The week passed peacefully. I started to get used to the daily routine. By Friday I knew almost all the students, but I couldn't call them all by name. In PE class, my teammates have learned their lesson and stopped passing the ball to me. If other teams try to take advantage of my weakness, they will rush ahead of me as quickly as possible. I'm happy to get out of the way for them.

Roger Wright still didn't come to school.

Every day, I watched the door uneasily until the Wright kids walked into the cafeteria, not including him. That's when I settle down and join in the lunchtime conversation. Usually these conversations revolve around Jack, two weeks later, during a trip to Bellingham Marine Park. I was also invited, and I agreed, more out of politeness than voluntariness. The beach should be hot and dry.

On Friday I walked into the biology classroom with no worries about Roger being there. As far as I know, he has dropped out. I tried not to think about him, but I couldn't contain my fear: I might be the culprit for his continued absences. But it seems ridiculous.

My first weekend in Victoria passed without any incident. Chuck was still the same, unwilling to spend time in an empty house, spending his weekends at work. And I cleaned the house, completed my homework, and wrote a few more pretended happy emails to my mother. I drove to the library on Saturday, but the collection was so small that I didn't bother to get a library card. Maybe I should go to Thurston or Seattle in the near future and find a good bookstore. I lazily thought about how much gas the truck would have to use every mile it drove through - and shuddered.

On weekends the rain became much lighter and quiet, so I slept well.

On Monday morning, everyone in the parking lot greeted me. I don't know the names of all of them yet, but I still smile and wave to everyone. The temperature dropped again this morning, but I'm glad it didn't rain. In English class, Jack sat next to me as usual. We briefly chatted about "Whistling Era", which was both calm and relaxed.

The most important thing is that it is more comfortable with each other than I ever thought. I'm more comfortable here than I ever expected.

As we walked out of the classroom, countless tiny white dots swirled in the sky. I could hear people shouting excitedly. The wind beat against my face, my nose.

"Wow," Jack said. "It's snowing."

I watched as the tiny cotton wool gradually piled up on the pavement, swirling across my face from time to time.

"Ugh." Snow. My good days are gone.

He looked surprised. "Don't you like snow?"

"I don't like it. This means that it is too cold to rain. "Obviously." Also, I think snow should fall one by one – you know, each one is unique, and all snow is like that. These snows look like small cotton balls on cotton swabs. ”

"Haven't you seen snow before?" He asked, skeptically.

"Of course," I paused. "On TV."

Jack burst out laughing. Then, a fluffy snowball landed on the back of his head impartially. We all go back and see who did it. I suspect it's Ike, who is walking away with his back to us—but not in the direction of his next lesson. Jack apparently thinks so, too. He bent down and gathered a pile of white slush.

"We'll see you at lunch, shall we?" I said as I walked away. "As soon as people started having snowball fights, I ran in."

He just nodded, staring at Ike's retreating figure.

Throughout the morning, everyone was talking excitedly about the snow. Apparently this is the first snow of the new year. I kept pursing my lips. Of course, it's drier than rain - until it melts in your boots.

After the Spanish class, Mary and I walked to the cafeteria, keeping a vigilant posture along the way. Snowballs are flying everywhere. I had a folder in my hand, ready to use as a shield if necessary. Mary thought I was a prank, but when she saw my expression, she gave up on throwing a snowball at me.

As soon as we entered, Jack caught up with us. He laughed, his hair covered in melted ice. As we lined up to buy food, he and Mary were talking about the snowball fight with great interest. Out of habit, I glanced at the table in the corner. Then, I froze there. There were five people sitting at that table.

Mary took my hand.

"Hello? Imia? What would you like to eat? ”

I lowered my head, and my ears were hot. I don't have to be so self-conscious, I remind myself. I didn't do anything wrong.

"What's wrong with Imia?" Jack asked Mary.

"It's fine," I replied. "I'll just drink soda today." I followed the tail of the line.

"Aren't you hungry?" Mary asked.

"Yes, I'm a little sick." I said, eyes still on the ground.

I waited for them to fetch their food, then followed them to a table and sat down, keeping my eyes on my shoes the whole time.

I gulped down my soda, my stomach churning. Jack asked me twice, with what I personally felt was unnecessarily worried.

I told him I was fine. But I wondered if I should be more exaggerated, and ran to the infirmary to skip the next class.

Absurd. I didn't have to run away at all.

I decided to give myself permission to glance at the Wright's table. If he's still glaring at me, I'm going to skip biology class and be a coward.

