Five minutes later, Lin Weixia was sitting in the back seat. The driver focused on the road ahead. The Qianjiao district sat by the sea — as the car moved forward, the distant red-and-white docks and harbor unspooled like a rewinding film, frame by frame.

The road wound around the mountain. The interior of the car was narrow and confined. When the driver made a sharp turn, even though she fought to keep her balance, she lost control and toppled sideways.

Lin Weixia practically fell entirely onto him — her forehead knocked against his chin, her pale arms like sections of lotus root brushed against his clothing and landed atop his firm forearm. Skin touched skin; the blood beneath their skin flowed. The cactus had tumbled onto the seat beside him.

His chest was broad and carried its own distinct warmth — burning hot — and with it the faint trembling vibration unique to a young man’s chest. Lin Weixia felt as though an electric current had passed through her. The part of her body touching his went pleasantly numb. Scorching heat radiated toward her, and she caught a scent drifting from him — a dark, woody fragrance.

Like a hot, humid sea wind crashing into her face, spreading through her entire body, with nowhere to hide.

“Tch.” A casual, indifferent tone — a low voice, as if carrying tiny particles, vibrating against her ear.

Lin Weixia jolted and snapped back to herself. Pressing an elbow against a support point, she picked up the cactus and lifted her head, withdrawing from his side — and in that one glance, she noticed the boy was wearing black lace-up athletic pants that left a strip of cold-pale ankle exposed, black lilies blooming upward along the skin following the contours, exuding an air of bizarre flamboyance.

And on the index finger of his left hand — a bright red drop of blood.

It must have been pricked just now. Lin Weixia immediately said: “Sorry.”

Having said that, she searched all over herself and produced a bandage, which she held out to him. Ban Sheng leaned back in the seat, took it, bent over, lowered his head, bit one edge of the bandage wrapper, and used his other hand to tear it open.

With a snap, it ended up stuck crookedly over the wound.

When the car turned onto a smooth stretch of road, Lin Weixia sat up straight again and pressed the button to lower the window. The evening breeze mixed with a salty, damp sea smell flooded in, and the air instantly became much clearer.

“Didn’t you arrive a while ago already?” Lin Weixia broke the silence to ask.

When she was leaving the house, Lin Weixia had glanced at the class group chat messages — someone had posted photos of the banquet, and one photo had happened to capture a languid, drowsy face. It was Ban Sheng.

Ban Sheng peeled open a preserved plum candy and tossed it into his mouth, then answered her: “Something came up — I went out for a bit. Li Shengran’s brother asked me to buy some things along the way.”

Before long, the car turned onto a wide, straight road cut through a green lawn. The car stopped in front of a villa with a red roof. In the distance, the vast sea embraced the setting sun as it slowly sank — a magnificent view unfolding entirely within sight.

Ban Sheng stepped out and opened the back of the car — it was packed with things needed for the banquet. The driver hurried over to carry them.

“Young master, I can make a few extra trips — let me handle this, let me handle it.” Uncle Chen hurried to wipe the sweat from his brow.

Ban Sheng didn’t let him. He deliberately chose the heaviest items to carry himself, his tone carrying a faintly amused mockery: “Uncle Chen, are you still treating me like a three-year-old?”

Lin Weixia glanced into the trunk — it was all liquor and drinks, along with snacks, colorful streamers, and hydrogen-filled balloons for decorating the party. She had hitched a ride and couldn’t very well stand idle, so she moved to help carry a box of heavy drinks.

A tall, upright figure stepped in front of her. He casually grabbed a bundle of blue-and-white balloons and handed them to her, saying: “These will do.”

Ban Sheng stood before her at his leisure, glancing down at the cactus in her arms, raising an eyebrow: “A birthday gift for Li Shengran?”

Lin Weixia nodded. She didn’t have any presentable gift to bring — this cactus was a plant she’d looked after for a long time, something she held dear, and so she had wanted to give it away.

Just as she thought Ban Sheng would mock her for the gift, he finished chewing the last bit of candy on the tip of his tongue, then suddenly reached out, took the cactus from her, turned and placed it in the trunk. His tone was shameless:

“This one’s mine now.”

“No.” Lin Weixia refused.

Ban Sheng wasn’t bothered. He bent over and rummaged through the trunk, producing a red gift box which he held out to her, still in that casual, careless manner:

“This is a photo of a young male celebrity she likes. She’d been pestering me about it for ages — take it and give it to her.”

Lin Weixia pressed her lips together: “I think the gift I brought is perfectly fine. If you want to give it to her, there’s no need to do it through me—”

“Li Shengran is allergic to cacti.”

