Wild Fire Bids Farewell To Summer Chapter 4

Before Pure Brightness

It was nearly nine-thirty.

On the third floor of the Miluo Building, in the Grade 11, Class 3 classroom, the ceiling fan whirled overhead. Its bearings lacked oil, emitting a rhythmic creak with every rotation. The breeze brushed past Wei Zhiheng’s nape, carrying away a sliver of heat, but his school uniform shirt was already soaked. It clung to his shoulder blades, the fabric heavy and saturated with sweat, sticking to his skin.

He gripped a 2B pencil in his right hand. The hexagonal barrel, printed with “For Exam Use” on its yellow lacquer, had been partially picked away by his fingernails, revealing the wood beneath. The tip, once a sharp cone from the sharpener, now skidded across the answer sheet. His hand was shaking—not a blatant wobble, but a subtle tremor of the muscles beneath the skin, starting from the tendons on the inside of his wrist and pulsing down to his knuckles. The pencil tip left jagged lines within the bubbles of the answer sheet, where graphite powder accumulated in a dark, grayish-black heap.

Question twelve. The standard equation of a hyperbola. He calculated the answer to be 2, but his hand refused to cooperate. The digit came out slanted, the bottom curve dragging into a tail, the strokes deformed. He applied more pressure, and the lead snapped with a sharp crack. Black fragments leaped up, landing on the answer sheet and the back of his hand. He didn’t wipe them away, letting the black specks remain on his skin.

The exam paper reeked of ink. Printed less than three days ago, the chemical solvents hadn’t fully evaporated, leaving a pungent, bitter scent reminiscent of pesticides. Leaning down, Wei Zhiheng couldn’t smell his own sweat; there was only this ink, heavy at desk height, stinging his lungs with every breath.

He raised his left hand. Not a direct reach, but first letting it hang by his side, fingers spread to let the sweat on his cuff air-dry for a second before lifting it. The proctor sat in a rattan chair by the podium, reading a copy of the Guangxi Daily. The rustle of the newspaper was constant. The teacher didn’t look up, but the two surveillance cameras at the front and back of the room glowed with red lights—the size of red beans, embedded in black hemispherical shells like petechiae on skin.

“Teacher, restroom,” Wei Zhiheng said. The words were squeezed from his throat, dry and parched.

The teacher nodded, the newspaper rustling loudly. Wei Zhiheng stood up, the legs of his plastic chair screeching against the terrazzo floor. He walked toward the back door, his pace controlled and steady, though his knees felt weak, losing support with every step. His right hand was shoved in his trouser pocket, clutching half an eraser.

The eraser had a transparent case. After three months of use, the polyethylene shell was no longer smooth, coated in a layer of grayish-white finger oil that revealed swirls of fingerprints under the light. Eraser shavings and white powder had gathered inside. He used his thumbnail to pry open the latch; the plastic emitted a fatigued snap, the hinge already turning white and on the verge of breaking.

He pulled out a slip of paper. It had been torn from a notebook, the fibers coarse and the edges ragged. Seven words were written on it: “What’s for lunch? No spice.” The pencil handwriting was slanted, the final stroke of the character for “spice” dragged down too long, the lines breaking. It had been written with his right hand, but his knuckles had stiffened while gripping the pencil, resulting in uneven depth and fractured strokes.

He folded the note and stuffed it into the eraser case. The fibers of the paper’s edge scraped against the plastic interior with a faint friction. The moment the latch clicked shut, there was a soft snap.

A voice-activated light in the corridor was broken. The tungsten filament had snapped, leaving a charred black spot that cast a flickering shadow on the ceiling. Wei Zhiheng walked close to the wall. The limestone brick wall was damp with moisture; his fingertips brushed off a layer of white frost, the powder embedding itself into his fingernails with a dry grit. His heart was racing, blood thrumming in his ears, but his face remained expressionless. This was a “normal” walk—the “normal” pace of a student going to the restroom.

