Chapter 2: Files

Ling Yicai didn’t get an answer in the end.

Those eyes that had lost all their fire made all the questions she had prepared to ask get stuck in her throat.

Xiahou Ming didn’t even turn around to look at her.

He just continued to walk around her and downstairs in that numb, zombie-like manner.

His silence made Ling Yicai feel more uneasy than any answer.

She stood there, watching the lonely figure in the ill-fitting boys’ school uniform disappear around the corner of the stairs, her whole body cold.

When Xiahou Ming returned to the classroom again, the morning reading class had ended.

Lin Xiaomei, who came back earlier, had apparently spread everything she heard in the office as if it were a trophy.

He ignored the curious whispers of the others and walked straight to the spot in the corner.

His “throne” was still there, and no one dared to sit on it privately.

But when he sat down, he could feel that the air around the seat had changed.

In the past, this was a vacuum zone and a center of power.

Now, this place has become the center of an exhibition cabinet, and he is the deformed exhibit that everyone is watching.

Teacher Wang, the homeroom teacher, simply glanced at him from the podium and said nothing.

Perhaps he felt that as long as this “troublemaker” stayed there quietly, he would be thankful.

His daily life was crumbling in a slow but steady manner.

In the first few days, his former followers tried to act like they used to, awkwardly surrounding him and calling him “Brother Ming”.

But Lin Xiaomei always appears at the right time, and says some words in a sarcastic tone that are not painful but hurtful.

“Oh, Brother Ming, your hair has grown longer and your skin has become better.

What shampoo do you use?” She would ask in front of everyone with an exaggerated curious tone.

“Brother Ming, are you still that strong now?

Next time our class needs to carry water, we can’t count on you.” After the physical education class, she would look at the sweaty boys and say meaningfully.

The followers couldn’t refute it.

Because Lin Xiaomei, in a joking and sarcastic way, said what was in everyone’s heart.

They also felt that Xiahou Ming was strange and ridiculous, and they also wanted to break away from the domination they had in the past.

So, they could only walk away in awkward silence.

Gradually, no one gathered around Xiahou Ming anymore.

He was isolated, in a respectable way.

Ling Yicai, in another way, built another cage for him.

She would come to see him every day, bring him breakfast, or put a bottle of milk on his desk.

She never mentioned what happened that day, but just wrapped him up with a careful tenderness that was almost like caring for a patient.

Her kindness was like cotton, soft but airtight, suffocating him.

He knew that Ling Yicai was “confirming” and “accepting” him in her own way.

But the prerequisite for this acceptance is that he must become a “girl”.

Nausea.

Xiahou Ming thought to himself.

The real turning point came in music class on Wednesday afternoon.

In preparation for the school anniversary, all the girls had to participate in recorder ensemble rehearsals, while the boys were sent to the playground to rehearse another program.

Xiahou Ming should have been there.

The music teacher had apparently heard about his “special situation” from the dean.

She pulled Xiahou Ming aside and said in a gentle, self-perceivingly sympathetic tone, “Xiahou Ming, I understand your situation.

You don’t need to attend this recorder rehearsal.

Just rest on the sidelines for a while.”

He was deprived of his qualifications as a “boy”, but was also denied the ceremony of recognizing him as a “girl”.

He became an outlier who was excluded from all the rules.

He could only hug his knees and squat in the corner of the music classroom, looking at the girls whom he once looked down upon.

Even if you just want me to pretend to be a girl at this moment, it doesn’t matter.

He watched them gather in groups of two or three, discussing music and exchanging snacks.

Don’t leave me alone.

He watched the teacher patiently instructing a girl who had played a wrong note.

Don’t you let me stay here because you think I’m a girl?

She began to feel that the world was so far away from her.

The chirping laughter of the young girls and the discordant yet vital flute sounds seemed to be separated by a thick layer of glass and could not reach her ears.

She looked at Ling Yicai.

She was the best flute player among the girls.

Her flute sound was steady and clean.

The sun shone through the window, falling on her lips and on the slender fingers that pressed against her pores.

Xiahou Ming looked at her, looked at her lips, looked at her fingers.

Then she lowered her head and looked at her equally slender hands.

A nauseous feeling mixed with jealousy and hatred surged up from my stomach.

After school, it was Xiahou Ming’s turn to be on duty.

Because she was a “freak,” no one wanted to be in her group.

Ling Yicai wanted to stay with her, but she had to go to piano lessons after school, an order that could not be disobeyed in her relatively wealthy family.

So, Xiahou Ming was the only one left in the huge classroom.

She swept the floor, cleaned the blackboard, and took out the trash silently.

While she was doing all this, there was a person sitting quietly in the corner of the classroom facing the corridor, reading a book.

It was that “weird guy” whose name she couldn’t remember.

She sneered in her heart.

She never thought that she would end up in the same situation as this guy.

Xiahou Ming ignored her.

After the classroom was cleaned and the broom was put back in its place, the girl closed the book and stood up.

She packed her things, put on her schoolbag, calmly walked past Xiahou Ming, and left the classroom.

From beginning to end, he never looked at her.

She was now the only one left in the classroom.

This made Xiahou Ming’s nerves, which had been tense all day, completely relax.

She was exhausted and sat down on the chair, dazed.

The afterglow of the setting sun dyed the entire classroom orange-red, like solidified blood.

Her eyes swept across the classroom aimlessly, and finally stopped on Ling Yicai’s seat.

A white recorder was lying quietly on the table.

She left in a hurry and forgot to take it with her.

Xiahou Ming stood up and walked over step by step as if being pulled by a sleepwalking thread.

She picked up the recorder.

The plastic felt very cold, and seemed to still retain the warmth of Ling Yicai’s palm.

She looked at the small mouthpiece.

That afternoon, she had seen Ling Yicai’s lips press against it and produce a melodious melody.

An irresistible urge seized her.

She closed the open front door.

Then, as if possessed by a ghost, he closed his eyes and slowly put the cold mouthpiece into his mouth.

A cheap smell of plastic and a faint, unfamiliar, sweet aftertaste of saliva spread on the tip of her tongue.

She felt neither satisfied nor disgusted.

There is only a blank space.

Then she began to imitate.

Imitating the look of Ling Yicai that she saw this afternoon.

She licked the edge of the small mouthpiece clumsily and tentatively with the tip of her tongue.

The traces of another girl left there instantly hit her like a weak electric current.

……Fck.

She cursed in her heart.

The feeling was not out of some impulse, but a deeper jealousy, a desire to possess.

She held the mouthpiece tightly and forced air into her body.

No longer tasting, but devouring.

The air smelled of plastic and the scent of another person.

It seemed that by doing so, he could take Ling Yicai’s “normal” and “girlish” qualities for himself.

Her fingers unconsciously rubbed the flute, searching for the air holes.

Her mind was telling her to hate it all.

But her body, the body that had betrayed her, found a strange, shuddering peace in this morbid ritual.

She knew she could no longer pretend nothing had happened.

Perhaps, from that moment on, she could no longer deny:

——She is no longer “he”.

Just as she was immersed in this perverse feeling of soul and body being torn apart—

Click.

There was a slight but very clear sound of the door lock falling from the back door of the classroom.