High school boys stand at the boundary between childhood and adulthood. Approaching or having just reached the age of maturity, they are always eager to prove their grown-up status. One after another, they prepared to drink straight from the bottles, as if this were the symbol of adulthood.

Fortunately, these were just common beers with relatively low alcohol content. Li Chenfei cautioned: “Don’t get drunk. No one will take you home.”

The others more or less acknowledged her warning with token responses, but Zhou Tingzhao and Sang Ru were not among those who intended to listen.

Zhou Tingzhao opened a bottle, clinked it with classmates who came to congratulate him, and promptly tilted his head back for several gulps.

Sang Ru observed him but didn’t follow his example. Instead, she casually picked up a glass, and the liquid tumbled in, fizzing with bubbles.

After clinking bottles with Zhou Tingzhao, the person came to toast with Sang Ru. The glasses collided with a crisp sound, and Sang Ru calmly drank, half a glass of alcohol going down her throat.

Seeing both of them so forthcoming, everyone became increasingly enthusiastic, coming one after another to toast.

After emptying one glass, she refilled it for another. Sang Ru refused no one, until Zhou Tingzhao slightly turned his body, shielding her behind him: “I’ll drink.”

Li Chenfei had just returned after singing a song and, seeing the situation, took the opportunity to pull Sang Ru aside: “This isn’t a wedding toast. Why isn’t there an end to it? Everyone, take it easy!”

Sang Ru allowed Li Chenfei to hold her, her face already somewhat flushed, and simply leaned on her shoulder to steady herself.

She knew her alcohol tolerance wasn’t good, and even going this far was already showing off. And his tolerance was just average, too; Sang Ru knew this.

That time when she met Zhou Tingzhao at a classmate’s gathering, he had actively or passively drunk quite a bit, yet still appeared remarkably clear-headed. She and Li Chenfei had left late, and just as they got into a taxi, she looked back once, and then couldn’t bring herself to leave.

The normally well-groomed Zhou Tingzhao, after seeing everyone off in his capacity as class monitor, finally stumbled under her gaze, walking unsteadily, completely losing the dignified bearing he had maintained in his formal attire.

Sang Ru, with some misfiring neural connections, softened her heart and asked the driver to turn around and pick him up.

What was Zhou Tingzhao’s reaction back then?

Astonishment.

He was surprised by her return, but quickly became unable to continue thinking. After getting into the car, he seemed to have dizzily leaned on her shoulder in just the same way.

Sang Ru felt somewhat dazed. It seemed she had truly spent a long time back in the past, re-immersed in the scholarly atmosphere. The moments that had moved her heart later seemed almost like a previous lifetime.

“Are you okay?”

Li Chenfei’s concerned voice sounded above her head, but these sounds were all being automatically muted. The noise was cast behind her, and Sang Ru could hear her long breaths. Beyond that, all other sounds seemed to come from half a meter away.

Zhou Tingzhao rarely showed such wildness. In the back and forth, one bottle had already been emptied. While others were drinking happily, he looked as if he were drowning his sorrows.

His brows were furrowed so tightly. If he didn’t want to drink, he shouldn’t, Sang Ru thought unconsciously as she gazed at his tense jaw.

All sounds gradually came back on, crowding into her ears once more. Sang Ru suddenly stood up, carefully enunciating her first few words: “Drink slowly. I’m going to call my brother.”

At the same time, Zhou Tingzhao deftly opened a new bottle.

The private room door closed behind her, separating her from all the clamor by just one wall.

She wasn’t going to call Luo He, but the act had to be complete. In the moment she leaned against the wall to catch her breath, Sang Ru took out her phone and checked the time.

It was getting late, and she’d forgotten to inform her mother that she might return home later than usual. Sang Ru immediately pressed the dial and had just put the phone to her ear when suddenly her wrist was seized. Startled, Sang Ru’s hand was gripped too tightly to resist, and her phone dropped.

Zhou Tingzhao caught it and pressed the end call button without even looking.

She didn’t know when he had come out, but now his lips and hair were dampened, his brows tightly knitted together. After drinking so much, his gaze had only grown sharper.

Zhou Tingzhao’s grip was deathly tight. If his gaze could physically bind someone, she would now be tied up in whatever form he desired, at his disposal.

A powerful sense of oppression trapped her between his chest and the wall behind her. Sang Ru heard Zhou Tingzhao finally speak, his tone suppressing some indescribable emotion, like a trapped beast confined within his eyes. He asked: “Calling him?”

Sang Ru slightly tilted her head up to meet his gaze: “Yes, is that not allowed?”

“He would have come long ago if he were coming at all.”

“What if something came up? I trust him,” Sang Ru said, moving her wrist slightly. “Let go.”

Zhou Tingzhao’s breathing grew heavier, as if chewing the words between his teeth before reluctantly piecing them together: “You like him that much?”

The dangerous aura approached, and Sang Ru feigned nonchalance: “Yes, I like him. What else?”

“What about me?” The already confined space suddenly became even smaller as Zhou Tingzhao pushed her further back, lowering his head in what almost amounted to an interrogation: “What about the ‘like’ you expressed to me? What does that count for?”

He sounded both fierce and hurt. The emotion that had initially made her somewhat scared completely retracted, and Sang Ru displayed a matter-of-fact expression: “If I like you, does that mean I can’t like others? If you won’t sleep with me, does that mean I can’t sleep with someone else?”

Zhou Tingzhao widened his eyes in disbelief, staring at her for a long moment. Suddenly, at the height of his anger, he laughed and forcefully pulled her into an empty private room nearby.

This room had no customers yet, and the lights weren’t on. Only faint light filtered in.

Sang Ru was pressed against the wall in a new location. Suddenly, the tip of her ear was gently bitten as it was nuzzled, and she heard Zhou Tingzhao say fiercely: “So this is all you want, is it?”