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September 2010. Li Kuiyi entered middle school.

On registration day that afternoon, the teachers hadn’t arrived yet, and the classroom was loud. She sat by the window as usual, leaning on the desk with nothing to do, doodling absentmindedly.

Suddenly someone poked her in the back.

She turned around and saw a boy — a few strands of his hair dyed yellow, a cocky smirk on his face. He flicked the strap of her halter top and said: “What are you wearing? Is that a dudou?”

At the time, that style of halter top was trendy among girls — a tie-neck design with the straps visible, fastened at the back of the neck.

She glared at him fiercely and said nothing.

But he took her silence as an invitation, pinching the tie at the back of her neck: “If you don’t say something, I’ll just go ahead and untie it~”

Li Kuiyi gripped her fingers tightly, shame and fury burning inside her — but she couldn’t move, because any motion would pull the strap loose.

The rims of her eyes were slowly going red.

Just then, a shadow fell across her from above. A lean, strong hand shot out and slapped the boy’s arm away with a sharp crack, flinging it aside. A voice rang out with contemptuous calm: “Keep your hands to yourself.”

The yellow-haired boy’s hand was knocked off. Li Kuiyi’s strap fell loose with it.

Before she could feel embarrassed about it, a boy’s short-sleeved shirt landed over her head and shoulders, covering her.

The shirt carried the exact same scent — clean and distinctly youthful.

Memories surged like a tide, waves crashing one after another. Li Kuiyi slowly stepped back from He Youyuan’s chest, lifted her head, and found herself looking, unexpectedly, into that same pair of eyes — sharp and clear, unmistakably black and white. She was still for a long moment, something catching in her throat.

“…Thank you.”

He Youyuan’s breath hitched. He was more than a little unsettled. He let go of her arm and stepped back half a step, moved his mouth slightly — but in the end said nothing, only looked away with studied casualness, his gaze drifting without anywhere to settle.

Fine, you’re grateful — but did you have to be so dramatically heartfelt about it?

The sudden braking had jostled every passenger on the bus to varying degrees. Once they steadied themselves, the grumbling began: “Ugh — can you drive more carefully!”

The moment turned awkward. The bus was nearly at the stop.

“He Youyuan.” She suddenly called his name, and said with quiet sincerity: “Thank you.”

Why are you thanking me again? He Youyuan frowned and let out a soft, impatient sound: “I heard you.”

Good. Now, at last, the “thank you” she had owed for three years was repaid.

Back then, by the time she’d gathered herself to thank him, he was no longer in his seat. All that remained on the desk was a fully solved Rubik’s cube, and written on its white face were nine characters: He Youyuan’s. Whoever touches it is a dog.

Nine squares. One character per square.

Looking back now, that was exactly the kind of thing he’d say.

He hadn’t returned to the classroom for the rest of that day. He didn’t come to school the next day either — and the Rubik’s cube disappeared with him. After that, Li Kuiyi never saw him again.

Had he transferred classes? Transferred schools? Or was he some old wandering deity who’d descended from the heavens for just that one moment of help? Twelve-year-old Li Kuiyi couldn’t figure it out.

But fifteen-year-old Li Kuiyi was glad — a small, unfinished regret had been repaid, after all.

The bus arrived at her stop. Li Kuiyi gave the three of them a light wave and said goodbye.

He Youyuan only let out a quiet “mm” and didn’t look at her. But once she’d turned away, he let his gaze drift down quietly behind her — and saw that, as always, she wore her school uniform immaculately, with a cream-white backpack on her shoulders. Hanging from the zipper was a fluffy, big-eyed spider plush, swaying with each step she took.

He recognized it: Lucas the Spider from the animated series Lucas the Spider.

Still watching that, huh. So childish.

The bus doors slowly closed again. Zhang Chuang immediately crowded in front of He Youyuan, jerking his chin in the direction of Li Kuiyi’s retreating figure: “What’s going on with you two?”

He Youyuan found this baffling: “What do you mean, what’s going on?”

“Don’t try to fool me.” Zhang Chuang gave him a look that said I see through everything. “While she was on the bus, you were wound up like a coiled spring — you couldn’t sit still. Do you like her?”

Qi Yu raised an eyebrow in mild surprise at that: “Really?”

Could you not ask questions like this on the bus? There weren’t many passengers left, but still — he had his dignity! He Youyuan was instantly flustered with embarrassed anger, ears turning red: “Really what — I don’t like her at all!”

He’d admit it — when she was around, he couldn’t relax. But it wasn’t because he liked her. These two clearly had no idea what it was like to deal with her. If they had, they’d want to stay a thousand miles away from her too.

Zhang Chuang, naturally, let his words go in one ear and out the other. He stroked his chin, voice thoughtful: “If you liked just anyone, with that face of yours, you could win them over in no time. But you had to go and fall for the top student in your year — no, the top student in the whole city. Whether your looks are worth anything in that arena… hmm, hard to say.”

“I said, I don’t li—”

“Hey, Qi Yu.” Zhang Chuang cut him off and tossed the question to Qi Yu instead. “You’re a top student too — when top students look for a partner, how much does looks factor in?”

