Li Kuiyi discovered that He Youyuan had no idea how to walk properly.

He always kept a distance of roughly one metre from her — sometimes drifting ahead, sometimes lagging behind. Sometimes he walked along the kerb; sometimes he picked his way along the gaps between the paving bricks. Sometimes, mid-conversation, he would lace his hands behind his head and walk backwards facing her. Later on, he found a long, thin stick in the roadside greenery. His delight was visible to the naked eye. He swung it around a couple of times and then — swish — brought it to rest against her neck.

Li Kuiyi: “…”

Could she pretend she didn’t know him? There was hardly anyone on the road at this hour, but she still felt rather embarrassed.

He, on the other hand, gave a light, carefree laugh, eyes slightly curved and glinting as though full of scattered starlight.

They turned onto Huayuan Street, which led to her residential compound, and Li Kuiyi let out a soft breath, pointing to a building ahead: “My place is just there — two more steps and I’m home. You don’t have to keep walking me, head back early.”

He Youyuan balanced his scavenged stick on his shoulder, still holding the cola can in his other hand — like a young wandering knight, carrying a fine sword and a flask of good wine. He followed her pointing finger and squinted toward the building, and then, quite suddenly, turned back to her with a raised eyebrow: “You lied to me.”

Li Kuiyi frowned faintly: “Why would I lie to you?”

Still denying it. He Youyuan watched her with a long, languid stare, composing a little mental soundtrack of the Detective Conan theme in his head. “That time you took the bus home, I remember you got off somewhere on Jianshe East Road — at least two bus stops from here. What — you moved?”

Li Kuiyi: “…”

“I like taking the bus. I just stayed on for a couple of extra stops. What’s wrong with that?”

Prickly pineapple, if you explain it like that, I’m going to start suspecting you like me again. Who rides the bus for the fun of it? It’s jolting and crowded. Unless… you saw I was on the bus too, and just wanted a few more minutes? It’s understandable, really — who wouldn’t want to spend a bit more time with someone they like?

He Youyuan let the thought run on and became more and more convinced this was exactly how it was. And on the bus that day, he’d even caught her — and she’d thanked him twice with that soft, warm look in her eyes. Hadn’t she been completely won over?

She really was so stubbornly tight-lipped.

He Youyuan let a smile play at the corner of his mouth and glanced at her lightly: “Fine, ride as many stops as you like. I’ll watch until you’re through the compound gate and then I’ll go.”

Li Kuiyi had no idea what he was so inexplicably pleased about. She looked at him briefly and said a few polite words: “All right then, thank you for walking me home tonight. Be careful on your way back too.”

He Youyuan gave a pleased nod.

He watched as Li Kuiyi turned to leave. The little spider dangling from her bag zip swayed back and forth, and he found himself instinctively lifting his “sword” to give it a prod.

“What are you doing?” She felt the small motion behind her and turned back.

He hastily pulled the stick back and put on an entirely innocent expression: “What? Did something happen?”

“Hmph.” She shot him a look, turned away again, and walked off without a backward glance, her ponytail swaying from side to side.

Only once her figure had disappeared through the compound gate did he bow his head and give a small smile. He turned to face the vast, dark night and blew a cheerful, pleased whistle. From somewhere unknown, a little black stray cat darted out, fixed him with its bright, gleaming eyes for a few seconds, then turned and padded serenely away.

Back home, Li Kuiyi first took out her phone to confront Fang Zhixiao — essentially grumbling that she had helped He Youyuan, which was an utter betrayal. Then she opened Yi High’s forum, found the trending post about He Youyuan, and prepared to delete her comment saying “not good-looking” — after all, he had apologised, and she wasn’t that petty.

To her surprise, her comment had accumulated quite a number of replies, and every last one of them was calling her out.

Strawberry Feifei: You call that not good-looking? Are you blind? Go get your eyes fixed.

Love Eating Meat: Seconded.

Eternal Love for Odd Letters: Absolutely baffling. A one-day-old account, talking nonsense in here. Contain your jealousy. You’d be better off growing your account than embarrassing yourself like this.

No Brain But Very Happy: You think you look good? Post a photo and let everyone be the judge. Let’s see what sort of monster you are.

