芊芊-回音哥

绝唱一段芊芊，爱无非看谁成茧

Today is Saturday and I stayed at home all day.

I. I had another dream last night; in the dream I met Fan Wenting.

It was still high school, still in some classroom, she was sitting in the seat in front of me doing homework. We were very close, I knew her well, and she liked me a lot. She was writing an essay in the composition notebook given out by our ninth‑grade teacher.

I stared blankly at her back, memories of our shared moments replaying in my mind, letting the youthful shyness gently brush against feelings that were becoming more certain. She also knew I was looking at her; sunlight from outside streamed through the glass onto her back, and that gaze which made her feel restrained and restless was always able to reach into her heart. We had long been used to sensing each other’s every move, caring, cherishing, leaving a warmth in each other’s hearts.

Yet in reality, during our student days I was only in the same class as her for the second semester of ninth grade; we had no interaction whatsoever, never spoke a word, and I didn’t pay attention to or understand her at all, just like I treated other girls.

She didn’t like chatting or roughhousing with classmates either. I only knew she got better grades than me, wore glasses, and seemed to have once sat near me, but we had no connection, and we were destined not to have any. I was someone cold toward everything around me, dull, reclusive, never smiled, and never took the initiative to greet others—at least that’s how I remember it now.

One of her legs couldn’t function normally due to illness, so when going out she needed one hand to support that troublesome right leg, limping along in a conspicuous sway as she walked through the corridors between classrooms. Thus, she was naturally “matched” with a quiet personality, seeming to be a solitary, hard‑to‑approach classmate. But this somehow made me like her; she got better grades than me, and I admired and respected those who did better academically. Though people with good grades probably didn’t care about such things—for example, I thought so when I zoned out—and I guessed she did too. We didn’t need any connection or emotional resonance; grades were what mattered most. I always thought that way. And I acted accordingly.

Graduation season was brief; we left behind a class photo and then disappeared from each other’s worlds.

From first to third year of high school, I became increasingly unable to control or dispel the secret crush and longing for Xue Yan that filled my heart; all of it was recorded in my diary. I think I changed quite a bit, especially in my final year of high school when I almost frowned daily, suppressing my emotions. The fact that Xue Yan ended up in the same class as me again after five years became a source of pain; that year I was like a surveillance camera. At the time I was in Class 6 of senior year, and I passed by Class 7 next door every day on my way to the toilet and meals. It was a long corridor connecting Class 6, Class 7, Class 8… Fan Wenting was in Class 7. I remember often seeing her coming toward me in the hallway back to the classroom; her difficulty walking made her easy to notice—after all, everyone in the grade knew about her condition. I thought that after another three years, maybe she had gotten used to it, used to others’ gazes, used to coexisting with a loneliness no one could detect in her heart… Yet we still had no relationship. I remained just as cold, head down, expressionless as I walked past her, never greeting her, never giving a smile, never looking at her—even though she was someone I had once been in the same class with, someone I clearly recognized. Sadly, we had no bond… Anyway, I was already used to it.

I imagine her heart was lonely and helpless too, during my countless expressionless encounters with her, and after I noticed that she began, upon making eye contact in the hallway and recognizing each other, to secretly turn her head to observe me in that fleeting moment as we passed.

My pain came from Xue Yan, from loving without reciprocation, from wanting to be loved. What about her? I never could, and never would, ask her in person. I think it was because of her disability, because of others’ gazes, or perhaps because two emotionally mature people both crave connection. I sensed her closed‑off heart and the dissonance beneath her equally expressionless face; I could see into her heart, and I felt we might share something in common.

I seemed to feel a mutual attraction, I seemed to empathize with her pain—did she feel the same? When I, too, began to take notice of her.

Fan Wenting. One day I received a friend request from her.

I felt as if I was expecting something; I accepted it, staring blankly at the new chat window with her name in my list, but I didn’t speak. On the other side of the screen, she didn’t speak either. Opening her profile, unsurprisingly there were hardly any posts. I looked at her online status—the hopeful green—thinking she must have received my acceptance notification. I was online when she sent the request; I thought she must know I was online, just then, just now, because she accepted it immediately.

As soon as she spoke, I could reply right away.

Yet all of it felt like a mistake, a misunderstanding, an error. I waited, afraid to miss it; I waited, the cursor blinking. I hadn’t even taken the initiative to say hello.

Opening QQ, which I hadn’t used in years, I saw the likes I’d given on her old posts—my response. In the list of friends who had liked my posts, hers was the reply. But everything felt like a mistake, quietly flowing through the blank white chat history, quietly, nothing happening…

She seemed unable to bear me silently watching her from behind without speaking, suddenly turned to face me, deliberately slapped her composition notebook onto my desk, gave me a reproachful glance, and picked up a pen as if to write in front of me. I glimpsed the name field at the top of the notebook—it was mine, my composition notebook. Seizing the chance, I teased her, pressing down on her book and pointing at the name field, joking, “Hey, why does it say my name here? Why are you stealing my notebook? Do you like me?” Her face reddened, she turned away to avoid my gaze, lips pursed in a smile. After the words left my mouth, my own face flushed, and I turned to look out the window.

She had the same question in her heart.

I, too, smiled with pursed lips. This was my response.

In senior year, exams large and small came frequently. Once, after the exam rooms were assigned, while chatting with Shi Lizhi, who sat in front of me, I suddenly realized I had no pen cap. I asked him for one but he didn’t have an extra, so he said, “Ask the person behind you.” The person behind me was Fan Wenting. The exam was about to start, and she might have been bored watching us. I pushed and hesitated, struggling to come up with some nonsensical excuse—I always worry too much, overthink. Shi Lizhi was in the same class as her then, maybe they were fairly familiar. I saw the kind of enviable, natural conversation between them: “Don’t you have a spare cap for him? He doesn’t have one.” Shi Lizhi pointed at me, so I helplessly turned around and gave her a foolish smile. He didn’t know I knew Fan Wenting—even though we’d been in the same class in ninth grade, he probably forgot, unlike me who remembers all sorts of random things. I thought Fan Wenting would be happy to give me a cap when she saw it was me asking. At that moment I wanted to catch even the faintest trace of “it” on her face—evidence that “it” had existed, proof that, without needing much, without forcing myself, just a little, enough for her to preserve her dignity, even the slightest sign that it had existed. But instead, her face showed a look of distaste. She opened her pencil case, rummaged through it, and took out a black translucent plastic pen cap from the bottom, unscrewed the pen’s cap, removed the refill and put it back in the case. Slowly screwing the cap back onto the shell, she casually placed the shell on the desk and pushed it toward me.

She didn’t say a word.

The dream ended, and once again I lost her. Her account hasn’t been logged into for four or five years; I searched the internet but found no trace of her, as if, like me, she has silently sunk into ordinary life. Back then I thought we might have something in common, but now I’m not sure.