Li Kuiyi had no idea how He Youyuan had translated her words into her forbidding him from feeling jealous, but watching the tall, slight figure in front of her absorb a new kind of fragility, she still felt a pang of reluctance to let it stand.

She decided she should talk to him properly.

“He Youyuan.” She tugged gently at the side of his jacket. “Don’t be angry yet — can we talk?”

He Youyuan lowered his eyes. The corner of his eyes were still red. He stared at the hand she had placed near his waist for a moment before asking, in a muffled, sulky tone, “Talk about what?”

Li Kuiyi led him over to the edge of a small flower bed and sat down. She sat beside him and, after a moment, said, “It’s not that I won’t let you walk me home because you were jealous. It’s that… I don’t want you to keep wasting your time on me. I’m not planning to be in a relationship during high school.”

She said this, then fell silent, head bowed.

But after a long wait, the person beside her made no response at all, and she couldn’t help turning to look at him.

He was sitting perfectly still, staring at the ground in front of him. The loose hair at his forehead stirred in the night breeze, looking a little disheveled. Just as Li Kuiyi was thinking he was slowly coming to terms with this, he suddenly turned his head and looked at her: “What does that have to do with me walking you home?”

Li Kuiyi: “…”

Talking to him really was a waste of breath.

“I said — I’m not planning to be in a relationship during high school. Even if you walk me home every day, I still won’t be with you.”

He said: “Then I’ll wait until the college entrance exam is over.”

They still had nearly two years until the exam. That wasn’t something to take lightly.

In truth, Li Kuiyi had also thought about waiting until after the exam — only to dismiss the idea. She couldn’t control when she might start liking him. If she ended up liking him before the exam even arrived, what then? She might never have liked anyone before, but she’d read enough novels to understand what it felt like — when you liked someone, you thought about them constantly. That would inevitably affect her studying.

So she absolutely refused to like him.

Li Kuiyi hardened her resolve, her voice low but decisive: “I still won’t be with you after the exam.”

He went still again. After a long pause, his voice came out rough: “Why?”

“Because… you’re not my type.” Li Kuiyi muttered, a little unnaturally.

She heard the breathing beside her pick up, carrying a faint tremor. After a moment, he spoke, and his voice was surprisingly calm: “What type do you like?”

Li Kuiyi didn’t actually know what her type was — that had been an excuse. But to give him no hope, she could only name traits he clearly didn’t have: “I like… gentle boys.”

He Youyuan’s voice pitched up sharply, as if in protest: “I’m not gentle?”

Li Kuiyi’s temple twitched. Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about yourself?

“What about you is gentle?”

“I’m—” The words stuck in his mouth and refused to come out. He didn’t know how to describe his own gentleness. But as far as he was concerned, he hadn’t gotten into a single fight with anyone since third grade of elementary school — didn’t that count as gentle?

“Also, I like boys with good grades.” Li Kuiyi added another layer of insurance to her “ideal type,” taking care to make sure it had nothing to do with He Youyuan.

That landed. His face darkened at once. “You like Qi Yu?”

Li Kuiyi was exasperated. “I don’t like Qi Yu. How many times do I have to say it?”

He Youyuan fixed her with a long, steady look, apparently weighing the truth of that statement. Eventually he took it at face value, and said with a reckless, throw-caution-to-the-wind energy: “Then I’ll study hard from now on. Would that be enough?”

Li Kuiyi hadn’t expected him to still be refusing to give up. She had no choice but to find yet another reason — and this one, she had to admit, was a little desperate: “I also don’t like boys who are too tall. I prefer them to be no more than 183 centimeters. No — 183 and under.”

She could change his temperament; she could improve his grades. But height — that wasn’t something he could change, was it?

She didn’t actually know how tall He Youyuan was, but he had said when they were doing the long jump that he could beat her score just by lying down. She was afraid that saying 184 centimeters would tip him off that she was specifically targeting him, so she’d changed it to 183.

He Youyuan was indeed thrown completely off by this one. He had never, in his entire life, encountered anyone who objected to his height. Every time people saw his tall frame, it only ever earned him comments like “what a fine figure you cut.” His facial muscles twitched visibly. He asked through gritted teeth: “A few extra centimeters and I’m suddenly an inconvenience?”

