End of term

By the end of December, the month had slipped by in the blink of an eye. On the evening of the thirty-first, there was no evening self-study session. Instead, each class held its own New Year’s Eve party.

As soon as class ended, the entertainment committee member dashed between seats with a sheet of paper to register performances. “Sign up for a program!” “Do you have any special skills, classmate?”

No... please, don’t come over... I leaned against the wall, head down, writing in my self-governance workbook and using it to shield my face.

“Oh, propaganda commissioner, as the propaganda commissioner, you have to lead by example and sign up for a performance.”

Still no escape.

After some thought and scraping together the little skill I had, I signed up for a harmonica solo of “Katyusha.” Of course, I hadn’t formally studied music; I’d only watched a few online tutorials, and the harmonica was a cheap one bought near the school gate for about twenty yuan. But I liked it very much. On the way home from middle school, I often played little tunes I had picked up somewhere on it.

After the last class on the thirty-first, I had someone bring me a steamed bun from the cafeteria and stayed in the classroom to carry out my primary duty—propaganda work. First, I stood on the desk and stuck several ribbons bought with the class fund on the walls. Then, with colored chalk, I drew red lanterns and fireworks on the blackboard. In the center, I wrote a big “Happy New Year” in calligraphic script.

Mission accomplished, I stepped outside and leaned on the railing to look at the sky. The colors shifted from a deep red at the horizon to a magnificent cobalt dome overhead. The silhouettes of the teaching building and the dawn redwood forest framed the scene. Even the homeroom teacher passing by behind me took out their phone to take photos. Such a beautiful sky—I wanted so badly to take a picture and send it to Zero Formaldehyde. But... it couldn’t be captured. Each human eye holds 120 million rod cells and 7 million cone cells, layered with intricate neural networks; no phone camera has evolved to match that. Over the semester, the atmosphere of the school library and Zero Formaldehyde’s influence had led me to unconsciously sprinkle biological terms into my speech and thoughts.

I so wished Zero Formaldehyde could come see it with me.

Around that moment, I suddenly understood what many people meant by “the moonlight is beautiful tonight.”

Back in the classroom, desks and chairs had been pushed to the sides, leaving a stage in the center. The class president and vice president stood at the center as hosts. On the screen, a festive PowerPoint played, accompanied by the “Spring Festival Overture”—the mood was just right.

It was my first time performing in front of the whole class. My hands gripping the harmonica were sweaty with nerves, but fortunately, I completed the piece without a mistake. Returning to my seat by the wall, I continued to enjoy the performances while doing homework—after all, the final exams were coming soon. After the second song, the entertainment committee member caught me.

“You’re always sneaking study... Hey, you guys, stop studying and come with me to the school gate to pick something up. The KFC order has arrived.”

I reluctantly put down my pen and went with them to fetch several buckets of chicken. Climbing to the fourth floor stairwell, I saw a familiar figure leaning on the windowsill of the study room.

I put the buckets down outside Class Two’s door and turned to run toward Zero Formaldehyde.

“Why aren’t you participating in the New Year’s party in class? Could it be you’re sneaking in studying?” I teased her in the entertainment committee member’s tone.

“No. It’s too noisy and stuffy inside. I just came out for some fresh air,” she replied absentmindedly, pencil scribbling on scrap paper.

“Still say you’re not sneaking study!” I grabbed the sheets from her. What was all this?

“Let the joy degree J represent the level of happiness. A standard individual’s behavior aims to increase J. Let J₀ be the baseline joy, L the laughter intensity, M the schadenfreude coefficient, and k the bottom-line coefficient. For the laugher: J = J₀ + M × log(N + 1) × L (N being the number of onlookers). For the mocked: J = J₀ - k × L... Using average joy to measure a group’s stability...”

The more I looked, the stranger it got. “Is this... a math problem?”

“You say it’s math, so it is. I’m trying to describe human behavior with a mathematical model; it’s easier to understand that way. The more onlookers, the more intense the laughter; when N is large enough, the mocked person’s joy decreases to near zero on average...”

“No, that’s not right! No matter how you calculate it, that behavior is wrong!”

“Huh? Isn’t it?” Zero Formaldehyde lifted her head, eyes wide as if saying, “Then you come up with a better model.”

“First, no one’s happiness can infinitely increase... or decrease...”

“Then find a function with asymptotes... maybe inverse proportional. If J drops below zero, the person dies? Then another mocked person appears—and everyone fears it’s themselves. I’ll add a fear coefficient... Fine, this calculation really doesn’t work...”

I pressed down on her hand writing the equation. “What are you doing?”

“Why?” she responded coldly.

“Are you being bullied in class?”

“...No. I’m just trying to understand human behavior.”

