After walking about halfway around, they reached a windy spot. As the wind lifted the hem of his shirt, Sheng Xia noticed he was wearing light colors tonight.

The sleeves of his blue shirt were rolled up, revealing strong, slender forearms.

That hint of light blue stood out clearly against the night, as distinct as the track’s dividing lines.

So he looked good in light colors too.

“Are you cold?” Zhang Shu asked.

Sheng Xia wore her spring uniform with the zipper pulled up. “I’m not cold.”

Zhang Shu: “Mm.”

Sheng Xia: …

Never before had they had such a natural back-and-forth conversation without any strain.

The wind whistled through the night.

“Are you…” Zhang Shu’s voice carried a thoughtful tone, very low, “Applying to the University of Pennsylvania?”

Sheng Xia was startled and instinctively replied: “How did you know?”

She stopped walking, falling two steps behind him.

Zhang Shu also halted and turned around. Though the night was thick, strangely, her face remained quite clear to him.

Then he thought, what’s so strange about that? Even when she wasn’t standing in front of him, with just a slight remembrance, her every expression would appear clearly in his mind.

Zhang Shu gave a self-mocking laugh: “How did I know? I’d like to ask too – why didn’t I hear it from you?”

Sheng Xia froze, mumbling: “Because… because I don’t want to go…”

She looked up at him, but the night was too dark to make out his expression. “So I wanted to wait until I was sure I wouldn’t go before saying anything.”

“Wait until you’re not going to say anything? What’s the point of that? Only report good news but not bad news, is that it? Don’t you know it’s even more worrying to hear these things from others?”

His voice carried restrained emotion, but his words were pressing, like embroidery needles, pricking Sheng Xia’s heart repeatedly.

But she had grievances too.

She spoke up: “Is this why you didn’t come to the bookstore? You didn’t even ask me, just didn’t show up? Do you know that day I…”

That day, she had prepared carefully, thought everything through, was full of anticipation…

Her voice was like a hook, both clinging and piercing.

He couldn’t look directly into those eyes pooled with tears.

Zhang Shu awkwardly averted his gaze and said deeply: “I went.”

“Hm?” Sheng Xia couldn’t believe it.

“I went,” he repeated, sighing softly, as if helplessly defending himself, as if self-soothing, “I saw everything you did that day… I was across the street, watching you arrive at the bookstore, leave, come back, sit down and put on your hairpin, then order food, read books all afternoon… whenever you left, that’s when I left.”

Sheng Xia’s heart trembled slightly. “Why… didn’t you come see me?”

“Because I was afraid.”

“What?”

“I had been drinking that day. I was afraid I couldn’t control myself, afraid I would interrogate you, afraid you would cry.”

Even now, he was afraid she would cry.

So he carefully weighed every word before speaking.

But he was about to explode from holding back.

He wanted so badly to grab her shoulders and demand: Why didn’t you tell him? Why did he have to hear this news from Lu Youze? Why make him so passive? Why let him start only to give him this ending?

But he couldn’t.

It would frighten her.

After speaking, Zhang Shu turned his head and walked ahead alone, as if unwilling to make eye contact anymore.

Sheng Xia was dumbfounded. Did he go? Watched all her emotions from across a glass window and street?

She didn’t know if her heart was aching for herself or him now.

She jogged a few steps to catch up with him. “Was it… Lu Youze who told you?”

That was the only possibility – the dinner he mentioned must have been with the Lu family.

“Mm.” His answer was brief.

He walked slower as if waiting for her. She fell slightly behind, looking down at his shirt hem floating in the wind.

The night was too quiet.

Even footsteps on the rubber track made no sound.

A gust of wind passed by, not cold, yet making one suddenly shiver.

“So now, have you decided?” He suddenly broke the silence, asking as if casually.

Sheng Xia’s thoughts were scattered, unable to find a thread, and she only half-heard this sudden question. “What?”

He stopped again and turned around. Sheng Xia wasn’t paying attention and almost crashed into his chest, instinctively stepping back and looking up sharply.