“Of course it’s an inconvenience.” Li Kuiyi argued without logic but with plenty of conviction. “Every time I look at you I have to crane my neck all the way back. It’s a strain.”

He stopped speaking. His gaze settled on her, heavy, and his eyes seemed to hold emotions that resisted naming. Just as Li Kuiyi was beginning to feel a little unnerved under that look, he suddenly let out a quiet laugh — a note of self-mockery in it: “You’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you.”

Was it that obvious? Li Kuiyi thought, a little guilty.

The chicken strips had gone cold. She stood up and said, “Anyway, everything I said tonight is serious. You don’t need to walk me home anymore. And it would be best if you stopped liking me too. I’ve said what I had to say. I’m going home.”

She walked past him and glanced at him from the side — he was still sitting there, mildly hunched, his long lashes hanging low. She couldn’t stop herself from pausing and asking, “Aren’t you going home?”

He didn’t answer. He only raised a pair of eyes that glistened faintly with moisture, looking at her — a broken light caught inside his pupils, his expression somewhere between confused and lost.

In that moment, Li Kuiyi felt utterly wretched — like she had abandoned a stray dog.

She clenched her fingers tight and only barely managed to suppress the urge to go and comfort him. She made herself walk forward — mechanical, stiff — and then ran away without looking back.

When she got home, she felt exhausted to her very core, as though she had been through a rough and dusty battle outside. She pushed herself to finish her unfinished homework, then reviewed everything she’d learned that day, before finally collapsing half-reclined in her chair and staring blankly at the white ceiling.

The image of him watching her as she left — it would not leave her mind.

He really did have a talent for looking pitiful.

Enough. Better to end it quickly than drag out the pain. For both of them, this was the best outcome.

Then so be it.

Li Kuiyi let out a soft sigh, resolved not to think about it anymore, got up to shower, came back, and burrowed under the blanket and went to sleep — and, as it turned out, the matter didn’t trouble her in her dreams at all. The next day when she got to school, she found that the space behind her seat had opened up — He Youyuan, desk and all, had moved to the very back row of the classroom. He sat there by himself with a quiet, self-contained air — the kind that made him look, to someone who didn’t know, as though he might actually be the top student in the class.

Classmates coming in noticed and gave him an odd glance, but they assumed it was a teacher’s arrangement and didn’t think much of it. Morning reading began to fill the room.

Let him sit wherever he wants — she couldn’t control that anyway. And honestly, him putting distance between them wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. That was what Li Kuiyi told herself.

Before long, Jiang Jianbin also came into the classroom. He narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping in puzzlement between Li Kuiyi and He Youyuan several times, then clasped his hands behind his back and walked over to He Youyuan’s desk, brow furrowed. “Who gave you permission to change seats on your own?”

He Youyuan said, “I’d been sitting by the window too long — I was starting to develop a squint.”

Jiang Jianbin thought about it and realized he had never actually shuffled the seating arrangement — other classes rearranged seats after every exam, which always made entire teaching buildings echo with noise. His class had stayed perfectly stable. He decided then and there that once the monthly exam was done, he’d reorganize the seating — it was almost the end of September, and the exam was right around the corner.

“Stay there for now.” Jiang Jianbin clasped his hands behind his back again and walked out. Eyesight was a genuine concern; he didn’t want to make an issue of it. He simply asked the student who had previously sat behind He Youyuan’s old seat to move their desk forward a little, so the empty space in the middle wouldn’t look so gaping.

Everyone quickly adjusted to the small change in the classroom layout — but what no one had expected was that, from the moment He Youyuan changed seats, it was as though he had changed into a different person altogether. He began studying in earnest.

Since he was good-looking, he already attracted a fair amount of attention in class. Everyone knew he loved darting out the moment the bell rang — to the bathroom, to the tuck shop, or sometimes just to lean against the corridor railing and stand around doing nothing, letting the breeze pass through him, exchanging jokes with the boys in class. Now, suddenly, he was buried under a pile of problems for the entire break, barely lifting his head. And there it was again: judging by how hard he was working, you’d think he was the top student in the class.

