"Drip, drip, drip! Drip, drip, drip!"
Dubian Che stretched out his hand from under the covers to turn off the annoying alarm clock, then lay in bed for another ten seconds before sitting up.
It was Thursday morning at 7:15 a.m.
Half-asleep, he brushed his teeth and washed his face, then dressed in a white shirt and trousers, tied his tie in front of the mirror, and slipped into his still-unfamiliar suit uniform, leaving the top button undone—it looked cooler that way.
In truth, he was already tired of buttoning up every day, and it felt constricting, not free.
Dubian Che started missing his old home where the bus came every two hours—where all one needed for a uniform was a shirt, and ties once distributed could be used as ropes.
He slung his backpack over his shoulder and, carrying the trash, stepped out of the house.
If he wasn't mistaken, his tie should be tied around the old well in the backyard, he suddenly thought as he threw the trash into the bin.
Right after waking up, Dubian Che's thoughts couldn't focus, drifting to all sorts of random things, sometimes even recalling experiences he thought he'd long forgotten.
Yawning, he swiped his card to enter the station and boarded the 7:30 train.
Getting off at Shibuya Station, Dubian Che walked up a relatively steep slope toward Goda High School.
Tokyo, despite being at the southern end of the Kantou Plain, close to Tokyo Bay, had its fair share of ups and downs.
His thoughts, as tangled as vines, began to wander, and he thought of Kiyono Lin, the beauty from the Human Observation Department. Her chest was like her existence: said to be there, yet not quite...
Dubian Che shook his head, cutting off the path his thoughts were heading down.
At the school entrance, a team dressed in sports gear, lined up neatly, and sporting buzz cuts, chanted slogans while running around the school.
The last person in the line threw a flirtatious glance at Dubian Che—it was Kunii Shuichi.
Dubian Che stood still, giving an earnest salute to the spirited high school life passing before him.
"Good morning, Mr. Dubian!"
On the way from the gate to the academic building, girls in his class wearing butterfly knots and pleated skirts greeted him.
After all, being third in his grade and quite good-looking, if it weren't for his poor family, the love letters he received every week could probably double.
Dubian Che tossed his indoor shoes onto the floor and crammed his feet into them, while slipping an unmarked pink letter from his locker into his backpack.
He, who by now had no ripples of emotion when it came to love letters, suddenly had a new thought: being a playboy wouldn't be so bad, casually agreeing to a few girls would surely meet some approving conditions, and thus he'd get lots of points.
In the classroom, with plenty of time before the 8:30 start of class, Dubian Che buried himself in finishing the submission he hadn't completed the day before.
"You're early today!" Saito Huijie greeted him as he walked in late.
Seeing him writing, he asked, "Didn't finish your homework? Want to copy mine?"
"No, it's a submission for the Literary Society."
"You're actually interested in that? Let me guess." Saito Huijie set his backpack on his own desk, sat on the chair of the classmate who hadn't arrived yet, and said, "There's a cash reward after submission is accepted?"
"No such luck, and besides, working part-time is quicker than trying to make money by writing."
"Then... you joined the Literary Department? The submission is the entry-level assessment!"
"It's not some writers' organization."
"Then why?" Saito Huijie tapped his head, suddenly making an enlightened gesture, and said with certainty, "Mr. Xiaoquan asked you to!"
"Is that her business?"
Saito Huijie gave up, "Then why? Has your brain gone bad?"
"It's ." Dubian Che used his pen to cross out a wrong word, "But it's someone else."
"That guy Shuichi, has he finally reached this point?"
Saito Huijie picked up Dubian Che's eraser, stripped it of its wrapper, revealing the pristine rubber, and placed it upright on the desk of Kunii Shuichi, who sat to his right.
Dubian Che looked up at his eraser resembling a bouquet of white flowers: "Saito, you're not far behind."
"Really? You're joking, right?"
"I, Dubian, never lie."
The joking over, Dubian Che recounted how he joined the Human Observation Department and was asked to submit to the Literary Society.
Saito Huijie's voice was loud, and without thinking, Dubian Che asked, "You know her?"
"Unrequited. But, is there anyone at Goda High who doesn't know her?"
"The one in front of you is an exception."
"Mr. Dubian..." Saito Huijie trailed off, as if hesitant to speak.
Dubian Che didn't grasp what he was implying; was he suggesting he wasn't human?
Never mind, he cared more about how to finish the last sentence of his submission.
Saito Huijie picked up the eraser and tossed it in his hand, saying:
"The unattainable crush is Kiyono Lin herself. Though Goda doesn't have the term 'school beauty,' when it comes to who's the most beautiful, it's that young lady."
"That impressive? How come you never mentioned her to Kunii before?"
"Who dares to gossip about her at school? And there's no use talking about it, someone like her is too far out of our league." Saito Huijie showed a wistful, subdued smile.
As soon as we leave kindergarten, humans more or less start to consciously assign themselves to a social hierarchy: poor people feel inferior to rich ones, unattractive people don't dare chase the attractive ones, and so on.
Saito Huijie's moment of dejection was fleeting, and he quickly recovered, "But Dubian, you actually dared to approach her?!"
"I just wanted to leave early."
"Stop pretending, tell me secretly, have you fallen in love with her at first sight? Although I think it's impossible, I'll still cheer for you in my heart!"