For Xu Xilin, the biggest change in his life was that suddenly there was no one waiting for him to go to school in the morning.

In fact, they seldom chatted on the way in the morning. Since Dou Xun was an extremely early riser, Xu Xilin was in a semi-comatose state every day, following him to school.

But it's really very different with him and without him.

On the first day of school, Xu Xilin put on his shoes in a daze and waited at the door of his house with half-closed eyes for a full five minutes, until Doudou Dog misunderstood that he was taking him out for a walk and ran over to rub against his legs. Only then did Xu Xilin come to his senses, opened his eyes, yawned blankly, and walked away alone.

The entire grade moved to the "Animal Protection Teaching Building" for the senior year. The classroom environment, which had just been renovated during the holidays, was even better than before. The lonely extra seats in the last row were no longer occupied.

When the head teacher peeked through the window at the back door, no one coughed to alert the troublemakers in front... Due to poor adaptation and carelessness, Xu Xilin was caught passing notes and playing with his mobile phone by the head teacher twice in one day, and he almost lost custody of his mobile phone.

The dark and chaotic life of the senior year of high school was also pressed down by the early start of the graduating class. New test papers were handed out during almost every break. The students made a neat "rustling" sound when passing the papers. The snow-white or slightly yellowed papers flew around the class one after another, just like the lyrics of the song -

The water of Honghu Lake is full of waves.

The weekly physical education classes also became a mirage. Although they were not cancelled explicitly, every time the scheduled time came, Qilixiang would come with one or two teachers and wait at the front and back doors, glaring at anyone who went out - including those who went to the toilet.

The most difficult thing to adapt to was the evening self-study class when I first arrived. After dinner, the students had eaten their fill, and the little internal energy in their dantian had all flowed into their stomachs, leaving them with no energy to take care of their brains. After seven o'clock, the words in the English reading material were doubled, and on average, three words had to be read twice. I wanted to lie on the table and sleep until the sun went down. But there was also a seven-mile fragrance patrolling next to me in high heels, which was really miserable.

When Xu Xilin entered the third year of high school, he automatically "retired" from the school basketball team. The scene of groups of girls lining up to bring him water was no longer seen. Sometimes during evening self-study, when he heard cheers from downstairs, Xu Xilin liked to look out the window and found that the girls who brought him water had changed, and the cool players had also changed. The court is permanent, but people come and go, and each of them is the star for a year or two.

There were also classmates with whom he sometimes had a close and sometimes distant relationship. Ever since he had a quarrel with Wu Tao at the "Adult Party" last semester, Xu Xilin was a little too lazy to pay attention to him at school, and the relationship gradually became distant. Since the start of the third year of high school, Wu Tao seemed to have faded out of the sight of the entire class. His training tasks became increasingly heavy, and he would occasionally come to sit in the class, but he would be so tired that he would lie down in the corner and fall asleep.

While others are planning to improve their grades in the subjects where they are lagging behind, he is working hard to improve his sports performance. Although they are both "performance", their efforts are in different directions. Even if they are forced to sit in the same classroom, they are still drifting several miles apart every day.

The fate between people is magical. Some are as close as ever even though they are old friends, some are as close as old friends, some meet again after many years and miss each other for an entire ten-kilometer radius, and for some others, the relationship quickly fades once they can't stick together every day.

Wu Tao gradually became an ordinary acquaintance of Xu Xilin in the class.

Campus life is monotonous, and the papers we do always seem familiar, but there are occasionally some small surprises.

"Have all the English newspaper subscriptions been received? Is there anyone who hasn't received this issue of the English newspaper yet?"

During the first break on Monday afternoon, the class mailboxes were distributed. The English class representative clasped his hands together and counted the number of newspaper subscribers at the top of his voice. He woke up Xu Xilin who was sleeping during the break. He had a cold recently and was still struggling to get up. Cai Jing patted him on the shoulder and said, "There's a letter for you."

Xu Xilin wasn't considered sloppy, he was just a little forgetful. There were a lot of papers distributed in the senior year, and he often threw them here and there. Either he couldn't find them or he forgot to do them - of course, the latter might be intentional.

Later, Cai Jing couldn't stand it anymore and would tidy up the table for him whenever he had time.

Xu Xilin: "...Ah? Mine?"

He took the envelope sleepily, confused and puzzled because he didn't have the habit of making pen pals.

Xu Xilin turned the envelope over and saw the recipient's address and name written neatly on it, and a stamp, but there was no postmark on the stamp.

Xu Xilin rubbed his eyes and came to his senses, thinking that this thing was stuffed in by someone from the school - most likely even from his class. He subconsciously looked up and glanced around the class, and saw that everyone was busy with their own things, with more or less afternoon sleepiness and irritability on their faces. There didn't seem to be any suspicious targets, so he frowned, lowered his head and opened the inexplicable letter.

First, a box of cold medicine fell out of the envelope, followed by a letter folded into the shape of a leaf.

Folding seems to be popular among girls. Xu Xilin took great pains to completely open it. The handwriting on it was very neat and beautiful, and the strokes were very soft, but the characteristics were not obvious, so it was hard to tell who wrote it. There were three main meanings. At the beginning, it was a beautifully worded passage of sadness, in the middle, it was very subtle about some of his trivial feelings, and at the end, he used a little space to gently care about Xu Xilin's minor illness that was not worth mentioning.