He pulled his right hand out of his pocket, holding the eraser. His palm was slick with sweat, and a layer of moisture immediately fogged the plastic case, blurring the finger oil into a cloudy mess. He reached the middle of the corridor, directly beneath the surveillance camera. He didn’t look up, but he knew the red dot was aimed straight at the crown of his head.

He loosened his fingers.

The eraser fell. He didn’t throw it; he simply let go. It hit the terrazzo floor and bounced once with the distinct light thud of plastic. Then it rolled, spinning and veering toward the right wall, coming to a stop about a foot away from the baseboard. The case faced upward; through the cloudy plastic, the white eraser inside looked yellowed, its edges worn and blurred.

Wei Zhiheng didn’t stop, maintaining his pace. He walked into the restroom and entered a stall. The metal latch was rusted, moving with a sticky resistance. He unbuckled his belt. The sound of urine hitting the ceramic was loud, its temperature slightly higher than his own, releasing a faint, pungent odor into the air. He counted his heartbeat—about ninety beats per minute, faster than usual.

Thirty seconds. Roughly thirty seconds. He flushed, zipped up, and walked to the sink. He turned the tap; the water pressure was high, turning white as it hit the back of his hand. The water was ice-cold, stinging his fingertips until they went numb. He looked into the mirror. The surface was mottled with water stains. His face, reflected in the shifting water, appeared distorted—his complexion gray, with dark, bluish shadows hanging under his eyes.

He flicked his hands dry without using a towel, droplets splattering against the mirror and the wall.

Leaving the restroom, he saw Huang Jinye standing by the corridor window. He was leaning against the windowsill, his left leg braced against the wall and his right leg supporting his weight. His left hand was in his pocket, while his right held a bottle of mineral water. His school jacket was only zipped to his chest, revealing a black athletic vest underneath. A dark, circular sweat stain marked the center of his chest.

He turned to look at Wei Zhiheng, his gaze unfocused, his eyes fixed on the wall behind Wei Zhiheng.

Wei Zhiheng walked over, his right foot stepping firmly on the floor. Huang Jinye didn’t move until Wei Zhiheng reached his side, their shoulders nearly touching. Heat exchanged between them; Huang Jinye’s body was burning, radiating the post-training warmth of the rubber track mixed with the sharp spice of eucalyptus candy.

Huang Jinye bent down. The movement was natural as his right hand reached for the floor. He snatched up the eraser with a quick motion. His fingers were rough, his knuckles prominent, and there was dark grime under his fingernails—coal cinders and limestone powder. He shoved the eraser into his pocket, the entire process taking less than two seconds. The surveillance camera recorded it: a student bending down to pick something up, standing straight, taking a drink of water, and heading toward the restroom.

He unscrewed the cap of the mineral water, took a sip, tightened it, and walked toward the men’s room, brushing past Wei Zhiheng. Their shoulders bumped—not hard. Wei Zhiheng smelled the sweat on him even more strongly now, along with a hint of graphite from a pencil lead.

The scrape of a fingernail.

Huang Jinye’s thumbnail scraped against the eraser case, making a faint “skree” sound. A chill ran down the back of Wei Zhiheng’s hand as a hangnail on the edge of Huang’s finger grazed his skin, leaving a white mark. It didn’t break the skin, but it stung.

Wei Zhiheng walked back into the classroom; the back door was still open. He sat down, and the plastic chair screeched again. The student in the next seat looked up at him before looking back down. It was a boy with glasses; the lenses reflected the light, hiding his eyes, showing only his twitching nostrils.

The proctor was still reading the paper, turning a page. Wei Zhiheng looked down at his answer sheet and found that his elbow had swept the broken pencil fragments into a small black pile. He brushed them onto the floor with his finger. The debris landed on his shoes—gray canvas sneakers with worn-white toes.

He began answering question thirteen. His hand was still shaking, but not as violently—it was an aftershock. He bubbled in option B; the lines were still uneven and jagged, but dark enough for the machine to read. He wrote slowly, pressing down with every stroke, the graphite rasping against the paper.

