#Assigned Tutoring Partner
The class bell suddenly rang, its sharp, urgent sound instantly tearing through the frozen air in the classroom.
The fact that Xia Zhifeng had taken the initiative to hug Zhou Huai'an—and even declared in front of everyone, “I’m serious”—was like a bomb dropped onto the surface of a calm lake. Before the end of the break, the news had already spread throughout the entire sophomore year like wildfire, becoming the hottest topic of conversation in the hallways and beside the sinks.
“Zhifeng! Xia Zhifeng! Did you burn out your brain with a fever?!”
Her desk mate Xiaomei grabbed Xia Zhifeng by the arm and dragged her firmly to the windowsill in the corner of the hallway. Xiaomei’s face was flushed bright red, and both her hands trembled slightly with excitement as she pressed them hard against Xia Zhifeng’s shoulders. Her eyes were as wide as bells. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? That’s Zhou Huai’an! Zhou Huai’an, the menace who erased half your class bulletin board last week, made you so mad you ran to the discipline office to report him for smoking! You actually hugged him in front of everyone today? And said… said you were serious?!”
The students passing nearby all slowed down, casting curious, gossipy glances their way. Their whispers buzzed around their ears like mosquitoes.
“Oh my God, wasn’t Xia Zhifeng always the one who hated Zhou Huai’an the most?”
“That’s not hate. That was obviously a full-on confession! I swear Bro Zhou’s ears were so red they looked ready to bleed.”
Xia Zhifeng looked at Xiaomei, who was practically hopping with anxiety. Her gaze fell on the girl’s face, covered in acne yet filled with sincere concern, and a trace of warm nostalgia flickered through her eyes.
In her past life, Xiaomei had moved abroad after graduating from college. Because of the distance and their different paths in life, the two of them had gradually lost touch. Looking at that still-youthful, innocent face now, Xia Zhifeng’s originally chaotic emotions miraculously settled down.
The maturity of a twenty-seven-year-old mind, along with the perspective she had gained from working life, meant she was no longer the girl who would blush, feel inferior, and panic helplessly because of her peers’ gossip.
With an unconcerned expression, she gently pulled her arm from Xiaomei’s grasp. She smoothed the wrinkles on her school-uniform sleeve with her fingertips, then turned and neatly stacked the textbooks scattered across the desk. Her movements were calm and graceful, carrying a certain power that soothed the heart.
“I’m fine, Xiaomei. My mind has never been clearer.” Xia Zhifeng raised her head and smiled faintly at Xiaomei.
It wasn’t the guarded, stiff smile she used to wear. It was an exceptionally gentle smile, with even a hint of indulgence in it.
“Clear? Then what was that just now…” Xiaomei was stunned by the smile, and the rest of her words caught in her throat.
“I just suddenly realized something.” Xia Zhifeng reached out and lightly patted the back of Xiaomei’s hand. Then she turned her head toward the lush camphor-tree leaves swaying in the sunlight outside the window.
Green shadows drifted through her gentle eyes. Her voice was soft, yet carried an unshakable certainty. “Life is actually very short—so short that you can miss something in the blink of an eye. I don’t want to waste another minute being stubborn with someone I care about.”
Xiaomei stared at her blankly. Today, Xia Zhifeng’s eyes seemed as deep as a clear spring, and an indescribably tranquil presence surrounded her. For a moment, Xiaomei didn’t know how to respond and could only nod dumbly.
After school, the setting sun dyed the horizon a gorgeous blood-orange.
Pushing her somewhat cumbersome secondhand bicycle with one hand, Xia Zhifeng slowly followed the crowd out through the school gate. The wheels rolled over the gravel, making a faint rumbling sound.
“Creak—”
A tall figure suddenly tore through the air with a sharp rush of wind and barreled across the path, blocking the front wheel of her bicycle.
Zhou Huai’an planted one foot heavily on the ground, while his other long leg casually straddled the bicycle’s crossbar. He was still wearing the school-uniform jacket he hadn’t bothered to button, its hem snapping in the breeze. He loosely held the strap of his backpack with one hand and pressed the other against the handlebars, his fingers turning faintly white from the force.
His handsome, flamboyant face wore an expression foul enough to eat someone alive.
The students leaving school nearby instinctively hunched their shoulders and went around him, treating him like a volcano that could erupt at any moment.
Zhou Huai’an raised one eyebrow and leaned slightly forward, closing in on Xia Zhifeng with an intensely oppressive posture. He smelled of laundry detergent and the sun-warmed air of someone who had just finished playing basketball. His eyes were filled with wariness, offended irritation, and the cold hardness of someone trying to reclaim the menace’s dignity.
“Xia Zhifeng, don’t try that playing-hard-to-get crap on me.” He gave a cold laugh and lowered his voice, the icy words clicking out between his teeth. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to. I’ll let you get away with going crazy in the classroom today, but you’d better know when to stop. Try it again, and don’t blame me for being rude.”
His voice carried the distinctive rasp of puberty. A vein rose faintly at his temple as he spoke, and his eyes were as fierce as those of a young wolf baring its teeth and claws, trying to scare off an intruder.
