#The Desk Mates' Secret Code
During the first homeroom period on Monday morning, the homeroom teacher stood at the podium, pushed up her black-framed glasses, and announced a major decision:
“To support the school’s one-on-one academic support program, we’ll be making a few adjustments to the seating arrangement over the next month. Xia Zhifeng, you and Zhou Huai'an will move to the window seats in the second-to-last row and form an exclusive academic support partnership.”
As soon as she finished speaking, a wave of muffled gasps and whispers swept through the classroom.
“Whoa, the homeroom teacher really put Xia Zhifeng and Bro Zhou together?” “With Zhou’s temper, who wouldn’t get annoyed sitting next to him...?”
Zhou Huai'an was sitting in the last row, casually spinning a fountain pen in his hand. At the sound of his name, the pen paused for a moment. He glanced sideways at Xia Zhifeng in the row ahead, the corners of his lips unconsciously lifting before he quickly forced them back down and put on an expression that screamed he was extremely pissed off. He grumbled under his breath, “What the hell... Sitting next to the top student means I won’t even be able to sleep in class in peace anymore.”
That was what he said, but the moment the bell rang, Zhou Huai'an moved faster than anyone else.
He strode over to Xia Zhifeng’s desk, swept the heavy stack of textbooks and reference books into his arms, and lifted her backpack with one hand. Looking down at her, he said, “What are you looking at? Hurry up and pack your pencil case. Are you waiting for Young Master Zhou to carry everything for you?”
Seeing his classic act of pretending to hate it while secretly loving it, Xia Zhifeng held back a laugh as she packed up her things, then followed him to their new seats in the second-to-last row.
The moment they sat down, Zhou Huai'an neatly arranged the tall stack of books by the window and casually pulled the sunshade curtain across, blocking the glaring sunlight and leaving Xia Zhifeng in a pleasantly cool patch of shade.
“Thanks, desk mate Zhou.” Xia Zhifeng turned her head, a hint of teasing in her clear eyes.
“I just happened to pull it shut. Don’t flatter yourself.” Zhou Huai'an turned to look out the window, but the back of his neck quietly flushed pink.
Before long, second period began: an excruciatingly boring history class. The old teacher stood at the podium holding his lesson plan and read through the text in a flat, monotonous voice that sounded like a lullaby.
In less than twenty minutes, Zhou Huai'an was starting to lose the battle. He propped his chin up with one hand, his black eyelashes trembling slightly. His eyelids grew as heavy as if they were fighting each other, and the fountain pen in his hand spun slower and slower. Tap, tap, tap—and finally, clack, it dropped onto the desk.
Xia Zhifeng didn’t even need to turn her head. Just from the sound of the pen falling, she knew that this big puppy had been lulled to sleep again.
She listened to the lesson without changing expression, but beneath the desk, she shifted her foot and lightly nudged Zhou Huai'an’s shoe with the tip of hers.
“Damn...”
As if he’d been shocked by electricity, Zhou Huai'an suddenly sat straight up! He rubbed his dazed eyes, turned toward Xia Zhifeng, and glared fiercely at her. Silently, he mouthed a furious, “Xia Zhifeng! Why did you step on me?!”
Xia Zhifeng didn’t even turn her head. She simply tapped the spot where she was taking notes in her textbook with the fingers of her left hand, signaling for him to look at the blackboard. Then she mouthed two words back: “Pay attention.”
Zhou Huai'an glared at her through clenched teeth, but when he saw her completely serious expression and unwavering focus, he couldn’t bring himself to get angry at all. He could only huffily pick up his fountain pen and force his eyes back toward the podium.
Third period was the most headache-inducing subject in junior year: math.
Mr. Zhang, the math teacher, was famous for his strict personality. He especially loved springing surprise questions on the class when he reached a key step in the lesson, catching students who had zoned out.
“We just covered the formula for solving this comprehensive conic-section problem in the previous chapter.” Mr. Zhang rapidly filled the blackboard with equations in chalk, then turned around and swept his piercing gaze across the entire class.
The classroom instantly became so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Everyone lowered their heads, terrified of making eye contact with Mr. Zhang.
Zhou Huai'an was bent over his scratch paper, idly drawing abstract pictures. He’d only half understood the formulas from earlier and was just about ready to give up thinking altogether.