Nine minutes later, Huang Jinye was in the gymnasium.

The space was vast and echoed loudly. The shadow of the basketball hoop loomed large on the floor. Over twenty student-athletes sat on folding chairs in front of desks, the legs of which were wobbly and reinforced with wire. Someone was shaking their leg, the metal chair making a rhythmic clatter; someone was spinning a pen, the cap tapping against the desk; others were panting, their breath heavy from just finishing a warm-up.

Huang Jinye sat near the door. He opened his palm, the eraser lying in his hand. There was a new scratch on the case now, made by the keys in his pocket—fresh and white. He pinched the latch open with his thumb and forefinger, the plastic snapping.

He took out the note and unfolded it. Seven words, slanted. He stared at it for two seconds, then flipped it over. He pulled a 2B pencil from his pocket; the barrel was covered in teeth marks, jagged indentations from when he chewed it while thinking.

He wrote: “Noodles on the second floor, already grabbed a spot.”

His handwriting was equally crooked. He held the pencil incorrectly; there was a thick callus on the inside of the first joint of his middle finger, formed from gripping barbells, not pens. The pencil scraped across the paper with a rasping sound. The radical for the character “grab” was written large, the horizontal and vertical strokes crossing with such force that they left raised marks on the back of the paper. He wrote in a hurry, the pencil lead pausing at the final stroke of “spot,” leaving a dark hole.

Sweat stained the paper. It wasn’t Wei Zhiheng’s, but his own. His palm was damp and hot, causing a small wet smudge to bloom around the word “already.” The paper fibers swelled as they absorbed the moisture, and the gray handwriting began to bleed.

He folded the note and stuffed it back into the eraser. The sound of the latch closing was drowned out by other noises in the gym—someone coughing, someone moving a chair, the screech of metal legs against concrete. The proctor, a young man from the physical education department, was looking at his phone, the screen light illuminating his face as his finger slid across the glass with a faint friction.

Huang Jinye stood up. The folding chair snapped back behind him, hitting the desk leg with a metallic clang. The proctor looked up and raised an eyebrow. Huang Jinye raised his hand. “Teacher, restroom.” His voice was hoarse and gravelly.

The teacher nodded without a word. Huang Jinye walked toward the side door with an uneven gait, his right knee stiffening when it bent—a result of a sprain from high jumping last week. He felt a sensation of something foreign inside the joint. He pushed open the door, and the light from outside flooded in, making him squint.

The corridor connected to the Miluo Building. The concrete was gray, and the wall bore graffiti sprayed in red paint: “430 days until the Gaokao.” The zero in the number had been turned into a smiley face, though it had a crooked, distorted mouth. He reached the stairwell and went up. There were wet footprints on the terrazzo steps—the dampness of the “Returning South” weather.

Wei Zhiheng was answering the final long-form question. His hand was shaking badly, and his vision was slightly blurred. A black spot was fixed in the upper-left corner of his field of vision, not moving with his eyes. It was a point of retinal hemorrhaging, no larger than a pinhead, yet it blocked his sight. He squinted; the numbers on the paper seemed to float, their boundaries fuzzy.

He used his left hand to pin down his right wrist. His pulse throbbed beneath the skin—fast and erratic. He forced himself to write, the pencil tip drawing jagged auxiliary lines on the scratch paper. Halfway through the solution, he forgot the steps; his mind went blank.

Footsteps came from the back door. One heavy, one light. Rubber soles rubbed against the floor, followed by the sound of the door opening and the groan of the hinges. He didn’t look back, but he smelled it—the sweat, the rubber, and a hint of turpentine.

An eraser landed on the bottom right corner of his desk. It wasn’t thrown; it was placed gently. Huang Jinye’s hand reached in from the edge of his vision—thick fingers, large knuckles, the dark grime under the nails clearly visible. The hand withdrew, and Huang Jinye walked toward an empty seat in the back of the classroom.

