Hearing the familiar name, Wei Qingyue glanced at the girl a couple of times.

Chen Huiming was crying and complaining loudly in the hallway. This disturbance attracted the attention of people from Class One and Class Two, and some opened their windows to look out. Zhang Xiaoqiang had no choice but to comfort her, saying there must be some misunderstanding. As she was consoling her, Teacher Xiao Xu arrived. After briefly asking about the situation, he entered the classroom and called out the two parties involved.

Because Jiang Du was the Chinese language representative, Chen Huiming automatically assumed Xiao Xu would be biased towards her. She stood there resentfully, full of indignation. With a stiff neck, she said, "Teacher Xu should ask her."

Jiang Du didn't embellish the story. She recounted it exactly as it happened, admitting her mistake first. This made Chen Huiming hate her even more. Fake. Just keep on faking it. She stared at Jiang Du with a sullen expression.

Xiao Xu was good-natured. He patiently counseled the two girls about their conflict for a few sentences and told them to return to their respective classes. When Chen Huiming sat down, her deskmate clearly heard her mutter "bitch," looked up at her, and then lowered their head again to continue writing, as if it had nothing to do with them.

This incident really did seem like Jiang Du had overreacted and was being too sensitive. When Wang Jingjing returned and heard about it, she found it strange and couldn't help but ask Jiang Du what was really going on.

"I thought she had read the letter, that's why I lost control," Jiang Du forced a smile. "I was in the wrong."

Wang Jingjing looked relieved. "Pfft, is that worth getting so nervous about? Even if she did see it, I'd generously admit it's no big deal. Of course, if she dared to peek, I'd definitely cuss her out. I could cuss her out for a whole day without repeating myself!"

Jiang Du believed her; Wang Jingjing was very feisty. She quickly tried to cool her down: "No, Chen Huiming didn't peek. I was mistaken."

But Wang Jingjing was convinced that Jiang Du had endured Chen Huiming's temper to protect her privacy and insisted on treating her to a roujiamo from the cafeteria after school. Jiang Du felt a little guilty; she knew that wasn't it, at least not her first reaction. She was simply afraid that the unknowable secret in the bottom of her heart would be discovered.

The window wasn't shut tight, and the sound of the howling wind was like surging ocean waves. Xiao Xu had said the weather forecast predicted sleet. Time flies so fast, she suddenly felt a bit sad. Winter had arrived just like that.

After the evening self-study session ended, she had already come downstairs with the crowd, but Jiang Du suddenly remembered something and ran back upstairs, patter, patter, patter.

Two girls in the classroom hadn't left yet. They were chatting casually while locking the door.

"Did you know? Chen Huiming said Wang Jingjing is also writing love letters to Wei Qingyue."

"That's hilarious. Nowadays, any Tom, Dick, or Harry dares to write love letters to Wei Qingyue. I wonder if he's annoyed by it. They're like flies, swarming all over him. Don't they have any self-awareness about their own standing?"

"Can't be helped. There are always a lot of people with no self-awareness."

The two of them started laughing. They didn't notice Jiang Du had turned back and was walking this way. When they saw her, they exchanged a glance, clearly worried about whether Jiang Du had heard them.

Jiang Du had indeed heard them. She didn't say anything, just walked over and greeted them proactively, saying, "The window isn't closed properly. It might sleet tonight."

One of the girls gave an awkward laugh. "Jiang Du, you're so thoughtful. We didn't even notice. So, you came back to close the window?"

There were many people in the class, so even though it was cold, a few windows were left cracked open for ventilation.

Jiang Du nodded. The girl said hurriedly, "Then you can lock the door. We're leaving now." After saying that, the two of them rushed off, leaving Jiang Du standing there alone in a daze for a few seconds.

When she came to her senses, she stepped on a desk, stood on her tiptoes, and shut the last window tightly. After getting down, Jiang Du took out a tissue and repeatedly wiped the spot where her feet had been.

After checking everything from front to back, she finally came out with a sense of relief. The classroom lock was a bit stiff. She used two fingers to apply force, but it wouldn't lock, and her hand hurt from the pressure. Jiang Du's face turned red from the effort. The lights on the floor were about to be turned off. She bent over, trying to see what was wrong.

"Planning to pick the lock?"

