If Yao Class was where top provincial scorers gathered, then Ning Sui felt that the mathematics department was practically a fertile ground for competition math prodigies — toss a stone and you’d hit two of them.

So in the very first calculus lecture, the professor showed no mercy. He flipped through the textbook at a brisk pace, covering an entire chapter in ten minutes.

The mathematics department required all students to take the highest-difficulty level of calculus, but fortunately Ning Sui had already worked through it once with her tutor Yu Zhiguo, and had reviewed it again during the summer, so she was currently in a relatively comfortable position.

Still, she didn’t dare get complacent. Since her schedule aligned well with Bi Jiaxi’s, the two made a habit of getting up early together to claim good seats. By the time the bell was nearly about to ring, Liang Xinyue and Yu Qin would saunter in unhurriedly.

The four of them sat in the center of the third row — a position with excellent strategic value: close enough to see the blackboard clearly, yet not so conspicuous as to get called on.

Ning Sui listened with full concentration, turning pages at a steady rhythm.

Liang Xinyue sat beside her, rather less focused. Her gaze kept drifting involuntarily toward the right-front corner of the room.

After a moment, she gave Ning Sui a light nudge. “Sui Sui, look over there — isn’t that Yin Rui?”

Ning Sui glanced in that direction.

Sitting at an angle was a male student with refined, clean-cut features, a pair of thin-rimmed glasses on his nose, and an expression of attentive concentration as the professor wrote on the board.

He reminded Ning Sui a little of Shen Qing’s type. Just as she was about to look away, the young man seemed to sense something and glanced over.

Their eyes met directly. Yin Rui paused for a moment, then smiled politely.

Liang Xinyue pressed in close, suppressing her excitement to a barely audible whisper. “Oh my god! He has dimples!”

Ning Sui was thoroughly used to Liang Xinyue’s tendency to flutter dramatically over every handsome face. Liang Xinyue’s personal motto was always infatuated, always on the verge of happy tears — though whether it was ever the same person twice was another matter entirely.

During the break, Ning Sui headed out to fill her water bottle. Standing in the queue at the water station, she ran into Yin Rui.

They were, after all, students from neighboring classes. While Ning Sui was still deliberating whether to say hello, he spoke first. “Hey, you’re Ning Sui, right?”

She was momentarily caught off guard and asked instinctively, “Yes — how did you know?”

Yin Rui smiled with mild amusement. “We added each other on WeChat a few days ago.”

Oh — they actually had.

His display name hadn’t been his real name, and at the time she’d added him just because he’d said he was from the mathematics department. Ning Sui quickly pulled out her phone. “Sorry, I didn’t save your contact name.”

“It’s fine,” he said, pausing briefly. “I’m Yin Rui. Class 4.”

Ning Sui nodded. “Right, I know.”

Now, seeing him close up, she clearly caught the dimple. She was surprised to find that his smile was quite bright and open.

That afternoon from five to seven, it was the Club Fair — the annual club recruitment event held at the university.

Ning Sui and Hu Ke’er ate dinner together in the cafeteria, then walked arm in arm along the street. All the clubs had set up small tents in the triangular plaza in front of Bainian Hall, decorated with posters. Students from the arts troupes even performed right in front of their booths.

Hu Ke’er was still brooding over the sun exposure she had endured during military training and tugged repeatedly at Ning Sui’s arm. “Tell me honestly — did I get darker? Did I?!”

Ning Sui appraised her for a moment. “No.”

Hu Ke’er was just starting to feel relieved when she heard Ning Sui add, with gentle regret: “Mainly because there really wasn’t anywhere darker for you to go.”

Hu Ke’er: “……”

She was furious. How could two people be so different!

Why were there people in this world who no matter how much sun they got, never tanned at all?!

In the middle of this conversation, they spotted a group of people breakdancing up ahead. Hu Ke’er immediately forgot what she’d been saying, and dragged Ning Sui over excitedly to watch.

Hu Ke’er was the universally enthusiastic type — she never considered whether she’d actually have time for the clubs she was joining, and indiscriminately scanned QR codes for anything that caught her interest. Ning Sui was more selective. After wandering for quite some time, she filled out a form for just one group: the musical theater club.

