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Li Kuiyi didn’t put He Youyuan’s school jacket on properly — she simply wore it draped over her shoulders, one hand holding the umbrella, the other gathering the jacket’s collar, and made her way home through the wind and rain of late autumn. She wasn’t sure why, but even with He Youyuan no longer at her side, she felt that if she actually put the jacket on, she would be crossing a line.

She didn’t want to cross any lines. After all, she didn’t like him.

Receiving his kindness, Li Kuiyi wasn’t entirely unmoved — but she couldn’t bring herself to like someone more simply because they were good to her. Strangely enough, rather than the warmth the jacket might offer, what she found herself drawn to was the clean, cool, rain-dampened scent of it.

She had always been this way — when she’d first come to like Fang Zhixiao, it wasn’t because Fang Zhixiao had helped her during her first period, but because on that night of the power outage and rain, the two of them had conjured what felt like a “glowing magic” together.

She didn’t like being moved. She liked being drawn in.

On the surface, both seemed passive — but being moved meant you chose me, while being drawn in meant I chose you.

If I’m drawn to you, it means something about you — your face, your voice, your scent, your personality, your mind — at least one of these things shines brightly, for me.

What I want to fall for is that part of you that belongs only to you — not the part of you that loves me.

Whether this view was right or wrong, good or bad, it was how Li Kuiyi had always navigated her relationships.

When she reached the entrance of her apartment building, she closed her umbrella and folded He Youyuan’s school jacket, tucking it into her bag. Her own school jacket was still hanging out on the balcony, and she was worried her parents might notice something — though in all likelihood, they wouldn’t pay it any attention.

That evening when she bathed, she took the jacket out of her bag and quietly slipped it into the washing machine in the bathroom. She wasn’t quite sure why a jacket that had only been draped over her needed washing, but all the romance novels she’d ever read had handled it this way: when the female lead wore the male lead’s clothing, it always had to be washed before being returned.

So it turned out romance novels weren’t entirely full of hollow nonsense — there were things worth borrowing from them after all.

After washing it, Li Kuiyi hung the jacket to dry on the security bars inside her bedroom window.

Fortunately, the rain only lasted a day and cleared up by night. By noon the next day, when Li Kuiyi reached out to feel it, the jacket was completely dry. She folded it again and put it in her bag. That day she arrived at school early, and while most of her classmates hadn’t yet returned for the evening self-study session, she placed the jacket on He Youyuan’s seat.

With that done, their relationship returned to where it had started. She hadn’t grown any closer to him because of it, and he, careful and considerate as always, maintained his distance from her.

One week later, the school began its mid-term exams. Weekly tests, monthly tests, mid-terms and finals — the second-year students had long grown weary of it all. They had neither the energy of first-years nor the motivation of graduating third-years; what they displayed instead was a state of utter exhaustion. Only a very few individuals remained fired up, determined to turn things around in this exam.

The papers this time were especially difficult, leaving everyone feeling thoroughly humbled — a few were practically ready to kneel in the exam hall and beg for divine intervention.

Once grading began, Jiang Jianbin took on an air of cryptic inscrutability, pacing the classroom with his hands behind his back during evening self-study: “Go on, laugh — why aren’t you laughing? Don’t you all act like you’re doing so well? You were having quite a lively time chatting, weren’t you? How is it that when it comes to conic sections, you suddenly go completely silent…”

Whenever this happened, the entire class would bow their heads and scribble away at their scratch paper while listening to the scolding — not necessarily taking it in, and not necessarily actually solving problems, but their hands had to look busy regardless.

Once the papers were graded, Jiang Jianbin called on the class president to bring a few students to distribute them. Meng Ran called up all the boys in the class, and Zhang Yun volunteered herself as well. Everyone understood — Zhang Yun cared deeply about her results and was likely hoping to find out her score in advance by distributing the papers herself.

With the arts class being small, distributing tests wasn’t a major undertaking — it could even be considered a form of entertainment. The boys joked and laughed among themselves. Meng Ran flipped over a paper, glanced at the class and name, and immediately tossed it to Zhao Shilei, raising an eyebrow with a mischievous grin: “Someone’s.”