“Zhou Huai'an!” Mr. Zhang’s voice suddenly rang out, the chalk pointing precisely toward the back row. “I’ve watched you keep your head down for a while now. Come on, stand up and tell us: what theorem should you use in the next step of this problem? How do you find the range of the eccentricity?”
The entire class immediately turned as one to look toward the back. Quite a few people wore gleeful expressions.
Zhou Huai'an frowned and slowly stood up. He looked at the densely packed symbols on the blackboard, but his mind was completely blank. His lips pressed into a tight line, and the atmosphere grew awkward.
“Can’t answer, can you? What were you doing down there instead of paying attention again...?” Mr. Zhang’s expression darkened as he prepared to start scolding him.
At that critical moment, Xia Zhifeng didn’t even raise her head or turn her body. Her right hand simply pushed a sheet of scratch paper a few inches toward the boundary between their desks.
At the top of the paper, several lines of equations flowed across the page in her neat, graceful handwriting. Beside the final answer, she had heavily circled the key phrase in red: **[Substitute using the second definition; eccentricity range: (1, √2)]**.
Zhou Huai'an had excellent eyesight. With a glance from the corner of his eye, he immediately caught the answer.
He raised his eyebrows, cleared his throat, and his tone instantly became smooth and unbearably smug. “Mr. Zhang, you can directly substitute using the ellipse’s second definition. Set the focal distance as a variable, then solve for the eccentricity e. The range is between 1 and the square root of 2.”
The reprimand Mr. Zhang had prepared caught in his throat. He stared blankly at the problem on the blackboard for two seconds, his eyes filled with disbelief. “Mm... Completely correct. Sit down. Keep your focus in class!”
A small wave of astonishment passed through the class. Zhou Huai'an promptly sat back down and leaned against the back of his chair, looking pleased with himself.
The instant Mr. Zhang turned around to continue writing on the blackboard, Zhou Huai'an quickly tore off a strip from the edge of the scratch paper, scribbled a few words, and slid it over beside Xia Zhifeng’s textbook.
Xia Zhifeng looked down. The note was covered in Zhou Huai'an’s wild, flying script: “Thanks, team leader. But that cat you drew in the corner of the scratch paper really looks like a pig.”
The corner of Xia Zhifeng’s lips twitched. She picked up her pen and wrote a neat line beneath his message: “Tomorrow’s special breakfast milk tea is canceled. You’re getting black coffee instead—no sugar, no cream.”
When she finished, she gently pushed the note back.
The moment Zhou Huai'an saw those words, his eyes went wide and the smugness fell right off his face. He hastily grabbed his pen and wrote on the note with desperate urgency: “No, team leader! I’m sorry! The cat is super cute! So lifelike! I want a full-sugar milk tea tomorrow!!!”
Looking at the boy’s frantic, aggrieved scrawl, Xia Zhifeng fought back a laugh and quietly tucked the little note into a gap between the pages of her dictionary.
“Ding-a-ling—”
As soon as the bell rang, the classroom came alive.
Zhou Huai'an went to the school store with a few basketball-playing bros from the class next door and soon came running back in a whirlwind. He held two freshly purchased popsicles, white vapor of cold air rising from them.
When he reached their seats, he smacked a mango-flavored one down on Xia Zhifeng’s desk.
“Here. The school store had a buy-one-get-one deal, so I grabbed it while I was there. Don’t think I bought it especially for you.” Zhou Huai'an tore open his strawberry-flavored popsicle and took a huge bite, turning his head away with a haughty air.
Xia Zhifeng looked at the mango popsicle on her desk, her eyes full of amusement. Who in all of Sophomore Class 3 didn’t know that the school store never did buy-one-get-one deals on popsicles? Besides, mango was her favorite flavor. This guy had obviously made two trips to get it.
“Then thanks for your ‘while I was there,’ Young Master Zhou.” Xia Zhifeng unwrapped it and took a small bite. The sweet mango flavor spread through her mouth.
Just then, two tall boys from the class next door burst noisily into Class 3, looking for Zhou Huai'an to borrow a basketball.
One of them leaned carelessly against Zhou Huai'an’s desk and smacked his palm against the desktop twice. “Bro Zhou! You playing half-court after school this afternoon? We’re short a power forward!”
