Shen Jinghong stepped aside to clear the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms folded across his chest. His peach-blossom eyes were narrowed to slits as he watched Lin Mo enter the classroom with his head bowed, following behind Shi Huai.
It was as though he were watching an ant, hopelessly out of its depth, attempt to climb a towering tree. There was mockery in his gaze, along with a trace of unease that was difficult to define.
Lin Mo took the seat beside Shi Huai and pulled an essay from his book bag. It was the policy essay Shi Huai had written last time.
The essay was covered in dense annotations written in fine brushwork. Every point was marked with its source and usage, while some passages had been circled with question marks beside them.
Shi Huai glanced at the annotations, somewhat surprised. “Brother Lin, how many times have you read this?”
Lin Mo’s voice was so soft it was almost inaudible. He lowered his head even further. “T-Ten... more than ten times, I think. There were some parts I didn’t understand, so I read them a few more times.”
Shi Huai was silent for a moment. Then he picked up a brush from the desk and began adding notes to each of the circled passages.
The tip of his brush moved across the paper, explaining, character by character, the origin and usage of each allusion.
His handwriting was neat and elegant. Every character looked like a work of art in the making.
Lin Mo kept his head lowered as he watched the characters emerge one by one from the tip of Shi Huai’s brush. As those precise, beautiful lines spread across the page, his heart began to race as though it might leap straight out of his throat.
He secretly lifted his eyelids and stole a glance at Shi Huai.
Shi Huai’s brows were lowered as he wrote. His lashes cast a small fan-shaped shadow beneath his eyes. His nose rose high and straight like a mountain peak, and his lips were gently pressed together, their shape sharply defined.
Lin Mo’s gaze clung to Shi Huai’s face, unable to move away, as if something had nailed it in place.
A voice inside him screamed frantically, Don’t look. Stop looking.
But he could not control himself at all. His eyes seemed to have a will of their own, fixed stubbornly on Shi Huai’s face.
“Brother Lin, this passage comes from The Zuo Commentary, Duke Xi, Year Twenty-Four. The original line is, ‘Keep faith, and those from afar will come to you.’ It means that keeping one’s word will win the allegiance of people from distant places.”
“I used it here to argue that those who govern must first earn the people’s trust before they can properly rule a country.”
Shi Huai wrote the final character and looked up at Lin Mo, only to find him staring blankly at his face. His eyes were unfocused, and there was an expression at the corners of his mouth that was impossible to tell apart from infatuation or fascination.
“Brother Lin?”
Shi Huai waved a hand in front of him.
Lin Mo suddenly came to his senses. With a clatter, he knocked over the teacup on the desk.
Tea spilled everywhere, soaking the essay covered in his painstaking annotations.
He hurriedly tried to wipe it dry, only to realize that he was making things worse. The ink blurred and spread beneath the water, while the notes Shi Huai had just written slowly dissolved across the page.
Lin Mo stared at the characters dissolving before his eyes, and tears immediately welled up.
It was the result of more than ten nights of painstaking work. It was an essay he had treasured above all else—an essay bearing every single character written by Shi Huai’s own hand.
“Don’t worry. I’ll write you another copy.”
Shi Huai lifted the soaked essay from the desk and set it aside to dry. Then he laid out a fresh sheet of xuan paper, picked up his brush, and began writing it again.
He wrote even more carefully than before. Every character was upright and precise, and every annotation was explained clearly.
As Lin Mo looked at the newly rewritten essay, he could no longer hold back his tears. One drop after another fell onto the desk, spreading into small, damp blotches.
He hurriedly wiped them away with his sleeve, his voice thick with tears. “Brother Shi Huai, thank you.”
Shi Huai looked at his reddened eyes and nose, and an indescribable feeling welled up inside him.
The boy cried far too easily. He was so shy he was practically like a young girl. Shi Huai could not imagine how he had grown up at home.
He folded the completed essay and handed it to Lin Mo, a gentle smile touching the corners of his lips.
“Don’t cry anymore. If there’s anything you don’t understand in the future, come ask me directly. Don’t sit there puzzling over it by yourself.”
Lin Mo accepted the essay. His fingers brushed lightly over the paper, as though he were stroking some priceless treasure.
He carefully tucked it into the innermost layer of his book bag, then stood and bowed deeply to Shi Huai.
He bent so far that his forehead nearly touched his knees. His voice was muffled and still thick with tears.
“Brother Shi Huai, I will never forget your great kindness.”
Shi Huai reached out and helped him back up, both amused and helpless. “Is that really necessary? All right, all right. Go back quickly. If your teacher suddenly returns and finds you gone, he’ll scold you.”
Lin Mo nodded vigorously, then turned and walked out of the classroom, his steps much lighter than when he had arrived.
His eyes and nose were still red.
He looked like a little white rabbit that had just been caught in the rain—pitiful and adorable.
Shen Jinghong had leaned against the doorframe and witnessed everything from beginning to end.
As Lin Mo passed him with his eyes still red, a complicated light flickered through Shen Jinghong’s peach-blossom eyes.
There was mockery and disdain, but more than either was a nameless irritation.
He was finding it increasingly difficult to control that irritation.
Shi Huai smiled at Lin Mo, and he grew irritated.
Shi Huai exchanged a few extra words with Lin Mo, and he grew irritated.
Shi Huai rewrote the essay for Lin Mo, and he grew even more irritated.
That irritation was like a fire burning inside his chest, scorching his organs until they ached, keeping him awake night after night.
He had tried all sorts of ways to suppress it—drinking, practicing martial arts, pacing back and forth in the study...
None of it worked. The fire only burned hotter, until he felt as though he were about to explode.
Shen Jinghong drew a deep breath, walked into the classroom, and returned to his seat.
He watched Shi Huai’s profile as he lowered his head and continued practicing his calligraphy. He watched that face, so beautiful in the light that it hardly seemed human, and felt as though his heart were being slowly carved by a dull knife.
It hurt—hurt terribly—but he could not bear to make the knife stop.
Day after day passed, and before long, it was the eve of the poetry gathering.
A great deal had happened in Class A over the past half month.
During a break, Wang Ren had secretly tried to slip a packet of pastries into Shi Huai’s book bag, only to be discovered by Shen Jinghong.
The two of them had gotten into a heated argument, and by the end of it, Shen Jinghong had thrown the packet of pastries out the window.
Wang Ren was so furious that he refused to speak to him for three days.
One evening, Gu Changning stopped Shi Huai and asked whether he would be willing to form a poetry society with him, meeting once a week to exchange and improve their poetic skills.
Shi Huai thought it over and agreed. Gu Changning’s expression did not change at all, but the corners of his lips lifted ever so slightly.
Lin Mo began coming more frequently. He showed up almost every day, bringing all sorts of pastries and tea, claiming that he had merely “happened to be passing by.”
Shen Jinghong had long since stopped trying to keep him out. He merely let out an ambiguous cold snort every time he saw him.
The meaning behind that cold snort was so complicated that even Shen Jinghong himself could not explain what it meant.
He only knew that his heart felt sour and miserable.
If only... if only he could hide Shi Huai away.
Preferably somewhere only he could see him...