“Oh—” the boys immediately understood, knowing the paper must belong to whoever Zhao Shilei had a crush on, and immediately began teasing him. They craned their necks to peer over each other’s shoulders, chattering noisily: “She’s from Class 19? I thought she was one of ours…”

He Youyuan didn’t move in to look. Zhang Yun was single-mindedly searching for her own paper.

While sorting through the papers, He Youyuan’s hands stilled. Before he even saw the name on the paper, he saw the number written in blazing red at the top: 143.

The math paper had been genuinely difficult this time around — he hadn’t come across many papers with scores above 130, let alone 120, during the entire distribution process. One above 140 — this was the only one.

Of course it was Li Kuiyi’s.

He Youyuan had only scored 112. For a single subject — math alone — there was already a 31-point gap between them. And this was even after he’d already been pushing himself.

He wasn’t sure what he felt. It didn’t sit well. There was a certain helplessness, a sense of being at a loss.

The others noticed that He Youyuan had paused in distributing the papers and curiously leaned over to look. When they saw the score, several involuntary exclamations of admiration escaped them. Zhang Yun, however, simply took Li Kuiyi’s paper directly from He Youyuan’s hands and read it from top to bottom: one fill-in-the-blank wrong, and the last major problem — her steps were all correct, but she had omitted the natural constant e from her final answer. The grading teacher had apparently felt it was a pity, and used red pen to fill in the e for her, writing the word “careless” beside it in large characters, followed by a string of exclamation marks.

143 points… how far behind would she be this time?

Zhang Yun’s heart was still clenching when Zhao Shilei passed her a paper: “Study committee, this is yours.”

She quickly took it and looked at the top: 123 points.

A full 20 points behind.

Wang Jianbo moved to peer over, but Zhang Yun snapped the paper shut with a sharp slap, her face cold. She got to her feet and walked straight out without distributing the rest.

“What did she get?” Wang Jianbo elbowed Zhao Shilei, fishing for gossip. After getting the answer, he let out a derisive laugh: “Makes such a show of working hard, and she still hasn’t improved — still getting left even further behind by Li Kuiyi.”

He Youyuan watched Zhang Yun walk away, lowered his eyes, and a shadow crossed his gaze — a strange, unbidden sense of kinship with her stirred in him.

She was difficult to catch up to, wasn’t she?

The boys around him broke into laughter and chatter again, the noise buzzing in his ears and then growing distant: “Hey, Chen Luyi didn’t do too badly this time either — at least she broke 130…”

When the full-subject results came out, Zhang Yun once again collapsed over her desk and cried. Faced with an especially difficult exam, Li Kuiyi’s advantage was too pronounced — the gap in their total scores was even wider this time than it had been at the last monthly exam.

But the exam was done, the rankings were set, and there was no point worrying about scores anymore. Most people held this attitude: it wasn’t the college entrance exam, so why act like the sky had fallen? So when the afternoon physical education class arrived, classmates still poured out of the classroom with enthusiasm, as though they had flung everything academic from their minds.

They ran their usual two laps around the track, practiced combative fist techniques for half the class, then the group dispersed for free activity.

As evening approached, the orange rubber track, the vivid green grass, and what little autumn sunlight remained complemented each other beautifully. Li Kuiyi had just finished exercising and sat down beneath the green boundary netting, feeling sweaty all over. She took off her school jacket and sat in just her short-sleeved shirt, listening to the girls around her chat. They were talking about the boys in the class, and the conversation eventually drifted to He Youyuan. Discussing an attractive boy was always different from talking about other boys — the girls adopted a careful, offhand tone, as if they were only saying a word or two in passing, lest anyone think they had any particular interest in him.

When there were ten minutes left before class ended, Li Kuiyi got up to use the restroom.

The restroom beside the track was small and far from the main school building, so it was rarely visited and therefore cleaner. Li Kuiyi took a small packet of tissues from her trouser pocket, pulled out two sheets, and was just about to go in when she suddenly heard the sound of muffled sobbing.

