I thought our next meeting might come on some distant day—at a crowded turn in a stairwell, perhaps, or before a noisy cafeteria window. We would nod politely, two strangers who vaguely recognized each other, and that would be all.
But fate has always enjoyed jokes that catch people unprepared.
After school, I rode my old bicycle—the kind on which everything rattled except the bell—through familiar streets toward my part-time job.
Dusk gathered. Streetlamps came on one by one, pulling the shadows of passersby long and thin.
I wanted the extra few dozen yuan of overtime pay, so I agreed when the manager asked me to cover a shift. By the time I finished, it was already eleven at night. The noise of the city had gone still. Only the occasional engine tore through the silence before fading away.
Thinking of Grandma alone at home, I pedaled faster. The wheels thudded over the uneven road.
As I turned into the narrow alley closest to home—barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side—an inexplicable chill crawled up my spine.
There were no streetlamps inside. Only scraps of light leaking from the windows of the residential buildings drew blurred shapes from the darkness.
At some point, two figures had blocked the ends of the alley.
One leaned against a wall with peeling paint, the ember of his cigarette pulsing red in the dark. The other squatted beneath a utility pole in the middle of the lane. I could not see his face, only hear his slurred snickering.
“Well, look at you, little girl. All alone this late?”
The man at the entrance straightened and came toward me. His voice carried a sticky kind of mockery, and the smell of smoke mixed with cheap alcohol rolled over me.
My heart sank.
They belonged to the notorious group of vocational-school delinquents who wandered the old neighborhood causing trouble. I tightened my grip on the handlebars. Cold sweat flooded my palms.
I instinctively tried to turn around, but the man had already sealed off the entrance.
The one at the far end swayed to his feet like a moving wall, closing the other way out.
The world fell silent. Only my frantic heartbeat pounded through the dead alley.
Fear spread through every part of me. I did not dare move. My mind emptied, leaving me with no idea what to do.
“Hey. What do you think you're doing?”
A voice—somehow familiar, yet edged with cold steel—cut in from the alley entrance and broke the suffocating silence.
The delinquent with the cigarette whipped around. “Who the hell asked you?”
I turned as though reaching for a lifeline.
A figure stood beneath the yellow halo of the streetlamp. Backlight traced his tall outline while leaving most of his face in shadow. One hand was tucked into his uniform pocket, the other hanging loosely by his side. His posture looked casual, but tension ran through it like a drawn wire.
It was the boy who had climbed the wall and broken my bottle that morning.
The weak light picked out the hard line of his profile. None of the swagger or embarrassment from sunrise remained. His astonishingly bright eyes had sunk into shadow, cold and dangerous. His lips were pressed into a narrow line. A near-feral hostility covered his normally open face, and the pressure rolling from him warned strangers to stay away.
He walked closer, neither hurried nor hesitant. Each steady step struck the broken pavement with a clear echo.
His stare never left the two delinquents. As he approached, he flexed his hands and rolled his knuckles. The soft cracks sounded unnaturally loud in the alley.
“Mind your own damn business!” The man with the cigarette spat it away. “You looking to die?”
He charged first, driving a fist straight at the boy's face.
The fight erupted.
The boy moved with startling speed. He slipped aside from the punch, knocked the man's arm away with his left forearm, and, almost in the same instant, drove his right fist into the man's jaw.
“Argh!”
The delinquent staggered backward and struck the wall.
The second man roared and lunged from the side, trying to wrap both arms around the boy's waist. As though he had eyes in the back of his head, the boy smashed an elbow into his ribs. When the man folded in pain, he drove a knee hard into his stomach.
He was fast, precise, and vicious.
Grunts, curses, and the dull sound of fists striking flesh collided inside the narrow space. Outnumbered two to one, he moved like a leopard. Every dodge and counter carried an instinctive ruthlessness.
A blow landed on his face. Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. He did not even frown. If anything, it only made his retaliation fiercer.
Sweat and dust tracked down his temple. His uniform jacket was pulled open during the fight, revealing the blue-and-white school shirt beneath it.
I stood rigid, my heart hammering. My fingers dug into the cold handlebars until my nails nearly bit into the metal.
Part of me wanted to rush in and help, even if all I could do was throw a stone. But my body had frozen.
