He Always Takes My Love Seriously

When he was fifteen, his homeroom teacher mixed up the names and credited Li Xingzhi with the score of “just three points lost across math, physics, and chemistry.” The real top student happened to be his new roommate. After flunking the high school entrance exams, he decided that working hard might not pay off anyway, so he pretended not to care. But he rarely turned down anyone who asked for help, and whenever someone showed him a little kindness, he could not help taking it to heart. Late-night talks in the dorm, his mother's reminders over the phone in a telephone booth, and the girl who fell for him first gradually gave him something to look forward to in his otherwise aimless days. Still, people are harder to understand than math problems. From high school to life beyond campus, Li Xingzhi slowly learns to say he likes someone, and to seriously ask, whenever someone laughs and says, “I was just joking”: “What’s so funny?”