He Youyuan was an extraordinarily dramatic person.

He had tried to “spread his feathers” in front of the girl he liked and gotten nothing but a bewildered look in return — and now he was brooding. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, and once again it fell to Zhang Chuang to do the soothing.

Zhang Chuang suspected he had definitely committed murder or worse in his past life, because how else could he have ended up with a friend like this — one who created endless scenes on a daily basis. His own girlfriend barely needed this much tending to, and yet here he was tending to him instead.

This, he supposed, was the price of careless friendships.

“Look—” Zhang Chuang sank into the beanbag chair in He Youyuan’s room, glanced at the person at the desk who was writing his homework in total silence, silently cursed the man’s ancestry eighteen generations back, and then cleared his throat diplomatically: “I never said the jump shot was not cool. The thing is, girls might not understand that specific kind of cool in the same way. It’s a male-female aesthetic gap, right? I’m being completely honest — only we men can appreciate that kind of move…”

As he spoke, Zhang Chuang had to fight back laughter himself.

Strictly speaking, this was partly his fault. As He Youyuan’s childhood friend, he should never have placed any expectations on that man’s flirting abilities.

He Youyuan had always had girls pursuing him, but he had never seemed to catch the slightest clue about romance. By fifth grade of elementary school, Zhang Chuang had already mastered brooding silently in front of girls, whereas He Youyuan had only known how to pile into the boys’ group to play marbles and compete to see whose yo-yo could keep spinning the longest. By middle school, most people had reached the age of early infatuations, with bashful young couples meeting secretly in every corner of the campus, while He Youyuan’s hobby was to disguise himself as the dean of discipline and sneak up on them.

That face of his was jaw-droppingly handsome — the kind of face where every strand of hair seemed to have a girlfriend. But in reality, the last time he’d held a girl’s hand had been during a group dance at an elementary school arts performance.

Still, over time he’d gradually come to understand what a lethal weapon his appearance was, and had at last developed a little bit of vanity about his image — he’d started paying attention to how he presented himself, and the overall impression he gave had become considerably more composed. At least in front of outsiders, he always looked the part.

Only Zhang Chuang and their other close friends knew that, at his core, he was still exactly the same. For instance: simply because a painting he was quite proud of had been evaluated by a teacher at the studio with the comment “your draftsmanship in this one isn’t great,” he had changed his QQ username to “My Draftsmanship Is Great” — to register his defiance. The real problem was that this had been over two years ago, and he had still not changed it back, keeping the grudge alive in plain sight.

From a person like this, what clever strategies could you realistically expect when it came to pursuing a girl?

“She was just a little surprised — it’s not like she laughed at you. And in the pursuit of love, a few stumbles are completely normal. When I was chasing Guo Yan, it took almost half a year. If you had my attitude, you would have collapsed eight hundred times by now. And besides, you like a girl for the first time — total inexperience is completely understandable.” Zhang Chuang carried on coaxing.

So exhausting. Coaxing his girlfriend was never this difficult.

He needed to help him get Li Kuiyi, fast — then it would be her job to coax him.

“Don’t worry — you don’t have the experience, but I do. I’m going to help you win her over, I promise. But you can’t just shut yourself off from me — at the very least you have to tell me where things stand between the two of you right now, so I can figure out the right approach. Didn’t you say she won’t let you like her? What exactly did she say? Tell me, and I’ll analyze it for you.”

Zhang Chuang finished this speech in one breath, and his mouth was nearly dry by the end of it. He waited a long time for He Youyuan to respond, and was on the verge of sighing when the sound of writing at the desk stopped. A few seconds passed, and then a flat, muffled voice came: “She said she doesn’t want to be in a relationship during high school, and that I’m not her type.”

Thank heavens — the man had finally condescended to open his mouth.

Zhang Chuang deliberately overdramatized his shock: “What? She doesn’t like your type? What type does she even want, then — a celestial being?”

He Youyuan’s voice was tinged with pure grievance: “She said she likes gentle boys, boys with good grades, and boys under 183 centimeters tall.”

At the first two requirements, Zhang Chuang had no particular reaction — they even matched his general expectation of what Li Kuiyi’s ideal type might be. But the last one made him bolt upright from the beanbag. As a man who stood 187 centimeters and had always regarded his height as a point of pride — planning to have it inscribed on his gravestone — he found the idea of anyone objecting to that general height range physically offensive. He waved a hand: “Impossible. Absolutely impossible. What is there to look at in a man who’s 183 centimeters or under? Something doesn’t add up. She’s lying to you.”

