Lin Beinan was born able to hear everyone's thoughts.
The thoughts filling his classroom buzzed like mosquitoes he couldn't chase away: hypocrisy, scheming, and people enjoying the show. Every single thought wormed its way into his ears.
He put on noise-canceling headphones and became the loneliest person in school.
Then a girl who couldn't speak transferred into his class: Xu Suining.
As usual, he listened. Nothing.
No appraisal, no dislike. Her thoughts were so pure they hardly seemed real.
For the first time in ten years, he heard silence amid the noise.
His classmates thought: She's mute. Stay away from her. Don't get mixed up with her.
She thought: Should I sit somewhere else so people won't talk about him?
When someone publicly pressured her to speak, he finally stepped in. "Don't bother her again."
Her notebook was filled with kind things about other people, without a single complaint.
On the last page, the words she'd crossed out left only half of the character Lin.
He admitted he could hear everyone's thoughts. She didn't run away. She simply wrote:
So this is how exhausted you are every day.
At the moment of greatest despair, after years without a voice, she cried out for the first time:
Lin Beinan.
This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.
