Not until the afternoon classes began did Chi Wan reappear in the classroom.
Jiang Zhi, keeping his head down, merely glanced up when she sat down before returning to whatever he was tapping away at on his phone. His knuckles were pronounced, his ten fingers dancing rapidly across the typing keys. Chi Wan guessed he must be playing a game; boys all liked them, Yan Xu for instance.
Yan Xu, who was usually at odds with her, turned around to look at her repeatedly the moment she came to class, acting all shady.
When his peripheral vision drifted her way yet again, Chi Wan asked coldly, "Something the matter?"
"S—something? Nothing's the matter." Yan Xu awkwardly fake-coughed twice, looking entirely guilty as charged.
His chair was kicked from underneath by Jiang Zhi's foot, and he heard the latter issue a warning without lifting his head: "Pay attention to the lecture."
"I..." Yan Xu was completely dumbfounded.
Pay attention? Pay attention to the lecture, of all things?
Since when had either of them ever listened to a lecture?
He turned halfway around to look at his head-down, dedicated good buddy, feeling only that the person before him had become terribly unfamiliar.
He muttered hesitantly, "Bro?"
Jiang Zhi lifted his head impatiently and asked with a frown, "What?"
Yan Xu said in a low voice, "I don't have a book, how am I supposed to pay attention?"
Hearing this, Jiang Zhi paused for a moment before a sharp snort of laughter came from beside them.
Yan Xu heard it too, glaring over with zero intimidation in his eyes.
"If you don't have a book, why don't you borrow one from your deskmate? You don't have one, so I suddenly do?" Jiang Zhi tossed his phone into the desk compartment, finding it amusing, and indeed laughed aloud.
Yan Xu felt doubly humiliated. He hadn't been wrong after all: ever since Chi Wan arrived, nothing went right for him. His master no longer loved him, and his senior brother no longer doted on him.
He turned away in a huff. Watching that indignant back, Chi Wan shook her head, picked up her own textbook, and flung it with force. The book sailed over Yan Xu's head and landed squarely on his desk.
The brooding Yan Xu was startled, the profanity slipping right out of his mouth: "Who the hell... trying to scare the hell out of me?" His voice tapered off toward the end as he saw clearly that the object before him was a mathematics book with a clean cover.
It had come from right behind his head. He turned back to see both of them with their heads down, each looking thoroughly busy.
Opening the cover, he saw the name "Chi Wan" written in sharp, powerful strokes—a very striking handwriting, yet one that carried a certain murderous aura for a girl; the spaces between the strokes of those characters seemed to gleam with flashing swords and glinting sabers, far too sharp.
Come to think of it, there weren't many girls who could throw a grown man to the ground. Nor were there many girls who took up sanda.
"Makes sense, makes sense," Yan Xu muttered to himself.
He listened to the teacher's explanation and flipped through the book, over and over, yet couldn't find where the teacher was lecturing, and the book in his hands looked like sheer gibberish.
Chi Wan's book was remarkably clean; aside from the name on the cover, there wasn't a single mark inside.
Yan Xu was baffled. Wasn't she supposed to be a top student entering Class 1? How was her book whiter than his own face?
He turned and leaned half his torso over, peering at Chi Wan's desk. The girl was wholly absorbed in working through problems, string after string of numbers and letters springing to life beneath her pen.
"What are you writing here?" Yan Xu asked in confusion, genuinely clueless after missing a whole period.
Chi Wan lifted her pen to cross out a flawed formula and replied, "Physics Made Easy."
"Oh~" Yan Xu nodded, then asked with utmost earnestness, "Does it become easy once you write it down?"
Chi Wan raised her gaze with a complicated look, pressed her lips together, and opened her mouth as if wanting to say something, before letting out a sigh and returning to her calculations.
Unsettled by her gaze, Yan Xu rubbed his head, having no idea what was wrong with his question—wasn't it called *Made Easy*?
"Idiot." Jiang Zhi finished typing out his last line of code beside them and said earnestly, "I told you before to study properly and pay attention in class."
"No, bro, didn't you not listen either... and you don't have a book." Yan Xu's voice dwindled under Jiang Zhi's increasingly sharp glare, and he finally added defensively, "I'm going abroad next year anyway."
