The bell rang sharp, a metallic echo that made a few kids groan dramatically, like they were being sentenced to hard labor instead of just another forty minutes of math. Next sounds were just books slamming onto the desks. I sat up straighter, already pulling out my prep exam papers and my notebook, flipping to a clean page. I always liked starting with a blank one, it made me feel like whatever the teacher threw at us, I could make it into neat lines and formulas.
Our math teacher, Mrs. Han, strode in with her usual brisk steps, her heels clicking like she was marching us into battle. She was, kind of. Maths is always a battle - not for me.
"Settle down," she said, not even looking up as she set her heavy stack of books and papers on the desk. "Open to chapter five. Quadratic equations. We covered the basics last week —today we'll go deeper. You'll need this for your exams."
A low groan rippled across the room, the kind of half-serious suffering you only hear in classrooms.
I was halfway through jotting the date on my page when something odd happened. The pen in my hand was suddenly… not in my hand anymore. I blinked, looked down, then to my right. Zhou Zeyan.
He had been sitting stiff and silent since he was dumped into the seat beside me, was now casually leaning back, his long fingers wrapped around my pen. He didn't even glance at me, just spun it between his fingers like he was testing its weight, then bent over his notebook.
Except he didn't start writing formulas. He drew a line. Then a swirl. Then what looked suspiciously like the outline of a dragon head.
I froze. My pen. My one good black pen, the one that didn't smudge and had that satisfying glide across the page. And he'd just… taken it. No hey, can I borrow that? No sheepish smile. Nothing.
For a split second, I thought about asking for it back, but his expression stopped me. Not because it was scary, it wasn't. He wasn't glaring, or smirking, or anything dramatic. He just looked… absorbed. Like the rest of the classroom.
So I sighed softly, dug another pen from my pencil case, and started writing again.
"Eyes up here!" Ms. Han snapped, slamming the chalk against the board. Equations written across the green surface: ax² + bx + c = 0. "Copy this down. You'll be solving these until you dream about them."
Around me, the whispering started up again. It was like a low tide of voices that rose and fell in waves, never loud enough to get caught but loud enough for me to catch fragments.
"Look at them…" A guy whispered. Wen Xiao, I recognised his voice. "…actually sitting together…"
"Do you think he talks? I haven't heard him say a word." An Zixin whispered. Her words obviously directed at you.
"Why next to Yiren though? Teacher really had to pick him…" Wen Ning added, her voice low, to not get caught.
My ears burned at the sound of their speculations and talks, but I kept my head down, scribbling fast, pretending my handwriting needed that much concentration. I knew my classmates, they loved gossip more than free Wi-Fi. And right now, Zhou Zeyan was the juiciest topic we'd had in months.
Mrs. Han scrawled another example, explaining as she went. Her voice was sharp, clipped, the kind that demanded attention. "When b² – 4ac is positive, you'll have two real roots. Negative, no real roots. Write it down!"
I scribbled, underlined, boxed formulas. Next to me, Zeyan added horns to his dragon, the curl of smoke rising from its mouth. My good pen was probably weeping ink tears.
Finally, Mrs. Han turned, scanning the room with hawk eyes. "Liu Jing!" she barked. A boy two rows ahead snapped upright, nearly dropping his ruler. "Solve this on the board."
As Liu Jing shuffled to the front, the whispering intensified again, this time with glances shot toward me and Zeyan. I caught a few stares directly. The girls leaning on their hands, whispering behind palms, one boy elbowing his friend and jerking his chin in our direction. Every time, I felt like a specimen under glass.
Zeyan didn't notice. Or maybe he did and just didn't care. He was shading the dragon's eye now, slow, steady movements like he had all the time in the world. His shoulders were relaxed, posture loose, the exact opposite of me, sitting straight, pen flying, writing notes.
Ms. Han corrected Liu Jing's shaky work, sighing. "This is why you practice. Sit. Next time, do better." Then she turned to the board again, firing off another example.
