Winding Echo Part 1

The subway was noisy. Yue Zhishi stared at the message on his phone screen, his expression calm, his heart beating fast.

He locked the screen, looked up at the subway route map and station names, then couldn't resist opening the screen again. He reread the message from Song Yu, then took a screenshot, as if this would prevent the words he said from being lost.

Holding onto the hand strap, Yue Zhishi gazed at his reflection in the subway window, experiencing a slight illusion. The person inside looked just like him, but was wearing a Peiya School student uniform.

And so, he remembered the day Song Yu attended his parent-teacher conference in place of Lin Rong.

It was October 10th of last year, Yue Zhishi's birthday. Having a parent-teacher conference on your birthday wasn't exactly something to be happy about. Moreover, the weather was cold that day; the temperature had dropped in the morning. Yue Zhishi had originally worn his thin sportswear uniform, but was stopped by Lin Rong and ordered to change into a knit vest and his uniform jacket.

In hindsight, Yue Zhishi was very grateful that Auntie Rong had forced him to change into the proper uniform, because during lunch he received another message from her. She and Song Jin had to attend a very important reception in the afternoon, so Song Yu would be attending the parent-teacher conference in her place. She also said she would properly celebrate Yue Zhishi's birthday with him over the weekend.

Lunch was actually terrible—scrambled eggs with carrots, plus a serving of Yu Xiang shredded pork that used carrots instead of winter bamboo shoots. But Yue Zhishi was in an exceptionally good mood, so excited that he didn't even sleep during the lunch break, instead rushing to tidy up his entire desk. When his deskmate arrived for the afternoon classes, he was startled to see the brand-new-looking desktop.

“How did you manage that?”

Yue Zhishi finished wiping the desk for the third time with a wet wipe, threw the wipe away, and clapped his hands. “Nothing special, just quick hands.”

He then sat at this reborn desk for three periods, tidying it up completely at the end of every class, even the drawer, until it was finally time for the parent-teacher conference. Most students hated this kind of meeting. The lucky ones could remain completely invisible during the conference; the unlucky ones were basically sending their parents to attend their public execution.

It was also the first time Yue Zhishi had looked forward to it so much.

The weather had worsened since the morning. Dark clouds filled the sky outside, and Yue Zhishi began to worry if it would rain and whether Song Yu had brought an umbrella. The homeroom teacher entered early, did a test run of the prepared PowerPoint on the classroom screen, and told the students to wait in the hallway.

Soon, the first parent arrived. It was the mother of a female classmate, dressed plainly, appearing a bit bewildered at the classroom door. Yue Zhishi watched that classmate lead her mother to her seat, then finally couldn't help but go out himself. He leaned on the hallway railing for a while, then walked to the top of the stairs.

“Lele, is your dad or your mom coming?” another male student standing at the top of the stairs asked, bumping him with his shoulder.

“They both have something on. My brother is coming.”

“You have a brother? That's awesome.”

A girl walked over. “You don't know? Oh, right, you weren't here for junior high. His brother used to be a senior in our school's Senior High Division. He's handsome and got good grades.”

Yue Zhishi's small sense of vanity swelled up, and he said on his brother's behalf, “It's not that exaggerated.” But the next moment, he turned his head and saw the man himself.

Song Yu was wearing a trench coat as black as his hair, which made his features look sharp and his aura outstanding. He was especially easy to spot among the crowd of parents. As he came up the stairs, he also looked up, his gaze meeting Yue Zhishi's. The corners of his usually straight-set lips moved slightly, and his indifferent expression softened a little.

“Brother.” Yue Zhishi took a few steps forward and stood beside Song Yu as he reached the top of the stairs. “I'll take you to my seat.”

The girl behind him was still discussing with the male student from just now, “I wasn't lying, was I? Isn't he a total dreamboat?”

This was Song Yu's first time in Yue Zhishi's classroom, but the one who felt more novelty and excitement was, contrary to expectation, Yue Zhishi.

His seat was in the third group, second to last row. Yue Zhishi led Song Yu over and had him sit down, even pointing to the cup he had just filled with warm water. “You can drink this, if you're thirsty.”

After he spoke, Song Yu nodded. He observed his desk, his face showing little emotion, but he offered a compliment, “So clean.”

His female deskmate next to him immediately sold him out to the handsome guy: “He spent the entire lunch break cleaning it.”

Exposed on the spot, Yue Zhishi glared at his deskmate. “Not the whole lunch break, that's an exaggeration...” He wanted to save a little face, but he noticed Song Yu didn't seem to be paying much attention to this. Instead, he was looking around the classroom on his own, so Yue Zhishi asked him, “What are you looking at?”

