In April of my second year, Sunan No. 1 High School wore early summer at its gentlest.
Fresh camphor leaves unfurled in the breeze. Sunlight slipped through the open branches and scattered restless flecks of gold across the red-brick path. The damp green scent of new growth drifted through the air, mingling with the faint chorus of students reading aloud in distant classrooms—a lazy yet vibrant soundtrack that belonged only to a school in spring.
I stood beneath the rear wall with a broad broom bound from bamboo twigs, sweeping up the leaves and tiny white camphor blossoms the wind had shaken down overnight. Our class was responsible for this section that week. I always arrived first, out of habit, because I liked the quiet.
My plastic water bottle rested on a reasonably clean stone beside the wall. It held boiled water that had cooled to lukewarm before I left home. Grandma was forever reminding me that warm water in the morning was good for the stomach, and I had never forgotten.
Suddenly, a rush of air passed overhead, carrying the smell of dust.
Before I could look up, a heavy black shadow came hurtling down.
Bang!
The dull impact exploded beside my feet, kicking up a cloud of dirt. I stumbled back, my heart clenching.
A black backpack lay in the mud.
At least it had not hit me.
Then my gaze froze.
Beneath the backpack was a pitiful scatter of pale-blue plastic—what remained of the water bottle I had used for nearly two years. Its body had been crushed flat and split apart. The cap had rolled several feet away, and the water I had not finished was slowly darkening a patch of earth.
The bottle had not cost much. I had bought it for five yuan at the little shop outside the school gates, and years of use had already scuffed it cloudy.
But it was the one personal thing I carried from home every day, filled with water Grandma had risen early to boil and cool for me.
Seeing it shattered without warning sent a lump of hurt and helplessness into my throat.
Something scraped above me.
I jerked my head up.
A boy in Sunan No. 1 High School's blue-and-white tracksuit swung himself over the top of the wall. He dropped with a careless, almost arrogant grace, landed steadily, and dusted off his hands.
Sunlight poured over him, outlining a tall frame and a clean, sharp jaw. A few strands of hair, damp with sweat, clung loosely to his smooth forehead. His eyes were startlingly bright, like a stream flooded with afternoon sun.
At that moment, however, those bright eyes flashed with unmistakable shock and embarrassment.
He clearly had not expected anyone to be beneath the wall—much less someone who had witnessed the entire crime.
“...G-good morning.”
He scratched his hair, still slightly out of breath. His gaze wandered everywhere except the broken pieces by my feet.
Then he bent down, scooped up his backpack, and brushed away the dust. With nothing left to hide the scene, he finally saw the full extent of the damage.
His expression went rigid. All that sunny swagger vanished beneath a tide of mortification.
“Um...” He wet his lips awkwardly and finally looked at me with profound apology. His voice dropped. “Is...is that your bottle?”
“Yes.”
My answer was almost light enough for the wind to steal. I nodded without taking my eyes off the wreckage.
“I'm so sorry!” He immediately opened his bag and rummaged through it in a panic. “Really, I'm sorry. I'll buy you another one. Here—I'll give you the money.”
He pulled out an old dark-brown wallet and fumbled for a rolled stack of bills. Judging by its thickness, it was enough to replace far more than one plastic bottle.
“You don't have to. It wasn't—”
I meant to tell him the bottle had hardly cost anything.
Before I could finish, a thunderous roar shattered the peace of the morning and rolled toward us with crushing force.
“Who is that? Who's climbing the wall again? You've got some nerve—late to school and still sneaking over the wall! Stay right where you are!”
Everyone at Sunan No. 1 High School knew that voice.
It belonged to the discipline director, nicknamed the Iron-Faced King of Hell. Rumor had it that any rule-breaker who fell into his hands began with a thousand-word self-criticism, followed by laps around the track, compulsory labor, and the rest of his infamous all-inclusive punishment package.
The boy's face drained of color. His embarrassment vanished beneath naked terror. He jolted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
“Take this. I'm really sorry!”
Speaking at lightning speed, he shoved the fistful of money he had just pulled from his wallet into my hand without even looking. The motion was so urgent and forceful that the edges of the bills scraped my palm.
A second later, he spun around and shot toward the classroom building in the opposite direction from the approaching voice, leaving only the sight of his desperate escape.
I stood frozen, clutching the roll of bills he had forced on me.
Several hundred-yuan notes and smaller bills were bundled together. A quick count put the total above two hundred yuan.
I looked from the money to the broken plastic on the ground, worth five yuan at most, and had no idea what to do.
The wind lifted several tiny camphor leaves and spiraled them onto the fragments. At that exact moment, the warning bell for morning study rang through the drowsy early-summer air.
I crouched and carefully gathered the larger pieces. Their rough, cold edges pressed against my fingertips, leaving a hollow feeling inside me.
The bottle I had used for so long was gone.
And I did not even know the name or class of the boy who had smashed it and fled.
During the morning exercises, at lunch, and after school, I lingered in crowded places—the corridors, stairwells, and notice boards. I searched face after face, all dressed in the same blue-and-white uniform.
The sunlight grew harsher. Tree shadows crept slowly over the ground. Song after song played over the campus speakers. Students surged past like tides and ebbed away again.
But he never appeared.
The boy who had dropped from the wall in a blaze of reckless morning sunlight, then fled in disgrace, began to feel like a hallucination born of early exhaustion. He had vanished among more than two thousand students at Sunan No. 1 High School.
Without a name or a class, finding one person on such a vast campus was as hopeless as searching the sea for a single needle.