The Mute Who Is Loathed by Everyone Has the School Heartthrob as His Childhood Sweetheart. - Chapter 2

“Jiang Chuan!” The boy standing at the very end spoke quickly, his voice cold and steady, effectively calling a halt to the reckless, frizzy-haired boy.

The frizzy-haired boy glanced back at Zhou Ai, whom he had collided with, and immediately added, “My bad, classmate.”

Zhou Ai, however, remained the calmest of the three. He lifted his arm with composure and lowered his gaze to inspect his elbow. A large, red scratch had been scraped onto the skin, with blood already beginning to seep to the surface. His expression remained unmoved as he prepared to place his arm under the faucet to rinse it.

But before he could wash the wound, his arm was intercepted by the person who had rushed over. The boy seemed to let out a soft breath before saying, “Let me take a look, and then I will take you to the infirmary.”

After a pause, the boy pressed his lips together and added, “Is that alright?”

Zhou Ai turned his head slowly. The first thing he saw were the boy’s black eyes, fixed steadily upon him with an intensity that didn’t quite match his flashy, arrogant appearance. In those eyes, Zhou Ai could see the reflection of his own pale face.

He coldly pulled his arm away and, ignoring the other, continued to rinse the surface blood from his wound under the tap.

In the mirror before him, the boy beside him kept his head slightly bowed, his jawline tense, his gaze never leaving Zhou Ai’s movements. Behind them, the frizzy-haired boy looked back and forth between the two of them with immense confusion.

Zhou Ai didn’t meet their eyes again. He draped his damp jacket over his arm, dried his hands, and prepared to leave the restroom. But just before he could exit, he was blocked once more by the boy in the black T-shirt. “Go to the infirmary and get it checked.”

Zhou Ai looked at the hand blocking his path. His brow furrowed instinctively, but noticing the boy’s reaction, the hand quickly retreated. Without another word, Zhou Ai left the restroom.

When Zhou Ai arrived home that evening, he saw luggage piled up in the entryway. He was alone in the house; his parents had likely finished their work early and rushed straight to the hospital to see his younger brother, who had fallen ill.

It had rained and turned cold a few days ago. His younger brother, Zhou Youbao, had played wildly in the garden downstairs while subsisting on nothing but cream ice cream cakes, which meant he couldn’t escape a late-onset fever. With his parents away on business this week, the nanny had taken a night off, having put Youbao to sleep before she left.

It was nearly midnight when Zhou Ai, having set down his pen, stepped out to get a glass of water and heard the intermittent crying of a child downstairs. When he pushed open the door to the children’s room, Youbao was trapped in his summer quilt, eyes shut tight, struggling to breathe through the fever.

It was past 1:00 AM by the time they reached the hospital. Zhou Ai barely slept, and the nanny rushed in the next morning to take over. Upon learning the news, his parents had contacted two caregivers from out of town to rush to the hospital ward.

At the end of September, the heat refused to fade, yet the empty three-story house felt permeated with a bone-chilling cold.

Zhou Ai sat at his desk until late at night. It wasn’t until the sound of a car engine pulled him from his sea of study problems that he realized someone was unlocking the front door. He frowned instinctively.

He rubbed his eyes, stood up, and switched off the room’s light before sitting on the window sill. The window was half-open, and his feet were surrounded by cigarette boxes and a lighter in the moonlight. He held a cigarette between his slender fingers; his elbow rested on his raised knee, and the faint mark of his injury was visible. Smoke drifted away on the breeze.

Before long, he heard a soft knock on his door. In the dead of night, the sound was abrupt and grating. A woman’s voice drifted in: “Xiao Ai, are you asleep? Thank you for taking your brother to the hospital last night and losing your sleep.”

Then came the tired, discouraging voice of a man: “He’s the older brother; it’s what he should do. What is there to thank?”

“…Still, it was hard on him. He watched over the baby all night…”

“What’s hard about it? He’s such a grown man now…”

The two continued talking as they walked away until all sound faded. The cigarette in Zhou Ai’s hand was almost finished when his phone suddenly lit up. He reached out to check it, and as expected, it was another text message from that anonymous number.

This number had been messaging him every night for nearly a month. The content was sparse mostly photos of the night sky, ranging from full moons to crescents, or drizzling rain occasionally accompanied by the words “Goodnight.”

Today, there was a message attached: “Are you well today?”

Zhou Ai had never replied, nor had he blocked the number. He simply left it there. He watched the message, extinguished the remainder of his cigarette, and pulled out another. He slowly looked up at the moon, which shared the exact same curvature as the one in the photo.

Zhou Ai arrived early at school the next morning. As he left the house, he noticed two pairs of adult slippers at the door, suggesting the couple had returned home the night before to stay with their sick son.

When he reached the classroom, there were few people around. As always, a steaming breakfast sat in his desk bin, but today, there were also two tubes of ointment for his bruises.

