Adolescent bullying sometimes doesn't even need any physical contact, nor does it require a single harsh word.
A group of people are chatting away normally, but the second you walk past them, they all fall silent, then turn to throw you that meaningful, knowing smile...
That's a silent sort of sizing up, a completely invisible form of bullying.
It makes you feel like you've been made the subject of everyone's judgment.
The worst part is, they haven't done anything to cause tangible harm. Even you start to wonder if you're just overthinking it, that maybe they didn't mean it that way at all...
So you can't bring it up to anyone, and there's no way to fight back.
Yu Zhining could feel that malice, and he was terrified that if things kept going this way, his little sister would get hurt too.
So he walked over to the doorway and said to Yu Xiaxing, "Go home by yourself. I've been busy with the math competition lately, so you don't have to wait for me on purpose anymore."
Yu Xiaxing seemed to sense that something was off. She looked down and kicked at the toe of her shoe, then asked softly, "Can I still come to your study room to do my homework?"
Yu Zhining stayed silent for a long time before he said, "It depends."
Little Star went quiet.
Yu Zhining reached out and gently nudged her schoolbag. "Go on, head home now."
She took two steps forward, then looked back at him, and finally turned and walked away.
Her small figure drifted through the sunlight at the end of the corridor, getting farther and farther away.
Yu Zhining stood rooted to the spot. With every step she took away from him, his ached a little more.
That thorn in his chest, it felt like it had started growing into his flesh and blood. Pulling it out would be agony, but leaving it there left him itching with restlessness.
...
The memory kept replaying in his mind.
That evening, in the Yu family's study.
The sky outside the window darkened little by little.
Yu Zhining had been keeping his distance from his little sister for days.
He was sitting at his desk, an exercise book for the math competition spread open in front of him, when Huo Mian knocked on the door again, hugging her textbooks to her chest. "Yu Zhining, there's a step I just can't figure out. Could you help me look at it?"
Yu Zhining nodded.
Huo Mian walked right in, and closed the door behind her.
Yu Zhining glanced down at the problem and told her the issue was that the original formula's structure was asymmetrical.
He picked up his pen, just about to write out the steps.
Suddenly, he heard faint rustling sounds by the door.
He looked up and saw sheets of paper being slipped in under the door, one after another.
Yu Zhining paused, got up and walked over, bent down to pick up the stack of papers.
They were Yu Xiaxing's crayon drawings, bright and vivid with lively little figures.
The first one showed two little figures holding hands. The taller one was wearing a school uniform with a blank, expressionless face, and the smaller one had pigtails and a big grin.
The second drawing showed the two of them sitting on the grass stargazing.
The third one was under a camphor tree, where the boy who had been bullying her was running away crying. She had scrawled a line of crooked words on it: [Brother is my yingxiong.]
She didn't know how to write the last character, so she used pinyin.
Yu Zhining's eyes stung, and his heart felt so soft it was about to melt.
Until Huo Mian's voice came from behind him.
"Why would she draw you pictures like that?"
Huo Mian stood beside him, frowning at the drawings, and whispered, "Your little sister really has no sense of boundaries at all."
"Holding hands, stargazing, and something about a hero... Those are things couples do, you know?"
"No wonder so many people in our class say the two of you are like a romance novel come to life..."
Yu Zhining's face turned cold, and he felt a surge of repulsion. "What's wrong with you? Are you crazy?"
Huo Mian jumped at his shout, and immediately looked a little hurt. "That's not what I meant. I just think all the students here are sharp, and if people see her drawing you stuff like this, they're going to talk. Especially her, giving you these pictures."
She was still so little. Would she end up going through what he was going through, crushed under classmates' all-encompassing malice?
Would she be smothered by this kind of invisible cruelty until she could barely breathe?
He looked down at the drawings in his hands, and suddenly they felt burning hot to the touch.
So he wrenched the door open.
Outside, Yu Xiaxing was lying on the carpet, still holding a small stack of drawings in her arms.
She had been too afraid to disturb his studying to even knock, so she had slipped the papers through the crack under the door one by one.
The door flying open startled her.
When she looked up and saw him, her eyes lit up instantly. "Brother!"
She immediately lifted the stack of drawings in her arms, holding them out to him full of hope. "I drew all these for you. I want you to have them!"
Yu Zhining handed the drawings he was holding back to her. "Don't ever draw pictures like this again."
The smile on Yu Xiaxing's face slowly faded. Her big eyes were full of confusion and hurt, and she had no idea what she had done wrong.
Yu Zhining avoided meeting her eyes, and said in a low voice, "I'm getting ready for the math competition. I'm very busy."
"Brother, did I disturb you?" she asked.
Yu Zhining said nothing.
"Then I'll come find you again when you're done being busy." Yu Xiaxing turned and left, still holding her drawings.
Yu Zhining stood in the doorway watching her go for a while.
When she got downstairs, he even walked over to the top of the stairs to watch her. She had already gone over to the living room sofa, and was lying quietly on her own at the edge of it, drawing by herself.
But he... but he really did care about his little sister, so much that just seeing her sitting there all alone, without him there to keep her company, filled him with overwhelming guilt.
He had always been so sure that his feelings for his little sister were nothing more than normal sibling affection.
But then he remembered the books Huo Mian had shown him, and he started to doubt that there was something wrong with him. All his kindness and care for his sister started to feel sinful.
He had always held himself to the standard of being an upstanding, proper person. How could he have turned out like this?
Guilt, shame, self-loathing... all wrapped around him layer by layer.
He went back to his room to do his practice problems, and chased Huo Mian away, not wanting to talk to anyone.
He could barely focus on his work at all.
After struggling with his tangled thoughts for two whole hours, he finally got up and walked out of the room.
He went to find Yu Xiaxing, wanting to ask for the drawings she had given him back.
But when he found her, she was sitting alone on the carpet in the small parlor, with pieces of torn paper scattered all over the floor.
She had ripped all the drawings to shreds.
A single scrap of paper was caught by a draft through the open door, and drifted right to Yu Zhining's feet.
Only half a sentence was left on it.
[Brother is my...]
The rest of the words, "hero", was nowhere to be found.
A terrible, heavy feeling settled over Yu Zhining. He walked over to her. "Xingxing."
He had barely said her name when Yu Xiaxing, sitting on the floor, snapped her head up.
Her eyes were red and puffy, and she glared at him with a look of stubborn, burning anger on her face.
"From now on, neither of us is allowed to talk to the other. The first one to speak is a dog!"
She turned and ran away right after she said that.
Yu Zhining stared at the shredded drawings on the floor and started to reflect. What huge, earth-shattering fight had they even had?
It seemed like nothing had happened. Back when she had left his study room, she had only thought he was busy with his competition, so she had gone downstairs to play by herself.
All his pain, he had kept it all locked up inside, never saying a single word of it out loud.
Had his cold, distant treatment of her these past few days been what hurt her?
Or had she somehow sensed his twisted, guilty feelings? Did she think he was disgusting now too?
