Zoe Young remembered that some famous person once said, he threw himself into it like a starving man lunging at bread. She used to think this was a silly thing to say, but only now did she realize that you can never underestimate a famous quote.

She didn’t know how long she’d been standing there; her left foot was starting to feel numb and tingly. She shifted her position, and then heard a sharp scream: “What the hell are you doing here?! I’ve been looking for you for ages, you’re just like your deadbeat dad, only know how to ruin my life, did I owe you people something in my past life?!”

The woman who burst out of the crowd was shouting loudly, but her voice was hoarse and breathless, so almost no one paid attention. But to Zoe Young, it sounded especially harsh. The little girl sitting by the flowerbed was startled, quickly stood up, instinctively covered her head, shrank back, and even squeezed her eyes shut tightly. The book that had been on her knees fell to the ground and she stepped on it herself.

In the end, she was dragged away by her mother, who pinched her upper arm. Zoe Young stood there dumbfounded for a long time before slowly walking over and picking up the dirty book from the ground.

“Seventeen Without Tears.” Why? She stared at the title for a long time, still a bit confused. Is it that you can’t cry, or that you shouldn’t cry?

Zoe Young couldn’t imagine what “seventeen” meant. To thirteen-year-old Zoe Young, age didn’t mean much; seventeen-year-old Joel Young gege, seventeen-year-old Lily Young, even seventeen-year-old Alan Carter—they were all completely different.

“Zoe? Why are you here? Hurry up and get in line, the drawing is over, it’s time to meet your homeroom teacher.” Her mom walked over, reached out and took Zoe’s wrist, warm and soft. Zoe Young looked up at her own mother, and thought of what had just happened. For the first time, she felt a strong sense of sympathy, even a cruel sense of superiority. She’s so pitiful, Zoe Young thought. “What’s that?” Her mom finally noticed what was in Zoe Young’s hand. “Where did you pick that up? Isn’t it dirty?” She pinched the spine between her thumb and forefinger and shook her head. “It’s someone else’s. I… I need to find a chance to return it to her.”

Zoe Young put the dirty book on the shelf, then wiped off the ink, sat back at her desk, and wrote the last paragraph in her first letter to Alan Carter: “Today I suddenly felt very happy. Turns out happiness is something you feel by comparison, compared to people who are worse off. Even though I think that’s not good, kind of dark, I have to tell you, the happiness you feel through comparison is the real kind, the kind you can see and touch.” 293? So-called new beginnings are just repeating the past at a higher level of difficulty.

? Time is a great magician, it never stops for anyone.

? Seventeen looks so wonderful; there will be a handsome, outstanding boy in white, there will be true friendship, a carefree life, even that kind of hazy love you have to let go of and the troubles of complaining about exams—all of it, in her eyes, was enviable.

? Revenge and blame are not the best ways to solve problems. For many things, all you can do is endure, and let them gradually fade away.

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The Fifth Beauty: Brave New World

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1. So-called New Life

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“Alan Carter, hello! I never told you about how I learned pinyin as a kid, did I?”

Zoe Young rested her left cheek on her hand, gazing at the rows of AaBbDdEe on the blackboard, while her right hand carefully took notes in a brand new notebook. Her deskmate had long since slumped over the desk, yawning from boredom at such dull content. She glanced at her deskmate, then the corners of her mouth lifted slightly.

That row of letters suddenly reminded Zoe Young of her very first class in first grade, when they started learning pinyin. Only this time, she wasn’t staring at the blackboard in confusion and panic, nor was she poking Zachary Lewis with her pen to quietly ask, “What’s this?” She hadn’t learned pinyin before elementary school, nor had she learned English before middle school, but her feelings were completely different now. Zoe Young silently counted the times in her life she’d felt lost, and for the first time, vaguely pondered what they meant to her. She could no longer remember how she felt when she carried a test paper with a score of forty back to her seat under everyone’s gaze. But she knew that if it weren’t for that moment of awkward helplessness, and the sudden clarity and regret that followed, she wouldn’t be able to face the unknown world of English so calmly now.