Wei Qingyue's voice suddenly came from behind her. Jiang Du's back stiffened. She couldn't help but look up and say reservedly, "No, I was trying to lock it." But what echoed in her mind was the conversation between those two students. Her gaze instantly dimmed.

Hearing this, Wei Qingyue simply pushed her aside. With a click, he locked it effortlessly. He let out a low laugh. "You really have no strength. Now I remember, you sat out during the military training."

There was a hint of teasing in his words, and Jiang Du was instantly mortified.

At that time, she sat by the side of the sports field every day. Many people knew that there was a girl in Class Two who didn't participate in military training but still had to sit on the field. To some, this seemed quite pretentious. If you're not participating, then don't participate. Why bother sitting there?

She wanted to explain that she had a heart condition and had undergone surgery, but she was also afraid Wei Qingyue would think she was pretending to be weak. After hesitating for a moment, she only said, "Thank you for helping me lock the door."

Her voice sounded a little down. Wei Qingyue glanced at her. "Did you have a fight with a classmate?"

Huh? Jiang Du looked up in surprise, stammering a bit, "You, how did you know?"

"When Zhang Xiaoqiang and I came back, that classmate of yours was complaining to Zhang Xiaoqiang in the hallway."

Jiang Du's face instantly turned pale, as if something inside her had been violently squeezed.

Seeing her reaction, Wei Qingyue smiled. "Don't be afraid. Although I can't say I understand you, my intuition about people is quite accurate. I know you're not like what your classmate said. If she says that about you again, you should confront her face-to-face."

Jiang Du looked at Wei Qingyue in disbelief. He said, "I know." In fact, those two words alone were enough. All of it, all her feelings for him, didn't need his response. Just this one moment of understanding was enough to comfort her entire youth. Heaven knows how grateful she was to him for saying that.

The wind blew into the hallway. Jiang Du was stunned for a moment, then suddenly realized that the hallway windows weren't closed either. She quickly ran over and slammed several windows shut with loud bangs.

Wei Qingyue watched her from behind. Just as he was about to remind her, the lights went out.

As expected, the girl let out a small gasp. He took out his phone. The school didn't allow phones, but of course, in 2006, very few high school students had them anyway.

Wei Qingyue's phone was the latest model. He turned on the flashlight, and a beam of light appeared ahead.

"Why are you closing the windows?" Wei Qingyue motioned for her to come and walk with him, but Jiang Du was frozen. It was very dark, but Wei Qingyue himself seemed to have become a source of light. The light was too bright; she had never been this close to it. In that instant, she felt more of a bewildered timidity than anything else.

"Jiang Du?" Wei Qingyue called her, a little puzzled, seeing that the girl wasn't moving.

She subconsciously believed that the ones who deserved to walk side-by-side with Wei Qingyue were girls like Zhang Xiaoqiang—outstanding, confident, and bright. Not like her, a little snail hiding in a corner, carrying its shell, only wanting to stay safely and peacefully in its own world.

Her body was stiff, and in the end, she still kept a little distance from him. The faint scent of orchid from the boy drifted over; Jiang Du suspected it was the smell of some kind of laundry detergent. Their clothes accidentally brushed against each other, just a light touch, but Jiang Du pressed her lips together. Every nerve, every cell in her body was tense. Her heart was no longer her own.

"Why did you close the windows just now?" Wei Qingyue asked her again.

The silence was finally broken. She tried her best to answer in a normal voice, "Teacher Xu said there would be sleet. If it blows in during the night, it might freeze."

Wei Qingyue laughed again, for reasons unknown.

Jiang Du's scalp tingled, and her heart filled with apprehension. Was he thinking she was a hypocrite, deliberately showing off her kindness? She wished she had just said she closed them out of habit... The girl was agonizing with regret, wondering why she had blurted out the truth without thinking.

Outside the academic building, a gust of cold wind came, making one's throat tighten. Wei Qingyue was still wearing very little. He turned off the flashlight and said, "Can you get back on your own?"

It was too short. The walk seemed to be over in a few seconds. Jiang Du had never wished so hard that the hallway was several kilometers long, so she could walk with him a little longer.

She hummed in agreement and said, "Thank you so much for today."

The wind was bitingly cold. Jiang Du looked at the sky and shyly mustered up the courage to say, "The weather forecast said there's going to be sleet. You'll catch a cold easily if you don't wear enough. A cold is a hassle. Even though it's a minor illness, it makes your head feel dizzy and foggy, which is very uncomfortable."

