Wei didn't look back. Not once.
Not at the five boys scrambling around the corner, their footsteps frantic and fading. Not at the smear of blood still shining wet at the corner of his own mouth. Not at the winter wind that coiled through the narrow alley, carrying the faint metallic tang of violence. And certainly not at Jian, who stood frozen at the alley's mouth with Yanyan's fingers clenched white-knuckled around his sleeve.
Wei simply turned, slid both hands deep into his coat pockets, and walked away. Step after measured step. Steady. Unhurried. The same calm rhythm he might have used walking home from the convenience store with a bag of instant noodles. As though the last ten minutes had been nothing more consequential than tying his shoelaces or closing a textbook.
A single streetlamp flickered overhead just as he passed beneath it. Pale sodium light washed across his dark hair, catching for one suspended heartbeat on the sharp line of his jaw, the faint bruise already blooming along his cheekbone, the solitary drop of blood that hadn't yet dried. In that brief glow Jian saw it clearly: not just danger, not just the cold precision that had sent five older boys running—but loneliness. A strange, quiet wildness wrapped tight inside an ordinary winter uniform.
Then Wei rounded the corner and vanished.
The cold rushed back in like it had been waiting.
Yanyan tugged Jian's sleeve, her voice barely above a whisper. "Jian-ge… let's leave. I don't want to stay here."
"Yeah," Jian answered. His own voice sounded distant, hollow, like it belonged to someone else standing a few steps behind him. "Let's go."
The walk to Yanyan's apartment usually passed in comfortable minutes—three familiar turns, the crosswalk where the signal always took too long, the gentle downhill stretch where an elderly couple sometimes set up a cart selling roasted sweet potatoes wrapped in newspaper, their sweet caramel scent drifting on the breeze. Tonight the distance felt unnaturally stretched, every block elongated, every streetlight burning too slowly. Time had thickened around Jian alone.
Yanyan clung to his arm more tightly than she ever had before, her shoulder pressed against his side as though the night itself might reach out and pull her away. She was still trembling faintly. After two blocks she glanced up at him, eyes wide and uncertain.
"Do boys fight like that often?" she asked quietly. "I didn't know… someone like him could be that scary."
Someone like him.
Quiet in class. Polite when called on. Unnoticed in hallways. Always sitting near the back window, doodling absent spirals in the margins of his notes. Cold, in the way still water is cold—beautiful until you touch it and realize how deep the freeze runs.
Jian didn't answer. He didn't trust his voice not to crack open and spill everything churning inside his chest.
When they finally reached the lighted entrance of her building, Yanyan exhaled in visible relief, a small white cloud that dissipated quickly. She turned to face him, cheeks pink from cold and leftover adrenaline.
"Thank you for today, Jian-ge. Really."
Her fingers brushed his lightly—gloved fingertips against his bare knuckles—a shy, hopeful gesture meant to draw him back into the soft, ordinary warmth of their routine. Movie dates. Shared earbuds. Goodnight texts with too many heart emojis.
But Jian's hand stayed still a second too long. His mind was still in the alley, replaying the exact arc of Wei's wrist, the exact crack of palm against cheek, the exact flat menace in his voice when he said he'd make an exception.
"Goodnight," Jian said quietly.
"Goodnight," she echoed, searching his face for a moment longer.
She turned and disappeared through the glass door. Jian didn't move until the elevator light blinked on and began its slow climb. Only then did he realize he had been staring past her the entire time—toward the dark rooftops, toward the stretch of night where a single boy had walked away carrying blood and silence like they weighed nothing.
The streets were quieter on the walk home. Steam rose in lazy spirals from the few remaining street-food carts still open, mingling with the sharp smell of soy sauce, sesame oil, and hot fried dough. Scooters zipped past in red streaks of taillight. A thin gray cat darted across the pavement, paws tapping softly before vanishing between two parked cars.
Jian registered none of it. Not really.
His mind looped the evening on repeat, relentless.
The first slap—sharp, humiliating. Wei's head snapping sideways, hair falling across one eye. Blood blooming at the corner of his lip like dark ink. Then the reversal. Wei's open palm returning the blow with surgical force. Blood spraying in a fine arc. The leader staggering.
"What?" Wei's voice had been soft, almost curious. "You hit me first. I'm just returning the favor."
Then the slow, deliberate lesson: "You interrupt people too much."
"I was answering your question. You interrupted me with that ugly voice of yours. So I answered again. You interrupted again. Are you stupid, or just deaf?"
And the final warning, delivered like a promise: "Say 'motherfucker' one more time. I'll break your jaw."
Who spoke like that? Who stayed so terrifyingly composed while promising violence? Who stood alone against five and never once raised his voice above a controlled murmur? Who walked away afterward as though the entire incident had been a minor inconvenience—a delay before finishing homework?
Not someone normal. Not someone safe. Not someone Jian could file away under any familiar label.
He shoved both hands deeper into his pockets, footsteps quickening as though speed could outrun the strange gravity pulling at him.
What was this feeling? Fear?
No. Not quite.
It was heavier. Sharper. More insistent. Something alive and restless beneath his ribs that he didn't dare name aloud.
Why did his mind keep circling back to Wei's face under that flickering streetlamp? Why did the memory of blood on his lip feel less like horror and more like a secret only Jian had witnessed? Why did it feel as though, for one brief moment in that alley, he had glimpsed something true—something no one else at school had ever seen?
His chest tightened until breathing hurt.
He had no answers. Only echoes.
The exact low timbre of Wei's voice. The exact flatness that masked something volcanic. The exact way his eyes had burned—alive, dangerous, beautiful—behind that perfect mask of calm.
When Jian finally reached his own street, the house was dark except for the faint warm glow leaking from the kitchen window. His mother always left the light on when she reheated leftovers for late-night studying sons.
He slipped inside, murmured a monotone "I'm home" toward the kitchen, received her tired reply, and climbed the stairs without another word.
In his room he closed the door softly. The familiar quiet wrapped around him—warm, safe, empty.
He sat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped between his knees, head bowed.
The image rose again unbidden: Wei's fingers twisted in the leader's collar, yanking him close. Eyes like dark fire behind winter ice.
"Now listen clearly. I don't like repeating myself. But for you… I'll make an exception."
Jian's breath caught.
"I don't understand him…" he whispered into the darkness.
The words escaped before he could stop them.
It wasn't anger. It wasn't hatred.
It was confusion knotted together with fascination. Curiosity edged with something warmer, something more dangerous. Something he wasn't ready to look at directly.
He leaned back until his shoulders met the mattress. Closed his eyes.
For the first time in years, his final thought before sleep wasn't Yanyan's shy smile, or tomorrow's mock exam, or the college applications waiting on his desk.
It was a quiet boy walking away under a winter streetlamp. Blood on his lip. Fire in his eyes. Hands in his pockets.
And Jian understood, with a clarity that frightened him:
He didn't just fail to hate Wei.
He couldn't stop thinking about him.