Chapter 10: Does That Make You Happy?
The physics lab was on the fourth floor of the Comprehensive Building, at the far east end. It had one more south-facing window than the art studio.
Yu Cheng's group was the first to finish the experiment. She pulled the last wire off the terminal block, and the bulb went dark.
Her partner was filling in data on the lab report. Yu Cheng zeroed the multimeter, coiled the wires back into the parts box, and leaned back in her chair. Nothing left to do.
A few other groups were still fumbling along. The room was noisy—voices, the hum of current, chair legs scraping the floor, all jumbled together.
Yu Cheng propped her chin on one hand and glanced out the window.
She pulled her gaze back, fished her phone from her uniform pocket, and held it under the lab bench, screen dimmed to the lowest setting. Unlocked it. Opened WeChat.
A new avatar sat in her friends list—a golden puppy, fluffy, one ear flopped over, round eyes tilted at the camera like it was cocking its head.
The remark name beside it was one she'd just changed: Shi Qi. Shi Qi's WeChat name was simple—just two numbers: 17.
Yu Cheng stared at the puppy avatar for a few seconds. Then she tapped into Shi Qi's Moments. No three-day limit, no six-month limit. She could scroll from the latest post all the way back to the beginning.
Mostly drawings—sketches, watercolors, digital pieces—with the occasional slice of daily life mixed in.
The latest was from last week: an unfinished still-life sketch, apples and a clay pot, the light and shadow handled cleanly. The caption was four words: *Can't finish this one.*
She scrolled further. A watercolor landscape—the flower bed by the school track. Caption: *Slacking off in art class.*
Further down. A digital painting of an orange tabby crouched in a corner of campus, chubby, eyes squinted shut, soaking up the sun. Caption: *Every time I feed it, it acts like I owe it canned food.*
Yu Cheng's thumb paused on the screen. She knew that cat. More precisely, she'd seen Shi Qi feeding it.
It was an evening in the second semester of freshman year. She'd finished a mock physics competition paper and come out of the Comprehensive Building. The sky had already gone dark.
One of the streetlights behind the cafeteria was out. In the dim light, cutting through the back way to the dorms, she saw someone crouching by the wall.
The figure had her back to Yu Cheng—schoolbag slung over one shoulder, uniform sleeves rolled to the elbows—breaking something apart in her hands and setting the pieces on the ground.
She was talking while she fed the cat. Her voice was low; from that distance, Yu Cheng couldn't make out the words. She only saw her reach out to pat the cat's head, get her hand swatted by a paw, and then laugh.
Yu Cheng stood in the shadows beyond the streetlight and watched for a long while before she left. She knew who that was. She'd remembered her since the first day of school.
After that, she kept seeing Shi Qi in different places. In the hallway, Shi Qi would pause at the door and hold it for whoever was behind her—didn't matter who.
In the cafeteria line, when someone squeezed past with a bowl of soup, Shi Qi would shift aside to make room.
The outstanding works exhibition in the Comprehensive Building hallway changed regularly, and every time it did, Yu Cheng slowed down as she passed—because a lot of Shi Qi's pieces were on those walls.
One was a painting of the small river behind the school, a few withered leaves floating on the surface, the reeds on the far bank bent sideways by the wind. A small label in the bottom right corner of the frame: *Grade 2, Class 3, Shi Qi.*
Shi Qi didn't know about any of this. She probably assumed the two of them had never really crossed paths.
On the first day of school, she'd pulled Yu Cheng out of that pack of boys by the flower bed, then clapped her hands and walked off—probably figured it was a small favor, done and forgotten.
But to Yu Cheng, it wasn't a small favor. That day, she'd been surrounded for several minutes. She'd tried being polite. She'd tried looking cold. The boys wouldn't scatter.
Then Shi Qi appeared, walked straight through the group, and grabbed her by the wrist.
The physics teacher rapped on the blackboard at the front and said groups that had finished could study on their own.
Yu Cheng slid her phone deeper into the desk compartment. The screen went dark for a second. She lit it again.
Kept scrolling through Moments. A photo from last winter—Shi Qi in a gray scarf, a cup of hot milk tea in her hand, flashing a peace sign at the camera.
Her hair was shorter than it was now, which made her look even thinner. In the photo, she was grinning.
A repost—the school art department's congratulatory announcement that Shi Qi had won gold in the citywide youth painting competition. Her caption was a single emoji: a little figure holding up a trophy.
It took Yu Cheng less than ten minutes to scroll through Shi Qi's entire Moments. She closed it and went back to the chat screen.