She couldn't bring herself to say it directly: "You should wear more when it's cold."

The girl spoke in a roundabout, subtle way, her thoughts hidden in the wind.

"That day I got scolded, you were gloating from the opposite balcony, weren't you?" Wei Qingyue joked for some reason. That day, he had seen Jiang Du. In fact, he had known for a while that she lived across from him. He had once inadvertently seen the girl using a clothes pole to laboriously lift a sweater up, drip, drip, drip, as if the water hadn't been wrung out at all. Only then did he understand that Jiang Du truly had no strength.

Jiang Du was startled again. She was flustered, and for a moment, she couldn't even come up with a lie.

"I wasn't gloating, really," Jiang Du said, her face flushed red as her brain worked rapidly. "That day, a lot of students saw you. I was just watching with everyone else to see what was going on. I really didn't mean to laugh at you."

The girl's demeanor seemed vaguely familiar to Wei Qingyue, hazy and elusive, giving him a sense of bewilderment. He didn't know where this fleeting emotion came from. After saying goodbye to her and returning to the dorm, amid the noisy and chaotic laughter, it became even more impossible to trace its origin.

Until the next day, when it really did sleet. Lead-colored clouds filled the sky, and cold rain mixed with snowflakes, melting into every brick on campus. Lin Haiyang suddenly sought him out again and delivered a letter to him.

Wei Qingyue had originally thought he wouldn't receive this kind of letter again, especially since a long time had passed in between.

The same envelope, the same stationery, and the same handwriting.

At that time, after Wang Jingjing finished reading this third letter, she tilted her head and pondered, asking, "Jiang Du, are you writing a novel? Where would my family have a Chinese toon tree?"

Jiang Du had anticipated that Wang Jingjing might have big doubts. She responded calmly, "Writing it this way makes it more personal. I think telling it gently is better, don't you think?"

Wang Jingjing pouted and said, "What do I think? I think you sound like an old lady, nagging and talking about boring things. How about this, let's copy some love poems for him? The kind that no one has read before, the really talented ones? You must have read some, right?"

"But those were written by other people." Jiang Du always had some inexplicable principles she adhered to.

Wang Jingjing couldn't quite understand her way of thinking. "So what? Even in essays, you're allowed to quote famous people."

"This is a letter, not an essay. A letter should be about the truest things." Jiang Du refused to yield. At times like this, she was as stubborn as a mule, although Wang Jingjing didn't understand why stubbornness was compared to a mule; she had no such life experience.

But she had a quick tongue and was best at retorting, "My family doesn't have a Chinese toon tree, so that's not true either!"

Jiang Du was at a loss for words for a moment. After a pause, she said, "Artistic truth."

"Oh, come on! What is all this? You're killing me. Jiang Du, you're actually hilarious!" Wang Jingjing burst out laughing. After she was done, she still happily transcribed the letter. As she got to the end, she couldn't help but mutter again.

When the letter was given to Wei Qingyue, the weather was terrible. After the evening self-study session, everyone ducked their heads and yelled "It's freezing!" as they ran to the dorms. Some were particularly lazy and didn't fetch hot water every day, borrowing from one person today and another tomorrow, or simply not washing their feet and jumping straight into bed. Although Wei Qingyue wasn't fussy about details, he still maintained basic hygiene. He slept on the top bunk. After washing up, he climbed onto his bed, wearing thin pajamas, and sat there reading the letter.

The favorite topic of conversation among the boys in the dorm was always girls. Wei Qingyue usually listened in silence, smiling silently, and rarely participated in such topics. But the topic itself was appealing. His bunkmate across from him, a short, skinny boy with a face full of acne, had mentioned Jiang Du a few times.

To his surprise, the other boys in the dorm also had an impression of Jiang Du. They said she was a true beauty, but just looked like her health wasn't great, as if a gust of wind could blow her away. Someone jokingly called her Sister Lin*.

*T/N: Lin Daiyu is a character from a famous classic titled Dream of the Red Chamber. A well-educated, intelligent, witty and beautiful young woman of physical frailness.

Was this the same girl he knew? Wei Qingyue always felt that the Jiang Du the boys talked about and the one he knew were not the same person.

He didn't actually remember many of the details. Every time he ran into her, Wei Qingyue would just say something casually. To him, she was just a schoolmate with whom he had some minor interactions. If he really had to recall what he had said to Jiang Du, he could only remember a third of it, at most.