Qi Yu’s face colored slightly: “How would I know? I’ve never dated anyone.”

Zhang Chuang grinned with sudden smugness: “You know, now that I think about it — one of you has looks for days, the other has grades to die for, and yet here you both are, single forever. Whereas me — mediocre on all fronts — and I’ve been in relationships since elementary school.”

He Youyuan let out a scornful snort: “Not ashamed in the slightest.”

“Right, right — you’re the shining example of virtue.” Zhang Chuang said. “If being stubborn is so great, how about you prove it? Go win over the top student!”

“I give up — I’ve already said I don’t like her. What would I want to win her over for?” He Youyuan was utterly drained.

Sour-faced pineapple — you’ve really done a number on me.

When Li Kuiyi got home, Li Jianye, Xu Manhua, and her little brother were sitting together at the dining table eating. The three of them were all cheerful together — she had even heard their laughter in the stairwell coming up.

It would be a lie to say she felt nothing.

She just didn’t know whether to be angry at her family for eating without waiting for her, or to blame herself for lingering on the bus and missing dinner.

Xu Manhua heard the door and glanced up at her. The smile on her face faded. She said nothing and went back to feeding her younger brother. Li Jianye, on the other hand, looked genuinely caught off guard: “You’re not in evening self-study today?”

Li Kuiyi asked quietly: “Didn’t I mention that before?”

Li Jianye cleared his throat, looking a bit sheepish: “Did you? I don’t… remember.” He glanced at Xu Manhua. “Looks like we forgot. Guess we’re getting old — memory’s not what it used to be.”

“We really did forget,” he added, repeating it with a slightly unconvincing air. “It wasn’t that we didn’t wait for you on purpose.”

What’s the difference? Li Kuiyi thought.

She went to wash her hands and sat down at the table without any particular expression, and began to eat.

She had been sent to her grandmother in the county at three years old. Li Jianye and Xu Manhua rarely visited — only once a year at the new year. Later, when family planning restrictions eased up, she was allowed to return to the city for middle school — but her younger brother was still too small, they said, and taking care of him left no room for her. So they put her in the boarding school. In all her memory, “family” had always been a blurry outline, without shape or substance, and naturally without warmth.

So to them, she was probably just a hollow shell of a family member too.

After all, closeness takes time — time spent together, side by side, day after day.

After being accepted into high school, she had thought carefully about whether to stay in the dormitory or commute from home. In the end, some small, persistent longing that lingered in her chest managed to defeat all the pride and stubbornness in her nature.

She had been foolish. Other than sleeping, she was almost always at school — even as a day student, how much time did she actually have to spend with them? By the time she got back from evening self-study every night, they were asleep.

And Xu Manhua seemed to be consistently cold toward her. Ever since Li Kuiyi had refused to hand over the 100,000-yuan scholarship money, she had never given her a pleasant expression.

But she still didn’t want to surrender the money. At its core, she didn’t trust her family. That money was her safety net. What if, when the time came, she got into university but they refused to pay her tuition? What if she got sick one day and they refused to get her treatment?

She didn’t know why she held her family in such low estimation.

But she was afraid. Genuinely afraid.

Maybe it had started at three years old — every time after the new year, she would cry her heart out, and they would walk away without looking back. That was when the sense of having been abandoned took root.

So she longed for them and kept her guard up; she tested the waters and pushed them away at the same time. That constant contradiction was the full extent of what family meant to her.

Li Kuiyi ate her bowl of rice in silence and went back to her room. She sat at her desk and prepared to write her weekly journal entry.

The weekly journal was a requirement from Liu Xinzhao — nothing strict, just 500 words or more. Liu Xinzhao had said: I want you to sharpen your eye and capture the flashes of thought that pass through your hurried, ordinary days.

Li Kuiyi thought for a moment, then picked up her pen and wrote: “I had long believed I was an idealist — but recently, I’ve discovered I’m actually quite pragmatic.”

The word “pragmatic” felt heavy, and carried a slight negative connotation, so she tried to soften it with a somewhat breezy tone as the entry continued. She didn’t want to pour too much genuine feeling into a journal that would be read, so beyond the opening line — which was true — she blended truth and invention freely, cooking everything together into one muddled pot.

Though at the very end she added, with a mischievous flourish: “While writing the above, I wasn’t entirely honest — which rather proves my point.”

She closed the journal, then leaned back in her chair and opened the copy of Huacheng she’d brought home.

She got so absorbed in reading that she stayed up through the night — and eventually drifted off with the book in her arms. As a result, it wasn’t until the next day at noon that she discovered He Youyuan had accepted her friend request.

Friend requests expired after seven days. This was the last day. And he had accepted it at 2:27 in the morning.

What a strange hour.

He Youyuan agreed — the timing was absurd. But it was too late to do anything about it. The moment he accepted, the chat window had popped up, making it an undeniable fact.

He was afraid Li Kuiyi would get the wrong idea — that he’d been lying awake agonizing until the early hours of the morning over whether or not to add her back.

So he immediately opened his photo album, found a gaming screenshot, and posted a status update.

He just wanted her to know: He was playing games. He accepted your friend request as an afterthought. It wasn’t because of you that he was up this late.