In the last week of the end of October, the weather suddenly warmed up, as if autumn had finally generously sprinkled a handful of warmth before completely handing over the rule. The sun was thick and warm, shining on the trunk of the sycamore tree by the playground, exposing the rough bark to a layer of warm light brown. The forty-minute interclass after the second class in the morning is the boiling time of the whole school during the day - every door of the teaching building is open, and the students are like sheep surrounded all morning, pouring into the playground, corridors and all the open spaces that can be exposed to the sun.
Doris played badminton on the concrete floor on the east side of the playground. The venue is two crooked lines drawn by several students on the concrete surface with chalk. In the middle is an old net borrowed from the sports equipment room. The mesh is loose to penetrate a sparrow. But it doesn't affect their interest at all. Doris held the beat borrowed from Ellie, and her school uniform coat had long been taken off and thrown on the edge of the flower bed next to her. She was only wearing a short sleeve, and a layer of sweat had permeated from the corners of her forehead. The boy opposite her was a sports committee member in the class. He was much taller than her, but his skills were really not good. The serve was either out of the net or out of bounds. Doris won without a sense of accomplishment, but ran all over the field. She is a resident student. She soaks in school during lunch breaks and between classes. She is not in a hurry like a walking student, so she has no concept of time to play ball.
Time flies in the crisp sound of badminton. When Doris noticed that more than half of the students on the playground had decreased sparsely, she suddenly grabbed a classmate next to her who was running to the teaching building and asked, "Did you ring?" The other party shouted "fight early" without looking back, and most of the voice was cut off by the wind.
Doris "clicked" in her heart, turned her head and ran wildly in the direction of the teaching building. Ellie was still calling her "racket--" behind her, and she couldn't care at all. It was about 100 meters away from the playground to the main entrance of the teaching building. She ran at the speed of a 100-meter sprint. Her sneakers stepped on the pile of fallen leaves and took a few broken leaves on her shoelaces. She didn't bother to throw them off.
When she rushed into the main entrance of the teaching building, she was out of breath and speechless. The corridor was empty, and the classroom doors on both sides were closed. Through the small glass window on the door, you could see the class that had already started inside. Her classroom is on the fourth floor - the one at the eastern end of the top floor. You have to climb four floors from the main entrance stairs. Doris grabbed the handrail of the stairs and ran up, two steps in one step, and her knees hurt. There was only one thought in her heart: it's over, it's over, Stephen's class, if he was caught by him if he was late, he would die.
Stephen is Doris's homeroom teacher, teaching mathematics. In her forties, her hair has begun to be sparse from the top of her head, but she has a neat short hair, which looks quite serious. He usually doesn't laugh and is very strict with students, especially in terms of discipline. Being late, going to bed, and not handing in homework are trivial to him. Doris once saw a boy who was called by Stephen to the office and stood for the whole lunch break because he was late for two consecutive days.
When she ran to the corner of the third floor, Doris looked up and her heart instantly cooled down.
Stephen is right in front of her. To be precise, Stephen was walking in the corridor on the third floor with his back to her, walking slowly, with a pile of lesson plans in his hand. He probably just finished the next class and was walking to his own class on the fourth floor. Obviously, he hasn't arrived in the classroom yet - but it's because he's dragging the classroom, which is completely different from her situation.
Doris subconsciously lightened her steps and wanted to sneak into the classroom quietly after Stephen before he turned around. But as soon as she turned sideways, she saw another person.
Dyson is coming down from the stairway on the fourth floor. He wore a dark gray thin sweater today, his sleeves rolled up to his arms, revealing a clean wrist line, and a thermos in his hand. He looked in a good mood and walked quickly. As soon as he went down to the platform on the third and a half floors, his eyes bumped into Doris, who was sneaking up.
The moment Doris saw him, her whole face was wrinkled into a ball. She quickly raised her hands and stroked crazily in front of her chest - she raised her index finger of her right hand and clicked desperately in front of her lips, meaning "Shh, don't make a sound"; her left hand fanned hard in the direction of Stephen's back, meaning "He is in front of him, don't let him find me"; then pressed down with both hands at the same time, meaning "Please, don't talk". The whole set of actions took about less than two seconds, and the speed was comparable to that of sign language translation, and there was an undisguised, almost funny plead expression on his face.