Someone speculated boldly: “Do you think he’s switched from being an arts student to a full academic track?”

“Ah? I haven’t heard anything about that. And besides, he’s still not here for evening self-study.”

Li Kuiyi heard these comments and couldn’t help glancing back at him — though all she could see, past the stacked books, was a small tuft of his hair. She couldn’t say for certain whether He Youyuan’s sudden studiousness had anything to do with her, but she felt, watching him, that burying himself in work like this took real willpower. Picking up studying again wasn’t something most people could manage — many failed at the first hurdle of not being able to settle their minds, of not being able to simply sit still.

It probably had something to do with his painting, she thought. Painting required a quiet mind, didn’t it?

He Youyuan no longer walked her home. In the ordinary course of their days, he didn’t speak to her either. If they happened to cross paths, he looked straight through her, as though she didn’t exist — as though he were trying to vanish from her world entirely, from every direction at once.

She hoped he could keep it up for a good long while, Li Kuiyi thought — not like before, where he managed at most a month before coming back and clinging to her again. And regardless of whether his current drive to study had been ignited by her, she genuinely wished that he would keep it going. For him, it would be a benefit that would last his whole life.

She had no time to give him much thought anyway. Every waking hour outside of eating, sleeping, and class was devoted to working through problem sets, or reflecting and summarizing. But she kept two regular habits: every evening after dinner, she would go walk a couple of laps around the track, and take a look at the sunset while she was at it; and every day, she would lean against the windowsill and look out at nothing in particular, letting her mind go blank for a little while.

After the monthly exam, He Youyuan had climbed to nineteenth place in the class — which was also nineteenth in the year. To make a significant jump in ranking within the advanced class was no small thing, and during class meeting time, Jiang Jianbin singled him out for praise.

With the exam done, everyone’s nerves eased up a little. Fang Zhixiao had also improved this time — especially in math, which she had somehow scored 116 on. Thrilled, she treated Li Kuiyi to a large serving of grilled cold noodles, then conspiratorially announced that she was coming to Li Kuiyi’s place to sleep over.

On Li Kuiyi’s narrow bed, Fang Zhixiao twisted and rolled until the sheets were thoroughly crumpled. Li Kuiyi, squeezed and overheating, kicked off the blanket and lay in a spread-eagle position, arms and legs draped over Fang Zhixiao in all directions. It was inexplicably still sweltering in October — previous years had always seen temperatures drop after National Day.

Then Fang Zhixiao yanked the blanket back up and covered both their heads. She threw an arm around Li Kuiyi’s neck, hanging off her like a koala, and whispered: “Li Kui, I think I might be about to get into a relationship!”

Li Kuiyi, somewhat smothered: “Get into what?” Then, catching herself: “Who are you getting into a relationship with?”

Fang Zhixiao buried her face in Li Kuiyi’s neck, giggling in a small, muffled way. “Guess.”

“Did Su Jianlin actually have a change of heart about you?” Incredulity colored Li Kuiyi’s voice. Other than Su Jianlin, could anyone else make Fang Zhixiao willing to be in a relationship?

“How could it possibly be him — I haven’t said a word to him in the past half year. Guess again.”

It was Fang Zhixiao who had something to announce about a relationship, yet somehow it was Li Kuiyi whose heart was pounding. She managed to steady her breathing and thought it through carefully: “You’re asking me to guess, which means it’s someone I know too. Someone we both know, who has the opportunity to develop something with you — that means they must be from our school…”

Like a flash of lightning, a name surfaced in her mind and she stumbled: “It’s not… Zhou… Zhou Ce, is it…”

Li Kuiyi remembered: the time she and Zhou Fanghua had sung “One Is Like Summer, One Is Like Autumn,” it had been Zhou Ce who went and told Fang Zhixiao. For him to go and tell her meant the two of them talked regularly enough to have something of an acquaintance.

“Hehe.” Fang Zhixiao pressed a kiss to Li Kuiyi’s cheek. “You really are the top student in the year. You’re so smart.”

Even though Li Kuiyi had figured it out herself, she still couldn’t quite believe it. She stared, stunned, for about ten seconds before demanding, “When did you two start having feelings for each other? I didn’t pick up on any of this at all.”

