Founding the society

Page 1 of 3

The next round of club recruitment would begin the following month. Zero Aldehyde suddenly took an enthusiastic interest in the procedures for founding a club.

“Oh, you just write up an application and submit it to the Student Organizations Union for stamping. The format should be on the school website,” a student-council member replied absentmindedly.

During the free period after dinner and before evening self-study, Zero Aldehyde commandeered the large screen in the neighboring study room and downloaded the club-formation application. I stood curiously by the back door watching her. She really had said something like, “This time this year, I’m going to start a club of my own.” She certainly meant what she said. Whatever kind of club it was, I would join.

“Perfect! Help me figure out how to write the application—” Zero Aldehyde had probably spotted my reflection in the screen. She waved me over. “O Great Master Who Scored More Than Fifty in Composition—”

“Aaah, don’t call me ‘Great Master’! …So what kind of club was it again?”

“A Scientific Paper Study Club! The sort where… everyone reads scientific papers together and learns about scientific ideas… Well…” She gave an embarrassed little smile. “It may not really seem like a club, and I don’t even know if it can be done, but…”

“—It should be really interesting! Leave the writing to me!” I declared grandly, patting my chest.

“Really? That’s wonderful! Thank you—”

Zero Aldehyde suddenly jumped down from the platform and hugged me. Blushing, I turned my head away and fought down the urge to take our intimacy a step further. Then I began scanning the requirements on the large screen: the club’s purpose, its activities…

After hastily finishing the homework due the next day during the first half of evening self-study, I began drafting the application. A Scientific Paper Study Club… For a high-school student like me, who wrestled with homework every day until my head spun, it was almost impossible to imagine. But then again… if it wasn’t outrageous, it wouldn’t be Zero Aldehyde’s idea.

With a mixture of excitement and unease, I agonized over every word. The moment evening self-study ended, I handed Zero Aldehyde an application containing exactly eight hundred words.

“‘We hereby solemnly submit our application to establish… The purpose of this club is to pursue truth and climb bravely toward the summit, while providing members with opportunities to cultivate themselves and enrich their knowledge…’” Zero Aldehyde read aloud, laughing as she went. “You write this stuff so fluently.”

“It’s just… official writing.” I scratched my head with a grin. “Is the president satisfied?”

Zero Aldehyde nodded. “Tomorrow after class I’ll go to the computer room and type it up… Then there’s another form we seem to have to fill in. We’ll deal with that tomorrow. And then… maybe we’ll be able to take part in recruitment? We’ll have to prepare some things…” She sat on the desk, swinging her legs, her eyes gazing toward a distant place I could not see.

“Come to think of it, I remember… you don’t really like crowded places, do you, Zero Aldehyde?”

“…That’s true. But… sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a group of like-minded friends or something…” She lowered her eyes. “I just don’t know whether I deserve to have things like that.”

The next day, Zero Aldehyde printed out the application with impressive competence, but ran into trouble while filling out another form. It was a registration sheet for the club’s founding members—and it required at least ten.

“Ten people… Gu Heqing, Gu Heqing…”

“I can only count as one…”

“Then—do you have any friends who might be interested in our club?”

“Xin Yi? But she didn’t join a club last semester. She said going to club activities was less worthwhile than staying in the classroom to do homework. I can ask her after class. And then… Ye Zihan. He’s probably already in the anime club…”

Unwilling to give up, Zero Aldehyde printed another copy of the application I had written. At the bottom, she wrote, “Urgent! Recruiting now! If interested, message…” followed by the number of that red-button phone of hers. Then she posted it on the noticeboard downstairs.

One day passed, then two. Her inbox remained empty.

On Thursday, I had cleaning duty, so Zero Aldehyde left first. On my way to take out the trash, I passed the noticeboard and saw that two corners of the sheet had been torn loose by the wind. I stuck them back down with transparent tape.

Page 2 of 3

I stopped when I passed beneath Zero Aldehyde’s apartment building. Usually, whenever I walked by, I would instinctively glance toward the window, but today something else held me in place.

Her family lived on the ground floor. The soundproofing in the old building was poor, and from below I heard a woman shouting through the window. I do not know what impulse drove me—curiosity, concern, or some useless protective instinct. In any case, like a thief, I crept up ten steps and pressed my ear against the cold metal security door.

