The chirping of September cicadas cuts the air back and forth like a dull saw. Summer cicadas arch their backs on their bicycles, with beads of sweat sliding down the collar of their school uniforms into the hollows of their collarbones. The squeaking sound of the aging brake lines mixed with the noise of the morning market behind her crushed her last bit of sleepiness.
"Make way! The brakes are broken!" She stopped suddenly at the corner of Wutong Lane on one foot, and her front wheel just barely brushed the front of the black Maybach. The car paint reflected her messy bangs and the arrogant five 8s on the license plate.
The man in a suit in the driver's seat was about to explode when the rear window suddenly dropped half an inch. The boy tapped his knuckles on the dark glass, and the protrusion of his wrist bones glowed coldly: "Uncle Wang, there is a medical kit in the trunk."
Only then did Xia Chan notice that his knees were bleeding and the rips on his school uniform pants were showing frayed edges. She gripped the handlebars tightly and took a half step back. The waste cardboard boxes tied to the back seat rustled - they were the packaging boxes she picked up from the alley behind the convenience store last night, and they could be sold for two dollars and thirty cents.
"No need." She pulled off the rubber band and tied her hair again. The faded strawberry pendant on the hairband drew a semicircle in the air. "Anyway, it didn't hit me."
The car door opened completely at this moment. A young boy in a private school uniform bent down to get out of the car. There was a golden school badge on the collar of his white shirt and a small mole on his right earlobe. He took the ice silk handkerchief handed to him by the driver, and when the sleeves slipped down, the light blue veins on the inside of his wrist were revealed.
"Classmate, your bicycle..." He suddenly paused, his eyes sweeping over the old textbooks tied with hemp rope in her bicycle basket, and the plastic basket fixed with wire on the back seat - in it lay wilted broccoli and half a cracked cabbage.
Xia Chan suddenly wanted to put the vegetable basket on his meticulously groomed hair.
"Jiang Zhixi! You're going to be late!" A girl screamed in the distance. Several girls in the same uniform ran towards her with their cell phones in hand, the cameras almost poking her in the face.
The boy suddenly took half a step forward, and the scent of mint mixed with the smell of piano paint hit him in the face. His gesture of handing over the handkerchief seemed gentle and decent to others, but his low voice was filled with ice: "There is surveillance 300 meters away, and even fraudulent behavior must follow the Basic Law."
Xia Chan stared at his slightly narrowed peach blossom eyes behind his glasses, and suddenly noticed his little movement of rubbing his earlobe - the frequency was abnormally fast, as if he was confirming the existence of something.
"Is the handkerchief enough to compensate for your car paint?" She slapped the other person's hand away, lifted the hem of her school uniform to wipe her sweat, revealing the hideous burn scar on her waist, "Remember to buy insurance next time."
As the crowd gasped, she had already pedaled her bike through the iron gate of Fu Jen Middle School. In the rearview mirror, Jiang Zhixi was carefully wiping the fingertips that had touched her with a handkerchief. The sunlight filtered through the sycamore leaves, leaving a cicada-molting-shaped spot on his shoulder.
When the morning reading bell rang throughout the teaching building, Xia Chan stopped in front of the bulletin board. On the photo wall of outstanding students, Jiang Zhixi's ID photo was printed with a brief introduction in gold foil: Gold Medal in the Junior Group of the International Chopin Piano Competition, President of the Student Union, SAT score of 1580...
"He was blackmailed by that rag picker this morning?" Two girls walked past her holding their homework books. "I heard he asked for 5,000 yuan."
Xia Chan locked the bicycle in the parking space in the corner, and hung on the chain buckle an anti-theft bell given by Lao Wang from the vegetable market. The sound of cicadas suddenly rose to a piercing level. She looked up at the distorted reflection on the glass curtain wall - there was a girl like an insect trapped in amber, carrying an old school bag that was about to fall apart, but she walked straight towards the old teaching building covered with ivy.
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