Lin Weixia looked at him, and suddenly understood why so many girls were infatuated with him. He truly did handle everything thoroughly. He looked aloof and cool, yet actually took care of every person around him and never let anyone fall into an awkward situation.

Lin Weixia gripped the bundle of blue-and-white balloons. Behind her came the sound of the trunk lid being pushed shut. Ban Sheng picked up two large bags and walked in with her.

When Lin Weixia and Ban Sheng appeared together at Li Shengran’s birthday party, the atmosphere froze for just a moment — every pair of eyes turned without exception to look directly at them, some surprised, some contemptuous.

An expression as if to say: so F-students have already made their intentions this obvious.

When Liu Sijia saw the two of them, her expression stiffened for an instant. But when her gaze shifted to Ban Sheng’s face, she forced herself to squeeze out a smile.

Liu Sijia was wearing a black velvet halter-neck long dress that day, dressed up impeccably — a rose pendant swaying gently with her movements, striking and eye-catching.

“Ban Sheng, thank you for bringing Weixia up,” Liu Sijia tilted her head up to speak to him, then suddenly noticed something as if discovering new territory: “What happened to your hand?”

“It’s nothing.” Ban Sheng tugged up the corner of his mouth, handed the things over to the housekeeper, and never met her eyes once during the whole exchange.

“I’m sorry, Weixia — I saw the messages just now. I should’ve gone to pick you up.” Liu Sijia took her hand.

“It’s fine,” Lin Weixia smiled slightly, then casually handed the red lacquered box to Li Shengran and said: “Happy birthday.”

Li Shengran received the gift with her chin held high, looking thoroughly uninterested — until she opened the box and let out a sudden shriek. Her expression flipped entirely from cloudy to sunny. She cleared her throat with an unnatural cough:

“How did you know I liked him! And my idol never gives anyone private autographs — you’re impressive. Thanks.”

“Come in — there are pastries over there.” Li Shengran’s attitude immediately warmed. Liu Sijia was about to ask a puzzled question but was pulled away by someone with an urgent matter.

This birthday party had been put together on a grand scale — two long tables covered entirely with pastries and all manner of drinks and liquors. The two floors of the villa, including the outdoor swimming pool in the courtyard, all belonged to these young people’s domain. Balloons floated along the ceiling as this group of high schoolers behaved like birds freed from a cage. Compared to the rules and decorum of school, they were dressed boldly, and the sounds of them playing Werewolf or other games were loud and boisterous.

As if youth itself was meant to be squandered.

After finishing her task, Liu Sijia was heading downstairs and walking toward the spiral staircase when she unexpectedly spotted Ban Sheng with a group of boys, chatting idly about this and that.

Liu Sijia had only come to Nanjiang City in her first year of high school. She didn’t know much about Ban Sheng, and even less about who he hung out with or who his close friends were.

One of the boys downstairs let out a wolf-whistle and asked Ban Sheng: “The girl on the U-shaped sofa’s not bad — what’s her name?”

Everyone’s gaze followed his gesture. Liu Sijia looked over too — the girl sitting on the U-shaped sofa was Lin Weixia.

Ban Sheng also lifted his eyes to glance over.

She hadn’t done anything special to dress up for this party. Compared to everyone else’s elaborate outfits, she looked entirely out of place. Lin Weixia wore a basic short blouse. Because she was sitting so straight, the blue high-waisted jeans looked loose, revealing a strip of pale, slender waist — so pale it seemed to glow. That waistline came in and out of view.

Lin Weixia had no accessories at all — only a teal-blue hair tie — with long, straight, glossy black hair draped down her back, eyes deep and dark as ink, lips naturally red. The last sliver of amber afternoon light filtered through the glass and fell on the left side of her face.

The red butterfly birthmark revealed a kind of transparent beauty.

Lin Weixia sat there doing a puzzle. Partway through, someone came over to strike up conversation, and she set down what she was doing to listen attentively, a gentle smile occasionally rising on her fair face.

“Looking to give yourself some trouble?” Ban Sheng replied to him.

The boy was stunned. The whole group laughed, their expressions laden with meaning as they looked at Ban Sheng.

Liu Sijia, standing behind them, heard the conversation. Something plummeted straight downward inside her. She had no more desire to go over and join in, and instead fled downstairs.

Halfway through the party, Liu Sijia had recovered her composure. She had originally thought she might be able to get Ban Sheng’s WeChat by playing games or through some other means — but apart from the moment when Li Shengran blew out her candles and he briefly showed his face, he had disappeared for the rest of the night to who knows where.

Liu Sijia sat there, elbow propped on the armrest, leaning forward and pouring her juice back and forth between glasses. Her expression made her irritation abundantly clear. Whenever a boy came over to flirt, she turned them away with a cold look, leaving them only able to watch from a distance.

