The next morning, the atmosphere in Room 302 is entirely different. The desks are the same, the green chalkboard is the same, but the social landscape has fundamentally shifted.

Mengqi sits in the front row, completely isolated. Nobody looks at her. When she tries to ask her seatmate for a spare eraser, the girl simply turns her back, pretending to be deeply absorbed in her vocabulary book. The absolute silence of the class is a collective judgment, cold and unyielding.

During the lunch break, the homeroom teacher walks up to the podium, clearing her throat. "Class, since the seating chart is changing next week, we need to clear out Xiaoyu's desk. Her parents will be coming this afternoon to collect her final belongings."

A heavy, respectful quiet settles over the room.

As soon as the teacher leaves for the faculty office, the students drift toward the cafeteria. Mengqi stays behind, pretending to organize her pencil case. When the room finally empties out, leaving only a few sleeping students in the back rows, Mengqi stands up.

Her eyes are fixed on Xiaoyu's empty desk.

With the mid-term mock exams just a week away, the academic pressure is brutal. Everyone knows that Xiaoyu, despite her quiet nature, was an absolute genius when it came to Physics. Her notebooks were legendary, filled with meticulous, multi-colored diagrams, flawless derivations, and shortcut formulas she had developed herself.

Mengqi glances around nervously, then slips down the aisle. She reaches into Xiaoyu's desk cubby, her fingers wrapping around the thick, blue spine of the Physics notebook. If she can just take it, she can copy the notes over the weekend and save her failing grades.

She pulls the notebook out, preparing to slide it into her canvas tote bag.

A hand shoots out from the side, clamping down firmly on her wrist.

"Put it back," a voice says, cold and hard.

Mengqi gasps, looking up into the dark, fierce eyes of Xu Jiang. He had entered through the back door without a sound, his face set in a grim line.

"I was just looking at it," Mengqi stammers, her face flushing crimson as she tries to wrench her arm free. "It's not like she needs it anymore."

"It belongs to her family," Xu Jiang says, his grip unyielding. He pulls the blue notebook cleanly out of her hands. "And you don't deserve to touch a single page of it."

Xiaoyu stands right beside them, watching the interaction with a surge of gratitude. She sees the absolute humiliation on Mengqi's face as the girl turns and flees from the classroom, unable to look Xu Jiang in the eye.

Xu Jiang doesn't hide the notebook away. Instead, he walks directly up to the front podium and places it under the document camera. He takes his own phone out, snaps a clean, high-resolution photo of every single page, and uploads the files directly to the class study drive.

He turns to the few students remaining in the room. "Xiaoyu's notes are the best in the grade. We should photocopy them and distribute them to everyone. It's what she would have wanted."

By the time the afternoon classes begin, every student in Grade 11 Class 3 has a neatly stapled, printed packet of Xiaoyu's Physics notes sitting on their desk. Her neat, elegant handwriting becomes the gold standard for the entire grade, her hard work preserved and celebrated by the very people who used to overlook her.

Xiaoyu sits on top of the teacher's desk, looking out at the rows of students studying her words. For the first time since her accident, she doesn't feel like a tragic ghost. She feels like she still belongs here.