Senior year began earlier than any other grade. The chill of the first lunar month still lingered; the snow on campus had been swept to the roadside and piled into gray-black mounds. Bare branches pointed at a leaden sky, and the air carried a tense, bleak hush.
The class-assignment list had been posted on the notice board in front of the senior-year building, ringed by students three deep. I squeezed in, eyes racing down the roster for Class One. Soon I found my own name—and right behind it, not far off, the name long since carved into my heart: Chen Jingming.
Exactly as he'd hoped.
When I walked into the new classroom hugging my stack of thick review books, I spotted him at once, standing by a window seat, waving hard at me, a grin on his face too triumphant to hide.
“Nian-Nian! Over here!” He pointed at the empty seat beside his own, voice so loud that heads turned.
He had become my deskmate.
All through that first day, Chen Jingming was like a fox that had just won a great battle and now paraded its territory. One moment he'd stack his new workbooks absurdly high; the next he'd lean over to borrow my notes, the smile never leaving his mouth. Even when the homeroom teacher announced the hellish senior-year study plan, he looked positively eager for battle—bring it on, and he would meet it.
But the true test was only beginning.
Senior year was a pressure cooker in the truest sense. The schedule was packed airtight; test papers flew like snow; quizzes big and small became daily bread. The teachers' faces grew graver by the week, their lectures faster, as if they could cram every last fact into our heads. The classroom air always carried a silent anxiety.
Over every head hung the sword named the college entrance exam. The pressure pressed down like solid lead, heavy on every shoulder, stealing breath. Sleepless nights, breakouts, frayed tempers—standard issue for a senior-year student.
Chen Jingming was no exception. Dark rings of late nights gathered under his eyes; he'd grab his hair in frustration over a problem; now and then he'd mutter curses at one that wouldn't yield. But strangely, more than himself, he seemed to worry about me.
“Nian-Nian, you look pale. Were you up late again?” Between classes he'd frown and press a bottle of warm milk into my hands whether I wanted it or not. “Drink. You need the protein.”
“Nian-Nian, have some fruit. Mom force-fed it to me this morning. For the vitamins.” A spotlessly washed apple would appear on my desk.
“Nian-Nian, walnuts. Good for the brain. I shelled them for you.” A small handful of plump, clean walnut meats pushed toward me.
“Nian-Nian, it's fine. It's just a little quiz. Don't pile the pressure on.” When a math quiz went badly and my mood sank with it, he'd set down his own workbooks and lean over, his voice dropped soft. “Look—your approach was right. You just slipped on the arithmetic. More care next time.”
“Whoa! Nian-Nian! Third in the whole year! I knew it! Of course Nian-Nian could do it!” When the monthly exam results posted and my name sat solidly at third, he was happier than I was, loud enough for half the classroom to hear—drawing a wave of good-natured laughter.
His care seeped in everywhere, down to the smallest seam. The good things to eat, the warm things to drink, the comfort that came just in time, the praise never stinted—they flowed like little warm streams, day after day, through the taut, gray grind of senior year. He was like a worker bee that never tired, stubbornly building an invisible wall around me, trying to keep the heaviest pressure on the far side of it.
Thanks to his clumsy, utterly sincere devotion, under that purgatorial load my mind and body held steadier than they had in second year. Even Grandma would feel my cheek and say, “Nian-Nian's color is better lately. Still too thin, though. Eat more.” Only I knew how much silent watching and effort from that boy named Chen Jingming lay behind it.
The days trudged through mountains of books and seas of papers. Outside the window the phoenix tree went from bare branches, to tender buds, to a canopy of green; time slid quietly toward May amid the scratch of pens and the flip of test pages.