…

Li Kuiyi suddenly decided she was absolutely that petty.

Hmph. Not deleting it.

She jabbed the screen off in irritation and locked the phone back in her drawer — out of sight, out of mind. Then she pulled an unfinished chemistry practice paper from her bag and sat down to work through the problems.

One of the questions read: “Diamond is the hardest naturally occurring substance, the only mineral at Mohs hardness level 10…”

She stared at the question for several seconds, then picked up her black pen, blacked out the word “diamond,” and wrote a few words above it instead — she knew perfectly well that the people who had come after her in the comments had nothing to do with He Youyuan, but she wanted to take it out on him anyway.

After writing those words, she felt marginally better and calmly continued with the rest of the paper.

The next day, Liu Xinzhao announced in class the details of the competition student selection process — exactly as Qi Yu had passed on earlier. This new competition class would be formed as a separate cohort, with the students focusing primarily on academic competitions. Liu Xinzhao urged everyone to think carefully and to discuss it with their parents first. Those who were interested could come to the office to collect the registration form.

After class, Qi Yu tapped Li Kuiyi on the shoulder with his pen: “You’re really not going to enter?”

She turned around, rested her arm on his desk, and didn’t answer directly — instead she asked: “Is there a university you really want to get into?”

There was, of course. Growing up, Qi Yu’s father and mother had always kept the names of Peking University and Tsinghua University at the tip of their tongues. By the time he was very young, he already knew that those two elite institutions were his destination.

But he felt too embarrassed to say it out loud.

Aspirations, for some reason, were always things one felt ashamed to voice.

He avoided her gaze and mumbled: “I — I haven’t thought that far ahead. We’re still almost three years from the university entrance exams, after all. Isn’t it a bit early to be thinking about this now?”

“Is it?” Li Kuiyi was mildly surprised. “I thought everyone had already thought about it.”

“So, you want to —” Qi Yu ventured carefully.

“…I’d probably say Peking University,” Li Kuiyi said, after genuine consideration.

Qi Yu smiled: “What do you mean, ‘probably Peking University’ — you say it like choosing Peking University is some kind of hardship.”

He actually rather hoped Li Kuiyi found choosing Peking University to be a hardship, because if she was too resolute about it, it would make him look timid by comparison — like he had no goals of his own.

“It’s not that.” Li Kuiyi quickly shook her head. “I actually quite like Fudan University too, but… if Peking University were willing to accept me, I would absolutely choose Peking University. You know what I mean?”

“Oh?” Qi Yu raised an eyebrow in surprise. He had assumed she was choosing between Peking and Tsinghua — he hadn’t expected her to be deliberating between Fudan and Peking. “Why Fudan?”

Li Kuiyi said: “I don’t know that much about it, honestly, but I read this magazine once that had a page introducing Fudan University, and the phrase it used was — a free and purposeless soul. I loved that, and it made me inexplicably fond of Fudan.”

A free and purposeless soul — the kind of thing that sounded as though only someone with a literary streak would say out loud. Qi Yu felt similarly awkward about expressing himself this way, because being literary was, more often than not, an invitation to be mocked — too sensitive, melodramatic about nothing.

So he stayed carefully within a rational circle, never doing anything too passionate, never letting anyone glimpse what was inside.

He had originally thought Li Kuiyi was the same kind of person as him.

Perhaps he had been too quick to form that impression. He had always assumed that, in Li Kuiyi’s way of thinking, rationality would have the upper hand — that she wouldn’t be moved by a single phrase and fall in love with a whole university. She should be like him, carefully and meticulously balancing her interests and her prospects, choosing a field that was a safe bet, and then aiming for the most prestigious institution within it.

That was the reasonable thing to do, wasn’t it?

Well, except — she’d said that if she had the chance, she would still go to Peking University.

In the end she was still the same kind of person as him after all.

Qi Yu let out a quiet breath of relief.

“So — is there some indispensable connection between your ideal university and whether or not you enter the competition programme?”