“You and He Youyuan were developing feelings and I didn’t pick up on it either,” Fang Zhixiao said with perfect reasonableness, while simultaneously reaching up to grab her phone from the headboard. She unlocked the screen, and immediately turned a little shy. “Actually… we chat almost every day…”

Li Kuiyi took the phone Fang Zhixiao held out. On the QQ chat interface with Zhou Ce, there was a “beacon fire” symbol at the top — indicating an unbroken streak of daily messages. And the two of them, as each other’s best friend, hadn’t even managed to produce so much as a “spark” rating.

A quick scan of the dates confirmed it: they really had been chatting every single day.

Fang Zhixiao pressed her lips to Li Kuiyi’s neck, all soft breaths. “After the monthly exam, he asked if I wanted to try things with him. I told him I’d think about it. I want to say yes — what do you think?”

Li Kuiyi put the phone down, still feeling a little unreal about the whole thing. Fang Zhixiao — how had she ended up in a relationship with Zhou Ce?

“Is it possible that chatting with him every day has just given you the illusion that you like him?” Li Kuiyi analyzed. “Didn’t you say you liked the untouchable, out-of-reach type? Zhou Ce isn’t that, is he.”

Fang Zhixiao pursed her lips. “What good does it do me to like the out-of-reach type when the out-of-reach type doesn’t like me back? Am I supposed to spend my whole life without a relationship?”

“But just recently — right, at the end of August — didn’t you say that if Su Jianlin changed his mind, you’d start liking him again?”

“But Su Jianlin isn’t going to change his mind, is he? Am I supposed to tie myself to that one tree until I die?”

Li Kuiyi scratched her head, feeling that Fang Zhixiao made fair points — but something still felt off. She thought about it for a while and asked: “But do you actually like Zhou Ce?”

“I think I do. If I didn’t like him, how could I stand chatting with him every single day?”

“Aren’t you worried it’ll affect your studying?”

“Pff, Zhou Ce can stay in the top thirty of the year and he doesn’t worry about it — why would I, sitting at six hundred and something, be worried?”

Li Kuiyi still hoped she’d think it over carefully, and so she borrowed Liu Xinzhao’s words from the other day: “I think before getting into a relationship, you really should understand the other person well. Like Zhou Ce — does he have stable emotions? Is he kind? Does he have a positive attitude toward his studies? How does he treat his friends? What’s his family like…”

“Since when did you become an expert on relationships?” Fang Zhixiao looked at her in amused disbelief.

Then she wrapped her arms around Li Kuiyi and began to wheedle. “Oh, come on — I want to be in a relationship! You know I’ve always wanted to know what it feels like. Just support me, please? I promise I won’t let it affect my studying. I’ll have him help me with problems, can’t I? And by the way, I’m a Aries and he’s a Gemini — they’re a perfect match, you know that?”

Can I actually say no? Li Kuiyi thought to herself.

“Fine, but be careful. Don’t get too caught up in it. Studies come first. Take care of yourself, and don’t do things you shouldn’t do…”

Fang Zhixiao deliberately blinked her eyes, teasing: “What things shouldn’t I do?”

“The kind of…” Li Kuiyi went scarlet all the way to her ears. “You know. That.”

Fang Zhixiao laughed triumphantly. “Do you think I need you to worry about that? Of course I know what I should and shouldn’t do.” Then she lowered her voice: “Besides, they say the first time really hurts — I’m kind of scared about that. I’m not in any hurry to try it out. What about you? Are you scared?”

Li Kuiyi’s face was burning, and she reached out and pinched her: “Stop talking about this.”

“You’re such an old-fashioned stick in the mud,” Fang Zhixiao scolded her. “You know, at our age, boys are already figuring out how to deal with their own desires, while girls are still refusing to even acknowledge any of it.”

Fair point.

Li Kuiyi felt she was indeed terribly behind the times.

“I haven’t felt the urge to try it either. And I’m also a little scared.”