“Tell me, aren’t you far too idle for a high-school student? You can’t even write a decent composition, yet you waste your time writing this kind of long-winded nonsense. You don’t even have your own studies under control, and now you’re reaching for the heavens and dreaming up all this useless rubbish! A club! What a waste of time! I’m telling you, that student in Class One who’s always in the top five carries books to memorize and exercises to do even on the way to the bathroom!”

That afternoon at school, Zero Aldehyde had said she had lost the application from her schoolbag and would have to print another copy. Thinking back now, it had probably fallen out at home and been discovered by her mother.

“I’ve let you off for far too long. The other day you came home with chalk dust and paint on your clothes. Don’t think I didn’t notice—I was simply too tired that day. I work myself to the bone every day to provide you with the chance to attend school like this, and what is it for? What year are you in now? Your second year of high school! Can’t you tell what matters and what has meaning? Everyone else is working hard and making every minute count, while you don’t have the slightest sense of urgency! I’m telling you, if you’re not going to study, get out!”

Through the door, all I could see was the darkness of the stairwell. Through the door, that sharp and forceful voice still pressed down on me until I could hardly breathe.

“You little deadbeat. You’ve become a stubborn old mule, haven’t you? Hold out your hand.”

Trembling, I fumbled out my house keys and fled.

Zero Aldehyde hardly spoke at all the next day. I wanted to comfort her, but I was afraid of revealing that I had eavesdropped the night before.

That afternoon, on our way to physical education class, we passed the noticeboard. Zero Aldehyde stopped. Rising onto her toes, she tore down the recruitment notice, ripped it in half, folded it, tore it in half again, folded it again, and kept tearing until the paper had become scraps no larger than fingernails. Then she threw them into the trash can beside her.

“Forget it. Still no one. I’ll just be a clubless wanderer this semester. No, wait, I can’t say there’s no one…”

She suddenly hopped onto the flower bed beside her and stretched out her right hand—her swollen left hand had not yet recovered. With a radiant smile, she made an inviting gesture toward me.

“Student Gu! Please join my club!”

I clasped her hand firmly. This was all I could do.

After we were assigned to the same class, I also had someone to accompany me to the cafeteria every day. At lunchtime, Zero Aldehyde selected her food with remarkable regularity: one meat dish and one vegetable dish. Which dishes they were depended on which tray was closest to the serving window.

“—In any case, whatever I eat is only to replenish a few essential carbohydrates and proteins…” she explained, staring coldly at the food on her tray.

“I hate eating. Why do human beings spend so much time eating?—Although, compared with our ancestors, we no longer have to work so hard to forage… Still… I still don’t want to eat.”

“Why not get something you like next time?—Would you like a chicken leg?”

“Rather than saying I ‘like eating’ it, I’d say I ‘don’t hate eating it quite as much’… Either way, eating is a troublesome business.”

Zero Aldehyde shoveled down her food in two or three mouthfuls, rested her chopsticks against the rim of the bowl with a soft chime, and began muttering intermittently to herself.

“Eating. In the end, it’s only so we can stay alive. Staying alive… what are we staying alive for? If someone said they stayed alive in order to eat, that would be a perfect closed loop. But I don’t want to eat, and it has nothing to do with whether I’m hungry…”

“Then chocolate is a food you like, right?”

“…In terms of its function, it has already surpassed the category of food. I’d call it ‘a safe stimulant and legal Soma for people intolerant of caffeine.’ One gram of chocolate can cure ten times its weight in sorrow.” She spoke with complete seriousness.

“Still, eat a little more—there’s physical education this afternoon, and we’re supposed to run together. The sports festival is in October too, isn’t it? As a member of Class Two’s—athletes! Seeded competitors! National Olympiad masters! You definitely need more protein if you want to have the strength!”

“Oh.” She nodded reluctantly.

The club recruitment fair took place at the end of September. We went downstairs and wandered around. As in previous years, the place was crowded and bustling, but there did not seem to be any club that interested Zero Aldehyde. So we returned to the study room on the fifth floor.

Page 3 of 3

The bookcase had grown considerably fuller. It contained books on mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology; it would not have been an exaggeration to call it a small library. When we changed classroom buildings, carrying all those things down four floors and then back up five was exhausting.

“A couple of days ago, our homeroom teacher asked whether I was still going to compete in academic contests during my second year. I said I was. Afterward, she tried to persuade me otherwise, saying things like how, since the new foundation-track admissions system had been introduced, contest students worked hard without receiving much in return.”

