Chapter 1: The Pond

Waking up in a strange room, Thomas Reed felt a bit disoriented. She lay there, staring motionlessly at the ceiling for a while before remembering—this was her new place.

It seemed to be raining outside. Nanlin City was especially fond of rain; in the short week since she’d arrived, it had rained almost every day. Thomas Reed didn’t like the rain. Every time it rained, her mood would get particularly bad.

The earphones she’d stuffed in her ears before bed were still hanging there, but there was no sound. She yanked them out with one hand, rubbed her sore ears, and sat on the edge of the bed for a long time without moving. It wasn’t until the door was banged on—bam, bam, bam—that her dad tried and failed to open it, shouting angrily from outside, “Why are you locking the door? Get up, you’ll have to go to class by yourself later, I have to leave first.”

“Thomas Reed, did you hear me?” The lock rattled noisily, and the door sounded like it was about to be smashed down, making an irritating noise.

Thomas Reed lay back down, didn’t say a word, put her earphones back on, and started playing music on her phone. The increasingly loud music drowned out the sounds from outside, just like she’d used music in her earphones countless times before to block out her parents’ endless arguments.

The noise stopped, but the rain hadn’t. The house was empty now, especially quiet.

Thomas Reed left with her backpack. She didn’t like using an umbrella. The rain outside wasn’t heavy, so she just pulled up her hood and walked head-down into the wind and rain.

Class 2, Grade 10, Nanlin No.1 High School. It had been a month since the semester started, and with about fifty students in the class, most people already knew each other. The boys and girls were about half and half, and almost everyone had found friends to hang out with, forming little groups. But with so many people in a class, there were bound to be a few loners, or outcasts that others kept their distance from.

Thomas Reed was one of the former. She had transferred in a week ago and had no interest in making friends, sitting in the back row with an air of cold indifference. She was the kind of girl who was very good-looking—thin eyelids, thin lips, a high nose bridge, and when her eyes were lowered, she always had a kind of world-weary laziness.

Most of the students in Class 2 were still well-behaved kids. The teacher didn’t allow phones, so few dared to bring them, but Thomas Reed brought hers every day. She often wore earphones to listen to music, looking unconcerned, and being late to class was a regular thing.

Usually, students like that were the ones with poor grades just coasting along, but in the first monthly exam, she ranked in the top ten of the class and top fifty in the grade—far ahead of the similarly nonchalant neighbors around her.

Besides her, there was another outcast in Class 2, someone everyone kept their distance from: Henry Clark.

She had entered the school with the second-highest score in the entire school, and in this monthly exam, she became number one. In stark contrast to her dazzling grades was her poverty.

Of course, not all the students in the class came from wealthy families; some were less well-off. But to be as poor as Henry Clark was almost unbelievable. Even someone as indifferent to everything as Thomas Reed, thanks to her desk mate’s gossiping enthusiasm, had heard plenty of rumors.

Henry Clark came from a very remote mountain village. Getting into Nanlin No.1 High School was practically a miracle. It was said that her tuition and boarding fees were both waived.

The school uniform was standard, but under it, Henry Clark wore a faded, frayed crew-neck T-shirt that had clearly been worn for many years, and on her feet was a pair of cloth shoes—in a place where everyone else wore sneakers or leather shoes, that pair alone made her stand out completely.

Henry Clark sat by the window in the third row. She wasn’t short, and because she wasn’t, she looked especially thin. Her long, jet-black hair was neatly braided behind her head—a very old-fashioned braid.

“Oh my god, I can’t stand sharing a dorm with her anymore. She doesn’t say a word all day. The rest of us in the dorm, whenever we see her, we just don’t feel like talking. That shirt of hers, it’s so torn up and she still won’t throw it away. And those cloth shoes, she’s worn them for so long and never washes them. Did you know she doesn’t even buy shampoo or body wash, just a bar of soap? She uses soap to wash her hair!”

“No way, is she really that poor? How much does it cost to buy a shirt, a bottle of body wash, or a pair of shoes? I don’t believe anyone can really be that poor these days. Didn’t the school give her financial aid?”

“She even brought porridge and steamed buns to the dorm, just left them by her bed, and eats them for two days. It’s unbelievable, not even afraid they’ll go bad. I’m just worried she’ll keep doing this. If she leaves spoiled food in the dorm, how are we supposed to live there?”

The girls’ endless complaints rang in her ears. Thomas Reed found it a bit noisy, lifted her eyelids to glance at the two girls nearby, then got up to go to the bathroom.

The restroom on this floor was too crowded. She didn’t like waiting in line, so she’d rather walk a bit farther to the restroom on the south side of the teaching building, where there were fewer people.

As soon as she walked in, she ran into Henry Clark—the very person her dormmates had just been complaining about—washing her hands. Thomas Reed had never interacted with her, nor really looked at her closely before. Maybe because of what she’d just heard, she glanced at her a bit longer this time.

Just then, Henry Clark looked up too, and the two of them made eye contact.

It was the first time Thomas Reed really saw what Henry Clark looked like.