Zhou Ai picked up the ointments and stared at them for a while before abruptly turning his head toward the opposite classroom across the corridor.

The entire row of classrooms opposite was unlit, let alone occupied by students. Zhou Ai retracted his gaze after a few seconds. He pulled some items from his bag and, as usual, carried the breakfast downstairs. He bypassed the empty teaching building, easily climbed the dilapidated wall, and headed to the remote, deserted back garden on campus.

Stepping over withered leaves, he clicked his lighter, and several stray cats and dogs darted out from all directions to nuzzle against his legs.

Zhou Ai crouched down. With one hand, he pocketed the lighter; with the other, he unwrapped the food and sorted it out for them. He watched them eat their fill before preparing to leave, but before he could, a kitten clung tightly to his pant leg.

Zhou Ai crouched there for a moment before turning back. He picked up the kitten’s front paw, noticing it was time for a trim.

Finding these stray animals was an accident. The school had “campus celebrity cats” kept by faculty, but the ones Zhou Ai fed were ones he’d happened upon while finding places to smoke. They were incredibly small and thin, incapable of jumping over the wall between the back mountain and the school.

Zhou Ai couldn’t describe his feelings for these animals. He hadn’t been around them before and rarely liked anything, but feeding them had become a habit, carrying with it a faint sense of responsibility.

This Friday was the first monthly exam of the school year, which would be followed by the National Day holiday.

During the last self-study period in the afternoon, Zhou Ai sat at his desk writing his test paper. Beside him, Jiang Wenyi and the boy in front were arguing about an advanced math problem, their voices loud, as if they feared the difficulty of the problem wouldn’t be noticed by others.

Rain began to fall outside the window, and a mist of rain drifted onto the desk. Zhou Ai put down his pen and reached up to close part of the window.

As soon as he did, the boy in front complained: “The AC is off; I’m sweating from all this work.”

Zhou Ai continued with his problem, but suddenly, a hand reached across his desk and pulled the window wide open. Jiang Wenyi said, “Opening the window lets in air; isn’t it cooler this way?”

The rain drifted inward, sprinkling once more onto Zhou Ai’s test paper. Zhou Ai didn’t stop; he simply shifted the paper slightly. The girl sitting in the front row, who had been focused on her work, suddenly raised her hand and slammed the window shut again.

She turned halfway around, her voice laced with anger: “Isn’t this a self-study period? I can hear your discussion through my headphones. Can you keep it down? You’re really disturbing everyone.”

“And if you’re hot, go run two laps on the playground in the rain to wake up. You opened the window—don’t you realize we’re the ones sitting inside? My test paper is half-soaked; how am I supposed to continue?”

Scolded to their faces by a girl, both boys lost face. Jiang Wenyi didn’t say anything more, and the girl’s male deskmate turned back with a sharp, piercing sound of chair legs scraping against the floor.

After finishing the last problem, Zhou Ai put down his pen. Jiang Wenyi suddenly called out to him: “Zhou Ai.”

Zhou Ai simply packed his things, his peripheral vision locked, refusing to grant Jiang Wenyi an ounce of attention.

Seemingly unable to bear the slight, Jiang Wenyi reached out and grabbed Zhou Ai’s arm. His palm was stained with ink, which left a mark on Zhou Ai’s snow-white uniform cuff. Zhou Ai stopped. He felt an intense repulsion toward this physical contact, so he pulled his arm back forcefully, causing Jiang Wenyi to nearly tip over. This was the first time he had displayed such an intense emotional reaction in front of Jiang Wenyi.

Jiang Wenyi stabilized himself, staring at him with a warning: “Monthly exam tomorrow. After it’s over, can you just roll out of our class? Don’t you know you don’t belong here? I’m telling you, special education schools and schools for the disabled are where you belong. Can’t you just roll over there?”

Zhou Ai finally raised his head slowly to look at the boy wearing black-rimmed glasses. His gaze was pitch-black, as if he were studying his face.

In Jiang Wenyi’s eyes, Zhou Ai was always lifeless, like a pool of stagnant water. For the first time, being directly scrutinized by Zhou Ai’s gaze, Jiang Wenyi felt as if cold, poisonous snakes were crawling over his limbs, and he couldn’t help but recoil.

But Zhou Ai only glanced at him before picking up his bookbag and leaving the classroom to the sound of the bell.

His thin frame integrated quietly into the crowd; from behind, he still looked just as somber.

For the first monthly exam, all candidates were randomized into exam rooms.

The first session on Friday morning was Chinese. In the exam room, the seat in front of Zhou Ai remained empty. It wasn’t until the very last minute, while the proctor was preparing to check the papers, that a tall boy appeared at the front door.

Zhou Ai had been propping his chin up, gazing out the window. The boy’s footsteps stopped right in front of him. Sensing the gaze, Zhou Ai dropped his hand and slowly looked up. He had already guessed who it was; after all, his eyes had swept across the exam number in the row in front of him earlier.