They retreated back under the blanket together and whispered for a good long while, saying everything curious there was to say. The more they talked, the more awake they felt, until deep in the night, they lay there looking up at the dark, their eyes still bright. A brief silence passed, and then Fang Zhixiao let out a blissful sigh: “I’m getting into a relationship.”

Li Kuiyi smiled for her too.

The following week, Fang Zhixiao and Zhou Ce officially got together. To mark the occasion, Fang Zhixiao threw a feast — treating Li Kuiyi and Zhou Fanghua to a fully carnivorous lunch in the canteen: braised pork belly, scallion-braised pork chop, and a whole drumstick.

On the boys’ side, Zhou Ce naturally didn’t escape notice. The moment Zhang Chuang learned his friend had gotten himself a girlfriend, he started hollering for a treat. Zhou Ce handed over his meal card and magnanimously told them to charge whatever they wanted — but Zhang Chuang wasn’t satisfied. He wanted barbecue, and pointed out that three years ago when he himself had gotten into a relationship, he had taken his friends out to a barbecue stall. He jabbed He Youyuan in the ribs, trying to get him on board: “Come on, you agree with me, right? We have to absolutely clean him out at a barbecue place.”

He Youyuan didn’t look particularly enthused. He gave a half-hearted tug at the corner of his mouth and said, “Sure, whatever you want.”

Qi Yu, standing nearby, was even more listless. He heard the news and only managed a thin, forced smile: “You guys go. I’ve got something on.”

“Seriously? That’s cold,” Zhou Ce said, feigning displeasure.

They all knew, really. Since the competition setback, Qi Yu had been like this — and this month’s exam had also seen him finish second for the first time, behind Xia Leyi rather than first. The melancholy weighing him down was plain to all of them, and they had no desire to watch him sink further into it. They hoped that bringing him along would be a chance to have a proper night out, let him unwind a little.

But what was He Youyuan playing at, being all brooding and distant again?

Zhang Chuang had assumed He Youyuan was still sour about Li Kuiyi and Qi Yu skipping class together, but surely enough time had passed for that to not still be an issue.

There was nothing for it but to coax him along.

Zhang Chuang cursed inwardly: what was the world coming to — someone else upset He Youyuan and now he was the one who had to smooth things over? What had he done to deserve this?

Well, he supposed, He Youyuan was practically a little brother to him. He could coax him — just this once.

He dragged them, cajoled them, pulled and pushed through every technique he had — and at last wrangled both reluctant parties to the barbecue stall, where they toasted Zhou Ce with fizzy drinks in place of alcohol.

“Come on, tell us the story — how did it happen? Give these two lonely hearts something to learn from.” Zhang Chuang picked up a skewer and asked, affecting wisdom beyond his years.

Zhou Ce grinned: “We just chatted. Every day, chatting — and then feelings happened.”

“You sneaky thing — you had us all fooled. Turns out you had it all planned out.” Zhang Chuang gave a thumbs-up, then noticed He Youyuan and Qi Yu sitting in silence and rapped the table in front of them both. “You two — are you listening? Take notes.”

Zhou Ce wanted to draw Qi Yu out of himself, and so he put on an air of gossipy curiosity and asked jokingly: “Hey, what was going on with you and Li Kuiyi that day? I’ve been curious about it for ages.”

Qi Yu lowered his eyes. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing — you went to the zoo together.”

Zhang Chuang was also very curious about the feelings his two friends had for Li Kuiyi, and he echoed: “Right, right, you went to the zoo! Be honest — do you have feelings for her?”

He Youyuan, who had just been about to take a drink of his soda, gave a small start.

Qi Yu was quiet for a long time. Just when everyone was reading his silence as confirmation, he gently shook his head and said: “No.”

“We’re all friends here — don’t hold out on us,” Zhou Ce pressed.

“Really, no.” This time, Qi Yu’s reply came more cleanly.

“Alright.” Zhou Ce bit into a fat skewer of meat, sounding regretful. “I thought the two top students in the year were going to cause a sensation — Chen Guoming’s expression would have been priceless.”

Top student…

Qi Yu gave an almost imperceptible smile — a mirthless, self-mocking one.

He wasn’t the top student anymore.