Dyson's steps stopped for a moment. He looked at her, and a light that Doris was too familiar with appeared in his eyes - the kind of light that she had learned to identify for many years later, which belonged to him, with a little narrow-mindedness and joking. The corners of his mouth curled slowly and obviously.
Then he opened his mouth. The sound was neither loud nor small, just so that Stephen, who was more than a dozen steps away in front, could hear clearly.
"Oh, Doris," he said in a relaxed tone as if talking about the weather, "you came just in time. I was about to say to Mr. Stephen, did you fall asleep during the geography class last week? I saw it. I slept on the table for a long time.
Doris almost couldn't come up in a breath. She shook her head crazily, crossed her hands into a big "X" in front of her chest, and then made a "please" action, and even began to stand on her feet in place, so anxious that tears were about to come out. Dyson looked at her like this, and his smile did not converge, but deepened. He turned his head slightly, as if he was tasting her embarrassment, and then turned in the direction of Stephen and raised the volume slightly:
"Mr. Stephen - wait a minute, about Doris--"
The back in front stopped.
Stephen turned around. His eyes first fell on Doris, who was standing stiff on the stairs, and then moved to Dyson, who was standing on the half-layer platform with an innocent and frank expression. His brows wrinkled, and the two gray eyebrows twisted into a deep ravine.
"What's the matter?" Stephen asked in a low voice, with a unique and unquestionable sense of authority of the math teacher.
Doris has completely given up struggling. She leaned on the handrail of the stairs and closed her eyes, waiting for the verdict of fate.
Dyson walked down the last few steps and stood next to Stephen. His tone was light, as if he was sharing a small discovery that was not hurtful: "It's nothing big, just a reminder. Doris slept twice in my class last week, and she slept quite soundly. I'm afraid she's not feeling well recently. Look, she just ran up and was out of breath. Is she too tired recently?"
Doris cursed a long series of words in her heart that she couldn't say. She did sleep twice - the first time was because she read the novel in the dormitory at two o'clock in the morning the night before, and the second time was purely because the class was about ocean current, and she really couldn't bear it. But she never thought that Dyson would remember, let alone that he would poke her out in a concerned tone of "I'm doing it for your good" in front of Stephen in this situation.
Stephen's expression changed from serious to more serious. He glanced at Doris, which showed disappointment and the meaning of "you wait".
"Doris," Stephen said, every word like a kanji written on the blackboard with chalk, neat and powerful, "Come to my office after this class."
After saying that, he turned around and went upstairs. His steps were a little lower than just now. The lesson plan was sandwiched under his armpit, and his back showed a coldness that could not be discussed.
Doris stood still and looked up at Dyson. Dyson was hoving a thermos and looked down at her slightly. Before the smile on his face was completely withdrawn, the corners of his mouth were still bent, and the light from the corridor window was reflected in his eyes, which looked very innocent.
"You--" Doris opened her mouth and was so angry that she couldn't say a complete sentence.
"What about me?" Dyson said in a gentle tone, "I'm just caring about the quality of your sleep."
Doris took a deep breath, and her cheeks were bulging, but Stephen hadn't gone far yet, so she didn't dare to attack. She could only suppress her voice and squeeze out a sentence from between her teeth: "You know that I'm making gestures to tell you not to say anything."
Dyson took a sip of the water in the thermos, as if it was something that needed to be tasted carefully, and replied slowly: "Well, I see. The hand is quite fast, and the comparison is quite clear.
"Then why are you--"
"Because of your expression," Dyson interrupted her, with a little imperceptible and almost stubborn smile in his voice, "It's really interesting. I can't help it."
Doris was so angry that she wanted to stomp her feet in place, but the sound of Stephen pushing open the classroom door came from upstairs. Finally, she stared at Dyson and dragged her steps to the fourth floor. When she passed by him, she heard him whisper, "Don't play so much in front of Stephen's class next time - he hates students being late more than me."
Doris paused and looked back at him. Dyson has turned around and went upstairs, holding the thermos in his hand, walking slowly, and the back of the sweater swayed gently with the movement. She stared at his back for two seconds and felt that this person was simply unreasonable - which side did he stand on?
The answer seems obvious, but it doesn't seem so simple.