"Cao Yiren."
My head snapped up. "Yes, ma'am?"
"Number three. Solve it."
My stomach flipped, but my hand moved automatically, picking up my second pen. I walked to the board, aware of a hundred eyes on me. I always got called, being the 'golden boy' came with its curses. Still, I solved quickly, each line of numbers neat and sure.
Behind me, the whispers didn't stop.
"…of course he knows it…" Li Wei whispered, ir was the most casual thing in the world.
"…Zeyan's not even paying attention, look…" A few other whispers, looking at Zeyan. "…he's drawing. I swear he's drawing…"
I capped the marker, stepping back. "x equals negative three, and x equals two," I said.
Ms. Han nodded once. "Correct. Sit."
I returned to my desk, trying not to notice the way people's eyes flicked between me and Zeyan as I sat down. He didn't even glance up at me. He just kept doodling. But when I slid back into my chair, he nudged the notebook slightly, almost like he was letting me see.
It wasn't just random scribbles. The dragon had shape, detail, depth. Smoke curled elegantly, scales glinted in careful lines. He was good. Like, really good.
For a moment, I forgot about the whispers, the formulas, even Ms. Han's voice. My lips twitched before I could stop them. "That's… actually kind of amazing," I murmured, barely louder than a breath.
He didn't reply. Didn't even look up. But the pen paused for half a second, as if the words had landed somewhere, before moving again.
And just like that, the rest of the math lesson blurred into chalk and numbers for me, whispers and doodles for him.
The second bell rang before I was ready. Math had drained me more than I'd like to admit, not the work itself, but the whispers, the eyes, the way everyone kept looking between me and the boy next to me like we were a new drama they'd tuned into. I stacked my math notes neatly anyway, closing the notebook, and swapped it out for my English textbook.
English class always felt lighter somehow. Less heavy formulas, more rhythm and flow. Ms. Chen, our English teacher walked into the classroom. She wasn't strict the way Ms. Han was; her sharpness came from words, not numbers.
"Good morning, class," she said brightly, in English, as she set her laptop down.
"Good morning, Ms. Chen," the class echoed back, some stumbling, some smooth.
"Today we're focusing on reading comprehension and speaking fluency," she continued, flipping through her book. "I want you to practice not just reading, but speaking confidently. English isn't about memorization. It's about communication."
Groans and sighs filled the air like smoke of a cigarette. Communication. Speaking. For half the class, that was scarier than exams.
I sat straighter, already uncapping my pen. I liked English, it came easier to me than most. My classmates didn't share that love. For them, English was just an obstacle to trip over. Except, apparently, for the boy next to me.
Zhou Zeyan hadn't moved much since math ended. He was still leaned back, the faintest slouch to his shoulders, eyes heavy-lidded like the class had already bored him. He hadn't opened his textbook. Hadn't pulled out a notebook. The only thing he'd touched was my pen, which was still in his hand, spinning lazily between long fingers.
When Ms. Chen called on the first student, nervous laughter rippled across the room. "Read the first paragraph, please," she said.
The boy stood, stumbling through a passage about global warming. His accent was thick, words tumbling over each other. Ms. Chen corrected him gently. The rest of the class chuckled under their breath, though more than half of them would've fumbled the same way.
Whispers rose again. Always whispers. "…Yiren's taking notes again, look at him…" "…Zeyan hasn't even opened his book, what's he doing here?" "…He's not gonna last the year…"
I gripped my pen tighter, pressing it to the page. Ignore them. Just focus.
"Cao Yiren," Ms. Chen called.
I looked up. "Yes, ma'am."
"Second paragraph, please."
I stood smoothly, book open, and began to read. The words flowed easily, clear pronunciation, steady pace. I wasn't perfect, but I'd practiced enough that the language rolled off my tongue without tripping.
When I finished, Ms. Chen smiled warmly. "Good, Yiren. Very natural. Work on your intonation, but overall, well done."