Through all of this, He Youyuan had barely said anything. But somehow — without him noticing — his appetite had suddenly improved, and he went from nibbling at skewers to eating them in big bites.

Since they all had early mornings the next day, the evening didn’t run long. By not quite half past eleven, they had dispersed. Zhang Chuang lived far away and decided to sleep at He Youyuan’s place, so the two of them walked back to Zhuangyuan Fu together with Zhou Ce before parting from Qi Yu, who headed home alone.

Though no one had drunk a drop of alcohol, Zhou Ce was somehow walking in a daze the whole way back, apparently drunk on love, rambling incoherently about nothing in particular. Zhang Chuang and He Youyuan, with a strong sense of responsibility, escorted him all the way to his own building entrance before heading back.

With Zhou Ce deposited, Zhang Chuang immediately locked He Youyuan in a headlock: “I let you off the hook at the table as a courtesy — now you tell me the truth. Do you like Li Kuiyi?”

He Youyuan didn’t struggle. He let his eyes fall slightly, and said quietly, “She won’t let me like her.”

Zhang Chuang hadn’t expected that single sentence to contain so much — his mouth dropped open. “What do you mean, she won’t let you like her? You mean you’ve already confessed to her, and she’s turned you down?”

He Youyuan gave a small sound of confirmation.

“When did this happen? For crying out loud, you don’t tell your friends a thing!” Zhang Chuang exclaimed.

He Youyuan said nothing, found a pavilion in the complex, sat down, and pulled off his glasses, pressing one hand over his face.

Seeing him like that, Zhang Chuang didn’t have the heart to hold a grievance. He dropped onto the seat beside him. “So right now you’re throwing yourself into studying as a way to numb the pain?”

“She said she likes boys with good grades.”

Zhang Chuang: “…”

So you haven’t given up.

He said, with barely disguised despair: “No, look — you’ve got the whole direction wrong. Tell me — are you good at studying? Not really, right? So right now you need to play to your strengths. What’s the one asset you can actually put in front of her? That face of yours. You shouldn’t be buried in textbooks right now — you should be taking that face of yours and parading it in front of her, luring her in. You understand?”

Luring her?

He Youyuan felt aggrieved. That made him sound like some kind of fox spirit.

“Trust me on this — I’ve been through two relationships and I’ve been in my current one for three years. I know girls better than you. Li Kuiyi is a girl with a very strong sense of herself, right? With a girl like that, you can’t try to move her with grand gestures — you need to attract her. Dazzle her. Make yourself magnetic to her, and then she’ll come to you. I’m telling you the strategy: first, get Zhou Ce to put in a good word for you. Pillow talk is incredibly powerful with girls — a few words from her best friend’s boyfriend and you’re halfway there. Then, go and let Li Kuiyi see you at your most appealing. Third, work the details — small things, the finer the better. Girls respond to that kind of thing. Three steps, and it’s done.”

Would that actually work?

He Youyuan turned it over in his mind.

The next day, after lunch in the canteen, He Youyuan and Zhang Chuang swung by the tuck shop. He Youyuan bought a tin of mint sweets; Zhang Chuang bought a bag of spicy snacks.

Zhang Chuang ripped open the packaging as they walked, and He Youyuan drifted over naturally, reaching in to grab one. His hand had just begun to extend when Zhang Chuang nudged him with an elbow, signaling him to look up.

He Youyuan looked up, and there were Li Kuiyi, Fang Zhixiao, and Zhou Fanghua, walking directly toward the tuck shop.

Eating spicy snacks in front of the girl he liked would somewhat damage the image. He smoothly withdrew his hand and tucked it into his pocket.

Zhang Chuang murmured in his ear: “Radiate charm. Radiate charm.”

How, though? He Youyuan instantly went completely at a loss. In normal circumstances, he could sing a bit, shoot some hoops, and draw a crowd of girls with ease. But right now, meeting Li Kuiyi without any preparation — what was he supposed to do?

As Li Kuiyi drew closer, and her gaze landed on him, his nerves grew worse and worse. When she was just a few steps away, he suddenly gave a light spring and performed an imaginary jump shot at an invisible basket.

Zhang Chuang: “…”

Brother — who taught you that was how you radiated charm?