She hadn’t originally planned to sign up, but watching the club members performing outside their tent — singing harmony with exuberant joy — a familiar warmth rose in her, evoking memories of her childhood voice lessons, when everyone would get on stage in different costumes and sing and dance together.

— Right.

Someone had once said it, hadn’t they? Life is about constantly trying new things. You can do anything you want to do.

So she didn’t hesitate any further. Under the warm, smiling gaze of a senior student, she reached out and took the pen.

The first two days of classes felt good — she was adapting well to everything.

Qingda and Jingda had an inter-university elective exchange program, and Ning Sui followed the crowd in selecting a course called Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Technology, figuring it would also give her a chance to see the neighboring university’s teaching style.

The course met on Thursday afternoons. The first session was an introduction to concepts and a broad overview — fairly relaxed.

Ning Sui had no background in programming, but the instructor had posted reading materials online, and she gave them a quick look on her laptop during class. From that alone, she learned that there were so many different assembly languages in computer science, each with different levels of accessibility and ranges of application.

It was also while checking her schedule that she suddenly remembered: she had something on Friday evening — a supplementary problem-solving session that their own department’s professor had arranged at the last minute. Attendance was recorded via facial recognition and couldn’t be skipped.

The artificial intelligence professor lectured in an extremely slow drawl, drifting along as though slightly intoxicated, straying off into all sorts of unrelated tangents. The course was titled Artificial Intelligence, and yet he spent vast stretches of time on poetry and classical verse — talking about how AI could compose poetry, though the samples he presented were all complete nonsense.

Not that Qingda’s campus wasn’t beautiful — it genuinely was. From Building Six, the view was a cascade of blooming flowers and drifting petals. In the second half of the lecture, Ning Sui’s attention wandered completely. She spent the remaining time staring out the window, and the moment the bell rang she stood up to pack her bag.

Students poured out of the classroom in a wave. Outside, the shade of tall green trees swayed gently.

Ning Sui’s eyes shifted without thinking — she found herself wondering what Xie Yichen was up to right now.

She took out her phone and opened his chat window. After a moment’s hesitation, she softly tapped on his profile picture.

First, she sent him a gentle nudge notification.

Then she shared her location — Building Six — with him.

He didn’t reply immediately. With nothing else to do, Ning Sui gazed ahead for a while, then slung her bag on her shoulder and started walking north along Xinmin Road, heading toward the Zijing athletic field she vaguely remembered from memory.

That area generally had the highest density of people, at any hour — you could always see students out running and exercising there, full of energy.

On the way she happened to buy a bag of yogurt drinks. She hadn’t been walking long before she checked her phone again. As if by coincidence, she saw Xie Yichen’s message appear right at that moment: [You came over?]

She paused mid-step: [Yeah, I had an inter-university elective. Just finished.]

Two minutes later, Xie Yichen sent a voice message.

The voice on the other end was clearly still catching his breath, but it came through low and resonant, and vivid: “I’m playing basketball, not done yet.”

Oh.

Before she’d figured out what to reply, he simply sent her a location — the basketball court beside the Zijing athletic field — with a blunt and unapologetic: [Come find me.]

“……”

Tall cypresses lined both sides of Xinmin Road, their branches full and dense. Sunlight sifted down through the gaps in the leaves in glittering fragments. A breeze swept through without warning, and the cool freshness settled into every limb instantly.

Wisps of hair drifted across her cheek. Something light and buoyant leapt quietly in Ning Sui’s chest — there was no rule that said an afternoon in this season couldn’t feel cool and refreshing.

Sui Sui Sui: [Oh.]

Ning Sui thought she remembered the way. In reality, this campus was vast, its layout compact and dense, the buildings and facilities so numerous they made her head spin. She almost got completely turned around.

She was just struggling to pull up the navigation app when Xie Yichen sent another voice message, as though he had anticipated this, asking in that unhurried way: “Do you know the way?”

“……”

Ning Sui looked in silence at the navigation on her phone screen.

Two clear paths, running north and south. It seemed to be laughing at her complete lack of direction.

Sui Sui Sui: [I know the way……]

He replied with calm implication: [Good then.]

“……”

By the time Ning Sui arrived at the Zijing athletic field, she had just finished her yogurt drink. She began looking for a trash bin.