Jiang Zhi sighed. "So, do you speak English?"
"Um... No. I can hire a translator." Yan Xu thought this was a brilliant idea, his face full of smug pride.
Jiang Zhi: "..."
Chi Wan found it unbelievable upon hearing it, yet somehow felt it wasn't entirely wrong either. Treating an English class as a Chinese translation lecture seemed—well, not entirely out of the question.
After school that afternoon, Chi Wan made a trip to the martial arts gym, training for over half an hour before heading home.
Just as she reached the doorway and prepared to take out her keys to unlock the door, she heard the sound of a heavy object crashing to the floor inside, followed by Song Wenbin's furious roaring and Fu Ping's loud sobbing.
"I work my fingers to the bone every day, pandering to other people's faces, and when I come home I have to look at your withered mug, crying, all you know how to do is cry..." Song Wenbin had shed his usual elite image of tailored suits and slicked hair; even through the door panel, Chi Wan could picture his hideous expression.
Chi Wan raised her hand holding the keys, then lowered it again. Thrusting her hands into her pockets, she turned and walked back downstairs.On the ground floor, she ran into Song Xuan, who had been out playing until just now.
Seeing Song Xuan looking thoroughly cheerful, she kindly offered a warning: "I'd advise you to wait a while before going up."
Song Xuan turned a deaf ear, snorted at her, and hopped and skipped his way upstairs.
Chi Wan let out a scoff. She found a stone bench to sit on downstairs, tilting her head to look up at this somewhat aged residential building of over a dozen floors with no elevator. The Song family lived on the thirteenth floor.
It was already some time past the end of the workday, and from the outside she could see many households cooking meals, wisps of smoke drifting from kitchen windows.
With a vacant gaze fixed on space, her thoughts drifted far away.
The school had already broken for the holidays that day, and the college entrance examinations were the next day. She had packed everything she needed for the following day and gone to sleep early to rest and build up her strength. Yet she had never expected to be choked awake in her sleep by smoke. Outside her bedroom were the cries for help of Song Wenbin and his wife, alongside Song Xuan's terrified weeping. By the time she fully regained consciousness and realized what was happening, rushing to open her door, the doorknob of her bedroom was already too scorching to touch directly.
She had been forgotten in that room; no one had heard her cries for help. Looking back now, how could they possibly not have heard her when she screamed so loudly and in such panic? They simply hadn't had the spare energy to care, unwilling to waste any time on her.
Before long, she had seen that little brat Song Xuan run crying down the stairs, glance around frantically at the entrance, and then sprint toward Chi Wan.
Watching his pitiful appearance, Chi Wan couldn't help but laugh.
Song Xuan sniffled, sucked a stray stream of snot back up his nose, and wailed loudly, "Chi Wan, Mom and Dad are fighting, and they even smashed the television, boo-hoo..."
Turning her head away at the sight of his disgusting display, Chi Wan gave a cold, indifferent "Oh."
"How can you be like this? If they keep fighting and get divorced, we won't have a mom and dad anymore." Seeing her apathetic attitude, Song Xuan grew frantic.
Chi Wan sneered inwardly—the only ones left without a mom and dad would be her, Chi Wan.
Unable to comprehend Song Xuan's anxiety and terror, she said flatly, "If they get a divorce, they get a divorce. Do you really think nobody will want you?"
Tearful and snot-nosed, Song Xuan poured out his grievances. "If that happens, I won't be able to stay with both Mom and Dad, and I won't know who to choose. Dad has money, but he yells at me and hits me, and Mom is really nice to me."
Yet he thought of how Fu Ping usually threw money around recklessly; although she had a job, her salary was low, and the household relied essentially on Song Wenbin's income.
Sniffling again, he muttered to himself, "But if Mom is by herself, she might not even be able to feed herself."
The mere thought that following Fu Ping might mean no more snacks, no more pretty designer clothes and shoes, and no allowance or money for games made Song Xuan feel as though the sky were falling.
Chi Wan looked with cold detachment at this younger brother five years her junior; an eleven-year-old child already knew how to weigh pros and cons, caring only about who treated him better and who had more money.
She smiled bitterly at herself. This was her family!