Chapter 82

*Campus IF Line — “Holding Hands”*
“Ha—you guys have no idea how chaotic it was back then. In all these years at No. 1 High, there’s never been another one like him—so singular.”
Xie Yuncheng’s “legend” seemed to have become, invisibly, one of No. 1 High’s great campus myths. The chaos he caused that day ultimately ended with nothing more than being dropped and left unresolved.
Someone curious asked, “And then? Did they really get together?”
“Of course…”
The speaker deliberately drew it out. “No.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“I’m not one of the people involved. How would I know why? If you really want to know—go ask them yourselves.”
The line was obviously a joke. Who would gossip to the main characters’ faces?
Almost everyone believed they would naturally end up together. But in reality, they didn’t cross even half a step.
Xie Yuncheng carried the halo of a top student and was highly valued by the school. Qin Sang didn’t know how the matter was later handled so neatly; she only knew he was called in, one after another, to the grade office and the Discipline Office.
In the end, the school’s handling decision was only a lightly delivered sentence: he had caused a disruption of order during the long break, and was given a verbal warning, with two honor points deducted.
Qin Sang thought the school would, out of consideration, stop the support program. But unexpectedly, her seat didn’t change.
Xie Yuncheng also kept his promise, using spare time to tutor her.
Sometimes after school, you could still see the two of them staying behind in the classroom.
Qin Sang’s foundation actually wasn’t bad. In three years of middle school, her grades at Ningjiang Middle School had ranked among the best. It was just that Ningjiang was, after all, a small county town; its educational resources couldn’t compare to No. 1 High.
And most of Class One had been promoted directly from No. 1 High’s junior division. The teachers in the academic affairs group had long formed fixed assumptions; much of the subject material was expanded outward, and it was hard for them to consider that there were “outsiders” like Qin Sang in the class who might not adapt well.
Part of why she couldn’t keep up with the pace was also that she couldn’t understand what the teachers were teaching, and naturally couldn’t digest it.
But she studied hard. For her, it was still difficult to understand and flexibly apply those formulas. She knew she wasn’t smart enough, so she could only rely on diligence to narrow the gap.
There wasn’t any particular reason. Qin Sang studied with a stubborn drive, forgetting to eat and sleep.
Sometimes after lights-out, she would still hide under the blanket and secretly do problems. She held a flashlight in her mouth, keeping her movements small, trying not to disturb the other girls’ rest.
Maybe Heaven doesn’t fail the determined. In the midterm exam, her scores did improve drastically, and she just barely crossed the line—slipping into the grade’s top ten by a tiny one-point advantage, perfectly stuck on the cutoff.
During the holiday, Qin Dahai came to pick her up. After learning her midterm results were excellent, he insisted on taking her to the nearby department store so she could choose something she liked as a reward.
Qin Sang didn’t refuse. She only rubbed her eyes. “I want to go get glasses first.”
Qin Dahai got nervous. “What’s wrong? Has your myopia gotten worse?”
“A little. The blackboard seems blurrier.”
She’d originally had mild myopia—200 degrees in her left eye and 100 in her right. But recently she could clearly feel her vision dropping a lot. Sitting in the same seat, sometimes she couldn’t see what was written on the board.
“Sang-sang.” Qin Dahai was rarely so serious. “Listen to Dad. Being studious is good, but grades aren’t the most important thing. You don’t need to push yourself that hard. You can’t ruin your eyes.”
“Your teachers said you’re doing problems under the covers in the middle of the night. That habit isn’t good. Dad doesn’t need you to become some big shot. You don’t have to carry such a heavy mental burden.”
Qin Sang answered guiltily, “I understand.”
She leaned against the car window and looked outside. She saw that familiar figure come out of the school. Jiang Mingyi slung an arm over his shoulder from behind, saying something she couldn’t hear. Less than two seconds later, a girl walked up to them. They looked extremely familiar with each other—she greeted them, and then they walked away together.
Qin Sang silently withdrew her gaze, fiddling with the zipper charm on her schoolbag.
If she wasn’t excellent enough, how could she stand alongside him?
The person she liked was like the moon hanging high above, while she was only a dim little asteroid.
She only wanted to try harder—harder still—shine and glow, and give off her own light.
…
In 2012, the Mayans had once prophesied that on December 21 of that year, humanity would meet its end. The world would fall into chaotic darkness and never see a brand-new dawn again.
“Sang-sang, do you think the Mayan prophecy is real?”
Qin Sang shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Liu Chengcheng lay on the desk, grumbling bitterly. “If it’s real, that’d be great. Then I wouldn’t have to get up early and stay up late every day, and I wouldn’t have to worry about the college entrance exam. How nice.”
Qin Sang only smiled helplessly and continued memorizing history.
That day, the world seemed to sink into a kind of chaotic order: everyone still lived as usual, step by step, yet also faintly expected to witness the moment the prophecy came true.
During evening self-study, for some reason the school suddenly lost power. The entire teaching building fell into a silent darkness—like the sign of an approaching apocalypse.
The duty teacher went out to take a look, then instructed, “Alright, everyone continue studying as usual. Stay in the classroom and don’t run around. I’ll go take a look.”
As soon as the teacher left, the whole class grew restless. It wasn’t only their class—the entire building was boiling. Someone even ran out yelling: “It’s here, it’s here—Mars crashing into Earth, aliens invading the world—ah, the end is coming! Everyone run!”
The hoarse, desperate shouting made everyone panic. In class, someone was already whispering with a sob in their voice, “Do you think it might be real?”
“Waaah, I don’t want to die yet…”
There were also bold ones who deliberately scared the timid classmates, holding a flashlight under their chin and pretending to be a ghost.
