Last Wednesday night, Zoe Young finished her piano practice and was bending over, wiping the white rosin off the piano with a dry cloth, when she suddenly heard a faint voice behind her: “Zoe, do you like anyone?”

Zoe Young was startled. She had always thought of the lively Tina Young as someone who bounced around, but now she had somehow mastered the art of moving without a sound. Surprised, she turned around and asked, “What did you say?”

“You can’t possibly not like anyone.” Tina Young looked serious, though it was unclear what she was nervous about. This sentence was exactly the same as the ones her female classmates used when interrogating her in class. They had all sworn to pry open Zoe Young’s mouth. In the whole class, only she and Fiona James had never revealed their crushes, which everyone found incomprehensible. The others all said these two were too stuck-up, too fake, and thought being class officers made them special.

Even though no one could figure out what the supposed conflict was between being a class officer and falling in love. Zoe Young still shook her head, her face full of resistance and… shyness. Her slight blush was magnified in Tina Young’s eyes, who pressed on relentlessly: “You have to say it today!” When Tina Young got stubborn, it was really something.

After several rounds of questioning, Zoe Young felt the rosin in her palm had become rough and sticky from sweat. She rubbed her hands nervously, her face flushed red, and finally, with great resolve, she spoke.

“…I like Kevin Sherman.” she said softly. Tina Young looked completely confused.

“Who?”

“Kevin Sherman—it’s 和也, not 达也! They all like 达也, and I do like 达也 too, but…” Zoe Young was still fidgeting in place, and when she looked up, she saw Tina Young’s face full of anger.

“What’s wrong?” “You’re so boring, you can’t even say one honest thing. Forget it, who cares about asking you.” Tina Young turned and left. Zoe Young stared blankly for a moment, then a little flame of anger rose from her chest to her head. “You’re the boring one!” she said to the air with her hands on her hips. Heaven knows how sincere she was—she had been shy for so long before finally gathering her courage.

Truly ungrateful. At that time, Zoe Young still couldn’t understand Tina Young’s feelings. This kind of feeling wasn’t like the sadness after being scolded by a teacher; it wouldn’t pass quickly, nor would it evaporate after running around the playground until you were drenched in sweat. This feeling was deeper and more hidden than the ripples Claire Daniels once felt from being teased. In short, it was everywhere, haunting.

As long as that person was still in Tina Young’s sight, she would keep feeling sad. Even if that person wasn’t in front of her, they would still linger in her memory.

Falling for someone is the most helpless thing of all. The three girls of the Yu family, each with a different expression, silently waited together for the first snow under the gloomy November sky.

At the tail end of November, the first snow finally fell in the northern city. It had been building up for so long that the snow kept falling for hours, swirling down from morning until after two in the afternoon.

The teachers made an exception and let everyone go outside to play in the snow, since by the rules, the whole school would have to shovel the snow the next day anyway, so they might as well have fun while they could. Zoe Young was still smiling as she wrote words in the smooth snow with her toe, when suddenly, the already-excited Claire Daniels hit her shoulder with a snowball. A few cold flakes splashed onto her cheek, giving her a strange sensation.

The snow on the ground was still loose and soft, and Claire Daniels was too impatient, so her snowballs were loose and weak. Zoe Young put on a light gray wool hat, stood with her back to Claire Daniels, ignoring her futile barrage from behind, and instead bent down, scooped up snow with both hands, packed it tightly in her palms, and squeezed it hard. A mischievous, sinister smile curled at her lips. “Jiejie, you’re dead,” Zoe Young thought with a grin.

Then, she quickly turned around and hurled the solid, giant snowball with all her strength toward Claire Daniels.

Zoe Young had a perfect plan, excellent patience, and top-notch equipment. And the worst aim.

She and Claire Daniels stood frozen in place, watching as the person in front of them silently wiped the snow off his face. “You. Are. Dead.” he said calmly.