For the rest of the class, Doris didn't listen to a word. She sat by the window in the classroom on the fourth floor, repeatedly replaying the scene in the corridor in her mind, sometimes gritting her teeth, and sometimes inexplicably feeling that there seemed to be something else hidden in his last advice. Stephen talked about the images and properties of quadratic functions on the podium. The parabola fluctuated in front of her eyes, but she only saw Dyson's curved corners of his mouth and his eyes with a narrow smile.
When the bell rang after class, Doris slowly packed up, took out a pen from the pen bag and put it back, and repeated it three times. Ellie whispered to her, "Are you okay?" She shook her head, took a deep breath, stood up and walked to the office downstairs.
Before pushing open the office door, she looked back at the stairway on the fourth floor. Dyson is coming out of the classroom opposite, with the lesson plan under his arms. He saw her standing at the door of the office and raised his chin to her from afar, which seemed to mean - go in, you deserve it.
Doris turned around and pushed the door in.
Stephen's admonition lasted for about fifteen minutes, from "You are already a resident student, and you should set an example" to "what does it look like to sleep in geography class", and finally "go back and write a 500-word review and give it to me tomorrow"
When Doris came out of Stephen's office, the corridor was completely empty. The bell of the fourth class had already rang, and the doors of the classrooms on both sides were tightly closed. Through the small glass window on the door, you could see the profile of the students bowing their heads and writing. She leaned against the wall outside the office door and took a long breath. She closed her eyes and cursed Dyson from beginning to end in her heart, from the gray sweater he was wearing today to the unsightly thermos in his hand. After scolding, the anger did not subside, but arched in his heart, like a sleepy beast that couldn't find an outlet.
She didn't go back to the classroom. The fourth class is geography class, and she doesn't want to see him again in the corridor. She turned into the bathroom at the end of the corridor, turned on the tap, and rinsed her face with cold water. The drops of water dripped down her chin on the front of the school uniform. She looked up at herself in the mirror. Her face was still red and her eyes were still bright. She couldn't tell whether she was angry or something else.
The 500-word review was written by Doris during the evening self-study. She sat at the desk in the dormitory and bit the pen cap and thought for a long time. The first sentence at the beginning was "Dear Mr. Stephen". She felt that it was too formal, so she crossed it out; she changed it to "Hello, Mr. Stephen". After reading it twice, she felt strange and crossed it out again. Finally, she simply wrote "I was wrong", and then began with "I shouldn't sleep in geography class" and honestly narrated the story. After finishing writing, she counted that it was only about 200 words, so she stubbornly put together some clichés such as "deep introspection" and "never never commit again", and finally filled the box. Early the next morning, she stuffed the review into the crack of the door of Stephen's desk, like throwing a hot potato.
For the next few days, Doris took a detour when she saw Dyson. Seeing him in the corridor from afar, she immediately turned into the nearest fork or flashed into the next classroom, pretending to read the curricula or borrow something from her classmates. She didn't sleep in the geography class - not only did she not sleep, but she also sat in the first row, her notebook spread wide, her eyes followed him on the podium, and her expression was more focused than ever. When Dyson once talked about the cause of the Mediterranean climate, his eyes swept to her, paused slightly, and the corners of his mouth seemed to move, but he said nothing and moved away.
This deliberate avoidance lasted for nearly a week. Doris thought she could hide like this all the time until one afternoon, in the last self-study class, she was lying on the table reading English, when a square folded note came from the front, passed through the hands of three people, and finally fell on her textbook. She opened it and saw that there was only one line of words on it. The handwriting was thin and neat. She recognized who it was at a glance--
"Have you submitted the review? Stephen said that the writing was okay.
Doris stared at the line for five seconds, and then suddenly looked up at the door of the classroom. Dyson was passing through the corridor, walking slowly, facing her sideways, holding a piling of rolls in his hand, as if he was just passing by. But Doris saw that the corners of his mouth were clearly curved.
She lowered her head and quickly wrote a line on the back of the note. She folded it and let the students in front of her pass it back. She didn't know whether he would pick it up or where he had gone. But a few minutes later, the note came back, with a new line of words on the back: "That's good. Don't sleep next time. The part of the ocean flow is really boring, but you have to take the exam.
Doris couldn't help laughing, and Ellie next to her looked at her inexplicably. She folded the note and sandwiched it into the title page of the English textbook, which was printed with a piece of Shakespeare's sonnet. She had never read it carefully before, but at this moment she felt that those letters had a warm meaning.