I sat again, cheeks faintly warm at the scattered murmurs around me.
And then Ms. Chen's eyes flicked to the boy beside me.
And then her voice shifted, sharper.
"Zhou Zeyan."
Silence. A single head turned, then another, and another, until the whole room was angled towards our row.
Zeyan didn't move at first. His pen kept scratching faintly, finishing the curve of some shape on his page. He didn't even look up.
Ms. Chen's tone cooled. "Stand and read paragraph three."
Finally, he paused. His gaze slid lazily toward her, unreadable. Then, without opening the untouched book on his desk, he reached sideways and plucked my book from under my hand.
My fingers froze around my pen.
The class collectively held its breath.
"…him?!"
"…he doesn't even care…"
"…watch him embarrass himself…"
Zeyan lifted his head slowly, like being dragged from a dream. His eyes slid to the book, but he didn't open it. Instead, he tilted it shut with one finger, gaze locked on Ms. Chen.
"Which passage?" he asked.
The words were smooth. English, not Chinese.
The class froze.
Ms. Chen's brows arched faintly, but she didn't comment. "Paragraph three, please."
He flipped the page once, found the passage instantly, and stood up His voice was steady, low, and fluent. The kind of English that didn't stumble. Like he'd always spoken English all his life.
Every word was spoken right. No hesitation. No effort.
The silence after each line was almost louder than his voice. The room went dead quiet.
"…what the—"
"…did you hear that?"
"…he sounds… fluent…"
I blinked at him, shocked despite myself. This was the boy who'd doodled dragons through an entire math lecture, who hadn't written down a single equation. And yet here he was, reading English like he'd grown up with it.
He finished the paragraph, closed his mouth, and fell silent. No smirk, no show-off grin. He just sat there, like it hadn't been anything special.
Ms. Chen's eyes softened, something like approval flickering across her face. "Excellent pronunciation," she said simply. "Very good."
Zeyan didn't look at me, didn't look at anyone. He just kept drawing. Calm, detached, like reading perfect English in front of the whole class had been as ordinary as taking a sip of water.
And for the rest of the period, the weight of those whispers pressed heavier than the lesson itself. Around us, the whispers exploded.
"…since when—"
"…does he study secretly?"
"…why's he sitting with Yiren then?!"
"…they're actually opposites…"
I hunched slightly over my notebook, trying to block out the noise. It wasn't me they were staring at this time. It was him.
But still, by sitting next to him, I was pulled into it too. Their eyes slid between us like we were in some sort of TV drama. Ms. Chen moved on, calling the next name, guiding another student through mispronunciations. The class slowly regained its rhythm, but I kept sneaking glances at Zeyan.
He wasn't listening. Not really. His head rested against his hand, eyes half-lidded, expression unreadable. He only shifted once, when my pen slipped from his fingers, falling onto the floor between our desks.
Without a word, he picked it up, set it neatly back in front of me. A quiet gesture. Gentle, almost.
I stared at the pen for a moment before curling my fingers around it again.
The third period dragged itself in with the faint smell of chalk dust and the creak of the biology teacher's cart. Mr. Liang was a tall, a little fat man whose energy could fill the whole room even before he opened his mouth.
"Settle down, settle down," he barked while entering the classroom, though his grin gave him away. He slapped the textbook onto the desk with a thud, sending a couple kids flinching.
"Biology is not boring, unless you decide to be boring. And today—" he paused for drama, chalk already spinning between his fingers, "—we are diving into the mystery of cells."
A ripple of groans met that, along with a few dramatic thuds of foreheads hitting desks. "Cells again?" someone muttered behind me.
"I thought we did this in middle school…"
"Bro, he's gonna draw the mitochondria for like the fifth time."
I straightened my notebook, flipping to a clean page. My pen hovered, ready. Beside me, the scraping of a pen started again, not across lined paper for notes, but across Zeyan's already-crowded sketchbook. I caught a glimpse: not dragons this time, but some kind of mechanical wings, lines sharp and layered. Not a single word written.