“Because my target university is Peking University, if I do enter the competitions, my ultimate goal would be to earn direct placement there. But as you know, earning direct placement at Peking or Tsinghua requires making the national training team, and my scores in mathematics and physics aren’t strong enough for me to be one of the country’s top fifty, let alone chemistry, biology, or computer science. So getting into Peking University through competition direct placement is essentially out of the question for me. To take a step back — I could try to win some prizes through competitions and use them to apply for Peking University’s independent admissions pathway, getting my admission score lowered — but in that case I would have to juggle both competitions and the university entrance exams, and it’s clear the competition class the school is setting up can’t accommodate that need. I’d be better off just focusing entirely on the entrance exams. In conclusion, the competition programme would do almost nothing to help me get into Peking University, which is why I’m not going.”

Whenever Li Kuiyi did an analysis like this, her speech sped up, and it took Qi Yu a moment after she’d finished to fully absorb everything she’d said.

He felt that this calm, analytical version of Li Kuiyi was the ideal Li Kuiyi he had formed in his mind.

But he immediately fell into a kind of unease, because Li Kuiyi’s situation was far too similar to his own, and what she had concluded ought to apply to him too.

Qi Yu smiled wryly: “Actually… getting placed at any good university through competitions would be wonderful too — somewhere like Jiao Tong or Wuhan University. It’s not as though you’d definitely walk away with nothing.”

“That’s exactly why I asked about your target university first.” Li Kuiyi gave a sly smile. “The loop only closes here — if you can accept going somewhere else, entering the competition programme is of course a worthwhile choice.”

The implication was clear: she only wanted Peking University.

Qi Yu was completely thrown.

This person had far too sharp an edge.

But Li Kuiyi not signing up for the competition programme still caught Chen Guoming’s attention. He called her out of the classroom for a specific conversation.

And so Li Kuiyi told Chen Guoming everything she had told Qi Yu.

After decades as year group director, he had always had the final word on things. It was the first time he had ever felt genuinely persuaded by a student.

When he thought it through carefully, the logic held — the girl was set on getting into Peking University, and you couldn’t exactly tell her not to try. The spots on the national training team were that limited, and making it in really did require exceptional natural talent.

But with Li Kuiyi not entering competitions, he couldn’t help but feel the school was missing out badly.

Chen Guoming let out a sharp hiss of breath, rubbed his temples, and waved a dismissive hand: “Go back to class for now — I’ll give the competition matter more thought.”

Li Kuiyi returned to the classroom and had barely sat down when Zhou Fanghua said: “The chemistry class representative suddenly had to collect the practice papers. I saw yours sitting on your desk, so I handed it in for you.”

“Oh, okay, thanks.” Li Kuiyi thought nothing of it.

Not until she went to the office to collect the journal notebooks did the chemistry teacher call her over — and only then, like a bolt of lightning, did it hit her what she had done to that chemistry paper.

The little old chemistry teacher had his reading glasses on, and pointing at the blacked-out and rewritten section of her paper, he read aloud in his unhurried way: “A dog’s bones are the hardest naturally occurring substance, the only mineral at Mohs hardness level 10…”

He adjusted his glasses and looked up. “What does this mean?”

Li Kuiyi bit her lip, her mind churning furiously as she prepared to weave a small lie to cover it up. Before she could find one, however, a male teacher came striding into the office — and behind him, He Youyuan.

“Come on then, explain yourself — what do you mean by ‘the prickly pineapple’s mouth is the hardest naturally occurring substance’? And furthermore, I give out practice papers for you to do the questions, not to use as a sketchpad. What on earth have you drawn all over it?”

Li Kuiyi was momentarily stunned.

Prickly… what now?

The little old chemistry teacher from Class One had clearly caught on that both teachers were dealing with the same issue. He picked up Li Kuiyi’s paper, walked over to Class Twelve’s chemistry teacher’s desk, and said: “Well, would you look at that — what a coincidence.”

Class Twelve’s chemistry teacher was astonished: “Your students are all top performers — how is there someone doing something like this over there too!”

He Youyuan also stole a glance at that paper, and the corner of his eye gave a faint twitch.

The two students stood there like a pair of quail, perfectly still, heads hanging — yet unable to resist sneaking a suspicious glance at each other.

“Prickly pineapple — that wouldn’t happen to be me, would it?”

“The dog you wrote about — that wouldn’t happen to be me, would it?”