From that day on, there seemed to be a secret passage between them. It's not a big deal, but it's an occasional note, which are all irrelevant words - once she asked him if he would play a documentary in the next geography class, and he replied, "Let's see your performance"; once he asked her how she was doing in the high jump (she later knew that he actually remembered the project she applied for before the high jump competition), and she replied, "practicing more than sleeping". These notes never exceed two or three lines, and the tone is always light, like ordinary questions and answers between teachers and students, but Doris put them away one by one and folded them neatly at the bottom of the dormitory drawer, with an English-Chinese dictionary that she had never read much.
November came quietly. The ginkgo leaves are almost all fallen, and the bare branches draw a fine net on the gray sky. The midterm exam was like a slowly approaching cold wave. The teachers of all subjects began to send out the past papers of previous years, and the classroom was filled with an atmosphere of anxiety and silence. Doris's weakness is mathematics. She understands half of the quadratic functions taught by Stephen, and the red cross on the workbook is connected. One night of self-study, she stared at a question of vertex coordinates for almost twenty minutes. Her mind was like a ball of cotton, and the more she looked, the more confused she became. She stared at the messy equation and somehow remembered the narrow smile when Dyson said on the stairs that day, "He hates being late more than me," and then somehow remembered the way he said "good" next to the high jump venue, and then remembered the words "The part of the ocean current is really boring" on the note.
She bit the pen cap and stood up. Ellie asked her where she was going, and she said she was going to ask math problems. But she went to the office of the geography group.
Dyson is still there. He was the only one left in the whole office. The desk lamp was on, there were piles of unfinished papers on the table, and the red pen was put aside. He looked up and saw her pushing the door in, and his eyebrows were slightly raised.
"Math problems?" He asked with a clear smile in his tone, "I teach geography."
"I know," Doris put the workbook on his desk and turned to the question of finding the vertex coordinates. "I didn't understand Stephen's solution. He said to turn the general formula into an vertex, and I couldn't turn it halfway."
Dyson pushed the paper aside and came over to look at the question. The light of the table lamp came from his side, casting a small fan-shaped shadow of his eyelashes on his cheekbones. He looked for a few seconds, picked up the pencil and drew a bracket next to her equation, and whispered, "You used the previous method correctly, but the symbol of this step is wrong. Negative is positive. It should be plus four, not minus four."
Doris came closer and looked. Sure enough, it was a very stupid symbol error. She was a little embarrassed and stretched out her hand to get the homework book back, but he didn't give in. The pencil drew a few more steps on the paper: "Go down from here. Look, the vertex coordinates will come out."
She stood at his desk and looked down at the lines of pencil words. There was a faint smell of coffee in the air mixed with the smell of clean soap on his body. It was dark outside the office window, and only the green light at the safety exit at the end of the corridor was on in the distance. It seems that there is only this room with a desk lamp left in the whole school. It is quiet, and even the sound of water flowing in the heating pipe can be heard clearly.
"Understood." She said in a softer voice than usual.
Dyson put down the pencil, leaned back on the back of the chair and looked at her. The light of the table lamp shone half of his face from the side, and the other half was hidden in the soft shadow. His expression was a little vague, but the smile was clear. You can ask me if you don't know math in the future," he said, paused for a moment, and added, "I don't charge money, but if you fall asleep in my class again, I will ask Stephen to add 500 words to you."
Doris picked up the workbook, made a "try it" expression at him, turned around and walked to the door. When she walked to the door, she stopped for a moment. She didn't look back and said, "Next time I send a note to ask you a question. Don't reply so slowly."
His low laughter came from behind him: "It depends on your performance."
Doris pushed open the door and walked into the corridor. The cold air came to her face, but she felt that her whole body was hot, like a baked sweet potato. She held the workbook in her chest and walked briskly towards the dormitory. When she passed the stairway on the fourth floor, she subconsciously glanced at the lighted window of the geography office. There was a thin layer of water mist on the window glass, and she couldn't see inside, but she knew that the table lamp was still on. She knew that he was sitting in the light and criticizing his pile of papers that could never be finished.
On that November night, the wind was very cool and there were no stars in the sky, but she walked back to the dormitory and felt that her steps were more stable than ever.