She wasn’t sure if she’d heard correctly. Her footsteps faltered, and she stood at the entrance, listening carefully.

Someone was definitely crying — and someone else was offering comfort.

It sounded like Zhao Jiawei’s voice: “…You’re already so outstanding, you know — being second in the grade isn’t something just anyone can achieve. Please don’t cry.”

It seemed the one crying was Zhang Yun.

Zhang Yun’s tear-laden voice followed: “I just can’t understand why… why no matter how hard I try, I still can’t beat her? I get here earlier than she does every day, I leave later, I study vocabulary during P.E., and I even go to tutoring classes on weekends — but I still can’t beat her! I honestly feel like a joke. Everyone must think so too…”

“That’s not true at all. Everyone thinks it’s incredible that you can work this hard — really. Hard work isn’t something just anyone can manage.”

Zhang Yun stifled a few more sobs: “Do you think she works hard?”

Zhao Jiawei hesitated: “She does work pretty hard, I think. I often see her doing problems during break times — though there are also a few others in our class who work even harder than she does.”

“But everyone still can’t beat her — she’s miles ahead of all of them… Why? I truly refuse to accept this.”

Li Kuiyi stood outside the restroom, her fingers curling inward. She pressed her lips together and stood in thought for a moment, then turned and walked away, keeping her footsteps light, as if she’d never come at all.

She wasn’t sure whether what Zhang Yun felt toward her counted as dislike — but it must have been resentment, at the very least.

She couldn’t quite name what she was feeling either. Stunned, perhaps. From the time she was small, every lesson she’d been taught told her that diligence brings its own reward — and she had always believed this. So she had been willing to fight hard to change her circumstances. She read extensively, worked through countless problems, could spend an entire summer in the library. So whenever she earned first place, she had always attributed the result naturally to her own hard work.

She had worked hard, and she had reaped the rewards — so she grew to believe even more deeply in this truth, and took pride in it.

But now, a paradox had appeared: someone was working harder than her, yet wasn’t receiving the reward to match.

This seemed to suggest that perhaps hard work wasn’t something that could be held as a belief.

Li Kuiyi walked slowly back toward the track, her thoughts drifting. She knew she had to admit it — she was genuinely talented when it came to academics, especially under the pressure of exam-oriented education. She was very good at finding the patterns that yielded high scores.

If she could call this slight cleverness a “gift,” then her own effort played less than a hundred percent of the role in her achieving good results — because “gift,” as the name implied, was something bestowed by heaven.

That kind of reasoning sounded arrogant — as if she were saying everyone else was less intelligent than her. She didn’t mean to emphasize her own cleverness; she had simply suddenly realized that from the moment of birth, the resources people were allocated seemed inherently unequal. Some people benefited from intellectual endowments; some from the advantage of appearance; some from the privileges of status and wealth; and still others from the fortune of their era. If one ignored all these “heaven-given” advantages and insisted that one’s success was purely the result of personal effort — wasn’t that, in its own way, a kind of arrogance?

She had been too arrogant before.

But did that mean effort was worthless? That didn’t seem right either — hard work really could change things. So where was the line? What kind of effort wouldn’t be in vain? She couldn’t figure that out.

She’d ask about it in her journal entry for Liu Xinzhao, Li Kuiyi thought.

Lost in these wandering thoughts, she forgot entirely about the restroom — fortunately, P.E. class ended shortly after, and she slipped away during the break to use it then. On her way back, she stopped at a sink and splashed water over her face, washing away the lingering stickiness of sweat. She felt instantly refreshed.

No sooner had she returned to the classroom than someone pressed a piece of candy into her hand. The girl distributing it was named He Lin, who announced that her family had welcomed a baby sister. Li Kuiyi quickly said “thank you,” then “congratulations.” He Lin broke into a bright smile and began distributing candy to classmates one by one, starting from the first column.

The classroom filled with cheerful noise.

He Youyuan was at his seat organizing his mid-term exam corrections. When He Lin reached him with the candy, he looked up and said “thank you” with a smile. He Lin couldn’t help but think this handsome classmate had been a little strange lately — how to put it? He seemed… a little gentler?