They were all laughing. Roger, Ekas, and Dyson Car, their hair soaked and covered in melted snow. Milani and Alice both leaned to the side as Dyson was flicking his hair at them. They, like everyone else, enjoy a snowy day. It's just that they look more like a shot from a movie than we do.

However, in addition to laughter and frolic, there are some differences. But I can't say exactly what the difference is. I looked at Roger more closely. His complexion was less pale, and I thought - probably the flush from a snowball fight - the dark circles under his eyes were less noticeable. But that's not all. I thought about it, I watched, I tried to figure out what had changed.

"Imia, what are you looking at?" Mary interjected, her eyes following my gaze. At that moment, his eyes turned to mine.

I hung my head and let my hair fall to cover my face. However, I can be sure that the moment we met our eyes, he didn't look as stern and unfriendly as the last time I had seen him. He only looked a little curious, and a certain amount of dissatisfaction.

"Roger Wright is staring at you." Mary giggled in my ear.

"He doesn't look too angry, does he?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Nope." She said, sounding deeply confused by my question. "Should he be angry?"

"I don't think he likes me." I confessed. I still felt like throwing up, so I rested my head on my arm.

"The Wrights don't like anyone...... Well, they don't even pay attention to anyone, let alone like it. But he's still staring at you. ”

"Don't look at him anymore." I booed.

She snickered, but looked away. I raised my head slightly to make sure she wasn't looking, otherwise I would have to use force to stop her.

Then, Jack interrupted us. He plans an epic snowball fight in the parking lot after school and wants us to join. Mary responded enthusiastically to his call. Looking at the way she looked at Jack, there was no doubt that she would agree to whatever Jack asked her to do. I am silent. It looked like there was no one in the parking lot, and I had to hide in the gym before.

For the rest of the lunch, I carefully kept my eyes on my own table. I decided to respect the outcome of the battle between the founders of my heart. Since he didn't seem angry, I went to biology class. The thought of sitting next to him again gave my stomach a few horrible throbs.

I didn't really want to go to class with Jack as I usually did - he seemed to be a moving target for the hugely popular Snowball Snipers. But as we walked out the door, everyone around me sighed in unison. It rained, and the rain washed away the snow and left ice marks on the sidewalks. I put on my hood with joy: I could go straight home after gym class.

On the way to Building Four, Jack kept complaining.

As soon as I entered the classroom, I was relieved to see that my desk was still empty. Mr. Ruth walked around the classroom, handing out a microscope and a box of slides to each desk. It was a while before classes began, and the room was filled with the hum of whispers. I no longer look out the door and doodle on the cover of my notebook doing nothing.

I could hear very clearly as the chair next to me was moved, but I was still looking intently at the pattern I had just drawn.

"Hello." A calm, heavenly voice spoke.

I looked up and saw with some vertigo that he was talking to me. He sat as far away from me as the table allowed, but the corner of his stool was facing me. His hair was wet, dripping and messy — though he looked like he had just finished a shampoo commercial. His strikingly beautiful face was both kind and frank, and a faint smile appeared on his flawless lips. But his eyes were a little cautious.

"I'm Roger Wright," he continued. "I didn't have time to introduce myself to you last week. You must be Imia Rien. ”

My mind was in a mess. Could it be that I made up the whole thing myself? He was impeccably polite now. I must say something: he is waiting. But I can't think of anything worth saying.

"You...... How did you know my name? I stammered.

He laughed softly, but looked a little confused.

"Oh, I think everybody knows your name. The whole town is waiting for you. ”

I couldn't help but look bitter. I knew it was so.

"Nope." I stupidly insisted on it. "I mean, why do you call me Imia?"

He looked confused. "Do you prefer to be called Eleimia?"

"No, I like the name Imia." I say. "But I guess Chuck - I mean my dad - must have called me Elle Emia behind my back - so everyone here seems to know that my name is Eleimia." I tried to explain, feeling like a complete idiot.

"Oh." He no longer dwells on the issue. I awkwardly looked away.

Thankfully, it was at this point that Mr. Ruth started the lesson. I tried to focus on his explanation of the experiment we were going to do today. The order of the slides in the box has been disrupted. We will conduct experiments in pairs to find out the cell division cycle represented by each onion bulb epidermal cell slide and label it accordingly. We are not allowed to flip through the books during this process. After twenty minutes, he would go back and forth to see who had done it right.

"Let's go." He ordered.

"Ladies first, buddy?" Roger asked. I looked up at him. He smiled, the corners of his mouth curled so charming that I could only stare at him like an idiot.

"Or I'll come first, if you will." The smile was stiff, and he was clearly doubting my intellectual competence.

"Nope." I said, blushing all over my face. "I'll come first."