He hit the desk a little too hard, making the water bottle at the corner of Xia Zhifeng’s desk wobble violently and almost tip over.
Zhou Huai'an had still been happily gnawing on his popsicle, but the moment he saw Xia Zhifeng’s water bottle nearly fall, his expression turned cold.
He lifted his foot and planted it directly on the boy’s sneaker, his voice low and threatening. “If you’ve got something to say, then say it. Did your hand cramp up? Why are you making so much noise?”
The boy yelped from the stomp, looking a little wronged. “Bro Zhou, I just knocked on the desk to get your attention...”
“Keep it down. Can’t you see my team leader is doing homework?” Zhou Huai'an shot him a sidelong look and pointed outside the classroom. “Take it outside. Don’t disturb our team leader’s studying.”
“Damn, Bro Zhou, you’re really a good student now? Fine, fine, we’ll wait outside!” The two boys grumbled as they ran out of the classroom.
Watching Zhou Huai'an act fierce in front of other people, then instantly turn haughty and bashful when he faced her, Xia Zhifeng felt a mischievous urge well up inside her.
While Zhou Huai'an wasn’t paying attention, she took the cold wooden popsicle stick in her hand and lightly pressed it against the exposed skin of his neck.
“Hiss—! Xia Zhifeng! What are you doing?!”
The icy touch made Zhou Huai'an jerk his neck back. He nearly leaped out of his chair. He turned around and glared at Xia Zhifeng, but when he saw her bright smile, the corners of her eyes curved like a little fox’s, all the harsh words on his lips got stuck in his throat.
In the end, the boy could only ruffle his own hair in frustration and mutter, “Forget it... A good man doesn’t fight with a girl.”
After school, the campus was cloaked in golden evening light.
The two of them walked out of the school gates, one ahead of the other. Zhou Huai'an carried his backpack with one hand and complained that Xia Zhifeng walked too slowly. “Xia Zhifeng, are you moving at turtle speed? If your legs are short, just take bigger steps.”
Yet his own long legs instinctively shortened their stride, always matching Xia Zhifeng’s pace. He even quietly moved to the outside, shielding her from bicycles racing past them.
Inside a quiet dessert shop on the old street behind the school, warm yellow lights reflected the sunset beyond the windows.
Xia Zhifeng held a red pen and carefully graded the problems Zhou Huai'an had gotten wrong in math that day.
“You used the wrong formula here, but your approach to the earlier part was correct. You’re making progress.” Xia Zhifeng used a small fork to cut off a bite of the strawberry cheesecake they had ordered and naturally held it to Zhou Huai'an’s lips. “Your reward.”
Zhou Huai'an stared at the fork in front of him and the tempting strawberry on the cake, his entire body going rigid.
“What are you looking at? Eat. My hand’s getting tired.” Xia Zhifeng urged him on.
The tips of Zhou Huai'an’s ears turned visibly bright red. He opened his mouth and stiffly took the bite of cake in one go.
The rich, sweet cheese flavor burst across his tongue, but the boy’s mind was nowhere near the cake. His gaze fell on Xia Zhifeng’s slightly raised lips and gentle eyes. His heart pounded like a little rabbit frantically throwing itself against his chest, so loud it nearly drowned out the background music in the shop.
The school he’d once hated most, the problems and exams he’d hated most—just having her by his side could somehow make them all feel so exciting and make his heart flutter.
Zhou Huai'an swallowed the cake with a gulp, tightened his grip on the fountain pen in his hand, and looked at Xia Zhifeng with serious dark eyes.
“Team leader.”
“Mm?” Xia Zhifeng looked up at him.
Zhou Huai'an took a deep breath, the pride and determination of a teenage boy flashing in his eyes. “If I make it into the top one hundred in the entire school on next week’s midterms... you have to agree to one condition.”
Xia Zhifeng raised her eyebrows and looked at him with interest. “What condition? Tell me first. I’ll think about it.”
A little embarrassed, Zhou Huai'an turned to look at the golden sunset outside the window. His voice was low but perfectly clear:
“I’ll tell you after the exam... on the day the rankings are posted!”
Looking at the unmistakable flush and soaring confidence on the boy’s profile, Xia Zhifeng smiled brilliantly.
“Okay, Zhou Huai'an. I’ll wait for your surprise.”