I had never stood so close to real violence—to cutting punches and brutal struggle heavy with the promise of blood and destruction. My fear was instinctive and absolute.
The fight ended sooner than I expected.
Both delinquents were bruised and swollen. One curled on the ground, clutching his stomach and retching. The other held a jaw that looked nearly dislocated, terror filling his eyes whenever he looked at the boy.
They did not dare remain. Supporting each other, they stumbled and scrambled out of the alley. Their curses soon vanished at the far end of the street.
Only ragged breathing remained.
The boy wiped the blood from his lip, walked to the side, and bent to retrieve the uniform jacket he had dropped during the fight. He beat the dust from it. Some of his daytime ease had returned, though the cold, dangerous edge between his brows had not entirely faded.
He glanced at me, and his eyes softened slightly.
“You should be careful going home this late,” he said. His voice was rough from exertion, but he deliberately made it gentler. Adjusting his collar, he came a few steps closer. “Especially since you're a girl. You need to watch out and get home earlier.”
The streetlamp finally lit his face clearly. A bruise was forming at the corner of his mouth, but the darkness had left his eyes. Beneath the yellow light, they looked clean and bright again, like a sky washed by rain.
He did not seem to recognize me.
Or perhaps he simply had not remembered the face of the girl whose bottle he had destroyed that morning. He had probably called me “classmate” only because I wore the same blue-and-white uniform.
Relief tangled with something more complicated inside me. I took a deep breath, pushed down the tightness in my throat, and pulled the roll of money from the side pocket of my schoolbag.
“Thank you for helping me,” I said, my voice still unsteady. “And this is the money I'm returning to you.”
He stared at the roll beneath his nose and visibly blanked.
He looked at the money, then at me, his face filled with such pure confusion that he suddenly seemed like an ordinary boy again—the complete opposite of the ruthless fighter from moments before.
“What?” He took half a step back as though I were offering him something scalding. His brows drew together. “Why are you suddenly giving me money? What do you mean, returning it?”
Now I was the one left speechless.
Had he truly forgotten?
“Don't you remember? This morning, you climbed over the school wall and broke my water bottle. You said you would pay for it, but the director came after you, so you shoved all this into my hand and ran.”
I held it closer. “It's two hundred fifty-one yuan and sixty cents in total. Count it and make sure.”
I remembered the number exactly—the five-yuan bottle and that absurdly heavy roll of compensation.
The confusion on his face froze, then shattered into realization.
“Oh!”
He slapped his forehead so hard that the movement pulled at his injured lip. He hissed in pain, but his eyes lit up.
“I remember now! It was you!”
He scratched the back of his head, and an apologetic, sincere smile returned. “I'm really sorry about this morning. That bottle—”
“It's all right.”
I interrupted him. After what had happened in the alley, the hurt and disappointment from that morning seemed insignificant.
Looking at the bruise on his lip, I said honestly, “Besides, you just helped me. I should be the one thanking you.”
“It was nothing. No need to thank me.”
He waved a hand, grinning openly enough to show straight white teeth, as though the boy with the murderous stare had never existed.
“Anyone would have done it.”
Even so, I stubbornly pushed the money into his hand.
“You really don't need to—” Embarrassed, he tried to give it back.
Beep, beep...
The alarm on my digital watch sounded abruptly. I had set it in advance, and it stopped him mid-motion.
“It's so late...” I checked the time and straightened my bicycle. “Sorry, but I need to hurry home.”
“Oh. Right, then...”
Understanding crossed his face, and he did not say more.
I climbed onto my bicycle and hurried away.
I had barely ridden beyond the alley when his bright, urgent shout came from behind me.
“Hey! What's your name?”
The wind rushed past my ears. I turned instinctively toward the figure beneath the streetlamp.
“Lin Nian—”
“I'm Chen Jingming!” His voice rang with the piercing clarity unique to youth. “Jing as in scenery! Ming as in tomorrow!”
The early-summer night wind carried a trace of warmth as it swept gently and swiftly past me.
Chen Jingming.
Those three syllables traveled against the wind and settled firmly in my ears.
From that night on, he came crashing into the quiet, colorless summer that had once belonged only to me.