She thought for a moment, then typed. First attempt: "Are you free tonight?" Deleted.
Second attempt: "Are you coming to the track tonight?" Deleted that too. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She stared down at the screen. Beside her, her partner was hunched over the desk, writing the last paragraph of the lab report.
Yu Cheng lowered her eyes and typed a third line. "Want to walk the track together tonight?"
The moment she sent it, she flipped the phone face-down on the desk. Her partner glanced up. "Why's your face so red?"
Yu Cheng said it was the heat. Her partner didn't push it.
In the art studio, Shi Qi set down her pencil and rubbed her wrist. This art class was a lost cause. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and checked the WeChat notification.
Yu Cheng: "Want to walk the track together tonight?"
Shi Qi stared at the line. Her heart rate kicked up again.
She read it several times. Read it, pressed the screen dark, lit it up, read it again.
In the window between dinner and evening self-study, the track wasn't crowded with runners—it was crowded with couples circling lap after lap.
She used to complain to Liu Qingqiao when she passed them: don't these people get tired? What's the point of walking a track at night? Liu Qingqiao said she had no sense of romance. Shi Qi said romance my ass, the track is crawling with mosquitoes.
Now, staring at the words "walk the track" on her screen, she had zero desire to complain.
She replied. "Sure." Then added a dog-nodding sticker—same breed as her avatar.
In the physics lab, Yu Cheng felt the phone face-down on the desk buzz softly. She didn't check it right away. Waited a few seconds. Then flipped it over, screen up.
Shi Qi had replied. The dog-nodding sticker bobbed on the screen, ears twitching. Yu Cheng watched it for a moment, then pocketed the phone and turned back to her physics textbook.
She turned two pages and realized she hadn't absorbed a single word. She turned another page. This time, the corner of her mouth escaped her control. Her partner looked up to borrow an eraser, caught that slight curve at the corner of Yu Cheng's lips, and swallowed the question.
Yu Cheng was smiling.
Her partner turned back around without a word and decided not to ask. At the front, the physics teacher called out a few names and said lab reports were due that afternoon—no report, no participation points.
A groan rippled through the room. Yu Cheng pulled out her lab report too, filled in the data, wrote the conclusion. Neat handwriting, clear logic.
She wrote diligently, but every couple of lines she'd pause, slip a hand into her pocket to touch her phone, confirm the screen hadn't lit up, then keep writing. She did it three or four times, never more than a minute apart.
Her partner, still grinding through her own report, finally couldn't take it. She poked Yu Cheng's arm with her pen. "Yu Cheng."
"Mm."
"You got answers on your phone?"
"No."
"Then why do you keep checking it?"
Yu Cheng took the phone out of her pocket and set it on the desk, screen up, about ten centimeters from her hand. "Just leaving it there," she said.
Her partner looked at the phone. Looked at Yu Cheng. Opened her mouth, closed it, and turned back around.
When the bell rang, Yu Cheng was the first person from Class 2 to have her bag packed and be out the physics lab door. Li Wenyin chased her for two steps, calling for her to wait so they could walk back to the classroom together. Yu Cheng didn't even turn her head. "Go on ahead," she said.
Yu Cheng went down from the fourth floor, cut through the connecting corridor, and walked to the entrance of Class 3's art studio.
She saw Shi Qi.
Shi Qi was hunched over her easel, one hand propping up her chin, the other dragging a pencil across the paper. Drawing slowly.
Liu Qingqiao sat beside her, already finished, already packing up.
Yu Cheng stood in the doorway for about a minute. Then, as if she'd sensed something, Shi Qi lifted her head and glanced toward the door.
The instant their eyes met, the pencil in Shi Qi's hand dropped onto the desk, rolled twice, and hit the floor with a crisp clatter.
Yu Cheng took out her phone, lit the screen, and held up the dog-nodding sticker from their chat. Through the glass window, Shi Qi saw it perfectly.
Yu Cheng put the phone away, nodded at her once, and turned to go.
The nod meant *See you tonight.*
Shi Qi picked up the pencil from the floor. The tip had snapped off. She watched Yu Cheng's back disappear around the corner of the corridor.
Liu Qingqiao had watched the whole thing from the sidelines. She patted Shi Qi's shoulder and, in the tone of someone who'd seen it all before, said, "You're done for."
Shi Qi didn't argue. With that broken pencil, she finished the last stroke of her drawing. Then she peeled the paper off the board, folded it carefully, and tucked it into her sketchbook.