The dorm lights went out at eleven o'clock sharp. Wei Qingyue turned on the flashlight on his phone. Beside him, the boys were talking about girls.

"Hello.

It's been a long time since I've written to you. I hope you are doing well. I think you're probably the same as always, right? You were first again in the mid-term exams. Everyone is talking about you. Your name represents the highest honor.

Time passes so quickly. Before I knew it, another autumn has passed. Winter always feels exceptionally long, and you have to wear bulky clothes. I don't really like winter, but on snowy days, I quite like the scene of huddling by a small stove with my family, roasting some sweet potatoes and chestnuts, while the wind and snow rage outside. But the classroom is less than ideal. It's very cold, and I hate being on cleaning duty the most. The benches are hard, the desks are hard, and when you swing the broom, dust flies right in front of your eyes. Why is there so much dust in the winter! It lands on the desk and can't be wiped clean with a facial tissue; you have to use a wet wipe. Some students like to use a book to sweep back and forth a few times and then sit down. Can that really get it clean? The students in our class seem to like doing that. I wonder how you wipe your desk and bench.

Perhaps the greatest joy of winter is being able to look forward to the new year and spring. Speaking of spring, we used to have a Chinese toon tree in the yard of my old house. As soon as spring arrived, my family would pick the tenderest toon sprouts. They can be scrambled with eggs or mixed with tofu, and their color is so delicate. People who aren't used to the taste of toon sprouts might find it strange, but once you're used to it, you'll smell a very special fragrance. Unfortunately, we later moved, so we can no longer pick toon sprouts in the spring, nor can we see the swallows that came to build their nests under the eaves every year. Although the residential complex we live in now is tidier and more convenient for school, I still miss the old yard more. Most importantly, back then, my family members weren't so old. For every year I grow older, they grow a year older. When I go to university and start working... I don't really dare to think about these things. There is truly nothing more ruthless than time.

By the way, the leaves of that big tree near the library have almost all fallen off. Its branches are twisted and crooked, and it suddenly has a very desperate and withered quality, completely different from its domineering presence when it was full of lush leaves. It used to be able to scare me, but not anymore. Instead, I feel a bit of pity for it. After all, it's the only tree there, all alone. There's a small flower bed next to it with many flowers, but they're not of the same kind. I wonder if you've ever had this feeling, that when you're not the same kind of person as others, you always feel like something is empty somewhere. For example, others have something that you don't. Of course, I'm not saying I'm the type of person who likes to wallow in self-pity. I just feel that having flaws, although not painful to the bone, can sometimes make you feel empty, like a corner is missing that can't be filled.

I don't know why, but as I'm writing this letter today, it has taken on a pessimistic tone, which was not my intention. Maybe it's just because the days are short and the nights are long, making one prone to overthinking. I imagine you're definitely not like me, right? You must have clear goals and definite plans. I heard you're planning to go abroad. You'll be going to a very distant country to study, right? If you like that place a lot, you'll stay there, right? I don't know if you have family here that you're reluctant to leave, and I don't know if there's anything about Mei Zhong that makes you reluctant to leave. I really like Mei Zhong, very much. I feel very lucky to be able to study here. I think that no matter where I go in the future or how old I become, I will miss everything about Mei Zhong.

It's been really cold recently. Everyone has started wearing more clothes. I don't know if some people aren't afraid of the cold; they wear very little and don't seem to be afraid of getting sick. But I've heard from my family that if you wear too little when you're young, you'll get arthritis when you're old. Arthritis is very painful, and I really can't imagine the feeling of not being able to run and walk freely. So, since we have to use our bones for a lifetime, it's probably better to cherish them (this is just my personal opinion).

This is the third letter. I wonder if you will see it. Every time I start writing, I actually think about this question. In any case, I still hope you can see it. Of course, if it bothers you or annoys you, I won't write again (this is a problem I've suddenly become aware of. I don't want you to hate me. Strangely, I used to think it was enough just to write it out, without ever considering whether you would be annoyed. I was too selfish). But right now, I don't even know if you've seen the first two letters, so maybe these worries are just me talking to myself.

But no matter what, finally, I want to wish you an early "Happy New Year," and also, "A healthy and peaceful new year, with grades as good as ever." This blessing is valid every year."