Unsent Scratch Paper

On the window sill of Class 4, Grade 3, there is always a math exercise book with rolled edges. "Lin Zhixia" is written with a 2B pencil on the lower right corner of the cover. The handwriting is as thin as the shadow of her eyelashes falling on the draft paper when she lowers her eyes to calculate the problem. No one knew that this exercise book had been rewritten by Shen Yuzhou long ago - on the back of the third page of draft paper, there was half a line of words painted in black with a carbon pen, and fragments of "hair swept across the eraser" could be vaguely seen, and a small sun was drawn crookedly on the edge of the black block, which was incompatible with the clear-step problem-solving process in the exercise book. Every night during self-study, Shen Yuzhou would move the exercise book two centimeters toward Lin Zhixia. When she lowered her head to write the questions, he used his peripheral vision to trace the hand holding the pen: the fingertips were always stained with circles of light blue ink, which were rubbed by her leaky hero pen. Sometimes the ink smeared on the draft paper, dyeing the "x" into a light blue star. During the monthly exam last week, Lin Zhixia ran out of draft paper. When he turned around, the tip of his hair brushed against Shen Yuzhou's arm: "Can I borrow a piece of paper?" He was so panicked that he almost thrust his pen into the wrong question book. He quickly pulled out a blank draft paper and handed it over, but in his palm was a piece of paper with "Lin Zhixia" written all over it - he had written and scratched it in front of the basketball stand in the corner of the playground during class, and the corners of the paper were soaked with sweat. The night when the college entrance examination countdown card turned to "30", the teaching building suddenly lost power. Amid the commotion in the classroom, Shen Yuzhou took advantage of the moonlight outside the window and saw Lin Zhixia squatting under the table looking for a candle. Her hair hung down beside her face, like a mimosa wrapped in the moonlight. He took out the highlighter that had been hidden in his pocket for three days - he knew she was afraid of the dark, so he bought the brightest lemon yellow one - and just as he was about to hand it over, he heard her deskmate laughing and handing over a candle. When the flame lit up, he quietly stuffed the highlighter back into the inner pocket of his school uniform. When he went home that night, Shen Yuzhou put the scratch paper that said "I'm always looking at you" into the thickest copy of "Five Years and Three Years of College Entrance Examination Simulation". There was also a piece of dried camphor leaf sandwiched between the pages. It fell out of Lin Zhixia's desk when he helped her pick up her exercise books last week. At the dinner after the college entrance examination, Lin Zhixia held up a Coke and chatted with her classmates about their aspirations. Shen Yuzhou sat opposite, holding the quarter-folded draft paper in his trouser pocket. It wasn't until Lin Zhixia walked out of the hotel with his schoolbag on his back that he took out the paper, looked at it under the street lamp, and then slowly folded it back - the corners of the paper were clenched and wrinkled, like his unspoken heartbeat. Later, the "Five-Year and Three-Year College Entrance Examination Simulation" was placed on the top shelf of the bookcase by Shen Yuzhou, and became covered with a thin layer of dust. Occasionally when I turn the pages of a book, a piece of draft paper will float out, smelling like old ink. Shen Yuzhou stared at the blurry writing on the paper, always thinking of the moonlight in his senior year of high school, the blue ink on Lin Zhixia's fingertips, and the highlighter he didn't hand out - it turned out that he had something on his mind, just like the words on the draft paper, written countless times, but even the courage to let the other party see them was hidden in the folds of the page. Intention: secret love