The group project, Li Wenya had decided, was a test.
Not an academic one. An existential one. Designed specifically by whatever force governed the mechanics of this fictional universe to see exactly how much she could endure before she stopped functioning as a rational person.
She had been managing it reasonably well.
The first three days of the project period had passed without a significant incident. Chen Yue had sent through her research materials, thorough, well-organized, and annotated with small helpful notes in the margins that made Li Wenya feel guilty about every suspicious thought she'd ever had about female leads. Xu Jia had produced a first draft of the written report that was surprisingly good and only contained two sections that needed major revision. Xi Yanli had said nothing to the group chat since his initial outline and had apparently communicated his continued participation through the silent medium of simply existing.
Li Wenya had organized the data.
Everything was progressing.
And then Xu Jia got sick.
The message arrived on a Wednesday morning, twenty minutes before class.
Xu Jia:not coming in today. fever. Tell Peng Xiao. Also, tell me everything that happens. especially anything interesting. You know what I mean by interesting.
Li Wenya stared at the message.
Li Wenya:Feel better. There will be nothing interesting to report.
Xu Jia:Sure
Li Wenya put her phone away.
She walked into the classroom and sat down.
Xi Yanli arrived two minutes later and sat beside her.
The empty seat where Xu Jia usually sat felt very loud.
The Problem
Peng Xiao announced at the start of the third period that groups needed to submit a progress check by the end of the week, a preliminary draft of at least two sections, compiled and formatted as a single document.
"Coordinate with your groups," he said. "If a member is absent, the remaining members are responsible for covering the workload."
Li Wenya looked at the empty seat to her left.
Then, in the group chat.
Then, at the project folder on her phone, Xu Jia's draft sat, complete but unformatted and not yet integrated with her own data section.
She could do it herself. It wasn't complicated. She would just need to spend the afternoon formatting everything into a single document and cross-referencing the data points.
She opened her laptop during free period and got to work.
She had been at it for approximately twelve minutes when a shadow fell across her screen.
She looked up.
Xi Yanli was standing beside her desk, looking at her laptop screen with an unreadable expression.
"What are you doing?" he said. It wasn't quite a question.
"Formatting the preliminary draft," she said. "Xu Jia is sick, so I'm compiling her section with mine."
He looked at the screen for another moment. Then, without further comment, he pulled out his own laptop, sat down, and opened it.
"Send me Xu Jia's file," he said.
She looked at him. "I can handle it."
"I know." He held out his hand for her phone with the calm certainty of someone who had already decided how this was going to go. "Send me the file."
She looked at his hand.
Looked at her screen.
Looked at his hand again.
She picked up her phone and sent him the file.
He caught it, opened it, and started working without another word.
They sat side by side in silence for the next forty minutes.
It was, Li Wenya thought, the longest forty minutes of her recent life. Not because it was unpleasant, it wasn't, which was precisely the problem. It was quiet and focused and oddly comfortable in a way that made her deeply suspicious of herself.
Xi Yanli worked with the same precise efficiency he applied to everything. He didn't ask unnecessary questions. He didn't fill the silence with small talk. He simply worked, and occasionally his laptop screen would update with a new section, and she would glance at it and find it was exactly what was needed.
At one point, their documents conflicted on a data point, and she said, "This number is wrong," and he said, "Check the source," and she checked the source, and he was right, and she fixed it without comment, and he said nothing, and they kept working.
It was, she realized with some alarm, the most functional she had felt during a group project in her entire academic life.
Don't read into it, she told herself firmly. He is just competent. Competent people exist. This is not significant.
She looked at her screen.
Kept working.
After School
By the time the bell rang, the preliminary draft was complete, formatted, and ready to submit.
Li Wenya saved the final version and looked at it for a moment. Clean. Professional. Significantly better than what she could have produced alone in the same timeframe.
She sent it to the group chat.
Li Wenya:Preliminary draft done. Submitting tomorrow.
Chen Yue:Already?? This looks amazing! Thank you both!
Xu Jia:I was sick for ONE day, and you already submitted without me. I feel so replaced.
Li Wenya:You contributed. Your section is in there.
Xu Jia:Did something interesting happen
Li Wenya:No.
Xu Jia:Xi Yanli helped, didn't he
Li Wenya put her phone face down on the desk.
Beside her, Xi Yanli was closing his laptop with the unhurried calm of someone who had never once in his life felt socially cornered by a group chat message.
"Thank you," Li Wenya said, because her mother had raised her with manners, even if her mother was currently working abroad and had no idea her daughter had transmigrated into a novel.
Xi Yanli glanced at her. "It was efficient."
"Right," she said. "Efficient."
He put his laptop in his bag.
She put her laptop in her bag.
They both stood up at the same time, which was slightly awkward, and then he gestured briefly toward the door in a way that meant after you without actually saying it, and she walked out first because the alternative was standing there deciding who moved first for an unreasonable amount of time.
In the hallway, they went in different directions.
She walked toward the school gate and told herself that the slight warmth in her chest was because she had successfully submitted a project draft ahead of schedule, and she was proud of her academic discipline.
It was academic pride.
That was all.
That Evening
Xu Jia called at eight.
"Tell me everything," she said, before Li Wenya had fully raised the phone to her ear.
"There is nothing to tell," Li Wenya said, lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling. "We formatted a document. It took forty minutes. We submitted it."
"You sat next to each other for forty minutes."
"We always sit next to each other. We are deskmates."
"In focused silence."
"That is how you work on documents, Xu Jia. In silence. Because talking interrupts concentration."
"Chen Yue told me he never helps anyone with project work," Xu Jia said, with the satisfied tone of someone producing evidence. "She asked around. Apparently, in his last school, he refused every single group project request and just did his sections alone and submitted them separately."
Li Wenya was quiet.
"He specifically chose to help you," Xu Jia said.
"He chose to help the project," Li Wenya said. "Which he is also a part of. It was self-interest."
"Li Wenya."
"Xu Jia."
"You have his personal number saved as Project, Xi Yanli."
She sat up slightly. "How do you know what I named his contact?"
"Because Chen Yue saw your phone screen for half a second at lunch and told me, and I have been thinking about it all day."
Li Wenya pressed a hand over her eyes.
"It's for the project," she said.
"Then why does it bother you that I know?"
The ceiling had no answer.
"Get some rest," Li Wenya said. "You're sick. Drink water. Sleep early."
"You're deflecting."
"Goodnight, Xu Jia."
She hung up.
Lay back down.
Stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
Picked up her phone.
Opened contacts.
Project: Xi Yanli.
She stared at it.
Did not change it.
Put the phone down.
Closed her eyes.
It's for the project, she told herself, firmly and with great conviction.
Outside her window, the city hummed its quiet nighttime hum.
Her phone lit up once.
Xi Yanli:Peng Xiao confirmed the submission. Presentation is next.
She looked at the message for a long time.
Typed back:
Li Wenya:Okay.
Put the phone on her nightstand.
Pulled the blanket up.
Just the project, she thought.
Just the project.
She fell asleep faster than she expected.
She dreamed about nothing in particular.
But when she woke up, the first thing she checked was her phone.