He stared calmly at the boy standing before him. The boy’s hair was messy, as if he’d just gotten out of bed. He looked down at Zhou Ai with an earnestness that didn’t match his cold, stern appearance. His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something.

Zhou Ai didn’t give him the chance, withdrawing his gaze directly. Immediately after, the proctor’s voice rang out in the exam room: “Classmate, if you’re late, take your seat quickly. We’re passing out the papers soon. Why are you still standing there?”

The bell rang on time. The boy finally turned slowly and sat in the seat in front. Once seated, his hand moved as if out of habit reaching to take off his uniform jacket but he quickly stopped and placed his hand on the desk instead.

The papers were passed from the front to the back. When they reached Zhou Ai, he reached out to take them, but the other person placed his own paper on Zhou Ai’s desk first.

Zhou Ai withdrew his hand, looked down to separate his copy, and heard the person in front say in a low voice, “Sorry.”

The monthly exam was organized internally by the school. After each subject, there was a 20-minute break before the next.

During the break, Zhou Ai waited until there were fewer people to go to the restroom at the end of the corridor.

Unfortunately, as soon as he entered, he ran into Jiang Wenyi, who was leaning against the sink comparing answers with someone else. Jiang Wenyi saw him at the same moment. The smile on his face stiffened as he glared at Zhou Ai’s retreating back.

Zhou Ai entered a stall. Jiang Wenyi’s voice had extreme piercing power and carried clearly inside, as if he were introducing him to the person beside him: “See that? That’s the mute from our class. Ridiculous, isn’t it? A mute, and he got into our class. He’s always causing trouble, costing us conduct points… a total piece of rat droppings…”

When Zhou Ai came out, only Jiang Wenyi was left leaning against the wall. He went to the sink to wash his hands. Jiang Wenyi stared at him with a smirk and said, “Zhou Ai, roll out of our class after the exam.”

Zhou Ai still ignored him, wiped his hands, and was about to leave when he was grabbed by the arm again. Jiang Wenyi sounded frustrated: “Are you really deaf? I’m talking to you!”

Zhou Ai lowered his head, looking at the creases Jiang Wenyi had made on his sleeve, and pulled his arm back forcefully again. At that moment, someone whistled as they entered the restroom a boy with a messy, frizzy hairstyle. He looked back and forth between the two, and Jiang Wenyi, valuing his pride, immediately backed away and left the restroom first.

Zhou Ai smoothed his sleeve. Jiang Chuan waved at him with a “Hi.” Zhou Ai looked at the familiar face, shifted his gaze coldly, and left.

When Zhou Ai returned to the exam room, a group of people was still surrounding the boy in front.

He recognized this person lying on the desk surrounded by boys and girls. The first time he saw Chen Xunfeng in the school in September, he recognized him. He had thought he had forgotten those childhood memories in his years of numbness, but the moment he saw Chen Xunfeng, he knew he still remembered everything clearly.

He even remembered that, at the time, as the sun set, the usually fierce Chen Xunfeng had been covered in tears, standing before him, clutching his wrist and crying: “I’ll be back to find you soon. I’ll definitely be quick. At the latest, tomorrow I’ll be back tomorrow for sure.”

Now, the softness and tears on Chen Xunfeng’s face had long since vanished. His features had been carved by time into a sharp, decisive look. He was a spirited, bold youth, spoiled by everyone into being lawless. Half a month ago, a photo of him tilting his head to smoke in the dusk had been frantically shared in every school group chat, and even talent agents had come to the school gate to wait for him.

“Chen Xunfeng, lend me a pen.” A girl’s voice interrupted Zhou Ai’s memories. Zhou Ai lowered his hand from his chin and withdrew his gaze from the window.

“No pens.” In his peripheral vision, Chen Xunfeng’s head was also tilted toward the window.

The girl seemed to have started searching his desk herself: “There’s clearly one here. Why are you lying? Are you just unwilling to lend it to me? Then I’ll ask someone else.”

As she spoke, she suddenly turned around to Zhou Ai’s desk. She flashed a warm, eager smile at Zhou Ai, and her hand even patted his desk. But Chen Xunfeng turned around even faster, looking like he’d given Zhou Ai a swift glance before saying to the girl: “Go back to your exam room.”

Then, he tilted his head, looked impatiently at the boys gathered around, and said: “Take your exams, don’t come over here if you have nothing to do.”

The second exam was also passed from front to back, but this time, Chen Xunfeng steadily handed the paper to Zhou Ai. Zhou Ai looked down to separate his copy, feeling the gaze from the front it seemed to linger on him, as if wanting to say something.

Zhou Ai turned his head to pass the paper behind him without making eye contact.

For the rest of the exams, Chen Xunfeng basically arrived early and sat quietly in the front, his back looking even disciplined and orderly.

Only during the English exam on the last day, Chen Xunfeng didn’t show up at all. Until the end of the exam, the seat in front of Zhou Ai remained empty.