It was Andrew Lane. Hit right in the forehead. What happened next, if described with the idioms they’d recently learned, would be: a tragedy beyond words. One slip, a lifetime of regret. Zoe Young and Claire Daniels ran for their lives, making a few futile counterattacks—though actually, Claire Daniels didn’t need to run, because Andrew Lane’s big snowballs were steady and accurate, never missing, and only hit Zoe Young. So, with nowhere left to run, Zoe Young did something only a first grader would do. She darted into the girls’ bathroom outside. “Come out if you dare!” “Come in if you dare!” Claire Daniels sighed helplessly.

“How old are you guys, still playing like this…” She gave a disdainful look at the two people shouting at each other at the bathroom door, brushed the remaining snow off her gloves, and walked away.

And those two actually kept yelling at each other like that for quite a while—Zoe Young unable to back down, Andrew Lane enjoying every minute. What finally ended the standoff was a crisp call.

“Andrew Lane, Andrew Lane! What are you doing standing at the girls’ bathroom door? You pervert!” The word “pervert” had just started to become popular, like “cool” and “handsome,” and elementary school kids used it all the time.

Zoe Young had already reached her limit with the bathroom smell. While Andrew Lane was talking to that girl, she hunched over and sneaked to the door.

“I found this on your desk, who gave it to you?” “What is it?” “It’s obviously a present. Come on, who gave it to you?”

Zoe Young heard lots of girls laughing and whispering, as if the girl leading them had brought a whole crowd to watch.

“How would I know?” Andrew Lane sounded a bit impatient, but still restrained and polite. “Charlotte Lee, you really shouldn’t go through my desk. Just put it back, okay?”

Zoe Young suddenly realized that Andrew Lane only ever bared his teeth and lost his patience in front of her. So he really just has it out for me, how annoying. She thought this as she peeked around the corner to check out the situation. But then a certain color caught her eye and made her freeze in surprise. Light blue background, white stars.

That familiar wrapping paper was now held high like a torch in Charlotte Lee’s hand, surrounded by all kinds of ambiguous smiles from the girls. But those smiles, those probing looks, always carried a hint of something that made Zoe Young uneasy. It felt like schadenfreude, or a scheme, or… in any case, her instincts told her something unkind was approaching. That wrapping paper. Zoe Young, as if in a dream, blurted out, “How can you just touch other people’s things like that?”

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8. The snow is almost melted

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Zoe Young had no idea what all these synchronized stares and the strange silence meant. Before she even realized it, the words she’d blurted out had made everyone’s expressions so complicated.

Zoe Young remembered her little cousin clutching scissors to her chest in panic. Even though she and Tina Young had never been that close, and their relationship had gotten even more strained last time because Tina Young looked down on her little crush, at this moment she still felt deeply indignant for Tina Young.

Zoe Young’s empathy always came from her vivid imagination. Putting herself in others’ shoes. If it were Nancy Ashton holding up the gift she’d given to 和也 right now? She would be furious. Zoe Young walked out from the bathroom door and stood at the edge of the crowd.

The world covered in snow was especially quiet, as if even the laughter of the kids playing snowball fights was muffled behind a glass dome. When Zoe Young was in eighth grade, she saw a question in her physics workbook and learned that the loose pores in fresh snow absorb sound. In that moment, as she stared at the tip of her pen, the memory of this snowy day in fifth grade suddenly came back to her.

A girl timidly broke the silence: “Wait… is this gift… yours?” Zoe Young had already prepared a whole set of explanations in her head, but this question completely threw her off. Mine? What confused her even more was that Andrew Lane, who had been watching from the side, suddenly snatched the gift from Charlotte Lee with a look of delight, straightened the slightly messy ribbon in front of everyone’s surprised eyes, and then, with a fake-serious expression, said coolly, “Go play somewhere else, don’t be so nosy, okay?”

This didn’t sound at all like how Andrew Lane usually treated girls. He never called girls nosy, talkative, or annoying like the other boys did. He was always polite, at least on the surface.

So as soon as he finished speaking, all the girls around him froze, their faces a mix of surprise and embarrassment, and a few of them obediently started to disperse. The little group standing behind Charlotte Lee hesitated and tugged at her sleeve: “Qianqian… let’s go.”