Between the lines

The office door closed softly behind them.

The corridor was empty and quiet, with the distant sound of a whistle drifting over from a PE class on the field.

Yuan Su walked ahead with long strides, even his retreating back radiating a coldness that kept everyone at a distance.

Pu Yu had to jog to keep pace, staying half a step behind him.

"Yuan Su," she called softly.

The boy ahead did not stop. His Adam's apple merely shifted, and his voice drifted back on the breeze, devoid of emotion. "Who told you to stick your nose in?"

Pu Yu had been about to ask whether he wanted help with his written self-criticism.

She paused, then corrected him earnestly. "I wasn't sticking my nose in. Those were the facts. Teacher Cheng needed to know the truth, and that boy needed to face consequences."

"I didn't need that." His voice grew colder.

"I did," Pu Yu blurted out almost before she could think.

"What did you need?" The irritation Yuan Su had forcibly suppressed began to stir again. "To prove what a kindhearted transfer student you are, or to make me owe you a favor?"

His sharp response left Pu Yu a little bewildered. "But I'm the one who owes you."

Wind Chime Alley, the repair shop, the exam room.

In his awkward, indifferent way, he had helped her time and again.

Yuan Su finally stopped and turned around.

His height forced Pu Yu to tilt her head back slightly to look at him.

Backlit by the sun, the boy's outline was edged in gold, but his features remained hidden in shadow, impossible to make out clearly.

"Stay out of it from now on."

"There's no such thing as that much fairness in this world."

So-called fairness was nothing more than a fairy tale the strong wrote for the weak.

At this school, in this town, a bad student's wrongdoing meant their nature could never change, while a good student's wrongdoing was merely a momentary lapse in judgment. As for him, from the day his father's gambling became an addiction and his mother was hospitalized, he had been destined to become the most extreme of the bad students, the one everyone avoided most.

Defending himself was useless, and proving himself was even more meaningless.

Pu Yu did not look away from him.

Her amber eyes were as clear as a pool of warm, unclouded water, reflecting the boy before her, bristling with wariness and sharp edges.

"I don't think so."

"Just because you've resigned yourself to that unfairness doesn't mean you should have to accept being treated unfairly."

Her voice was soft, like a March breeze in Jiangnan, yet it held a resilience that gently pushed against the high walls he had built.

"As long as I'm here, I won't stand by and let people misunderstand you."

Yuan Su stared at her for a long time.

The girl's gaze was open and clear, so clear that his harsh, cutting words from moments before seemed utterly mean and contemptible.

It was like being someone who had spent too long in a dark cave, grown accustomed to the smell of damp and decay, only for another person to suddenly appear with a small, warm lamp, stubbornly insisting on lighting the path beneath his feet.

That dazzling light made him instinctively want to flee, to destroy it.

He pressed his lips tightly together.

An irritation he did not know how to handle surged up again.

"Naive."

In the end, that was all he coldly forced out of his throat.

Then he turned and headed toward the classroom without looking back.

Evening study hall.

The sky outside the windows had gone completely dark.

Cheng Siyi came in carrying a stack of photocopies, a gentle smile on her face.

"I'll need ten minutes of everyone's time." She clapped her hands. "Pu Yu's Chinese composition from this month's exam was selected by the grade-level teaching team as a model essay. We've made copies, one for each of you. Take a look at its structure and central idea."

The sheets were passed back from the front row.

Cheng Siyi had only spent a short while explaining the essay's opening before the director called her away.

The classroom's quiet atmosphere was immediately replaced by chatter.

"Oh my god, Pu Yu really scored 141 in Chinese!"

"She actually got full marks on her essay! How is she even human?"

"What good is being good at humanities? We're in a science-track class. Essays are way too subjective. She just got lucky and happened to write something the grader liked."

The jealousy in those words all but spilled over.

Xu Suiran had been admiring Xiaoyu's perfect-score essay with shining eyes.

At those words, she whipped her head around and shot back in a clear voice, "Well, listen to our academic rep. Why didn't you come first in Chinese, then? Because you didn't feel like it? Was getting full marks on your essay beneath you?"

"Besides, Xiaoyu only just transferred from City No. 1 High School. Their textbooks and teaching pace were different. Coming twentieth in the grade is already amazing, okay?"

"Unlike certain people who went to all that trouble to become academic rep and still can't make it into the top twenty."

Zhou Tingting's face went pale at the retort. "Xu Suiran, what are you trying to say?" she demanded angrily.

"Nothing in particular." Xu Suiran's eyes curved as she grinned. "I just think our Xiaoyu is incredible. How about you get full marks again next time and give certain people something else to envy?"

Warmth filled Pu Yu's heart, along with a touch of guilt.

She gently tugged on Suisui's uniform. When her friend turned around, Pu Yu gave a small shake of her head and a look that said, "It's okay."

Xu Suiran was still fuming. "Xiaoyu, you're too nice. You're such a pushover! The quieter you are, the more they think they can bully you. They'll only keep pushing their luck!"

"Then would you like some steamed buns? Shall I bring you some tomorrow?"

"No! I'm too mad!"

Xu Suiran grumbled on for quite a while before Pu Yu finally managed to soothe her.

It was not really that Pu Yu was a pushover. After everything that had happened at home, words like these could no longer affect her much.

Her gentle, quiet refusal to compete or argue instead left the furious Zhou Tingting feeling as though she had punched a pillow, with nothing to show for it.

"Oh, Suisui, do you have my Chinese exam paper?"

"Ah! Yes! I was copying your answers this morning!"

Xu Suiran dug Pu Yu's beautifully handwritten exam paper out of the pile on her desk.

She had just turned around to hand it over-

A hand with well-defined knuckles suddenly reached across.

With a swish, it plucked away the flimsy sheet.

Pu Yu looked up, stunned.

Xu Suiran, sitting in the row ahead, also jumped, almost blurting out, "What ghost dares scare me like that?"

Once she turned and saw who it was, she pressed her lips together and did not dare make a sound.

At some point, Yuan Su had sat up straight, his face still weary from having just woken.

His long fingers held the thin exam paper, his eyes lowered to the neat, graceful handwriting filling the essay grid.

The essay was titled "Light in the Cracks."

It told the story of a seed that had fallen into a crack in a cliff. There was no sunlight, no rain or dew, only endless darkness and pressure. Yet it did not wither. Instead, it desperately shattered rock with its roots and drew in every drop of moisture it could find, until at last it bloomed in the barren earth.

Yuan Su rarely read these so-called model essays.

To him, they were nothing but castles in the air built from pretty words.

Strictly structured, but dull.

Pu Yu's writing was calm, without any carefully polished formulas, yet every word and sentence carried the strength of life wrested from despair.

Yuan Su's gaze lingered on those words for a long time.

[A seed that refused to admit defeat traded pain for growth where no one could see. It accepted the existence of the crack, but refused to rot within it. This was not an inspirational story. It was the instinct to survive.]

[We are always singing the praises of suffering, forgetting that suffering itself deserves no praise. What deserves praise are the souls that preserve their dignity even in the midst of suffering.]