I'm showing off, but I'm not overdoing it. I've done this experiment and I know what I'm looking for. It's simple. I put the first slide under the microscope with a snap, quickly adjusted it to 40x, and then briefly looked at the slide.

I was quite sure to draw conclusions. "Early."

"Can I take a look?" I was about to remove the slide when he asked. At the same time, he grabbed my hand and told me to stop. His fingers were cold, as if he had been burying his hands in the snowdrift before class. But that's not because I quickly broke my hands away. When he touched me, his touch burned my hand, as if an electric current was flowing through us in an instant.

"I'm sorry." He whispered, immediately withdrawing his hand. Still, he reached for the microscope. I looked at him with some waver, he had been examining the slides for less time than I was.

"Early." He agreed, neatly writing in the first blank space of our experiment report. He skillfully switched into the second slide and took a cursory glance.

"Late." He whispered as he wrote it down.

I try to make my voice appear indifferent. "Can you show me?"

He pouted and grinned wickedly and pushed the microscope to me.

I eagerly looked through the eyepieces, but was disappointed. Damn, he was right.

"The third slide?" I stretched out my hand, but I didn't look at him.

He handed me the slide. He seemed careful not to make any more skin-to-skin contact with me.

I looked at the slides as fast as I could.

"Interval." Before he could speak, I handed him the microscope. He glanced at it quickly, then wrote it down. I could have written it while he was reading, but his delicate and elegant handwriting calmed me down. I don't want to ruin this piece of paper with my clumsy scribbled font.

We finished the experiment early and left everyone else behind. I could see Jack and his partner comparing the two slides over and over again, while the other group flipped through the books under the table.

I really had nothing to do but try not to let myself look at him. But it didn't work out. I looked over and he was staring at me with a puzzling frustration in his eyes. In the flash of light, I noticed the slightest difference in his appearance.

"Do you wear contact lenses?" I blurted it out without thinking.

He seemed confused by my surprise question. "Nope."

"Oh," I muttered. "I think your eyes are a little different."

He shrugged and looked away.

In fact, I'm sure his eyes are a little different. I remember his staring eyes vividly—the last time he had glared at me like that—the color of his pale skin and red hair that stood out against the backdrop. Today, his eyes are a completely different color: a strange yellowish-brown, slightly darker than the color of the oil sugar, but the same golden hue. I can't understand this kind of thing, unless it's him who lied about contact lenses for some reason. Or maybe it was Victoria that drove me madly out of my normal perception of the world.

I looked down, his hands clenched into fists again.

Mr. Ruth walked over to our table to see why we stopped and didn't do it. He looked over our shoulders and saw that the experiment had been completed, and he looked more intently to check the answers.

"So, Roger, don't you think Ellemiah should have the opportunity to use a microscope?" Mr. Ruth asked.

"Imia......" Roger subconsciously corrected. In fact, she found three out of five. ”

Now Mr. Ruth looked at me with a very skeptical expression.

"Have you done this before?" He asked.

I smiled shyly: "But not with onion bulbs." ”

"Is it with white fish blastocysts?"

"That's right."

Mr. Ruth nodded. "Did you take an Advanced Placement course in Draco City?"

"Yes."

"Very well," he said after a pause, "I think it's good that you two are in the same experimental group. When he walked away, he was still muttering something. When he was gone, I started scribbling in my notebook again.

"It's a shame to have snow, isn't it?" Roger asked. I had a feeling that he was forcing himself to make small talk to me. I'm starting to have paranoia again. It was almost as if he had overheard the conversation between me and Mary over lunch and was trying to prove me wrong.

"Not at all." I answered honestly, not pretending to be as ordinary as everyone else. I'm still trying to get stupid, suspicious thoughts out of my head and I can't concentrate.

"You don't like the cold." This is not an interrogative sentence.

"And dampness."

"Victoria must be an inhospitable place for you." He said thoughtfully.

"You can't imagine it." I muttered in a gloomy whisper.

He seemed fascinated by what I was saying, but I couldn't imagine why. His face distracted me, and I could only try not to look at him without being polite.

"So, why are you here?"

No one had ever asked me that question - at least, not as bluntly as he was.

"This ...... It's a long story. ”

"I think I can listen patiently." He urged.

I paused for a long time, then made the mistake of meeting his staring eyes. His dark and golden eyes confused me, so I replied without even thinking about it.

"My mom remarried." I say.

"It doesn't sound like that complicated." He didn't seem to agree, but he quickly took pity on me. "When?"

"Last September." My voice sounded a little sentimental, at least to me.

"However, you don't like her new husband." Roger speculated, his voice still cordial.