Zhang Shu looked straight at her. The distance was too close, his height towering over her, creating an overwhelming pressure. “Now, have you decided? Are you going or not?”

She didn’t know.

This question – she didn’t know either.

Originally the plan was to appear compliant while secretly resisting, but now it seemed she didn’t have that luxury. She understood her foundation wasn’t great; even with endless studying and pushing herself to the limit, there was only so much she could achieve. Just maintaining her current grades was already difficult enough – how many more points could she possibly gain?

Without the independent recruitment path, she had no confidence.

The future wasn’t a joke.

She understood that if she couldn’t get into River Qing University or Hai Yan University, no other school would do.

Other first-tier schools in River Yan? In Wang Lianhua’s view, that was worse than staying at South Li; in Sheng Mingfeng’s view, worse than going abroad.

Originally, Sheng Xia didn’t want to study abroad, simply because she didn’t want to.

But now, she wasn’t sure anymore. She finally confirmed that her insistence had something to do with the person before her, and perhaps far more than she had imagined.

The scene from that night watching videos flashed through her mind – their fingers intertwined as he asked if she wanted to go to River Yan together.

With those words, he had already captured her heart for River Yan.

Because of him, she wanted to stay in this land more.

Because of him, she yearned for the city of River Yan.

But the reality was, she couldn’t reach it.

During her silence, Zhang Shu already knew the answer.

He knew the answer when he left the hotel.

Compared to the slim hope of the college entrance exam, who would choose to give up an Ivy League university?

With Sheng Xia’s qualifications, even if not Penn, she could apply to universities ranked higher than River Qing or Hai Yan.

This was certain.

Even if she wanted to give up, he wouldn’t allow it.

“I…” she hesitated.

“You don’t have much time left. Going on like this, you’ll end up with nothing,” he interrupted, saying what she was unwilling to say.

The words carried double meanings.

She didn’t have much time left to study hard, and she didn’t have much time left to say goodbye.

She stammered: “I know.”

Precisely because she knew everything, when she learned independent recruitment was hopeless, what collapsed in that instant seemed not just her hope, but her entire world.

The world she had built in her mind that included him.

Zhang Shu looked up at the sky, sighed, then looked down and asked: “When did you start preparing?”

Sheng Xia chose her words carefully: “My family suggested it, but I haven’t started preparing yet.”

“When did they suggest it?”

“After the second monthly exam.”

Zhang Shu fell silent.

After the second monthly exam – heh, quite early. The situation was even worse than he’d imagined.

And what had he been doing during this time?

Worried she’d be troubled by her grades, taking her to the riverside to clear her mind, spouting a bunch of self-righteous grassroots philosophy, tirelessly finding Fu Zhong’s test papers for her, using every fragment of time to drill concepts into her head.

What was he doing?

Being self-indulgent?

Lu Youze was right – she could have better choices, she deserved better choices. They lived in completely different worlds.

What he thought she needed were just necessities in his world, but she didn’t need them at all.

Zhang Shu: “When will you start preparing?”

His tone was so cold.

They were barely an arm’s length apart, yet it felt like thousands of miles of wilderness lay between them.

Sheng Xia’s heart contracted sharply.

Zhang Shu: “I looked it up – you need to take tests to go to America too. Shouldn’t you be starting related courses?”

The course schedule from the institution’s teacher still lay on her phone. Sheng Xia kept her head down and answered softly: “Mm.”

The wind carried another of his laughs, striking straight at her chest.

It hurt dully.

He put his hands in his pockets, kicking at non-existent pebbles, as if thinking, holding back, weighing his words. After a long while, he lifted his head, as if finally unable to contain himself, and asked: “So what am I to you, Sheng Xia?”

What was he?

What was someone who didn’t even have the right to know?

Was he a beggar, a tagalong, or a lapdog?

Before she could speak, he self-mockingly muttered: “I’m being presumptuous asking that. I was the one who confessed, not you. You never made any promises. I have no right to ask what I am to you now. You said we were just classmates – right.”

That dull ache was pierced through, and real pain swept over Sheng Xia.