Song Yu retracted his gaze and looked at Yue Zhishi. “I just realized this was my classroom in my second year of high school.”

Peiya School often changed classrooms; sometimes during renovations, even the signs on the classroom doors would be replaced. Since starting high school, including class reshuffles, Yue Zhishi had changed classrooms four times. He never expected to end up graduating from the same classroom Song Yu had in his second year.

“Really?” To Song Yu, Yue Zhishi's happiness always seemed to come out of nowhere.

Song Yu nodded, his elbow resting on the desk, and added calmly, “I sat right behind you.”

His words were so misleading.

It was as if they were really in the same classroom, and he really sat behind Yue Zhishi every day, so that whenever Yue Zhishi wanted, he could see him just by turning around.

In a parallel universe, delayed by a year, if it were to overlap with the universe Yue Zhishi currently inhabited, then Song Yu could have accompanied him through every arduous day of his third year of high school.

Yue Zhishi froze for a second, then couldn't help but break into a smile.

“Is there anything in your desk that I'm not allowed to see?”

Hearing this, Yue Zhishi spread his hands and said magnanimously, “Nope, feel free to look.”

He had cleaned it so spotlessly just to accommodate Song Yu's mysophobia.

The homeroom teacher urged the students to leave, so he couldn't stay any longer and had to go out with the other students. Everyone tacitly stood outside the windows, peeking into the classroom to observe the reactions of the teacher and their own parents. However, because of this parent-teacher conference, Song Yu's presence was a special situation, and particularly eye-catching. The surrounding students were all discussing him. The boys said Song Yu was a great basketball player, and the girls said he was handsome and had good grades. Yue Zhishi, the expert brother-bragger, couldn't even outdo them.

His eyes were only for Song Yu. The other parents were all looking up at the homeroom teacher speak, wearing expressions that said, 'For the sake of my child, I must be sufficiently devout.' But Song Yu barely looked up. Instead, he bent over and took out a stack of test papers and supplementary materials from Yue Zhishi's drawer.

“You're doomed,” his deskmate, also standing outside the window, said to Yue Zhishi. “Your brother is looking at your test papers. He won't tattle to your parents when he gets back, will he?”

Everyone else started laughing too, but Yue Zhishi was surprisingly calm. “He won't. He's never tattled before, and my parents don't really care whether I do well on exams or not.”

“Really? That's so nice.”

“Then why is he taking them out to look at them?”

“Yeah, anyway, I don't like people going through my stuff. Not even handsome guys.”

Hearing this, Yue Zhishi frowned. “He's my brother, not a stranger. I like him going through my things.” After saying that, he walked off to the side. He was famous for his good temper and popularity; he rarely even said harsh words, let alone got angry. His obvious displeasure this time surprised several of the girls around him.

Another student spoke up: “Lele, you and your brother don't look alike at all. He seems so cool and aloof. But his features are so defined, is he mixed-race too? Why are his hair and eyes so black?”

Yue Zhishi thought he had a lot of questions, but he still answered, “He's not mixed-race.”

“No wonder, you two look completely different. You're not biological brothers, right? Cousins?”

Yue Zhishi fell silent. He didn't really want to answer that question.

After starting high school, Song Yu and he were separated. Even if Yue Zhishi went to the study hall next to Class 5, Year 3, there was no one to go home with anymore. He would sometimes space out while looking at Song Yu's name on the Gaokao honor roll in the cafeteria, but that list was only posted for a year before being replaced by a new batch of students.

He somewhat regretted staying at Peiya School. It would have been better to go to a new place, somewhere that wouldn't make him think of Song Yu at every moment. Going to the cafeteria made him think of the dishes Song Yu hated; going to the sports field made him think of Song Yu shooting a basketball.

The worst was the Sky Corridor on the third floor.

“If you're not biological brothers, you probably aren't that close, right?”

He stared at the window pane, his own face overlapping with Song Yu's side profile, like a double exposure in photography.

Yue Zhishi suddenly wished desperately that he and Song Yu looked exactly alike, so much so that anyone could guess their relationship at a glance. That way, no one would ever question it, and he himself would have a weight to keep him from feeling so insecure.

Before long, the homeroom teacher came down from the podium, opened the classroom door, and had the class president lead them out to wait, or to go home first. Just as the door closed, a girl outside suggested going to the cafeteria. The others all agreed, so they went down together.