"No, the Aiken people are nice. Maybe, a little too young, but it's still good. ”

"Why don't you continue to live with them?"

I can't think of what he's interested in, but he continues to stare at me with those piercing eyes, as if my boring life is an unusually wonderful legend.

"Aiken travels a lot, he's a professional footballer." I forced a smile.

"Have I heard of him?" He asked, smiling too.

"Probably not. He's not playing very well, strictly speaking in the minor leagues. He's always running around. ”

"That's why your mother told you to come here so she could follow him around." He said this in a tone that was more like an inference than a question.

I lifted my jaw slightly. "No, she didn't let me come here. I came on my own. ”

He frowned. "I don't understand." He confessed, looking deeply frustrated by this fact, and a little overdone.

"At first she stayed with me, but she missed him so much that she was very unhappy...... So I think it's time to have a better life with Chuck. I said, my voice deepening.

"But now, it's becoming unhappy for you." He pointed out.

"So?" I provoked.

"It doesn't seem fair." He shrugged, but his eyes remained.

I laughed dryly. "Didn't anyone tell you? Life is not fair. ”

"I'm sure I've heard it somewhere." He said coldly.

"So, that's it." I insisted, wondering why he was still staring at me with those eyes.

His gaze changed to scrutiny. "You're doing well," he said slowly. "But I bet you've been through more than you've shown to anyone."

I grimaced at him, resisted the urge of a five-year-old to speak, and looked away.

"Am I doing something wrong?"

I tried to ignore him.

"I don't think so." He whispered smugly.

"What does this have to do with you?" Enraged, I asked. My eyes were still looking away, and I saw the teacher walking around the classroom.

"That's a good question." He whispered, so low that I wondered if he was talking to himself. However, after a few seconds of silence, I was convinced that this was the only answer I could get.

I sighed and looked at the blackboard with a sinking face.

"Did I you off?" He asked, sounding a little funny.

I glared at him without thinking...... And then again the truth was told. "Not exactly. I'm mostly mad at myself. I had all the things written on my face - my mother used to say that I was one of her open books. I frowned.

"On the contrary, I find it difficult to understand what you are thinking." He guessed, completely denying what I had just said, but it sounded like he was telling the truth.

"Then you must be a good reader." I retorted.

"That's usually the case." He smiled heartily, revealing a row of neat snow-white teeth.

Mr. Ruth told the class to listen to him, and I was saved, so I went back to the lecture and listened intently. I couldn't believe that I had just told this wonderful, handsome boy about my dull life, who could have despised or even ignored me. He seemed to be engaged in our conversation, but now I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was turning away from me again, his hands gripping the edge of the table incredibly.

When Mr. Ruth started the demonstration, I tried to focus as much as I could on the cross-sectional view of the slide projector, even though I saw it in the microscope without much difficulty. But I'm still distracted.

When the bell finally rang, Roger rushed out of the classroom quickly but gracefully, as he had done last Monday. And I, as I did last Monday, stared at his distant figure in amazement.

Jack immediately jumped up to me and picked up my book for me. I think he's like a funny tail.

"It's horrible." He said. "They all look the same. You're so lucky that your partner is Wright. ”

"It didn't take much effort for me to do it." I said, I guessed it. But I quickly regretted it. "But I've done this before." I added before he felt hurt.

"Wright looks friendly today." When we put on our raincoats, he commented. He didn't seem very happy about it.

I struggled to sound indifferent. "I want to know what happened to him last Monday."

As we walked towards the gymnasium, I couldn't focus on the small talk with Jack. Physical education class didn't keep me focused either. Today Jack and I are in a group. He righteously defended me and his position at the same time, so I only stopped fugue when it was my turn to serve. Every time I serve, my teammates have to be careful to avoid my service path.

By the time I walked to the parking lot, the rain had subsided into fog, but sitting in the dry cab made me happier to sit in. I started the engine, and for the first time I didn't care about the scalp-tingling roar of the engine. I unzipped my jacket, lowered my hood, and flipped my wet hair so that the heat could dry it on my way home.

I looked around to make sure there were no cars coming from front to back. At this time, I noticed the still, snow-white figure. Roger Wright leaned against the front door of the Volvo, three cars away from me, looking intently in my direction. I looked away and scrambled to reverse, only to nearly crash into a rusty Toyota Corolla. As luck with that Toyota, I hit the brakes just in time. Toyota happens to be one of those cars that would be smashed into pieces by my truck. I took a deep breath, still looking at the window on the other side, and carefully reversed the car, and this time it worked. As I drove past the Volvo, I kept my eyes straight ahead, but still sneaked a glance around. I could have sworn I saw him laughing.