When the typhoon passed, it left the coastal road under a layer of sand and the lower village under a layer of silence. Our school was on the hill, so we lost only a week of classes and the roof of the bicycle shed. On the first day back, our teacher wrote a name on the board: a family from the lower village whose house had lost its ground floor, and whose daughter, Lian, was in the class below mine.
台风过去后，它把滨海路留在一层沙下，把下村留在一片沉默下。我们学校在山上，只损失了一个星期的课和自行车棚的顶。复课第一天，老师在黑板上写了一个名字：下村的一户人家，房子没了一层，家里的女儿莲在我下一班。
The response was immediate and, I still think, genuine. Within three days we had collected clothes, blankets, school supplies, and enough money to replace the family's refrigerator. People brought things they had been meaning to throw away and things they had just bought. A boy in my class carried in a rice cooker still in its box. For a week, helping felt like a season, and everyone wanted to be part of it.
回应是立刻的，而且我至今认为，是真诚的。三天之内，我们收齐了衣服、被子、文具，还有足够给那家人换一台冰箱的钱。人们送来一直想扔的东西，也送来刚买的东西。我班里一个男生搬来一台还在箱子里的电饭锅。有一个星期，帮助像是一个季节，每个人都想参与。
Lian came back to school on the ninth day. She wore a uniform that did not fit her and thanked everyone who spoke to her, in a voice so careful it sounded like a door being closed gently. I remember thinking that she must be very grateful. It did not occur to me, then, that gratitude can also be a kind of work.
莲在第九天回校。她穿着一套不合身的校服，对每个跟她说话的人道谢，声音小心得像一扇被轻轻关上的门。我记得我当时想，她一定非常感激。那时我没有想到，感激也可以是一种劳动。
By the second month, the season had changed. The donations had been delivered, the photographs had been posted, and the class had moved on to examinations. Lian was still there, in the same borrowed uniform, but the things she needed now were less photogenic: someone to explain quadratic equations, a quiet place to study after the shelter closed at six, and a reason not to leave school at the end of the term.
到了第二个月，季节变了。捐的东西送到了，照片发过了，班里已经转去准备考试。莲还在，还穿着那套借来的校服，但她现在需要的东西不那么上镜：一个能讲清二次方程的人，一个收容点六点关门后能安静学习的地方，一个让她学期结束时不退学的理由。
I noticed this because I was the one who had organised the donations, and I had begun to feel proud of a job that was finished. When Lian asked me, in the corridor, whether I could help her with mathematics, I said I was busy that week. I was. I was also relieved, because helping her with mathematics did not feel like the season; it felt like homework.
我注意到这些，是因为募捐是我组织的，而我开始为一个已经结束的任务感到骄傲。莲在走廊上问我能不能帮她补数学，我说那一周很忙。我确实忙。我也松了一口气，因为帮她补数学不像那个季节，它像作业。
She did not ask again. I told myself she had found someone else. Then, in December, our teacher mentioned that Lian had missed six days, and that the shelter was closing for the winter. The class went quiet in the way a class does when it realises that the story it had been telling itself was only the first chapter.
她没有再问。我告诉自己她找到了别人。然后，十二月，老师提到莲缺了六天课，收容点冬天要关。班里安静下来，那种安静是一个班意识到自己一直在讲的故事只是第一章时的安静。
We made a rota, which is a less beautiful word than donation. Four of us would take turns: mathematics on Tuesdays, a place at someone's kitchen table on Thursdays, and a walk to the bus on Fridays. It was not enough. It was, we discovered, the amount that could actually be sustained in a year of examinations, and sustainability turned out to be the point.
我们排了一张轮值表——“轮值”这个词远不如“捐款”好听。四个人轮流：星期二数学，星期四在某人家的厨房桌上写作业，星期五送到车站。这不够。但我们发现，这正好是一个考试年里能坚持下来的量，而“能坚持”原来才是重点。
Lian's marks improved slowly, then not at all, then slowly again. She never became the grateful girl from the photographs, and I stopped wanting her to be. In spring, she told me that the rice cooker had broken, and we laughed, because it was the first ordinary thing she had said to me. The refrigerator, she added, was still working.
莲的成绩慢慢上去，又停住，再慢慢上去。她始终没有变成照片里那个感激的女孩，我也不再希望她变成。春天，她告诉我电饭锅坏了，我们都笑了，因为这是她对我说的第一句平常话。她又说，冰箱还在用。
I am not proud of the second month. I am proud of the rota. Sympathy arrives on its own, like weather, and leaves the same way. Responsibility is what remains after the weather, when nobody is taking photographs and the equation still does not make sense. We kept the rota until we graduated. Lian kept the notes.
我不为第二个月感到骄傲。我为那张轮值表骄傲。同情自己会来，像天气，也像天气一样离开。责任是天气过去之后留下来的东西——没有人拍照，方程还是解不出来。我们把轮值表坚持到毕业。莲留着那些笔记。