Yue Zhishi was a bit reluctant to leave and took a few extra glances. Song Yu had taken off his trench coat and draped it over the back of the chair. He was wearing a white knit sweater, sitting quietly inside, holding Yue Zhishi's pen, his head lowered, his expression serious, as if deep in thought.

This made Yue Zhishi feel as if he had been transported back three years, standing outside a classroom, waiting for his brother, whose class hadn't ended yet.

“Let's go, Lele.”

Yue Zhishi turned back. “Yeah.”

The content and procedure of parent-teacher conferences were all more or less the same. The homeroom teacher would talk about the grim situation of the Gaokao, then announce the results of the latest mock exam. Song Yu was very familiar with it all, only now the roles were reversed, and he was the one sitting and listening.

He didn't have much of an inclination to listen. He had heard this stuff for three years; it was the same old thing in a new package. Even without listening, he knew how to provide guidance better than the parents present who knew nothing about the Gaokao.

Song Yu flipped through Yue Zhishi's test papers. His English was as good as ever. Even Song Yu was a little curious if there was really some kind of metaphysical boost from his bloodline. But his math, compared to his other subjects, wasn't exceptionally good. His scores fluctuated quite a bit and weren't very stable. When he did well, he could get very high scores, but when he did poorly, his score would be pulled down by other good students.

He found Yue Zhishi's mistake notebook and flipped through it, discovering that a mistake he had recorded had been made again on the most recent test paper. In Song Yu's eyes, these problems all had very clear structures and patterns. So he simply picked up a pen and used this time to help Yue Zhishi systematically organize his mistakes, even writing down several common problem-solving patterns in his notebook, categorized.

After organizing with deep concentration for a while, he suddenly heard the homeroom teacher call Yue Zhishi's name. Song Yu looked up and saw that the parent in the front row was also looking at him.

“Yue Zhishi's parent is actually one of Peiya School's own outstanding graduates, Song Yu. Back in his day, his grades were always among the top in the school, and his Gaokao scores were also excellent.” After speaking, the homeroom teacher looked at Song Yu with an expectant gaze. “It's quite a coincidence that you're here today. Could you share some of your experiences from the review period with the other parents, or perhaps some things parents should pay attention to?”

Song Yu was very uncomfortable in this kind of environment. He felt less like Yue Zhishi's brother and more like his father. This strange generational displacement made him press his lips together unnaturally. He was silent for a moment before speaking in a low voice, “Actually, at this stage, it's already too late to talk about study experiences.”

His words were so direct that they made the homeroom teacher a little embarrassed. “Ah, indeed...”

“However, I do think there are things parents need to do. These last six months are crucial. If possible, try not to give the students too much pressure. Instead of blindly making them study or giving them nutritional supplements, it's better to care more about their psychological state and use less criticism-based education.” After speaking, Song Yu still gave the homeroom teacher a way out, offering her a faint, business-like smile. “As for the rest, I think you've already covered it very well, Teacher.”

Perhaps it was because he had a halo effect; whatever he said, some parents would agree. After retreating unscathed, Song Yu returned his attention to his little brother's test papers. When he was more or less done looking, he arranged the papers in order, placed them back in the drawer, and put the mistake notebook on top so that Yue Zhishi would see it as soon as he returned.

While getting the papers, he accidentally pulled out a math workbook with a purple cover. With nothing better to do, Song Yu flipped through it a little. This kind of supplementary material that didn't need to be handed in was usually not filled out completely.

As expected, not only was there little writing, but the workbook also seemed to be a good tool for Yue Zhishi to kill time. In the bottom right corner, Yue Zhishi had drawn a flip-book style animation of one of his favorite anime characters. If you flipped through it quickly, you could see a complete fighting sequence.

This was something only Yue Zhishi would do.

Song Yu suddenly found the parent-teacher conference rather interesting. Looking at the contents again, many pages had writing that was completely illegible, growing more and more erratic until it became a series of dots poked onto the page—clearly the state of someone so sleepy they were losing consciousness but still forcing themselves to write.

Just by looking at these traces, Song Yu could vividly picture Yue Zhishi in his mind.

Flipping to a certain page, he paused. He stared at it for a moment, then picked up a pen and wrote a line of text below.

Time was quickly whiled away. After the meeting, several parents came to Song Yu's desk, hoping he could share a bit more. Although Song Yu was always cold and terse, he couldn't be too obvious about it, so he said a few things. It wasn't until a parent asked for his contact information and inquired if he could be hired as a private tutor that Song Yu finally spoke up and refused.