September 1, 2002. Class 1, Grade 10, Beishan No. 1 High School. Forty-eight students.
The forty-eighth name on the class assignment list wasn’t written in brush ink: Shao Ye.
Chen Yan was in Class 1. Shao Ye was too.
They lived in the same factory compound, in the same building, on the fourth and sixth floors. That year, the factory’s restructuring was wrapping up. In the same building.
Chen Yan had a notebook. Blue cover, two yuan and fifty cents. The words "Mistakes Notebook" on the cover were written by him in his first year of junior high, neat and straight. He copied every mistake once, then corrected it once. He spent his whole life correcting mistakes.
That winter, the notebook fell onto the ice on the Sha River. Shao Ye saw it but said nothing. Later, he went back and picked it up.
Light narrative, literary sense