Sometimes the world is enormous. A few walls or floors are enough for two strangers to pass each other countless times without ever knowing.
And sometimes it is very small. Once two people know each other's names, even a school of more than two thousand students makes meeting seem effortless.
After that night in the alley, the frequency with which Chen Jingming and I “happened” to run into each other rose at a clearly visible rate.
One morning at the school gates, I had just locked my bicycle when I looked up and saw him weaving nimbly through the crowd. The familiar black backpack hung from one shoulder, and he held a half-eaten steamed bun in one hand.
His eyes brightened. From a long way off, he waved and called loudly enough to drown out the warning bell for morning study.
“Lin Nian! Morning!”
One afternoon, sunlight streamed through the tall corridor windows, laying long bands of gold across the polished terrazzo floor. I was carrying a stack of collected homework toward the teachers' office when I nearly collided with someone at the stairwell.
It was him, returning from basketball. Damp hair clung to his forehead, his cheeks still flushed from hard exercise, and a ball was tucked against his chest.
He grinned. “Wow, Lin Nian. What a coincidence! Going to the office? Want me to carry some?”
Before I could answer, he familiarly took half the heavy notebooks from my arms.
After school, I would bend to unlock my bicycle only for a warm figure to lean close, waving a freshly printed ranking sheet.
“Lin Nian! Look, look! Fifth in the whole year! You're incredible!”
He pointed to my name with eyes as bright as if he had discovered a new continent. His admiration was entirely unhidden, as though he were the one who had placed fifth.
At seventeen, Chen Jingming was impossible to overlook at Sunan No. 1 High School.
He was like noon sunlight in midsummer, piercing the thickest canopy without restraint—fierce, dazzling, naturally proud, and alive with openhearted energy. Wherever he went, he drew every eye and became the center of attention without trying.
I was more like a piece of the shade beneath those crowded green branches, accustomed to existing unseen.
Quiet. Reserved. The most forgettable part of my class.
Beyond necessary conversation, I had almost no friends. I maintained a distant kind of harmony with everyone—neither disliked nor truly close.
Chen Jingming forced himself into becoming the exception.
Our relationship changed as though pushed forward by an invisible hand, at a speed I had never expected.
At first, he greeted me with one-sided enthusiasm and I answered with an awkward nod.
Later, he began dropping into the empty seat beside me to share limited-edition rice cakes he had fought to buy, or complain about how many words the Iron-Faced King of Hell had made him write the night before. I would occasionally murmur a sentence or two whenever his endless chatter left room.
Later still, he somehow learned that I studied at the library every weekend. After that, he always managed to “coincidentally” appear at the other end of the same table, claiming he was there to “absorb the top student's aura.”
He was always the one who took the first step.
“Lin Nian, let's add each other on QQ. Come on, don't be so cold. Making a friend won't cost you a piece of flesh. Please? Please?”
He pressed his palms together in an exaggerated plea, mischief flashing in his eyes in a way that made true refusal impossible.
“Lin Nian, want to go out this weekend? I know a new arcade where the tokens are super cheap! You have to work? That's fine—I'll come with you. I need a job to save money anyway. My parents cut off my allowance for the whole month!”
He could always find a reason so logical that refusing him would make me seem unreasonable.
“Lin Nian, Lin Nian, Lin Nian...”
“Nian-Nian, Nian-Nian, Nian-Nian...”
At first, he used my full name with tentative familiarity. I did not know when he decided he had received permission, but at some point he claimed a more intimate name for me.
Nian-Nian.
The two syllables bounced from his lips with an affection he treated as perfectly natural.
Under that relentless assault, my defenses dissolved piece by piece.
Without my noticing, a person named Chen Jingming began appearing everywhere in my world. He occupied my conversations between classes, shared my lunches, and filled the hours after school that I had once spent walking alone.
He was a beam of light too fierce to resist, breaking into my dimmest corners without permission. He scattered the loneliness that had lived there for years and brought a warmth and noise I had never known.
More precisely, he became the only friend of my high-school years.
The only person who waited for me at the school gates every afternoon without fail.
The only one who accompanied me to my part-time job.
The only one who, whenever I quietly ate the cheapest vegetables in the cafeteria, placed the largest piece of braised pork from his tray into my bowl and announced with complete conviction, “I'm dieting.”
...