So-called new beginnings are just repeating the past at a higher level of difficulty. All she could do was learn to wait. “You know what? I suddenly realized that time is truly, truly great. I always knew it before, but I didn’t understand it back then.”

She didn’t know if this slightly pretentious line would make Alan Carter laugh at her, but she was genuinely grateful—even if she didn’t know who she was grateful to.

The wall clock ticked away, unhurried, never speeding up just because you’re in trouble, nor slowing down because you’re happy and proud.

Time is the fairest magician.

Zoe Young heard a terrifying scream during Chinese class, as if a wild beast was fleeing down the stairs, followed by thunderous footsteps. She jumped in fright, turned around, and saw a hand outside the back door glass, quickly raised and then slammed down, waving a long wooden board, its white paint clearly from a dismantled desk. The loud cursing and banging in the hallway made it sound like hell on earth. The students in the classroom were still stunned, but three boys in the back row had already leapt up, almost pouncing on the back door, excitedly peering out the back window.

“Damn, isn’t that Charles Moss from ninth grade?” “I told you he wouldn’t be cocky for long, those guys from Vocational have been waiting for him at the gate with a dozen brothers every day, he climbed the wall to escape, but today they found him in class, you can run from the monk but not the temple…” The Chinese teacher, a short-haired woman in her thirties with a perpetually icy expression, glanced outside as if nothing was unusual, then grabbed the math teacher’s teaching stick and slammed it hard on the blackboard. The loud bang made all the students shudder.

“Everyone get back to your seats! Have you all forgotten the rules?!” The three boys left the back window and returned to their seats, a bit sheepish. Zoe Young also turned back, still a little shaken, opened her textbook, and glanced at today’s lesson, Henry Moore’s “A Walk.” She flipped a couple of pages, then looked back again. In the second-to-last row by the window, in the same spot where Zoe Young sat in first grade, there was a girl in a dark blue raincoat, head bowed low, as if the commotion had nothing to do with her. Her ponytail stuck up high, like a flustered, messy rooster’s tail.

That girl was the protagonist of “Seventeen Without Tears.” When Zoe Young saw her in the same class on the first day, she thought it was amazing and was very happy. She was about to go over and say, “Your book is with me,” but after thinking about it, she stopped.

That would be the same as telling her, I saw your mom hit and scold you. Zoe Young held back. It had been over a month since school started, and she still hadn’t spoken a word to that girl.

The Chinese teacher continued the lesson in a flat voice: “So here we have two mothers and two sons. What is the author’s purpose in doing this? Who can tell us?”

The last four words were clearly just for show; she didn’t expect anyone to raise their hand, so after asking, she lowered her head to look at the roll book.

“Michelle Cindy?”

“Michelle Cindy?” There was already faint laughter below. The girl in the second-to-last row stood up as if startled, head down, silent, like a piece of wood. “Speak!” The Chinese teacher frowned and sighed, thinking the girl hadn’t heard the question, so she repeated, “I just asked, what is the author’s purpose in having two mothers and two sons here?” Time is a great magician, it never stops for anyone. But Michelle Cindy was someone who could freeze with time.

Zoe Young didn’t know who had cast a spell on whom. A minute passed. The confused Chinese teacher stared at the girl with her head down, the laughter in the class grew, then was suppressed by the teacher’s terrifying expression, and the room returned to silence. “What’s wrong with her? Is she doing this on purpose?” She lowered her head and asked Zoe Young in the first row. After seeing Zoe Young’s file and learning she was from the Affiliated Primary School, the homeroom teacher thought highly of her and seated her in the first row. She shook her head and quietly added, “She… she’s not doing it on purpose.”

Zoe Young didn’t really know what counted as on purpose or not. It was the first time the Chinese teacher had called on Michelle Cindy, and she found it baffling, but the same scene had already happened countless times in English class.