Someone even led the way into telling ghost stories. Jiang Mingyi patted the desk and said, “Everyone stop shouting. Don’t you know the taboo of this teaching building? I heard this used to be a graveyard. The ones buried were all people who died unjustly—after death they couldn’t be reborn, all lonely ghosts and wild spirits. The resentment here was sky-high. A long time ago, a boy went to the bathroom alone at midnight and ran into something unclean. As soon as he went in, the stall door moved—someone was pulling on his door.”
“The boy shouted, ‘Who is it?’ No one answered outside. The pulling only got faster, and the latch rattled like crazy. After who knows how long, it finally went quiet outside. But the boy was so scared he didn’t have the courage to open the door. He didn’t even dare call for help. He could only force himself, bending down, trying to look through the gap under the door to see if the person outside had left. Slowly—little by little—he bent his waist, lay on the floor, turned his head to look, and suddenly—”
Jiang Mingyi’s cadence rose and fell; he even deliberately lowered his voice. The whole campus was pitch-black, which already made it atmospheric.
Qin Sang swallowed. She hadn’t been afraid before, but now she grew tense too. A fine numbness suddenly crawled up her back, as if in the darkness a cold hand had brushed her spine—icy and spreading.
She subconsciously pulled her hands and feet back, as if doing so could hide her in a safe zone and avoid all demons and monsters.
“The boy met a pair of blood-red eyes. That face was a mess of flesh and blood, exposing ghastly white bone. When it grinned, its mouth was full of worms. It smiled sinisterly and said, ‘Found you.’”
“Ah—!”
Someone suddenly screamed in the class.
Everyone was thoroughly frightened. Qin Sang held her breath, not even daring to open her eyes. In the darkness, she grasped at something in panic and held on tightly, as if it were her last lifeline.
She curled up, fingers clenched hard. But very quickly, she realized what she was gripping tightly seemed to be a boy’s warm, dry hand.
Qin Sang realized it belatedly. Her hand loosened reflexively as if she’d been burned—but in the next second, it was held back. The boy’s hand was lean and long. That warmth wrapped around her tightly, as if it had already driven away the chill.
“Weren’t you not scared?”
In the dark, she couldn’t see his face. She only heard his voice—lowered, smiling.
Qin Sang said nothing. Heat surged to her cheeks. The class had already fallen into chaos.
“Damn it, Jiang Mingyi, you went too far. Isn’t that the ghost story serialized in last issue of *New Talent*? You used it to scare classmates—that’s not appropriate!”
“Holy shit, you scared me to death. I’ve got goosebumps all over. So you were using a ghost story to deliberately bluff me—so low. Brothers, beat him up!”
“Hey, hey—wasn’t I just trying to liven things up because everyone was too scared? Don’t hit me—ow, Dong Siyuan, don’t take revenge for personal grudges! Don’t hit the face, you asshole—why are you aiming for my face? I still want to live off this face in the future!”
“Pfft. Eat shit.”
Jiang Mingyi had angered the crowd and was attacked by everyone. The previously tense, eerie atmosphere was instantly shattered. Everyone shouted and bickered, the classroom a mess.
Later she learned the school’s power outage was because nearby construction caused the voltage load to be too high and burned out the transformer. It wasn’t only the school that lost power— the entire Jing’an District had gone out.
That day, the Mayan end of the world didn’t arrive. Everyone still had evening self-study. The duty teacher brought candles and lit them.
But no one knew that in that half hour without power, they hid it from the crowd and secretly held hands, feeling each other’s heartbeats in the quiet night.
At that time, she thought: how wonderful it would be if time could stop on this very second.
On the last day of 2012, New Year’s Eve, she got up early and stayed busy, writing two Spring Festival couplets and hanging them up. Qin Dahai laughed that her handwriting hadn’t improved, yet still happily showed off to Xiao Yan’s dad: “Look—my daughter wrote these couplets. Pretty handwriting, right?”
Xiao Yan’s dad smiled and agreed, and gave red envelopes to both her and Xiao Yan.
Qin Sang was busy making dumplings. Inside the dumplings they hid coins and Sichuan peppercorns—hoping for good luck.
But after wrapping for a while, the moment her phone rang she dropped everything and ran off to chat on her phone.
At the reunion dinner, the class group chat was lively, discussing this year’s Spring Festival Gala. Almost everyone popped up—but there was no sign of Xie Yuncheng.
Jiang Mingyi said he’d gone back to Jingcheng for the Spring Festival. The Xie family was a big clan; he probably didn’t have time to chat.
Qin Sang felt a little disappointed. She scrolled through the chat history. At ten o’clock, she finally mustered the courage to send him a New Year’s blessing text.
During that time, she kept waiting absentmindedly, checking her phone every so often.
Near midnight, Qin Sang suddenly received a blessing from the capital.
“Happy New Year.”
He smiled and asked her what she had done today. Qin Sang answered like counting treasures.
“I helped Dad write couplets, and I made dumplings too. When I ate dumplings, I even bit into a Sichuan peppercorn. Dad said I’m definitely going to get rich this year. Oh, and I got lots of red envelopes.”
She spoke with a smile. For some reason, the other end of the line was so quiet it felt excessive. When the clock struck midnight right on time, fireworks all around rose and bloomed in the sky.
“Sang-sang, did you hear it?”
All the noisy sounds around her drowned out that tiny meow. Qin Sang’s fingers wound around the tassels on the pillow and she answered softly, “Hm?”
On the other side, there was a rare few seconds of silence. The boy’s voice, mixed with the howling northern wind, sounded especially blurred.
“An’an says… it really misses you.”