Xia Zhifeng stopped pushing the bicycle.
She didn’t flush with anger as she had in her past life, nor did she clench her fists and argue with him. She simply stood there quietly, her clear eyes fixed on the boy in front of her.
She noticed the sweat sliding down from beneath Zhou Huai’an’s slightly curled bangs, tracing the bridge of his high nose before stopping beside his bobbing Adam’s apple. She noticed that although he glared at her as fiercely as he could, his eyes kept flickering unnaturally, and even his tightly pressed lips trembled faintly.
He was nervous. The menace who feared neither Heaven nor earth at school was using all the spikes on his body to hide the chaos inside him.
In her past life, Xia Zhifeng would certainly have felt that her dignity had been trampled on in a situation like this. She would have lashed back with cutting words, and the two of them would ultimately have drifted farther and farther apart amid endless verbal wounds.
But now, the twenty-seven-year-old Xia Zhifeng looked at him without the slightest trace of anger in her eyes—only a faint, waterlike gentleness.
She stepped forward once, and the distance between them suddenly shortened.
Xia Zhifeng lifted her head slightly, her eyes curving into two lovely crescents. Her voice was as light as a summer night breeze. “Zhou Huai’an, are you hungry? I’ll buy you noodles.”
All the harsh words and threats Zhou Huai’an had prepared instantly jammed in the depths of his throat.
His entire body froze.
The fingers pressing against the handlebars suddenly tightened until his knuckles went white. He stared hard at Xia Zhifeng, the coldness in his eyes shattering in an instant and giving way to extreme shock, bewilderment, and deep incomprehension. What the hell was wrong with this woman? She wasn’t even angry after being threatened—she was actually asking if he was hungry? Had she knocked her brains loose in the classroom just now?!
“You…” The corner of Zhou Huai’an’s mouth twitched. Looking at Xia Zhifeng’s impossibly gentle smile, he felt a chill run down his back, while his heart began to pound uncontrollably.
This feeling left him even more helpless than when Xia Zhifeng shouted at him or pointed at his nose and cursed him out.
“Psycho!”
Zhou Huai’an glared viciously at Xia Zhifeng as though she were an incomprehensible freak. He didn’t dare say another word. He suddenly stomped on the bicycle pedal, causing the handlebars to veer slightly, then left coldly without looking back.
The boy’s long, lean figure looked somewhat disheveled and pathetic beneath the setting sun. When he turned a corner, he was so distracted that he nearly crashed into the greenery by the roadside.
Xia Zhifeng stood where she was, watching his retreating back. The smile at the corners of her eyes deepened, and she gently shook her head.
She didn’t chase after him. She knew better than anyone that seventeen-year-old Zhou Huai’an was a sensitive hedgehog with an intensely strong sense of pride. Trying to forcibly pull out his spikes would only make him run faster. Dealing with him required enough patience and gentleness.
Pushing her bicycle, Xia Zhifeng followed the streets she found by memory back home.
The glow of the setting sun spilled across the walls of the old apartment buildings, and the mottled brick gave off the deep fragrance of passing years.
With a click, she pushed open the slightly worn green metal door.
“Zhifeng, you’re home? Go wash your hands—we’re about to eat! I made your favorite sweet-and-sour spareribs today!” Mom’s familiar call came from the kitchen, accompanied by the roar of the range hood and the sizzling stir-fry in the wok.
On the small sofa in the living room, Dad was wearing reading glasses and holding today’s newspaper in both hands, absorbed in reading. Hearing the door open, he lowered his head slightly and looked over the top of his glasses. The wrinkles on his face relaxed as he smiled. “How was school today? I heard you have a history quiz this week. How’s your preparation going?”
Xia Zhifeng stood in the entryway and stared fixedly at the scene before her.
Tiny motes of dust floated through the air, slowly turning in the shafts of sunset. The scents of vinegar and meat drifting from the kitchen mingled together, forming an image of warmth and ordinary family life.
In her past life, she had stayed in the city far away after graduating from college to prove herself, returning home only a few times a year. Later, after she developed stomach cancer, she had gritted her teeth and hidden every detail of her illness so her parents wouldn’t have to bear such crushing grief and despair. Until she died alone in a hospital room at twenty-seven, leaving her white-haired parents to bury their child and collapse from crying several times at her funeral.
Her eyes suddenly grew hot, and a sour wave of emotion surged over her like an avalanche, nearly drowning her.
Xia Zhifeng quickly changed her shoes, set down her backpack, and hurried forward.
Under Dad’s astonished gaze, she stretched out both arms and hugged him tightly around the neck from behind, pressing her cheek deeply against the slightly loose collar of his shirt, which carried a faint scent of laundry detergent.
“Oh my, what’s gotten into you today? You’re all grown up, and you’re still acting like a little kid and being spoiled?” Dad laughed and patted the hands she had placed against his chest. His voice was filled with indulgence and helpless affection.
Xia Zhifeng didn’t say anything. She simply closed her eyes and greedily breathed in the long-lost, genuine warmth of home.
After washing her hands and sitting at the dinner table, Xia Zhifeng ate very slowly.