The first time Xu Xilin read it, he was confused. After a while, he turned back and read it carefully. His eyes lingered on the last sentence "I hope I can be admitted to the same school as you" for a moment. He found that this thing was very ambiguous and could be called a love letter.

Xu Xilin's sleepiness was completely gone. He put the cold medicine into the desk like a thief, folded the letter casually, and stuffed it into a pile of draft papers.

He vaguely guessed who wrote the letter and glanced at Luo Bing secretly.

Luo Bing had her hair tied in a ponytail, with the ends sticking out of the wide collar of her school uniform. She sat upright, looking like someone who was "oblivious to the world outside and focused on reading the books of sages."

Xu Xilin didn't dislike Luo Bing, but he wasn't attracted to her either. What would it feel like to have a class monitor as his girlfriend? Xu Xilin imagined based on Luo Bing's personality and felt that the two of them didn't seem to have much to do except stare at each other while studying together.

If dating is so boring, I might as well just lock myself in and watch porn.

Moreover, Ms. Xu Jin had told him clearly that, considering that many ancient people got married at the age of thirteen or fourteen, the concept of "premature love" itself was absurd. At Xu Xilin's age, if he could have a relationship based on emotion and restraint, it would be a major event in his life, and she would not interfere. But there was one thing: if he dared to put his work aside and use relationship as a pastime like those gangsters, Ms. Xu Jin would enforce justice on him, first break his legs, and then send him to a boarding school in another place, so that he would not have nothing to do all day long.

Xu Xilin pondered for a moment and thought, "Forget it."

He didn't say anything and didn't reply - the other party didn't sign the letter anyway, so he just pretended to be confused.

Xu Xilin didn't see that Cai Jing glanced at it silently while he was flipping through the cryptic love letter.

Unlike Xu Xilin, Cai Jing recognized Luo Bing's handwriting at a glance. After he glanced at it, his eyes seemed to be burned. He quickly retracted them and lowered his head deeply. He felt a little breathless because of the incomprehensible physics test paper in his hand.

Xu Xilin quickly forgot about this little episode.

At the weekend, Dou Xun, who had been away from home for more than a month, finally came back.

Senior year students have six self-study classes every Saturday. As soon as the bell for the last self-study class rang, Dou Xun came in quietly from the back door. Xu Xilin turned around inadvertently and almost jumped up.

Dou Xun didn't say hello in advance. He just carried a bag with him and went straight to No. 6 Middle School after returning from school.

I don’t know if it was because of the one month of college life, or because he finally got rid of Dou Junliang and Zhu Xiaocheng, but he seemed to have been reborn.

At the beginning of this year, he had just transferred to Class 6 and walked to that station quietly. His face was full of anger and he looked like he had a grudge against the world. At this time, Dou Xun was still wearing the same white shirt and gray jacket, with the familiar headphone cord hanging loosely around his neck, which made him feel very calm.

Although he was still not good at speaking, he greeted the students passing by with a good attitude, and took the initiative to say hello to Qilixiang. Then, as if he had never left Class 1, he said to Xu Xilin very naturally: "Are you going home now?"

Xu Xilin had made an appointment with someone to play basketball on the weekend, but he decisively broke the appointment and jumped up with his bag in hand: "Go back! I'll treat you to barbecue!"

Dou Xun said: "I should treat you, I am the teacher."

It's not relevant to bring up this issue.

Xu Xilin: "...Go to hell."

The two of them ran to the kebab stand at the school gate with ease. "Teacher Dou" held up a skewer of mixed vegetables and meat and poked Xu Xilin: "There are carrots."

Xu Xilin: "I haven't recovered from my cold yet."

Dou Xun: "It's okay. I got vaccinated this year, so I'm not afraid of infection."

Xu Xilin then took the colorful carrot from his hand and took it away for him: "Hey, why are you so fussy? Okay, eat it."

Dou Xun then lowered his head and started to chew the meat. After chewing for a while, he felt that it was really inappropriate for him to just lower his head to eat, like a dull and listless glutton.

He glanced at Xu Xilin secretly and tried to find a topic: "I heard from seniors that there are some very wealthy laboratories in our department, and undergraduates can raise mice for experiments all year round."

Xu Xilin almost choked on the skewers while eating. He was talking about mice, and Teacher Dou really had some ideas.

But they hadn't seen each other for a long time. When Xu Xilin heard Dou Xun trying so hard to find something to say, he suddenly felt a little soft in his heart and asked cooperatively, "Are rats expensive?"

"It's quite expensive." As soon as he answered, Dou Xun became excited as if he had guessed a difficult question correctly, and answered seriously, "It is said that in order to ensure their health, they must be carefully fed and given enough food. When necessary, they must be given music to play and guided to climb pipes for exercise. They must be raised for several months before being killed."

"..." Xu Xilin swallowed the food with difficulty, "Who will clean up your bloody laboratory?"

"You can lay down plastic sheets," Dou Xun said, "and wrap the bodies up after the experiment and take them away."

Xu Xilin: “…”

Dou Xun: "Then we sell them in bulk to the people who sell barbecue skewers in front of the school."

This guy is still good at chatting.