Qi Yu would never say something with such certainty.

If Li Kuiyi were to ask him: “Are you well prepared?” the most he could say was: “More or less.”

“More or less” — these three words were already the greatest affirmation of himself that he could bring himself to voice aloud.

He considered this a form of self-preservation. Based on more than ten years of being a student, it seemed to him that people generally didn’t like someone who came across as too arrogant. Li Kuiyi’s answer, for instance, carried an invisible weight of pressure — even though he tried to remind himself that how well someone else had prepared had absolutely nothing to do with him, he still tensed up for a brief moment.

“How well have you prepared?”

When people ask this question, what they are really looking for is a kind of comfort and affirmation. The answer everyone most hopes to hear is “I haven’t prepared well” — even if it is a lie, people still like to hear it, because it soothes the restlessness and anxiety in their hearts.

An “honest answer” at such a moment comes across as too blunt and cutting.

Moreover, exams were a matter of timing, conditions, and circumstances all aligning — no one could guarantee they would perform well. If you committed to your words too firmly, the one who ended up embarrassed was yourself.

But Li Kuiyi didn’t seem to worry about any of that.

In Qi Yu’s hand, the black ballpoint pen rotated a few turns. He thought to himself that he should have realized long ago that she was a very direct person — otherwise she wouldn’t have written a letter to the principal the very second day that morning jogs were implemented by the school, and she wouldn’t have stepped up without hesitation to question the physical education teacher’s behavior the moment she sensed something was slightly wrong.

She was quite courageous.

While he hadn’t even had the courage to stand on the same side as her.

With a clatter, the ballpoint pen slipped from his fingers and rolled all the way to the foot of Li Kuiyi’s seat. Li Kuiyi bent down and picked it up, then turned around to hand it to him, tilting her head slightly with a teasing smile: “You’re not nervous, are you?”

Qi Yu smiled as he took the pen back, and didn’t answer. After a moment, he tapped her on the back and said, “Lend me a pen — this one took a knock and the ink is broken.”

Li Kuiyi found it strange. Someone like Qi Yu — how could he possibly show up to an exam with only one pen? But sweeping a glance at his desk, there was indeed only one lead-filling pencil, one eraser, and one set square.

She handed over her entire pencil case generously. “Pick whichever one feels right for you.”

He saw that her pencil case also had a big fluffy spider eye charm hanging from it — identical to the one hanging from her bag’s zipper, just slightly smaller.

He couldn’t help himself. He reached out and touched it.

An exceptionally smooth, silky, soft sensation.

For some reason, during the exam, he felt a warmth in his palm, as though that small spider had left its temperature behind in his hand.

Nine subjects, over two and a half days. The day after the exams ended, in the early morning, Li Kuiyi arranged to meet He Youyuan at the entrance to his residential compound to return his rinse bucket and the barbecue money.

She had not chosen to return it to him at school. After carrying his rinse bucket home, she had been afraid the brushes soaking in the water would be ruined, so she helped him wash all of them clean — and in doing so, she discovered that on his rinse bucket there was a line of small text written: Property of He Youyuan — whoever touches this is a dog.

Li Kuiyi: “…”

Three years had passed, and he was still every bit as immature as ever.

It was precisely because he had marked all his belongings with his name that she didn’t dare bring the bucket into school, for fear that someone might notice and start gossip. She was especially in need of guarding her “reputation” lately — in front of Chen Guoming in particular, she absolutely had to be a model student of pure and spotless character.

He was punctual enough — she had said ten past six, and he was not a single second off.

He came strolling over unhurriedly with a straw clamped between his teeth, drinking milk. She didn’t know whether it was because he was so tall, but the milk carton looked particularly small and dainty in his hand. With a loud slurp, the milk was drained to the last drop, and he gave it a casual flick. The carton traced a perfect arc through the air and dropped clean into the bin.

He looked at her with a satisfied air, eyebrows raised, as if to say: pretty cool, right?

Li Kuiyi sighed inwardly, pretended she hadn’t seen, and handed the rinse bucket straight to him.

He Youyuan took it, and was unexpectedly surprised to find that all his brushes, his gouache palettes, and even the bucket itself had been washed spotlessly clean. To be honest, the bucket was something of a “veteran relic” — he had grabbed it on a whim to bring to class when helping out. It was coated in several layers of paint, and getting it completely clean was no small feat. That meant she had put in real effort washing it.

What was this if not genuine affection?

The corners of his mouth curved up involuntarily, even carrying with it a touch of bashfulness. He rubbed his nose and said quietly, “Thanks.”

Li Kuiyi nodded, feeling that this student had potential — last time he hadn’t even known how to say thank you.

Then she remembered something else, and fished some notes of varying denominations from her bag, holding them out to him: “This is the money for the barbecue last time.”

His expression cooled. He shoved both hands in his pockets. “No need.”

“We agreed I was treating you as an apology.” Li Kuiyi’s hand holding out the money was still raised. “If you pay for it, doesn’t that mean I owe you even more?”

Then let her owe it, he thought.