The perspective and keen awareness of a twenty-seven-year-old meant she no longer focused only on her own little world as she had in her past life. Instead, she began carefully observing every move her parents made.
She noticed that Dad’s right wrist trembled unnaturally whenever he picked up his chopsticks to serve himself food. Every time he stood to get the soup ladle, the back of his left hand would quietly brace against his lower back, while he unconsciously clenched his teeth and faintly furrowed his brow.
Those were early symptoms of a serious herniated lumbar disc. In her past life, Dad’s back injury had suddenly flared up during her senior year of high school, leaving him completely bedridden and hospitalized. At the time, she had thought it was an unexpected accident. But looking back now, the illness had already begun taking root during her sophomore year.
And back then, she had been immersed every day in competing with Zhou Huai’an and in the sensitive, fragile pride of adolescence. When had she ever spared even a thought to observe the pain Dad silently endured between his brows?
After dinner, Xia Zhifeng volunteered to wash the dishes. She stood at the sink and carefully scrubbed every bowl and plate until they were spotless.
Afterward, she found a pain-relief medicated plaster for promoting blood circulation and reducing bruising in the small medicine cabinet. Carrying a cup of hot water, she walked over to the sofa.
“Dad, lie facedown. I’ll put a patch on you.” Xia Zhifeng spoke softly.
Dad paused, then gave an awkward little laugh. “Hey, no need. It’s just been a little sore lately…”
“Lie facedown.” Xia Zhifeng’s voice was gentle but carried an undeniable firmness.
When she lifted Dad’s shirt and saw the reddened skin across his lower back from years of strain, Xia Zhifeng’s eyes reddened again. After carefully wiping the area with a hot towel, she gently applied the medicated plaster and pressed it lightly with both hands to help the medicine absorb.
“Our Zhifeng really has grown up. She knows how to worry about her dad now.” Lying facedown on the sofa, Dad let out a long breath. His voice was full of comfort and emotion.
After helping Dad get settled, Xia Zhifeng gently turned off the living-room light and returned to her bedroom.
The room was arranged exactly as she remembered. Pink curtains swayed gently in the breeze. A small desk lamp sat on the desk piled high with textbooks, and several posters of stars who had once been hugely popular were still stuck to the wall.
Xia Zhifeng sat at the wooden desk and pulled a delicate diary with a tiny lock from the back of the deepest drawer.
She unlocked the clasp with a key and opened the yellowed pages. They were filled with the childish, sharp handwriting of her sixteen-year-old self:
[September 3: Zhou Huai’an erased the words on my class bulletin board. Jerk. I never want to speak to him again for the rest of my life!]
[September 12: He threw a basketball at my desk again. Is he some bastard who makes a point of picking on me? I seriously hate him!]
Xia Zhifeng lightly ran her fingertips over the words charged with such intense personal emotion, a self-mocking smile curling across her lips.
Instead of picking up a pen to write another accusation as she had in her past life, she silently closed the diary, shoved it heavily back into the bottom of the drawer, and locked it. She no longer needed to record that boy through subjective prejudice and emotional venting.
She reached out and pulled open the curtains. Cool night air drifted in through the gap in the window, and moonlight spilled over the desk like water, bringing a sense of tranquil peace.
Just as she was about to organize the mountain of textbooks piled across the desk, her eyes accidentally swept over a yellowed note pressed beneath them.
It was a one-on-one academic support form the class had filled out half a year earlier, at the beginning of sophomore year.
Her name was written in the title at the top of the form: Xia Zhifeng (academic support group leader).
At the very bottom, in the column marked “assigned tutoring partner,” a name had been written crookedly in wildly arrogant strokes so forceful they had nearly pierced through the paper: Xia Zhifeng.
The signature at the bottom consisted of two large, flamboyant characters, unmistakably bold in style—Zhou Huai’an.
Xia Zhifeng’s hands stopped abruptly as she organized the textbooks, and her entire body froze.
In her past life, she had gotten into a huge argument with Zhou Huai’an over their seats right after the school year began. Furious, she had thrown this form into the deepest part of the drawer without even looking at it carefully. She had always assumed the homeroom teacher had forced her, as class president, to deal with Zhou Huai’an because his grades were terrible and he was a troublemaker—that the teacher had dumped this hot potato in her lap.
So it hadn’t been the homeroom teacher’s decision.
Zhou Huai’an had held the pen himself and written her name on that form.
Long, long ago, back when she was still lost in inferiority, sensitivity, and prejudice, the boy who appeared arrogant, domineering, and invincible had already silently reached out a hand to her.
The night wind swept through the curtains, making them rustle.
Xia Zhifeng looked at the yellowed form, her fingertips lightly brushing over the bold yet clumsy handwriting. A complicated, indescribably gentle light flickered in her eyes.
She carefully folded the form into a neat square and gently slipped it into the pocket of the school-uniform jacket she would wear tomorrow.
With a click, she turned off the desk lamp, and the room fell into a tender calm.
The night outside was beautiful, and the moon shone bright. Her salvation and the truth that belonged to her had only just begun.