“Oh, really…” I had not paid much attention to education policy, though I had heard a little about reducing the weight given to academic competitions in admissions. “If everyone says that, why are you still continuing this year?”

“Well…” She tilted her head and thought for a while. “Because then I can keep telling our homeroom teacher, ‘I’m doing contest problems; my materials are in the study room,’ and have an excuse to slip over here during evening self-study.”

“You really are… willful.”

I walked over to the cabinet and casually pulled out a few books. There were quite a number of works of literature besides the required reading, though I had rarely seen Zero Aldehyde read them. Most of the books on the lists she asked me to order online were about mathematics and science.

I opened a copy of Lolita. An unfamiliar name was written across the title page in blue-black fountain-pen ink: Cheng Chuan.

I opened a few more. The Decameron. Keigo Higashino’s The Solitary Sleeper. Yu Hua’s To Live. Each title page bore the signature “Cheng Chuan.”

I suddenly found myself unable to control my hands. I pulled the books from the cabinet one by one and opened them, discovering the same name even in several popular science books.

Staring at those neat blue-black characters, I realized that at least one part of my question had been answered—why were there books on Zero Aldehyde’s shelves that she had no interest in?

Because they were not hers.

But then why were this person’s books here? What kind of relationship did they have? Who was Cheng Chuan?

I raised my head in confusion and caught sight of my own reflection in the glass window. Well, it was not merely confusion. There was also the wariness of someone whose relationship had been threatened, the alertness of someone who had encountered a rival.

Zero Aldehyde had probably noticed my strange expression. She came over, saw the open title pages, and shook her head with an exasperated smile.

“They were left behind by the older girl who used to live across the hall from us when I was little. Don’t read too much into it.”

What was there to read into? I wanted to argue that, but then I remembered the expression I had just worn. Suddenly, I knew any denial would lack credibility, so I simply kept quiet.

“She moved in when I was in third grade—or maybe fourth grade. She was in her first year of middle school then, in the advanced class at a nearby middle school. Her aunt knew that my mother was a middle-school teacher, so whenever they ran into each other, they would chat about admissions policies and things like that. I don’t remember the details anymore. In any case, after seeing each other so often, our two families became familiar.

“Sometimes my mother had to travel for training, and my father was busy at the hospital, so there was no one at home to look after me. The aunt across the hall would come over and take care of me. Sometimes I even stayed at their place.

“The aunt across the hall was gentle, and her cooking was delicious. Sometimes I even wished she could be my mother. The girl next door was Cheng Chuan. My mother often praised her, saying she was excellent in both conduct and academics, that she was in the advanced class and consistently ranked among the top ten in her grade. She told me to learn from her.”

At this, a faint trace of sarcasm touched Zero Aldehyde’s lips.

“But she hated being called ‘older sister,’ so I just called her by her name. I often visited Cheng Chuan’s home during the summer and winter holidays, and she really did teach me a great deal. She explained all the middle-school mathematics and science she was studying at the time. She also told me many stories—some from books, and some she made up herself.

“She’s in university now. She said she couldn’t take the books with her, so she gave them all to me. I couldn’t keep them at home—they don’t like me reading books that aren’t related to schoolwork—so I put them here together with my own.”

She described it all in a flat, emotionless voice, as if she were recounting someone else’s life.

So that was how it was.

As I tidied the stack of books bearing Cheng Chuan’s name, I tried to imagine their owner from the titles alone.

“Those books—have you read them?”

“I read quite a few at her house. Actually, I loved novels when I was little.”

“Really?”

“Of course. The scenes and stories described in books were so marvelous and strange, so much more interesting than the narrow, dim rooms and lonely, boring classrooms where I spent every day… But later, I came to prefer books about the natural sciences. Because… no matter how strange or fascinating those stories were, in the end they were only creations of human beings. After reading too many, they began to feel stale, affected, and tiresome. And perhaps I’m not very good at understanding or inhabiting other people’s emotions. These days, I read novels more like textbooks. Textbooks about the human world.”

“And nature never makes me feel affected or tired of it—”

Her voice suddenly rose.

“‘Heaven and earth are not benevolent; they treat all things as straw dogs.’”

“I can try to understand a nature like that.”

As she spoke, she walked to the window and lifted her head toward the clear, cloudless blue of the autumn sky.