“Right and wrong in human nature and behavior... can’t be understood or judged by calculation. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—malicious harm is wrong no matter what... And the most important thing: I don’t refrain from hurting others because it increases overall happiness... but because of... the stars above and the moral law within.”

Zero Formaldehyde stared at me intently. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m not like you, with some kind of moral intuition. I can only fit it with formulas... but as long as I use the right model and consider enough parameters, I should be able to calculate the optimal solution most people find reasonable.”

“...Isn’t that enough? Sorry for being harsh just now...” She lowered her head and put down the pencil, as if making a compromise.

“It’s okay. Everyone probably has their own theory for explaining the world... Nothing in the model actually happened, right?”

“No, it’s just a mathematical model.”

“If something like that really happened, tell the teacher.”

“I know, Director Gu.”

We sat on the windowsill of the study room, watching the brightly lit teaching building. Some classes even rented lighting and sound equipment—the floorboards seemed to vibrate.

“That one is Venus, that one should be Orion Beta... The light pollution is terrible here.” Zero Formaldehyde waved her hand, pointing at the sky.

“I performed today—I played ‘Katyusha’ on the harmonica.” I pulled it from my pocket and played it again.

Zero Formaldehyde clapped a few times. “Wow! I want to hear more.”

I played “Moscow Nights,” and she began singing along.

“...Only the wind gently sings, how beautiful the night is, how cheerful the heart is, on this enchanting evening...”

It was the first time I’d heard her sing. Her voice was soft but steady. Entranced by her singing, I momentarily lost focus and hit a wrong note.

“My beloved sits quietly by my side, silently watching me without a word. I want to speak to you, but I’m shy; so many words remain in my heart...”

Two weeks before the final exams, the music and art club classes were suspended, but the nine academic subjects still felt insufficient in time, and classes dragged on longer and longer. I gave up going to the cafeteria for dinner, instead bringing biscuits and milk to the classroom, eating while listening to the evening campus broadcast and reviewing political history and geography notes. Weekend competition classes before exams were also paused to free up time for self-study.

“Ah~ Why do I have to memorize all these things about the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties’ feudal systems and the edict of enfeoffment?” Zero Formaldehyde complained, stretching in the corridor during break.

“Uh... I don’t know either. But thinking carefully, it seems only now can we study nine subjects at once. This is probably when our knowledge is at its broadest; in grade 11, subjects get divided, in college majors are chosen, and later research fields narrow. —I think I read somewhere that knowledge grows exponentially, but human life remains limited, so it has to be this way...”

“Even so... I still want to finish the college entrance exam early and throw away these political and history review materials.” She turned away and lay on the railing.

“Ahahaha...”

“You two seem to have a lot of fun chatting.” After returning to class, the girl in front of me asked. (Her name was Xin Yi, my first friend in this class. Sitting so close, we often asked each other about homework or borrowed notes, and slowly became familiar.)

“Is it strange?”

“No, just a bit surprising... Lin Quan is considered a top student—everyone in the grade knows how good her grades are. But she usually ignores others in class. You’re a bit like her.”

“Is that so...” I hadn’t been completely unaware, but hearing it from others stirred complex feelings.

“No, no, you’re a bit better... When someone asks her a question, she actually writes the detailed solution on paper and hands it over, just doesn’t want to say much. She’s very thoughtful, just very quiet.”

Is that so? In other words, am I someone who receives special treatment from Zero Formaldehyde?

There was a superstition circulating at Jiang Lin Middle School about exams—that using a top student’s pen to answer questions could bring better scores. I wondered if, at that time, Zero Formaldehyde was surrounded by classmates begging to borrow her pen... but knowing her personality, maybe not.

I wanted a pen of hers to bring me luck—so on the day before the exam, I finally mustered the courage to ask. Zero Formaldehyde laughed at my superstition and exchanged a black gel pen with me. I held it carefully and examined it; the pen was very simple, just like her style. The transparent plastic barrel was scratched in many places, showing it had been used a long time. It seemed she only splurged when buying books; for clothes and stationery, she stuck to the simplest styles.

At the exam, I regretted it a little—holding her pen, images of her sitting beside me doing problems involuntarily appeared in my mind. Focus, focus. I took a deep breath—if it were Zero Formaldehyde, what approach would she take...

Whether by superstition or not, I ranked fourth in the ninth row and fifth in the sixth row—both within the top twenty in the grade. I also won a scholarship for the first time. Indeed, grades are a student’s hard currency, the center of all operations. They seem to exchange not only for money but also for praise and self-esteem—I still remembered the inferiority I felt when I first entered this “elite class” (a class formed by gathering the best middle school exam students from various districts in Jiang Lin city, Classes One through Four)—feeling that as someone admitted from “below,” I could never match others in academics or overall quality. But as my rank improved, that feeling gradually faded.

Yet this binding brought a faint unease. If one day I... No, a student’s primary duty is to study diligently; why think so much?