Huang Jinye walked out the back door, his footsteps fading—one heavy, one light—as he went downstairs.

Wei Zhiheng stared at the eraser. It lay on the desk, forming an angle of about thirty degrees with his answer sheet. The scratch on the case was deeper now, reflecting white light. He reached out and picked it up, his fingers brushing against the oily film on the surface, feeling the sticky residue left by another person’s skin.

He pried open the latch and took out the note. The handwriting on the back had pressed the paper into an uneven texture; the strokes of the character for “grab” protruded from the back like scars. There was sweat on the paper—someone else’s sweat—forming a pale gray halo around the word “already.”

He folded the note once, then again, and stuffed it into the left pocket of his school jacket. There was a hole in the pocket lining, the threads at the edge fraying. The note fell through the hole, mingling with the accumulated eraser shavings, pencil lead fragments, and a crumpled eucalyptus candy wrapper. He snapped the eraser case shut and placed it at the corner of his desk, lining it up with the broken pencil leads and the rusted sharpener.

The surveillance camera on the ceiling blinked with a red light, like a heartbeat, like a point of hemorrhaging. It recorded: a student picking up an eraser, looking at it, and putting it back on the desk. A normal action—checking stationery, adjusting its position. The red light flashed twenty-four times a second, slicing the movement into static frames, saving them to a hard drive, compressing layers of dust into a geological stratum of rock.

Wei Zhiheng continued to write. His hand shook, but he no longer tried to suppress it, letting the handwriting remain crooked. He wrote three lines for the final question, but unable to solve it, he stopped. The pencil lead left a black dot on the paper.

The bell for the end of the exam rang. The sound traveled from the corridor—first from the nearby classes, then from the distant ones, washing over like a wave. Wei Zhiheng stood up, folded the answer sheet, and tore it along the perforated line; his shaking hand nearly tore it crooked. He handed it to the person in front of him, who passed it further along. The papers rustled as they were handed forward.

He walked out of the classroom. The corridor was packed with people, the sound of footsteps noisy, dense, and chaotic. He walked close to the wall, avoiding the shoulders of the crowd. The limestone wall tiles were damp, and white frost clung to his sleeves. He reached the landing of the second-floor stairs. Huang Jinye was standing there, leaning against the wall, his right leg straight and his left leg bent with his knee against the wall, spinning the bottle of mineral water in his hand.

Their eyes met. Huang Jinye’s gaze shifted downward, landing on Wei Zhiheng’s right hand. Wei Zhiheng shoved his hand into his pocket, but his reaction was a beat too slow. Huang Jinye saw it—he saw the hand shaking inside the pocket, a small, high-frequency tremor.

He didn’t say anything either, merely tilting his chin toward the cafeteria before turning to head downstairs.

Wei Zhiheng followed two meters behind. His right hand gripped the eraser in his pocket, the edge of the plastic case pressing into his palm, right against a bruise—a purplish-red mark with irregular edges on the thenar eminence. It hurt when he pressed it, a dull ache, but he didn’t let go.

The voice-activated lights in the corridor flickered on as they passed and extinguished behind them. The surveillance cameras on the ceiling rotated, tracking the moving crowd, their red lights flashing. The eraser was in his pocket, its transparent shell enclosing a white core, the case smeared with the finger oil of two people, clouded and caked into a solid mass.

They walked toward the cafeteria, toward the second floor, toward the bowl of rice noodles for which a spot had already been claimed. The air was thick with the smell of sour bamboo shoots—fermented and pungent—mixed with the ink of exam papers, the scent of sweat, and the briny stench of sulfides rising from the underground river. Wei Zhiheng’s stomach cramped, acid rising in his throat, but his face remained expressionless. This was a “normal” lunch hour, a “normal” encounter between two students. In the gaps between surveillance and gazes, an object had been passed, power had shifted, and another layer had been pressed into the physical chronicle of their bodies within the strata of things.