The rough drafts in Class 3-1 always held secrets.
Lin Haitang first noticed Jiang Yubai because of his notebook, so clean it hardly looked like a rough draft. The formulas were as neat as print, even the auxiliary lines perfectly straight. Yet in the margin, a blurred ink mark looked like a word left unfinished.
He was the universally acknowledged "ice-cold top student." His white shirt was always buttoned to the very top, and when asked a question, he only ever said, "The steps are on page 32." Yet when she sprained her ankle, he crouched to tie her shoelaces; on rainy days, he quietly nudged his umbrella toward her; and in her homework, he tucked a note with simplified steps.
She was a somewhat scatterbrained "little sun" whose rough drafts were covered in doodles of suns. She couldn't help sneaking glances at his profile as he bent over his work. She noticed that he always placed his fountain pen a little way from the edge of the desk. She noticed that the two characters of "Xiao Tang" in his notebook had been crossed out and written again. She noticed that although he said, "I don't lend out my notes," he made an exception and handed the notebook to her.
From the chance encounter when he dropped his pen in the seat behind her, to finding their names side by side on an elective class list; from the nickname hidden at the edge of a rough draft, to him pulling a crumpled confession note from his pocket beneath a streetlamp, it turned out some feelings didn't need to be spoken aloud. They were hidden in the moments his ears turned red, in her sneaky glances that she pretended not to notice, and in a stack of rough drafts filled with each other's names.
This is a tender story about "carefully inching closer," about an iceberg slowly melting in the warmth of the sun, about two teenagers tucking "I like you" into every little crack in their senior-year routine, until a soft breeze blows and every unspoken feeling becomes impossible to hide: a quiet tenderness.
