The room was warm, and as soon as he entered, he took off his heavy coat, revealing a white sweater, white jeans, and white sneakers underneath. He stretched his legs, looking for all the world like a heron. Thinking himself very dashing, he was utterly unaware of her silent derision. In truth, they had been about the same height until high school, when he suddenly shot up like a bamboo sprout after the rain. In no time, he was a full head taller than her, forcing her to look up at him every time they talked—a fact she grudgingly held against him.
“Hey, hey.” He lightly kicked the rattan coffee table, sending tiny ripples through the water in the glass atop it. “By the way, now that you’ve been promoted, where’s the celebratory treat?”
She looked at him blankly, utterly confused. Finally, he grinned and said, “Comrade Secretary! You’re on the same level as my dad now.”
She nearly forgot that she had been elected class secretary. It was entirely a joke; the school had been swept up in the craze of Wang Lei’s hit song The Class Secretary, and even the usually unromantic boys in the science class had collectively gone mad, insisting on electing a girl to the position. Out of the twelve girls in the class, they just so happened to choose her.
From then on, she had more interactions with him. As the head of publicity in the student council, he would visit her every Wednesday. “Write a piece for us, Secretary Meng. Don’t forget your organizational duties.”
He was only half-grown, yet he already spoke in the official jargon of an experienced bureaucrat—a clear case of inheriting the family trade.
Despite their heavy academic workload, he was relentless. She could only halfheartedly oblige. So, every weekend, the school’s radio station would announce crisply: “Author: Grade 11, Science Class 2, Meng Zhe Zhe.” This even sparked rumors, with whispers from other classes occasionally reaching her ears. They accused her of abusing her position to monopolize the airwaves. Her temper, already short, flared. The next time he came, she greeted him with a glare. “I don’t have time. Go find someone else.”
“Who can I ask?” His face fell. “Help me out here.”
Her mood was foul. “No way. Write it yourself.”
“Me?” He grinned shamelessly. “You’ve known since we were kids—I can’t write.”
It was absurd. Their school was ranked among the top in the city, yet somehow, someone like him had managed to make it into the top ten in the arts stream. What a glaring failure of the education system! She looked down on him fiercely. “How do you even manage to write essays for exams?”
“They’re all formulaic. That’s easy enough.”
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