Cha'a No. 2 Middle School · Chat

September, and the sun over Changchun is still blazing hot. On the doorframe of Class 3, Grade 9 at Cha'a No. 2 Middle School, the banner reading "New Semester, Fresh Start"—crookedly taped up last year—still hangs, its curled edges rustling loudly in the breeze. Inside, forty-three desks are crammed together, their corners piled high with textbooks, workbooks, half-drunk bottles of iced black tea, and half a pack of spicy gluten strips shoved into the deepest corner of a drawer. "Wang Qiang! You've got your feet propped on my chair again!" Liu Ruolin snaps without even turning around, jabbing the tip of her pen hard against her desk. In the back row, a boy with a tuft of cowlick hair lazily pulls his feet back. A plastic lollipop stick dangles from his lips, and he doesn't even bother looking up: "Hey, Class Monitor, got eyes in the back of your head or something?" Beside him, Feng Xiang chuckles and shoves potato chips into his mouth, crumbs spilling all over his desk. Jia Chun is busy trying to shoot a rubber band at Ma Zeping in front of him, but his aim slips, and—*smack*—it hits Xu Xiaoming right on the forehead as he walks through the door. The classroom falls dead silent for half a second before erupting into a burst of laughter. "Sit down, every single one of you!" Shi Miaona's voice rings out from down the hallway, her high heels clicking sharply against the floor tiles. Before she even steps through the door, her hand reaches in first, pointing straight at the row by the corner: "Wang Qiang, Jia Chun, Feng Xiang—the three of you, go stand in the back." Wang Qiang shifts the lollipop stick from the left side of his mouth to the right, not forgetting to make a face at Liu Ruolin as he stands up. Liu Ruolin rolls her eyes and looks back down to keep working on her quadratic function. Ma Zeping ducks his head and quickly hides the rubber band in his pencil case. The potted pothos on the windowsill has wilted leaves, and faint, scattered reading voices drift over from the next classroom. The blackboard still has leftover math formulas from the last period; the student on duty forgot to wipe it, and no one bothered to remind them. The ceiling fan oscillates with a creaking groan, fluttering the corner of Wang Qiang's forty-three-point test paper on his desk before letting it drop back down. Shi Miaona stands at the podium and slams her lesson plan onto the desk. "Class begins!" The whole room lazily scrambles to their feet, chair legs scraping harshly across the floor. Standing in the very back row against the wall, Wang Qiang nudges the heel of Jia Chun's shoe with the tip of his sneaker. Jia Chun doesn't dare look back, only straightening his spine even stiffer. Liu Ruolin flips open her English textbook, its dog-eared corners creased with neat precision. Outside the window, the leaves of the plane trees sway, and the sunlight filtering through the gaps falls square across Wang Qiang's nonchalant face. These days are far from over.