“Do you think it’s embarrassing to let a girl pay?” Li Kuiyi ventured a guess at his reason. “You don’t need to feel any pressure about that. It’s perfectly natural for me to pay when I invite someone — it has nothing to do with gender.”

Was that his reason? He Youyuan looked into those clear, earnest eyes and fell into a muddle of uncertainty himself.

But what he could be sure of was that Li Kuiyi was definitely a fool. If you liked someone, you shouldn’t be conducting cold, clinical financial transactions with them like this. She could easily have said “then let me treat you again next time” — that would have given her a reason to ask him out again, wouldn’t it?

No experience whatsoever. This had to be her first crush.

The scowling pineapple’s… first crush.

Ah, what terrible luck. This pineapple was covered in spines, and even the fruit inside was sour and tart. How would anyone be able to stand it? It was only thanks to his boundless magnanimity and expansive love for all that he was willing to give her a pointer or two — like the quiet, unsung salt water that soaks the pineapple, capable of transforming bitterness into sweetness and clarity.

Hold on — salt water that soaks the pineapple?

Soaking the pineapple…

He Youyuan hurriedly stopped his train of thought and quietly apologized inwardly: sorry, I didn’t mean to think about soaking you… the train of thought just ran away with itself.

And so Li Kuiyi watched the expression on the boy before her shift from awkwardness to bewilderment, then from bewilderment to a barely suppressed delight, and finally a faint blush crept over his face and the tips of his ears…

What was this? Did I come here to watch you cycle through a range of facial expressions?

Time is precious, my friend.

“Are you taking it or not?!” Li Kuiyi ran out of patience.

He Youyuan came back to himself and found her glaring at him like a fierce little lion cub. Heh — she’s actually snapping at him. He had just said it himself, hadn’t he — this person was sour and tart and covered in spines.

He took a deep breath to steady himself. A smart person absolutely must not give in to the pleasure of the moment. He had to play a long game, he had to show tolerance toward her — that way she would like him more and more, and the more she liked him, the more the advantage in their relationship would belong to him.

You’re done for, scowling pineapple. You’re going to sink deeper and deeper into the quicksand of liking me.

“You don’t have to return it,” he said, as if it were a matter of no consequence. He slung his bag strap loosely and gave her one brief, glancing look — just for a moment — then shifted his gaze away into the distance. “Treat me again next time. I won’t grab the bill.”

But Li Kuiyi immediately shook her head. “No — that’s not a good solution. If I return the money you spent, I don’t owe you anything anymore. If we do it your way, I’d have to treat you to two more meals before it’s even — even though you also treated me to one, so they cancel out, meaning from the total perspective nothing is really different — but in practice that one extra meal is a completely unnecessary expense on my part. Do you follow?”

She spoke so fast and urgently that He Youyuan only caught something about “one meal” and “two meals” being repeated from her mouth, and had to slowly work through it himself before he understood what she was saying — though he still didn’t quite understand what she meant by “a completely unnecessary expense.”

Was she saying that going out to eat with him was completely unnecessary?

Seeing him slightly dazed, Li Kuiyi realized he hadn’t fully understood — which was fair, she had been speaking far too fast just now. She bit her lip slightly, a little awkward, and summoned the same patience she used when explaining problems to Fang Zhixiao. “Which part wasn’t clear?”

He didn’t answer, but flipped back his uniform sleeve and glanced at his wristwatch, saying, “Let’s go. It’s twenty past six already.”

He descended the steps in a few easy strides, his figure growing lean and slight in the cool early autumn morning air, his bag on his back looking empty and hollow — hard to say whether anything was in it. A round red sun was rising from the vast open east, large and full, with glimmers of rosy cloud half-buried in the layers of cloud, conveying an inexplicable sense of desolation.

In the distance, the white poplar trees had begun to shed their leaves. The bare, slender tips of their branches were etched starkly against the sky.

This person was angry again, wasn’t he?

What a thoroughly unreasonable individual.

It wasn’t as though she had said anything wrong. She remembered that in junior high she and Fang Zhixiao had read a novel together where the male lead was pursuing the female lead, so he gave her all sorts of gifts, and the female lead — in order to not be indebted to him — could only give back gifts of equal value in return. Fang Zhixiao had cradled her face and said how sweet, how sweet, while Li Kuiyi felt suffocated on the female lead’s behalf. Because from a pure value standpoint, the female lead didn’t seem to have lost anything — but the money spent on all those gifts was money she hadn’t needed to spend. She could have used that money to buy something she actually wanted, instead of exchanging it for gifts from the male lead.

The male lead gave her gifts because he liked her, so he was receiving emotional value in return. But what did the female lead gain? She hadn’t liked the male lead at the time — the whole thing was just being pushed along against her will.

She had shared this observation with Fang Zhixiao, and Fang Zhixiao had found it quite reasonable, but then had looked at her with an expression of deep regret and said, “You, my friend, are probably going to grow old and die alone.”

Li Kuiyi thought: then she would grow old and die alone. She would rather die of loneliness than die of suffocation — she wanted to fight for the things she wanted, and throw away the things she didn’t want even if someone pressed them into her hands.

And so she quick-stepped forward, caught up with He Youyuan, stepped directly into his path, grabbed his arm, and commanded: “Hold out your hand!”