Right? That was He Youyuan’s conclusion too.

He suspected she was lying, and what bothered him was this: she was willing to make up a clumsy excuse to deceive him rather than simply continue their connection — just like the time before, when she had told him she was allergic to nuts rather than accept his chocolates.

Li Kuiyi the great deceiver.

Because she had insulted the category of tall men, Zhang Chuang’s fondness for Li Kuiyi instantly plummeted to negative figures. He had always had a kind of regard for her — not exactly fondness, more like “respect” — because she always topped the rankings, and her grades were even better than Qi Yu’s. He, as someone of mediocre academic standing, inevitably felt a certain admiration looking up at that kind of achievement… Now, however, top rankings or not — if her taste was this bad, it didn’t matter. An extraordinary student with terrible taste in men would look at someone like He Youyuan right next to her and still not appreciate what she had. That was simply a waste.

He mulled it over carefully, narrowed his eyes, and asked, the question carrying a trace of feeling: “So what do you even like about her?”

To his surprise, He Youyuan gave him an extremely displeased sideways look: “Mind how you speak.”

Zhang Chuang: “…”

You haven’t even won her over yet and you’re already on her side?

They say love makes you stupid. From the look of things, He Youyuan’s brain had broken down ahead of schedule.

“What’s wrong with the way I spoke? Why are you getting so worked up?” Zhang Chuang made a show of denial and added, “There’s a saying: know the enemy, know yourself, and you will never be defeated. I need to know why you like her before I can design a proper strategy.”

Did designing a strategy require knowing why he liked her?

He Youyuan had a vague sense something was off — Zhang Chuang was probably just fishing for gossip — but he had no choice but to take him at his word. He had no experience in matters of the heart, and desperation made for careless judgment.

Saying this kind of thing in front of a friend was embarrassing. His face went faintly warm and his ear tips reddened. He said, uncomfortably: “She’s… pretty…”

Those few words nearly made Zhang Chuang’s jaw hit the floor. He would never in a million years have predicted that the very first thing out of He Youyuan’s mouth would be “pretty” — Li Kuiyi was absolutely not the kind of girl who struck you as beautiful the first time you saw her. She gave you the impression of being someone with attitude, with a faint scholarly quality that, combined with a certain self-possession, came across as a lofty aloofness.

She seemed very difficult to approach.

Still — given that a certain someone had just revealed a concerning tendency toward taking sides — Zhang Chuang quickly composed himself and did his best to keep his tone neutral: “Weren’t there girls who chased you who were prettier than her?”

No, He Youyuan thought.

No one was like her. When the weather was hot and she put her hair up in a ponytail, she was beautiful. When the weather was cold and she let it down, she was beautiful. Even when she cut her fringe above her eyebrows, she was beautiful. When she solved a problem, it was a composed and cool sort of beauty. When she spoke sharply, it was a stubborn sort of beauty, and when she refused to back down from something, it was utterly endearing. Her skull was perfectly round. Her ears were very fair. Her neck was slender and graceful. Her sternocleidomastoid muscle had perfect definition. Every part of her was beautiful. She was beautiful in her school uniform — precise and proper. She was beautiful in a white dress — clean and pure. She was beautiful in a loose, old-fashioned tank top — effortless and free. She was beautiful in a yellow-and-white striped camisole too — bright and vivid like a pineapple, that kind of dazzling warmth.

No one was like her — no one was so concretely beautiful in his mind, possessing that warm, living quality.

Just thinking about her, the corner of his mouth had — against his will — curved into a faint smile. He caught himself quickly, slid Zhang Chuang an unhurried sideways look, and said: “What gives you the right to question an art student’s sense of beauty?”

Zhang Chuang couldn’t help drawing a sharp breath. He began to seriously wonder whether Li Kuiyi had cast some kind of enchantment on him.

While Zhang Chuang was still in a daze, He Youyuan added: “She’s also smart.” He seemed to grow pleased with himself for a moment. “Probably about ten million times smarter than you.”

Zhang Chuang felt a bullet lodge directly in his chest.

Praising her was one thing — did he have to knock him down a peg in the same breath?

Forget it. He couldn’t listen to any more of this — if it went on, Li Kuiyi was going to be elevated to some cosmic goddess.

