretty girl in her class who didn't have a mom or dad and lived with her grandparents.

Realizing she might have misspoken, Zhang Xiaoqiang stopped herself in time and seamlessly changed the subject: "My hometown is just over by Tianma Bridge, it's very close."

"How does that count as a hometown? Isn't it also in the city?" a boy interjected.

Zhang Xiaoqiang was clearly much more mature than her peers. She said, "Yes, but it wasn't a dozen years ago. The people around there got rich from demolition and relocation. For people without many skills, it was a life-changing opportunity."

The boys were quite interested in this and asked a few more questions. Zhang Xiaoqiang spoke eloquently about government policies, which was obviously influenced by her family background. Jiang Du looked at her and couldn't help but sigh inwardly, but she knew she didn't envy this aspect of Zhang Xiaoqiang.

The fire gradually died down. Zhang Xiaoqiang pushed Lin Haiyang and the others up, saying with a smile, "Alright, I'll leave the cleanup to you boys."

After speaking, she pulled Jiang Du aside and asked her, "Are you free on the sixth day of the new year? It's my birthday."

So direct, straight to the point. Jiang Du actually found it a bit abrupt. Her relationship with Zhang Xiaoqiang, how to put it... in her understanding, it was just an ordinary classmate relationship. Zhang Xiaoqiang was enthusiastic toward everyone and was an outstanding student leader. You couldn't tell if she was particularly close to anyone; it seemed about the same with everyone.

Being invited so suddenly, Jiang Du almost failed to hide her slightly surprised expression. She smiled shyly, "Your birthday is on the sixth? I should be in the city... um," she seemed to hesitate for a moment, "are the people you're inviting all from our class?"

"Basically, yeah. People you know, like Lin Haiyang, the class president, and the girls sitting in front of and behind my deskmate." Zhang Xiaoqiang's eyes darted around. "Let me think who else to invite. I'll treat you all to a meal and karaoke then."

Jiang Du admitted to herself that she was being very sly. She asked this with an ulterior motive.

'Will he be there?' She knew he and Zhang Xiaoqiang were good friends, and that Zhang Xiaoqiang also liked Wei Qingyue, but the relationship between Zhang Xiaoqiang and Wei Qingyue was so natural and open.

Only she would have a heart in turmoil at the slightest provocation.

But, if only she had known him a long, long time ago like Zhang Xiaoqiang did, how nice that would be. Even just as ordinary classmates, she could have seen him for so long... A kind of bittersweet tenderness welled up in Jiang Du's heart.

However, she didn't hear that familiar name from Zhang Xiaoqiang's lips. The other girl didn't know about the secret anticipation and nervousness in her heart. Even Jiang Du couldn't understand why she always harbored such an illogical and baseless hope.

Figures of students leaving continuously passed through the hallway. In each classroom, only a few students on cleaning duty remained. Even after everyone had left, despite the cold, Jiang Du lingered, hiding in the restroom.

She didn't actually need to use the restroom. She squatted until her legs went numb, and only stood up with difficulty after she noticed that everything outside had gone quiet.

As expected, no one was left.

The building was empty, suddenly carrying a desolate and lonely air. If the campus were filmed for a movie, the usual laughter and merriment of the students would be a stark contrast to the current silence and emptiness, a contrast worthy of constant flashbacks.

At the end of the hallway, the lockers for several classes stood there quietly.

Jiang Du walked over slowly. Even though no one was around, she was still quite cautious, her heart pounding. She first opened her own locker. Inside was a pink thermos, a folding umbrella, and some useless scratch paper and tissues. After taking a deep breath for a few seconds, the girl's gaze shifted to the Class One section, to Wei Qingyue's locker, on which three conspicuous characters were written.

Three characters could be a young girl's entire world.

Jiang Du bit her lip, took off her gloves, and rubbed her hands together silently a few times. Then, her body tense, she reached her hand toward that locker.

The locker was ice-cold, with a metallic sheen.

The girl's slender, fair fingers lightly traced over the name. As if realizing her behavior was a bit perverse, her face flushed red again.

Jiang Du quickly pulled her hand back in the end. Even though no one saw, she was extremely embarrassed, as if she had just done something shameful. She had planned this for a long time: to wait until everyone was gone before the winter break, so she could touch Wei Qingyue's locker.

Next, she pushed the things in her locker around, locked it, turned around, and then saw a person leaning against the corner of the staircase where it met the hallway, standing there with an amused expression.

It was Wei Qingyue.

He had an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Clearly, he had come up to find a place to have a smoke.

Jiang Du's heart and breath stopped at the same time. She stared at him, motionless, as if frozen in place by a blizzard. Her heart instantly plunged into a vortex of surprise and panic.

"What a coincidence," Wei Qingyue was the first to speak, as if he hadn't seen a thing. The boy always had that carefree and composed, 'couldn't-care-less' expression. He smiled at Jiang Du and took the cigarette from his mouth. "Perfect timing, there's a question I wanted to ask you."

"Huh?" Jiang Du was so flustered she was about to stutter. Her brain desperately told her to calm down quickly. 'Maybe he didn't see anything. Right, he didn't see anything.'

"You always get first place... My grades are pretty average." Her inexperienced and awkward appearance was all taken in by the boy.

Wei Qingyue, who had been leaning against the wall, pushed off it lightly to stand up straight and said, "The other day, I was doing a classical Chinese reading comprehension, and there was a word in it, called 'Zhuo Dao'. Do you know what 'Zhuo Dao' means?"