I exhaled slowly and turned forward. Not my problem.
"Yiren!" Mr. Liang's voice shot out. My head snapped up.
"Yes?"
"You look awake, at least." He grinned, waving the chalk like a wand. "Tell me. What is the powerhouse of the cell?"
A couple of students snickered. Classic.
"The mitochondria," I answered easily.
"Correct!" He scrawled the word across the board in looping characters, underlining it twice like it was the climax of the lesson. "But biology is not just about memorizing terms, students. It is about understanding life. And life, my dear scholars, is messy."
Another groan from the back. Mr. Liang ignored it and launched into his lecture. His voice rose and fell dramatically, chalk squeaking as he sketched an oversized cell across the blackboard, labeling each part like it was a character in some serious crime.
"Cell membrane, your gatekeeper. Cytoplasm, your bustling city. Ribosomes. Tiny factories. And of course, mitochondria: the glorious engine. Copy this down."
My hands moved quickly, catching every label, every underlined phrase. Except the chair beside me stayed quiet. No notes. Just the faint tap of Zeyan's pen dragging across the page, line by line, shading into shadows.
Whispers started again. "…he's not even trying."
"…is he seriously just drawing again?"
"…doesn't he care he'll fail?"
Mr. Liang clapped his hands once. "Pair work! You will discuss with the person next to you: why are cells considered the basic unit of life? You have five minutes. Go."
Immediately the room burst into chatter. Not discussing the question, but getting into their gossips. Of course, who would talk about studies when given time? Its high school we're talking about. I turned instinctively to the right, ready to explain. And then paused.
Zeyan hadn't looked up once. He just continued drawing. I hesitated, tapping my pen against my notebook. "You're supposed to—" I started.
He finally glanced up. A beat of silence stretched before he said, quietly, "You already know the answer. Write it."
The words weren't harsh. They weren't mocking. Just flat, like it was obvious. And then his gaze dropped again, back to his drawing. I was about to say something, but the way he said it, as if it was obvious that I didn't need to discuss.
I wrote the explanation neatly in my notebook: Cells are the basic unit of life because they carry out all the processes necessary for living things, from energy production to reproduction.
When Mr. Liang called on pairs to share, my voice came steady when our turn came. He nodded approvingly, moving on to the next group. And Zeyan? Still drawing.
Half the class leaned forward, whispering behind their hands. "…did he even say anything?" "…nah, Yiren just covered for him."
I ignored them, focusing on the board. Mr. Liang was back to sketching, chalk dust clouding in the air as he scribbled the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. He turned back towards us mid-sentence, his eyes scanning the room.
"Zhou Zeyan," he said suddenly.
The whispers died instantly.
Zeyan's pen froze mid-line. Slowly, he looked up.
"What," he said flatly.
The way he said it- not rude, but heavy, like a weight dropping, made a few kids stifle laughs.
"Why is the nucleus called the control center of the cell?"
My stomach dropped. Oh no. He hadn't listened to a word. He hadn't written a thing. He didn't even have notes.
But then. He tilted his head, looking down at my open notebook like it was nothing. Cool. Effortless. His gaze scanned the exact sentence I'd just written.
And then, without missing a second, "Because it holds the DNA. Without it, the cell can't regulate or reproduce."
My pen froze.
The class blinked.
Even Mr. Liang paused, caught off guard. Then he broke into a wide grin. "Correct!" He slapped the chalk against the desk like a gavel. "See? Even the quiet ones know the answer!"
Laughter rippled through the room.
Zeyan didn't smile. Didn't smirk. He just dropped his gaze back to his drawing and kept drawing, as if the interruption hadn't happened.
But I knew. I knew he hadn't known. He'd just…used me.
And worse? Nobody else had noticed.