“I’m planning to start delivering milk to him every morning starting tomorrow,” Liu Sijia said.

Lin Weixia took a sip of juice and reminded her: “He drinks Chenguang brand — the sweet milk.”

“How do you know?” Liu Sijia raised an eyebrow, instinctively on alert.

Lin Weixia set down her cup and sighed: “The whole school knows Ban Sheng has a bottle of milk every morning. Besides — I sit next to him.”

Liu Sijia relaxed. To shift the awkward atmosphere, she pulled Lin Weixia along, wanting to join a game together. Lin Weixia thought of the wariness in the A-students’ eyes and made the excuse that she was a bit tired and wanted to rest.

Liu Sijia didn’t push her, and walked straight over — within moments she had become the center of the crowd.

Lin Weixia sat there and noticed the thin, slight girl from her class — the one with the thick fringe. Her complexion was much better than before, but the fringe still hung long and thick. She was clutching a box of cookies, her expression timid and shrinking.

Just as Lin Weixia was about to go over and speak to her, she stood up — but the crowd was coming and going constantly, and in an instant the girl disappeared from view. Lin Weixia gave up and wandered around aimlessly. She happened to spot Liu Sijia surrounded by a cluster of people and concluded that Liu Sijia didn’t seem to need her very much.

Though perhaps, to Liu Sijia, she was a calming presence.

Lin Weixia drifted upstairs. The upper floor had fewer people and none of the lively buzz from below. She was about to turn back when she suddenly heard a noise and stopped.

She looked back. Zheng Zhaoxing and a few other boys were sitting in the lounge chairs out on the second-floor terrace, their chairs arranged in a cluster. In the middle stood the thin, frail girl from her class, who looked terrified.

Zheng Zhaoxing sprawled in his chair without a care in the world, wearing a floral shirt and beige shorts, holding a young coconut. He smiled and waved her over: “Come on — let me taste the cookies you made.”

Under the coercive stares of the other boys, the slight girl lowered her head and tried to pry open the cookie tin but kept failing. The boy behind her shoved her hard: “What the hell are you stalling for?”

The girl lurched forward from the force of the impact. Just as she was about to collide with Zheng Zhaoxing, he sidestepped — and the girl tumbled face-first to the floor.

The whole group roared with laughter, the sound grating and harsh.

Lin Weixia watched the scene and was about to step forward, when suddenly a long arm shot out and yanked her. She was pulled uncontrollably into a side storage room.

The space was extremely cramped and enclosed. Lin Weixia was only aware that the boy pulling her arm was gripping it very tightly, and that the two of them were pressed very close together. Everything before her eyes was pitch black. Her sense of smell became suddenly acute, and the person’s cool, tobacco-scented air seeped bit by bit into her nostrils.

Lin Weixia didn’t know who it was. Self-preservation made her instinctively try to pull free — until the person spoke: “— It’s me.”

The motion-activated light flickered on and off, then lit up. Lin Weixia pressed her back against the wall. Ban Sheng stood before her — the side of his face showing clean, fluid lines. One hand still gripped her arm; the other held a cigarette. He turned his head slightly, and from between his thin lips exhaled a breath of smoke, his eyes fixed on her.

He really was handsome — with a trace of rakishness, his bone structure first-rate.

“Let go.” Lin Weixia looked at him.

Ban Sheng heard and released her. From outside on the terrace came more sounds. Lin Weixia craned her head out and saw the scene before her with perfect clarity.

Zheng Zhaoxing tried one bite of the cookie — or perhaps hadn’t eaten it at all — and spat it on the floor. Then he snatched the cookie tin from her arms and smashed it to the ground. The people beside him, seeing this, used their shoes to grind it underfoot, laughing as they crushed it.

Zheng Zhaoxing reached out and kept poking her with one finger, sneering: “Who invited you here? Scaly girl — disgusting.”

“With the cookies you made — I bet your skin flakes were falling into the dough.”

“Ha, don’t say that, bro — you’re making me sick.”

Zheng Zhaoxing pushed closer, hurling filth while jabbing her forehead with his finger. The girl stood silent without saying a word. She kept her head down, her thick fringe covering her expression.

The group surrounded her, cursing and shoving — behavior even worse than before.

Lin Weixia wanted to go out. She was yanked back by Ban Sheng again. To stop her from moving, he pressed against her, his left leg blocking her side to prevent her from slipping away.

With each extra moment of mockery and abuse outside, Lin Weixia felt more tormented. She kept trying to pull free. Ban Sheng pressed one hand onto her shoulder, lowered his head, bit down on the bandage wrapped around his finger, and with a sharp tug — a pale strip of flesh was revealed with a small red dot.

