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Echoes of Yesterday: Midnight at Twelve
墨書 Inktalez
Her name is Xiao Ya, a girl living in a silent world. Pencils and sketch paper are her only bridges to communicate with the world. At school, she silently endures the malice from some classmates while also feeling the warmth of friendship. Until one day, a tragedy shatters the tranquility of the campus and completely alters Xiao Ya's life trajectory...
The glass windows of the Art Classroom are beaded with fine droplets of water, and Xiao Ya's fingertips create a soft rustling sound as they glide over the rough sketch paper. She leans closer to the easel, her hair brushing against the still-wet sunflower, causing its golden center to ripple slightly.
The aroma of fried meatballs wafts in from the cafeteria, mingling with the sharp scent of acrylic paint, weaving an invisible net around her nose. "Hey! The deaf girl is drawing creepy stuff again," a boy from behind kicks her chair hard. Wood shavings tumble down onto her white canvas shoes, and Xiao Ya's hand, clutching a 24-color pencil, pauses momentarily, leaving an abrupt black dot on her sketchbook.
A girl in front with twin ponytails suddenly turns around and slaps a strawberry milk candy onto her desk before turning back to give a rude gesture to the boy behind. As the lunch bell rings, vibrating the window frames, Xiao Ya hugs her well-worn sketchbook and slowly moves along the gray-white wall of the corridor.
The sunlight at the third-floor corner cuts across her shoulder, stretching her shadow into a long exclamation mark. A few girls giggle as they rush past her, one wearing leather boots deliberately stepping on the fringes of her dragging scarf, their laughter sharp like a pigeon being choked. "Be careful!" someone grabs her arm.
Xiao Hui's woolen gloves brush against her wrist, bringing a cool sensation of mint ointment. This transfer student who often hangs around the infirmary is now using her frostbitten fingers to adjust Xiao Ya's scarf, with snowflakes from outside clinging to her hair tips.
In the Art Studio, the radiator hisses as it leaks water while Xiao Ya curls up on an old wooden box by the window. As charcoal sweeps across the paper, faint blue marks appear on Xiao Hui's neck. Last Wednesday in the gym storage room, when Zhao Qiang poured an entire bucket of ice water down Xiao Hui's collar, she was outside picking up fallen orange crayons. Tucked inside her sketchbook is a crumpled candy wrapper—the lemon hard candy that Xiao Hui secretly slipped to her yesterday.
The cold wind wrapped in fine snow slammed against the glass, and Xiao Ya suddenly sat up straight.
Through the gap of the storage cabinet behind the easel, Zhao Qiang's studded leather boots were grinding against Xiao Hui's untied shoelaces. She saw Xiao Hui's glasses lying in the dirty water, cracks in the lenses spreading like a spider's web. The pencil tip snapped with a "pop," leaving worm-like fissures on the drawing paper.
The unfinished sketch was bathed in the sunset: the tilted storage cabinet transformed into a grim iron barrier, Zhao Qiang's veins bulged at his temples, twisting into vines, while Xiao Hui's suspended sneakers looked like a bird with broken wings. Xiao Ya wiped away the shadowed areas with her thumb, carbon powder seeping into her fingerprints, blooming into strange shapes on her fingertips.
When the Christmas Eve lights lit up, Xiao Hui's light blue scarf hung on the iron netting at the top of the teaching building. Xiao Ya crouched by the window of the Art Studio, watching that splash of blue rise and fall in the wind, reminiscent of the broken kite they had released together last week.
The police's red caution tape wrapped around the stair railing, casting intersecting shadows on the wall. On page 37 of her sketchbook, Xiao Hui's last smile was frozen in shades of pencil gray. Xiao Ya's trembling fingertips brushed over the shadow at the neck of the figure in her drawing, where snowflakes from last night had drifted in from the rooftop, now melting into deep brown tear stains in the warmth.
Suddenly, a heavy thud echoed from outside, causing her palette to topple over, cobalt blue paint winding like a river through the cracks in the floor. Thin ice had formed on the rooftop, and Xiao Ya knelt in the corner where Xiao Hui once curled up.
Numb fingers pulled out a stack of sketches from her portfolio, Zhao Qiang's distorted face overlapping on each sheet of paper. She pressed the drawings against the frosted iron railing, her breath clouding around the figure's grimace in the artwork.
In the distance, New Year's bells faintly trembled through the air as she took out the golden bell that Xiao Hui had given her—a paintbrush—and solemnly signed the date in the corner of her last drawing. The cold wind swept up the paper and brushed past withered branches, startling sparrows from their perch under the eaves.
Xiao Ya gazed at the leaden clouds above, tasting blood rust on her tongue. Suddenly, the curtains of the Art Classroom shook violently; a pothos plant that Xiao Hui had watered had unknowingly spread to the edge of the windowsill, unfurling its dark green tendrils in the cold wind.
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