“All right, all right, I get it.” Zhang Chuang gave an “okay” sign, cutting the topic off while he still could. Honestly, he had never imagined He Youyuan would be like this about someone. By rights, though his character was far from that of a scoundrel, his face was such that he could have coasted on it without any effort — yet here he was acting like a complete and utter romantic.

Zhang Chuang quietly found himself marveling at Li Kuiyi again. Top of the rankings and somehow brilliant at bewitching people too.

So should he be encouraging He Youyuan to be brave in love — or counseling him to turn back before it was too late?

And then, before he could make up his mind, He Youyuan had already gotten up and squeezed into the beanbag chair beside him, reached up to rub the back of his neck, and asked tentatively: “So… do you think I should keep pursuing her?”

Zhang Chuang couldn’t help exhaling slowly, and started weighing things in his mind carefully, brow furrowed in what he hoped looked like deep thought: “Let me think.”

“Okay.” He Youyuan licked his dry lips and curled his fingers. He sat quietly at his side, staring at him with complete, single-minded attention, as though he were waiting for a verdict.

Zhang Chuang sat in thought for a long, long time — long enough that He Youyuan was nearly ready to urge him along. At last, he hooked an arm around He Youyuan’s shoulder, and with the gravity of a father delivering life advice, said: “I think… you should probably let it go.”

He Youyuan’s heart dropped. “Why?”

“I was going to help you go after her. But she told you she’s not planning to be in a relationship during high school — if anyone else said that, I’d take it as an excuse and still tell you to keep trying. But when Li Kuiyi says it, there’s a nine in ten chance she means it. Which means even if you pursue her, you won’t get anywhere — and it might even backfire. She might think you’re disrupting her studies.”

Zhang Chuang glanced at He Youyuan, saw his expression had darkened, and paused, weighing his words before continuing: “I’m not trying to hurt you — I genuinely think the two of you aren’t from the same world. Look: to us, Qi Yu already seems like someone who works insanely hard. Last year, the entire summer after middle school graduation, he spent every day in tutoring — just getting to that point was something neither of us could ever imagine. And yet, do you know what Li Kuiyi was doing? I found out not long ago — Zhou Ce mentioned it, probably got it from his girlfriend — apparently that summer, Li Kuiyi was at the city library almost every day: self-studying new high school material in the morning, reading for pleasure in the afternoon, and working through problems at night. Don’t you find that even more alarming than Qi Yu? He at least had his parents pushing him. She’s running entirely on self-discipline. Given that, how likely do you think it is that she’d risk everything to be in a relationship with you?”

Zero.

He Youyuan sat there with his lashes hanging low, silent.

His chest ached terribly — it felt like a great wad of cotton had been stuffed inside, and every breath felt heavy and blocked. All his life, from childhood on, he had been the one who was pursued. He had always been above it all, free and unbothered, never acquainted with the bitterness of feeling small or second-best. Now he knew what that felt like.

What had he been doing that summer?

Forget studying — he could barely even manage to get out of bed.

This wasn’t a question of grades. It wasn’t a question of attitude. It was this: if one day she said she was going somewhere far away, would he have what it took to keep up with her?

Mismatched paces were terrifying. His own parents were the best proof of that.

Seeing him silent for so long, Zhang Chuang clapped him on the back. “Don’t be too hard on yourself — honestly, the two of us are the normal ones. She’s the outlier.”

He Youyuan gave the faintest tug at the corner of his mouth in a small smile.

He didn’t know why, but the first time he ever liked a girl, it had come to this.

Even though she had turned him down, he had always believed there was room for things to turn around. He had even entertained a stubborn, shameless thought: she’d said she liked gentle boys, boys with good grades, and boys under 183 centimeters tall — so once he became those things, what excuse could she have left to refuse him?

Whether she’d meant it or not, she’d said it. And if she’d said it, he was willing to become it. He had reflected on himself: sometimes he really was too harsh, always getting angry at her, always trying to make her angry too. Back when he had walked her home, he’d bring her snacks every day — the yogurt and ice cream were because he knew she liked them, but the bag of nuts had been purely to cause trouble — handing the nuts to her one at a time and saying with his chin tilted up and that insufferable smirk: “Well, well — the great lady’s nut allergy seems to have cleared right up, has it?”

Girls couldn’t possibly like that kind of behavior, could they?

He wouldn’t do that anymore. He would like her properly.