He Youyuan stared straight at her, and instinctively held out his palm.

A roll of banknotes, warmed by her body heat, fell lightly into his palm — light as a feather, an array of colors.

She forced his fingers closed around them, met his eyes with a cool, level gaze, and turned and walked away.

The little spider dangling from her bag zipper swayed, and swayed, and swayed — its big eyes gazing at him with innocent candor.

He Youyuan knew she was angry.

She had put him in a bad mood and then didn’t come to soothe him, but instead turned around and got angry herself.

The teachers at First Middle School had always been famously fast markers — two days later, all the results for every subject were out.

Li Kuiyi had placed first in the grade for seven individual subjects. The only two that had escaped her were mathematics and history.

The math paper for this exam had not been especially difficult, but certainly wasn’t simple either. Only two students in the entire year had scored full marks: Qi Yu and Xia Leyi. Li Kuiyi had scored 149 points, and was currently in the office receiving a heartbroken dressing-down from the math teacher: “Don’t skip steps on me! How many times have I told you — these questions are graded by steps. How fast do you think teachers mark? A question gets two seconds of attention at most. What are we looking at? The key steps! You three — the top three in the year — should have scored a clean sweep of full marks for me, and of the three of you, I trusted you most, and you’re the one giving me grief…”

Li Kuiyi let the words go in one ear and out the other, nodding at the appropriate moments with perfect form, but inwardly unbothered — it wasn’t the end of the world. She’d fix it next time.

As for history, her result ranked fifth in the year.

The teacher who taught history for Class 1 was a man in his thirties, bespectacled, with the look of a bookish scholar from the Republican era. He had been on the receiving end of quite a bit of good-natured ribbing from colleagues in the office over the past few days — mostly along the lines of suggesting he reflect on his teaching methods.

He was probably feeling rather mournful about it too: sometimes when Li Kuiyi ran into him on the way to school and greeted him, his smile in return looked somewhat strained.

Still — she held her position as first in the year, and that was secure.

Second place was still Qi Yu, third was a girl named Qin Weiwei, and Xia Leyi had dropped to fourth.

These were all normal fluctuations in results, and no one paid too much attention — even Xia Leyi herself didn’t seem to mind much. When the rankings were posted to the side of the blackboard, she was still showing a few girls their astrology charts and analyzing their prospects.

What truly surprised Li Kuiyi was that Zhou Fanghua’s history score had ranked first in the entire year, and her politics score had ranked seventh in the year.

The reason it surprised her was that in the previous two progress tests, Zhou Fanghua’s politics and history scores had both been poor, and she had been worrying every day about physics, politics, and history.

Faced with scores like these, Zhou Fanghua was herself somewhat incredulous: “I don’t know how I managed it. So many questions I wasn’t even sure about — and they all turned out to be right.”

Pan Junmeng said, “Humanities subjects are like that — a little luck is perfectly normal.”

Zhou Fanghua’s year ranking came in at thirty-fifth, up two places — and she was visibly elated. But with the results out came the seat rotation, and the chances of her continuing to sit as Li Kuiyi’s deskmate at her new ranking were, it had to be said, a little slim.

The top year ranking — surely she would be very popular as a deskmate?

Making friends was not especially easy for her. She basically only ended up talking to the people sitting around her. Even though it had been over a month since the school year started, there were still plenty of classmates in the class she hadn’t exchanged so much as a word with.

Zhou Fanghua very much hoped to keep sitting as Li Kuiyi’s deskmate. She was quiet, clean, absorbed in listening and studying — sitting beside her, it was easy to be drawn along by her focus. And she had a kind of courage that Zhou Fanghua did not.

But she was too embarrassed to ask Li Kuiyi to save her a seat. They seemed to have grown close, but not entirely close — and that kind of request was hard to bring up, in case Li Kuiyi wanted to sit with someone else.

Everyone gathered outside the classroom. Liu Xinzhao would read out names in order of ranking, and when called, students could go in and choose the seats they wanted. It seemed like the other classes were all doing the same thing during evening self-study. For a moment the whole teaching building was filled with the sound of desks and chairs being dragged around.

Li Kuiyi leaned quietly against the wall. Zhou Fanghua stood beside her.

She suddenly reached over and squeezed her hand, asking softly: “Do you want to keep sitting together as deskmates?”

When it came to making new friends, Li Kuiyi had no particular enthusiasm for it either. Her social circle most of the time also stayed within the surrounding seats. Rather than adjusting to a new deskmate, it was better to try to hold onto the old one first — and save both of them the trouble of getting used to each other.

Besides, she thought Zhou Fanghua was genuinely good company: quiet, clean, always quietly putting in her own effort. Her shyness and timidity weren’t things worth commenting on — they were just how she was.

Zhou Fanghua’s eyes lit up brightly. She pressed her lips together over a smile and gave a heavy, emphatic nod.

It was still the seat by the window, and Zhou Fanghua was still her deskmate — that was enough. She didn’t notice any particularly significant changes in the arrangement around her.

But what she hadn’t expected was: Qi Yu, carrying a stack of books, settled into the seat directly behind her.