When military training ended, Brian Clark’s conjunctivitis gradually improved. She was very careful in all settings, and believed the rumor that just making eye contact could spread the infection, so whenever she spoke to Jason Walker, she kept her eyes on the ground.

Little Foster rearranged everyone by height again, shifting positions every two weeks.

On the weekend, Brian Clark went home.

She took a shower first. While her grandma cooked, she wrote in her diary in her bedroom. What is a diary? It’s something to fill the loneliness of adolescence, recording daily trivialities, noting different scenery, or carrying some secret, hidden thoughts.

Brian Clark was good at writing essays—not in a particularly literary way, but with a special simplicity, what people call “great skill appears clumsy.” No matter what she wrote, there was always a sense of the earth’s solid gentleness. At first glance, her diary seemed like a plain record: how the spring breeze blew, how the autumn fog spread, how the sun on the playground made her scalp burn, while the sand under the trees stayed warm... And then, there was a boy with excellent grades, thick black eyebrows, tall, wore size X clothes, and always looked at people from above, seeming hard to approach.

But, he never tried to get along with me.

After writing each line, Brian Clark would lift her head and stare blankly at the osmanthus tree outside the window for a few seconds. The scent of the blossoms was almost cloying, making her shiver before she bent over to write again.

When it was time to eat, her grandma came to call her.

Her grandpa came in carrying a small stool. Both grandparents were retired; her grandma loved to get up early and wander the market with a cloth bag, while her grandpa liked to play chess with other old men. Whenever Brian Clark came home, her grandma would cook a whole table of dishes.

There were both meat and vegetables, with bright, colorful combinations.

“Are your eyes better, baby?” Grandma ladled out a big bowl of bone soup for her.

Grandpa had already looked Brian Clark up and down and said, “I think the kid’s pretty much recovered.”

Brian Clark was the type to only share good news, not bad. She talked about funny things from military training, imitated the homeroom teacher’s tone, mimicked the instructor’s sternness, making her grandma laugh nonstop.

Only when Brian Clark was home did the house really feel like home—lively, full of chatter and laughter, even the old furniture seemed to come alive.

After dinner, her grandma glanced at the calendar on the table out of habit. Brian Clark knew what that meant; she’d already checked when the Mid-Autumn Festival was.

That person only came home twice a year—Mid-Autumn Festival and New Year’s Eve, the days for family reunions, which were also the days she had to stay at her cousin’s house.

Brian Clark hadn’t spent Mid-Autumn Festival with her grandparents in years.

Clearly, this year would be no exception.

The two elders exchanged a silent glance. Grandma spoke, her face full of guilt: “Baby, this Mid-Autumn Festival will be the same as before, okay?”

Was there really a choice? Brian Clark dimmed for a moment as usual, then smiled: “Okay, when school’s out I’ll ask Jason Walker to go to the bookstore with me.”

Grandma hesitated, her eyes full of complicated emotions that words couldn’t describe.

Brian Clark only knew that person was her mother. When her mother came home, she had to leave; otherwise, her mother would never come back.

One year, she was just too curious, and too eager. She thought her mother would like her—she never got into trouble, loved to study, loved to help out, like a gentle little lamb. Jason Walker would get into fights and arguments, even have people come to their house, and her mother would still take her side. Brian Clark thought if her mother got to know her better, she’d definitely like her. So, with that in mind, she secretly came back again. Before she could see anything, her grandma found her and, in a panic, hurried her off toward her cousin’s house.

Brian Clark felt so wronged, holding back tears, looking back again and again, only to see her grandma’s hand waving: hurry up.

She cried all the way, wiping her tears dry before entering her cousin’s house.

Even so, Brian Clark never asked the adults, including her cousin’s family, what was really going on. She thought, if someone wants to tell you something, they’ll tell you without being asked; if they don’t want to, asking won’t help, so why make things hard for others? And if that someone is family, you should never make things hard for them.

As if to make up for it, her grandma gave her extra pocket money as usual. Brian Clark wasn’t one to spend recklessly, but this time, she planned to use it. Competition at Meizhong was fierce; Brian Clark was only average when she entered, barely noticeable. In the teachers’ eyes, there were only two things that mattered: Tsinghua/Peking University and the “first-tier” university rate. Brian Clark was very worried she’d end up at an ordinary college.

She didn’t have any better ideas—doing endless practice papers seemed like the only way out. Anyway, she wasn’t afraid of hard work.

But at Meizhong, the rate of students reaching the first-tier university cutoff was very high; unless you were at the bottom, whenever Brian Clark got anxious, thinking of this would help her relax a bit.

While her grandma was cleaning up the dishes, she heard her grandparents whispering in the kitchen. Brian Clark didn’t go over; she quietly returned to her room, opened her diary, and saw the crescent moon outside the window, clear and pale, a bit like a wan human face.

Brian Clark felt she should wrap up her diary entry, but in the end, she only wrote “him”—just that, not even a name.

One word, one line, a single period.

The most annoying thing after military training was writing a reflection. The feeling was exactly like having to write an essay after a primary school field trip—utterly exasperating. The exercise books hadn’t even been handed out yet, and everyone was reluctant to even turn in a diary, afraid the Chinese teacher would just sell them as scrap paper, making it not worth the loss. So, they’d just tear a page from their notebook and start churning out the same old nonsense.