She had said she didn’t want to be in a relationship during high school, and he was willing to wait until after the exam. But he was an arts student — come next summer, he would be going to intensive training. The studio was all the way in Beijing, and he would be gone for seven or eight months. He was afraid that by the time the auditions were done and he came back, she would no longer remember who he was — and, even more, he was afraid she might come to like someone else.

That thought produced a small, pressing urgency in him, which was why he had wanted so badly to keep walking her home. In the fall and winter they could eat popsicles and roasted chestnuts together along the way, and by the time one full year had passed, perhaps he would have gathered enough courage and conviction to ask her to wait for him — to let him come back from training, and then face the college entrance exam together, and go to Beijing together.

On one side, his desire to respect her wishes and not impose on her; on the other side, his longing for more time with her — he was pulled in two directions, genuinely at a loss. He didn’t know where the boundary was with her, and so he had turned to Zhang Chuang, hoping this so-called “experienced veteran” could tell him whether he ought to keep pursuing her.

Zhang Chuang had given him an answer.

He didn’t like this answer one bit.

He Youyuan reached up and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, draping it carelessly down over his eyes. He slumped into the beanbag, looking half dead. Zhang Chuang, taking one look at him, deliberately craned his neck and peered into the gap between the hood strings at his face, letting out a snicker. “My dear boy — you’re not actually crying in there, are you?”

“Get lost.” He Youyuan grabbed the hood drawstrings and yanked — the hood instantly cinched tight, swallowing his entire head.

Zhang Chuang left him to it. This kind of thing — no one else’s words could do much. You had to work it through yourself.

“Do you have a spare toothbrush? Get me one — I’m not getting into your bed without brushing my teeth and washing up first.”

He Youyuan shifted slightly on the beanbag, still lying there like a dead fish. As he moved, the hem of his sweatshirt rode up, exposing a strip of pale, lean waist. Zhang Chuang eyed the distinct muscle definition along his lower abdomen for a moment and thought: Li Kuiyi really didn’t know what she was missing.

“In the cabinet above the bathroom sink, right? I’ll get it myself.”

Zhang Chuang gave him a nudge on the leg — counted as letting him know — and went off to the bathroom to wash up. He had just finished brushing his teeth and stepped out of the bathroom when he came face to face with He Youyuan’s maternal grandmother and grandfather, just returning from outside, along with his young aunt.

All three of them jumped.

Zhang Chuang was more embarrassed than anything else. He scratched his hair. “Grandma, Grandpa, good evening, Teacher He…”

The old woman squinted, then recognized him. A hand flew to her chest. “It’s big Chuang — you nearly gave Grandma a heart attack. I thought our little prince had suddenly gone and gotten buff.”

Zhang Chuang gave an awkward laugh. The grandmother then said, “Perfect timing — Grandma brought back a whole box of hairy crabs. We’re steaming them right now — you’ll eat with us, won’t you, dear?”

“Oh — thank you, Grandma.” Zhang Chuang didn’t stand on ceremony. They’d been next-door neighbors once; dropping in for meals had been perfectly ordinary. It was only after the He family moved away that the visits had grown less frequent.

His grandmother handed the crabs to his grandfather to steam, then asked the young aunt to go and call He Youyuan out for crabs. He Qiuming couldn’t be bothered to go — she went to her own room, changed into house clothes, washed her face, stuck on a sheet mask, came back out, and said: “He’ll have heard us coming in. If he can’t drag himself out here on his own, that’s his problem. Let him starve for all I care.”

As it turned out, even after the crabs were steamed and brought to the table, He Youyuan had still not appeared. The grandmother went to call him herself, but he lay buried under the blanket and said he didn’t want to eat.

“Mum, leave him alone — the crabs will get cold.” He Qiuming called out.

The grandmother came back to the table, sighed, and began pulling apart a crab as she asked Zhang Chuang: “Did something happen to him at school — did a teacher tell him off?”

Before Zhang Chuang could answer, He Qiuming let out a soft snort: “He’s got no shame — does he actually take any teacher’s criticism to heart?”

“Is that how you talk about your own nephew?” The grandmother gave her daughter a look, then fell into thought again. “Then what is it — is he moping over some girl? Did someone break his heart?”

He Qiuming shook her head, absolutely certain: “That would be even less likely. The He family doesn’t produce romantics.”

As for whether that was true or not — well, it was really rather hard to say.

Zhang Chuang cracked open a crab shell, and privately, contentedly, thought about it.