Perhaps because his smile had a certain captivating quality, the girl’s face flushed, and she gave him a few extra pieces of candy.

He Youyuan casually unwrapped one and popped it into his mouth. He was just about to lower his head and continue working through his corrections when he suddenly heard Wang Jianbo, who had come over to Meng Ran’s seat again, murmuring to Meng Ran: “Look at Li Kuiyi.”

In that teasing, insinuating tone.

Hearing her name, He Youyuan’s pen paused — almost by instinct, he looked over.

She was turned halfway in her seat, laughing as she chatted with the girl diagonally ahead of her, one arm raised as she used her hand to gather her hair, a hair tie looped around her wrist.

What was it? She was just tying up her hair. He Youyuan didn’t understand.

But he unmistakably heard the knowing laughter of the two boys in front of him — naked, and ill-intentioned.

He looked over again.

This time, he understood.

She was wearing her short-sleeved school uniform — very loose — and as she raised her arm to tie her hair, through the gap of the wide sleeve, one could see, beneath the cotton fabric of her undergarment, the soft, slight curve of her chest.

“…Actually, she just needs a boyfriend. More groping and they’ll grow bigger.” Wang Jianbo let out a crude laugh, his voice lowered as he said this to Meng Ran.

The words had barely fallen when someone grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up. Then came a sharp crack as a fist landed on his left cheek.

He Youyuan pinned him to the ground. Wang Jianbo struggled and kicked a desk, sending a pile of books crashing to the floor, stirring the dust from the air. The entire class was startled. Everyone turned to see the scene, and many were left completely stunned — someone even let out an involuntary cry. A few boys snapped back to their senses and rushed over, grabbing He Youyuan before his second punch could land, seizing his arms and forcibly pulling him away.

But Wang Jianbo’s mouth had already been split and was bleeding from the first blow.

Everyone stood frozen. No one dared ask what had happened. They could only see that He Youyuan’s eyes were red, fixed on Wang Jianbo on the ground, his chest heaving violently. Several boys had no choice but to stand in front of him, blocking him from striking again. Students from other classrooms in the corridor had noticed and were crowded at the windows and back door to watch.

Soon, someone went to the office to call for a teacher. Jiang Jianbin heard that a student had gotten into a fight and was furious, rushing over in a flurry. Without another word, he grabbed both He Youyuan and Wang Jianbo by the ear and dragged them out. As he left the classroom he wheeled around and barked at the class: “What are you all staring at — get back to your studies!”

The students, scolded by the homeroom teacher, all returned to their seats — but couldn’t stop the curiosity buzzing in their hearts, and began whispering to the students around them: “Hey — why did He Youyuan hit Wang Jianbo?”

“I don’t know. By the time I looked, Wang Jianbo was already on the ground.”

“It wasn’t Wang Jianbo saying something again, was it? Nothing good has ever come out of that mouth of his…”

The last class of the afternoon happened to be politics, but Jiang Jianbin had gone to deal with the fight and didn’t come to class. The politics class representative told everyone to take out their politics workbooks and do the exercises. The atmosphere in the classroom was restless, and Meng Ran as class president had no heart to manage it — because he had a fairly good idea of why He Youyuan had hit Wang Jianbo.

What exactly was the relationship between He Youyuan and Li Kuiyi? For her, he’d actually beaten someone up.

And everyone knew — in their school, fighting could get you expelled.

Li Kuiyi quickly arrived at the same realization. She couldn’t help but grip her pen tightly, a worried furrow forming between her brows: God — He Youyuan wouldn’t get expelled, would he?

She also couldn’t figure out why He Youyuan had hit Wang Jianbo in the first place. Wang Jianbo may have had a bad temper, but he at least knew when to stop. His usual outbursts of temper were nothing more than petty squabbles — how had he ended up throwing actual punches all of a sudden?

She was almost certain Wang Jianbo had provoked him.

She wasn’t biased toward He Youyuan — she simply trusted that he wasn’t that kind of person.