“It’s not like that…” she seemed to mumble to herself.

Zhang Shu: “Even if we’re just classmates, if you knew so early it would end like this, why couldn’t you just reject me directly?”

Sheng Xia protested: “I was trying, I was attempting, fighting against it. I thought I could, but I failed.”

Reject him directly? That night, who could have done that?

She couldn’t even reject the evening breeze that night.

“I was wrong, I was too hasty, I’m sorry…” Her voice already carried a crying tone, though she hadn’t realized it herself.

Originally, hearing “I’m sorry” had already sparked inexplicable anger in Zhang Shu, but hearing her crying tone, he instantly panicked. He quickly cupped her face and found it already covered in tears.

He immediately became flustered, using both hands to wipe her tears.

While wiping, he unconsciously comforted her: “It’s not your fault, don’t cry, it’s me, it’s all my fault, don’t cry anymore, stop crying…”

The more he comforted them, the more she couldn’t hold back. Her tears were like a broken dam, uncontrollable.

“I didn’t, I didn’t…” Sheng Xia sobbed, her voice broken, “I tried so hard, I, I also, I also stayed up late every night, writing so many, so many drafts, but…”

She cried, her voice breaking, incomplete, “But, I just failed, I’m very sad too, how can you say, say, say such harsh things… You think I don’t feel bad, wu…”

Zhang Shu’s heart felt like it was being tightly bound with a thin rope, unable to breathe. “I said the wrong things, stop crying, stop crying, I didn’t mean to be harsh with you, if you cry more I’ll…”

His heart was constricting to the point of suffocation.

Seeing that wiping with his hands was useless, and her small face was almost rubbed red in his hands.

In his mind he thought “To hell with restraint,” his arm reached out and pulled her into his embrace, one hand steadily holding her shoulder, the other gently rubbing the back of her head, “It’s all my fault, don’t cry, please don’t cry…”

Repeating futilely.

The sudden closeness made the young body tremble, and a strange sense of satisfaction swept over.

The person in his arms was as soft as a foam doll, shoulders slightly shaking from crying.

His chest was already soaked through as if hollowed out.

The warmth was burning his entire heart into ruins.

Sheng Xia was also close to suffocation. She didn’t know when the surging emotions had collapsed – probably starting to accumulate from the moment she learned independent recruitment was hopeless, gradually rising.

By the time she realized, she couldn’t hold it back anymore.

And now, feeling herself being held in his arms, she was even more at a loss for what to do, could only let her tears flow freely.

His embrace carried the scent of sun-scorched warmth and had a temperature hot as fire.

His hands were broad, warm, and gentle.

What to do? Dark clouds and wind, tell me, how should I say goodbye to someone like him?

“Whoosh!”

The lights blazed bright, pure, and clear.

High pole lights all around lit up simultaneously, illuminating the sports field as bright as day.

The power was back.

Shouts came from the teaching area in the distance, mixed with various emotions – excitement, disappointment, curiosity.

They cared about when the lights would come on; they didn’t care if the night was beautiful or if the evening breeze was cool.

All of this, only the embracing couple on the track knew.

Sheng Xia slowly pushed Zhang Shu away, stepping out of his embrace.

Suddenly seeing his face clearly, she was a bit dazed.

While Zhang Shu, looking at those watery eyes, couldn’t move either.

They looked at each other wordlessly. Zhang Shu paused before letting go, the soft touch gone. His Adam’s apple rolled unnaturally.

“We should go back,” she stopped crying and said softly.

Zhang Shu remembered the purpose of tonight’s “talk” and collected himself before calling out: “Sheng Xia.”

She looked up.

“You should prepare well. Penn is good, don’t miss the timing.”

She didn’t speak, knowing he hadn’t finished.

Zhang Shu’s lips curved slightly, forcing a smile as if having made some decision. His gaze was dejected and scattered as he said heavily: “I should be the one saying sorry. At a time like this, I shouldn’t have bothered you. You should cut your losses while you can. Let’s… end it here.”

He seemed to choke, paused briefly, then spoke: “I wish you a bright future.”