“There’s a thorn — get it out,” Ban Sheng said, looking at her, his manner composed.

“In a moment,” Lin Weixia said distractedly, thinking only of getting outside.

Ban Sheng pushed her back. Meeting her eyes, he emphasized:

“Now.”

Lin Weixia lowered her eyes to look at his finger. With the blood blotted away, she could see a green thorn embedded in the flesh — it must have been from when she bumped into him in the car.

She had caused it — she really should take responsibility.

Held here as she was, Lin Weixia relented, deciding to get the thorn out quickly so she could go help.

Lin Weixia reached out and felt along the wall for the light switch, but it didn’t respond. The light must be broken. Lin Weixia cupped his hand in both of hers, and had to rely on the light coming through the window from outside and the flickering motion-activated corridor light to confirm the position of the wound.

The motion-activated light went on and off. Lin Weixia leaned in very close, squinting hard, pinching his finger trying to work the thorn out.

The two of them were very near each other. Lin Weixia was wearing a loose white button-down shirt that day. At some point a button had come undone. With a slight downward glance, a pale milky expanse of skin was visible at the collar — a strip of white undergarment, a young girl’s peach-soft curves rising and falling with her breath.

Ban Sheng’s pupils darkened. His throat shifted up and down. He felt a fleeting itch.

Lin Weixia was still working on the thorn in his finger. The thorn slipped and buried itself further into the flesh. Ban Sheng tilted his head back slightly, swallowed, and catching the sight inadvertently moved his gaze to the top of her head.

“Never mind,” Ban Sheng said, intending to pull his hand back.

Lin Weixia was too focused — she could see she was nearly there. The hand suddenly withdrew, and instinctively she stepped forward, cupping it, saying: “Just a little more.”

Lin Weixia pressed her whole face up close to Ban Sheng’s finger, working intently to squeeze the thorn out. A faint pain traveled through the nerve endings of Ban Sheng’s index finger. The dim light played across both their faces. Their breathing — one quickened, one uneven — mingled together. In the end, it became impossible to tell who was agitated; both of them had broken out in a fine, dense sweat.

In the moment before the motion-activated light went dark, the green thorn was finally out.

Both of them let out a breath, drawing in air in great gulps, like fish deprived of oxygen and overheated, on the verge of drying out.

After dealing with the thorn, Lin Weixia immediately turned her attention to the situation outside and wanted to go out to help. But Ban Sheng seemed to have seen through her intentions. A cool, almost excessively rational voice came from above her head:

“In Shengao, you have to learn to get used to it. And — the more you help her, the more excited they get.”

The tone in which Ban Sheng said this sounded exactly like that of a coldhearted bystander who had watched from the sidelines for far too long. For some reason, Lin Weixia’s mind connected it to the image of Ban Sheng during that typhoon — cigarette in mouth, ferocious expression, beating someone — and every trace of goodwill she had built up toward him collapsed entirely in that moment.

Lin Weixia looked at him and said, word by word: “Is that so? Watching others suffer — what’s the difference between you and those people out there?”

At that precise moment the motion-activated light came on, allowing Lin Weixia to see Ban Sheng’s expression clearly. The light illuminated his sharp-featured face, and in an instant — a cold ferocity and a heavy, murderous air swept across his brow, and a fleeting shadow of darkness crossed his face.

The light went dark again. Lin Weixia couldn’t tell what expression he wore, only that Ban Sheng was staring fixedly at her — as though he wanted to grind her to dust with his gaze.

A moment later, Li Shengran’s clear, crisp voice came from the corridor, dripping with displeasure: “Zheng Zhaoxing — what are you all doing? I invited my deskmate here to help!”

Lin Weixia exhaled quietly in relief. Then suddenly — her shirt collar was pulled by someone, drawing them close once more. She was forced to tilt her head up to look at him.

Ban Sheng had at some point plucked a NASA badge from himself. He bent his neck, eyes fixed on her, and with his fingers unfastened the pin on the back of the badge — then, with practiced ease, used the pin to thread through the loosened opening at her collar. His clearly defined knuckles inadvertently grazed the skin of her chest — rough, yet cool.

Lin Weixia trembled slightly. With nowhere to move, she looked at him, her breathing becoming heavier, a thin sheen of sweat already on her forehead. Something in the air crackled and snapped, the light flickering on and off, his face half-submerged in shadow.

After the badge was secured, Ban Sheng leaned in close, the distance between them narrowing to nearly nothing — almost touching nose to nose — and said:

“No difference. So you’d better get used to me showing up at your door from time to time.”