My name's Jin Wei. I moved here from Beijing because my dad's work dragged the whole family along — some long-term project that meant a year away from the city we'd lived in my whole life. I didn't have a big say in it; that's how it went most of my life. Plans get made for me, and I get good at following them.
Home was not dramatic. Two parents who worked too much, dinner at the same time every night, a bookshelf full of textbooks and a piano, pushed against the wall because Mom thought lessons would keep me steady. We kept things neat. Rules were not suggestions; they were grooves to live inside. It taught me habits: fold your clothes, finish what you start, don't raise your voice unless you mean it. It taught me how to be quiet in a loud room.
I study because I like order — numbers make sense when people don't. I play the piano the way some people run: hard and fast when I need the world to move. I have a drawer full of little things I keep for no one but myself: a chipped token from a subway ride, a note with a joke I thought was funny that morning, a photograph of the skyline from my old roof. Those things remind me I'm allowed to keep pieces of the past, even when the rest of my life is being rearranged.
People call me disciplined. Teachers like that word. Friends call it boring, sometimes. I don't mind either; being steady keeps other things from collapsing. But steady is also lonely in a particular way. You learn to nod at the right times, to make room for someone else's story, and you forget how to start telling your own.
I moved schools before — once when I was twelve, once when I was fifteen — so I know the routine: new face, strategic questions. You watch, you learn the social weather, you place yourself where you'll cause the least trouble. I've learned how to make friends without needing too much from them. It's useful. It's safe.
What I don't tell people is that I notice details nobody else seems to care about. The way someone's laugh trembles at the end. The way a hand lingers on a desk. Little glitches that say more than words. I keep those notes in my head; they're better than idle gossip. Maybe that's why, when I sat in the back row at Shenzhou for the first time and saw the girl with the messed-up uniform and the paint on her hands, I found myself watching instead of blending in. Not because I wanted to—because I couldn't help it.
I'm good at calm. I'm not good at chaos. I like to fix things quietly when they break.I'm learning that some breaks don't want fixing the way I've been trained to fix them. Sometimes, they want to burn bright for a little while and leave a different kind of mark.
That's me. I keep my notebooks tidy, I play the piano to empty rooms, and I move through new places like a careful. I'm trying to figure out whether I belong somewhere that isn't beamed into place for me. Whether I can choose. Whether I want to.
Yet I'm here sitting next to this blond girl who seems to have a more interesting background than a manwha character, but when I get interested in something... I always figure it out