For the rest of the period, Mr. Liang barreled through cell functions, firing off questions left and right. I answered when called. A few others stumbled their way through.
Literature was always the calmest part of the day. Even before the teacher walked in, the room felt lighter somehow, like we all knew it wasn't going to be the kind of class that made your head ache. When Mrs. Zhang came in, the whispers faded instantly.
"Good afternoon," she greeted us, smiling, her voice soft but carried authority. "Today, we'll begin with Tang poetry. A gentle start. Don't worry, no memorization yet, just listening, thinking, and maybe finding a line or two that speaks to you."
I felt my shoulders relax. No pop quiz. No calling out names from the roll and making people stumble over ancient Chinese phrases in front of everyone. Just listening. Mrs. Zhang had always been like that. She cared more about us actually feeling the literature than about proving we'd studied it.
I slid my pen out and opened the anthology on my desk. The neat columns of characters stared back at me, perfectly printed, waiting to be underlined and scribbled on. On my right, though, there was nothing neat or controlled.
Zeyan didn't even glance at the textbook. He flipped his notebook sideways, pen already gliding across the page. He wasn't pretending to follow along. He wasn't even pretending to be present. Just… drawing.
I tried not to look, but my eyes betrayed me for a second. I turned back quickly and bent over my notes. My handwriting wasn't the best, but it was quick. Efficient. I copied the structure she was drawing on the board: four lines, five characters, strict tonal rules.
"Poetry," Mrs. Zhang said, writing with deliberate strokes of the chalk, "was not only for scholars, not only for examinations. It was a way of expressing longing, grief, joy… a way to make sense of emotions too heavy for plain words."
I underlined that. Beside me, the sound of Zeyan's pen didn't stop. Mrs. Zhang moved closer to the front row, reading aloud:
"The moon is bright above the sea,
From far away you share this light.
Though miles apart, we gaze together,
Our hearts are joined beneath the night."
Her voice was gentle, carrying the rhythm of the words like a poet. The room fell still.
I copied the verses neatly, adding notes at the side: moon as symbol of longing. Connection despite distance. My handwriting tilted slightly as the whispers started again, softer this time but still sharp enough to cut.
"…he's just ignoring everything."
"…doesn't even care."
"…how can he get away with that?"
I bit the inside of my cheek and kept writing. The words blurred for a second, my own reflection staring back from the ink. Did he really not notice? Or did he notice and simply not care?
Mrs. Zhang went on, her scarf shifting as she gestured lightly with her hand. "Notice how the poem doesn't directly say 'I miss you.' It shows it, through the image of the moon. The poet trusts the reader to feel what isn't said aloud. That's part of the power of literature, it lives between the words."
The class felt like it passed in fragments: Mrs. Zhang's voice, the smell of chalk dust, me writing my notes, the whispers around the classroom, Zeyan's quiet scratch-scratch-scratch.
The strangest part was how the air shifted around him. People kept stealing glances, whispering, but he sat untouched by it all, like he existed in a different layer of reality. I wanted to ignore it too, but I couldn't stop being aware of it.
Mrs. Zhang closed her book gently. "For homework, I'd like each of you to find one Tang poem that resonates with you. Write a short reflection, why that one, what feelings it stirs in you. No right or wrong answers."
Pens scratched as people wrote it down. I copied the instructions neatly. Easy enough.
The bell rang.
Chairs scraped, voices rose, the room filled with shuffling and chatter. I packed my things quickly, careful not to bend the edges of my notebooks and books. Zeyan shut the notebook, and then, just as casually as if he were tossing away a candy wrapper, he dropped my pen on my desk.
"Thanks," he muttered. Not even looking at me, just swinging his bag over one shoulder.
I blinked. My pen.
Then my eyes fell to the closed notebook sitting on the desk. I pulled it closer. My rough notes notebook. The one I used for scratch work, not the neat pages I'd just been writing in.
He'd been using my notebook the entire class.
~ Min
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