Chapter 7 Scorch Marks · The Burning Countdown
The air in late autumn crackled with tension, as brittle as the fallen leaves crunching underfoot. Lin Yan's desk was a warzone of calculators, coffee stains, and half - finished blueprints for the provincial competition. He'd taken to sleeping in the lab, curled up on a cot beneath the mechanical clock, its gears turning like a metronome in his dreams.
Su Wantang worried silently. She noticed how his collarbones jutted through his shirt, how he'd forgotten to replace the frayed strap on his mechanical watch. One morning, she left a thermos of congee on his desk with a sticky note: Eat or I'll tell Chen Ye to sit on you.
Chen Ye, for his part, alternated between ribbing Lin Yan about "becoming a lab hermit" and leaving protein bars in his bag. But his usual swagger had dimmed. He'd catch Su Wantang staring at Lin Yan's profile during class, or find her rereading the unopened letter in the library, her fingers tracing the seal.
The first crack in their fragile equilibrium came on a Tuesday. Lin Yan arrived at the lab to find his competition folder splayed open on the floor, pages ripped, equations scribbled over in red ink. His heart dropped—those were his annotated notes, the ones he'd spent months perfecting.
"Who did this?" Su Wantang demanded, kneeling to gather the scraps. Her voice shook with rage.
Lin Yan didn't need to guess. He recognized the handwriting—the same sharp, angular script that had signed his father's last letter. You'll thank me someday.
Chen Ye stormed in moments later, hair damp from basketball practice. "I saw a guy in a suit skulking around earlier." He held up a blurry phone photo: a man with a familiar gold watch, ducking into a black sedan. "Want me to track him down?"
"No." Lin Yan's voice was ice. "I'll handle it."
But handling it meant confronting his father at the man's downtown office, a sterile high - rise with no trace of the warm, cluttered study of his childhood. "Why?" he asked, standing before the desk where his father signed divorce papers and business deals with the same detached precision.
His father didn't look up. "You're throwing away a future for... what? A bunch of rusty gears and a dead woman's obsession?"
The words hit like a punch. Lin Yan's hand slammed down on the desk, knocking over a crystal paperweight. "She wasn't an obsession. She was my mother."
"Precisely." His father finally met his gaze, eyes cold. "And look where her 'passion' got her. I won't let you follow the same path."
Lin Yan left without another word, but the damage was done. Back at school, he smashed a gear into the lab sink, blood blooming from his palm. Su Wantang grabbed his wrist, ignoring the shards. "Talk to me," she pleaded.
He pulled away. "There's nothing to say."
That night, Chen Ye found him on the rooftop, nursing a bottle of cheap beer. "So," he said, kicking an empty can, "your old man's a dick. Newsflash: most of them are."
Lin Yan stared at the city lights. "He thinks I'm wasting my life."
"Yeah, well, he's probably wasting his." Chen Ye took a swig from the bottle. "My dad bailed when I was five. Mom says he went to find 'better stars.'" He laughed harshly. "Turns out, some people just suck at navigating."
Lin Yan glanced at him, surprised. Chen Ye rarely talked about his family. The artist shrugged, flipping open his sketchbook to a page of star charts labeled Wasted Constellations. "Point is, we don't need their approval. We've got our own shit to fix."
They sat in silence until dawn, the beer bottle empty, as the first rays of sun gilded the mechanical clock's dome. When Lin Yan stood up, his palm was sticky with dried blood and resolve. "Let's win this thing," he said.
But the universe had other plans. On the day of the provincial competition, Lin Yan's bus was delayed by a car accident—a black sedan T - boned at the intersection. He recognized the gold - watchted driver being led away by paramedics and felt a sickening lurch in his gut.
He arrived at the考场 (exam hall) twenty minutes late, sweating through his shirt, only to be blocked by a监考员 (proctor). "No admittance after the start time," the man droned.
"Please," Lin Yan begged, "I was in an accident—"
"Rules are rules."
Su Wantang appeared like a hurricane, debate club badge flashing. "This is a violation of his rights! The accident was caused by a third party with a direct conflict of interest—"
"Wantang, stop." Lin Yan put a hand on her shoulder. He could see the clock on the wall ticking mercilessly. "It's over."
But it wasn't over. That night, Chen Ye broke into the school server room, his sneakers sticking to the carpeted floor. He'd never been good at following rules—not when something mattered. Using a VPN he'd borrowed from a shady sophomore, he uploaded Lin Yan's exam answers, timestamped to before the deadline.
"Don't ask," he told Lin Yan the next day, tossing him a energy drink. "Just accept the win."