She was surprised to find that all the trash bins on the Qingda campus were smart-sorting bins — automated, though the mechanical processing was a bit slow. Ning Sui fiddled with the screen for quite a while before figuring it out.

Xie Yichen hadn’t sent her any more messages. She wasn’t sure whether he’d gone back onto the court or not. There was a small convenience store near the basketball court, and as she passed by, Ning Sui stepped in and bought two cups of the university’s house-made lightly sweetened mung bean ice slush.

Looking over the court, there were far more people playing than she’d expected — it appeared to be a fairly lively match. A scattering of spectators stood around the perimeter, with quite a few girls mixed in among them.

It was around four or five in the afternoon. The sun wasn’t too harsh, though the light was generously bright. Ning Sui shielded her face with her hand and made her way along the edge, scanning the court for Xie Yichen.

She was craning her neck and searching when someone lightly tapped her arm from the side.

She turned around. He was standing right behind her.

Xie Yichen was wearing a dark navy basketball uniform — a sleeveless jersey on top, loose knee-length shorts below, a towel draped casually over one shoulder.

The heat from exertion radiated off him. Sweat glistened along his neck and jaw and at the ends of his hair.

Dark hair, dark eyes, and in that haze of warmth and perspiration, his brow and features looked more sharply, decisively sculpted than ever.

Ning Sui’s gaze drifted involuntarily to his arms, and something brushed against the tip of her heart without warning. The muscle there was defined and solid, the lines clean and taut, and faint blue veins threaded along his forearms: “……Is this a halftime break?”

Xie Yichen exhaled slowly, his throat shifting. “No. I asked someone to sub in for me for a bit.”

It had been almost a month since they’d last seen each other. The weather was still warm, and Ning Sui had on a round-neck ruffled-hem rice-colored floral dress with a light purple open-collar knit cardigan over it, her soft hair pinned up in a loose updo, a subtle layer of makeup on her face.

Her eyes were clear and bright, wisps of hair falling at her cheeks, the sunlight catching them and gilding them with a delicate gold.

Xie Yichen looked down at her, his long lashes shifting quietly, then lowered his gaze to the white plastic bag she was carrying.

When Ning Sui noticed that a distinct smile had appeared at the corner of his mouth, she held out one cup of mung bean ice slush. He took it with the easy nonchalance of someone who fully expected it, and settled onto a nearby bench. “Thanks.”

“……”

Ning Sui: “I didn’t say that was for you.”

“Mm.” Xie Yichen, unbothered, raised an eyebrow and fixed her with a leisurely look. “Then who is it for.”

“……”

Fine. Especially since she genuinely did owe him one today.

Ning Sui swallowed whatever she’d been about to say, kept her face perfectly composed, and sat down beside him. “I bought an extra one. You can give it to a friend.”

Xie Yichen gave a casual hum and glanced up at the court.

A few of them were friends from his own department — people he knew. The rest were players who’d been matched up on the spot. The ones he knew were clearly distracted, shooting looks in his direction and making exaggerated faces.

He ignored them, poked the straw through the drink’s seal, and asked in an unhurried tone, “What course did you take here?”

Ning Sui said, “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Technology.”

Xie Yichen’s mouth curved upward in an understated flicker, and he looked sideways at her with a slightly sardonic slant to his expression. “That’s not really your major, is it.”

He’d been sweating this much, and yet somehow there was no real smell of sweat — only something clean and scorching. Ning Sui felt as though she were sitting next to a small sun, waves of heat rolling toward her without pause.

Her lashes gave a small flutter. “I’m just genuinely interested.”

Xie Yichen: “Is that so?”

She caught the hint of an amused curve at his lips in her peripheral vision. Ning Sui looked down. “Yes. I want to keep up with the times.”

She paused, keeping her voice steady. “After all, even your campus trash bins run on artificial intelligence.”

“……”

Their end of the bench faced the sun, so they were sitting directly in the light. Xie Yichen had spread his legs wide, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, the straw between his lips, his hand loosely squeezing and releasing the plastic cup of mung bean ice slush in an absent, rhythmic way.

Ning Sui was still shielding her face with her hand, watching the young men run back and forth on the court, while quietly scanning the area to see if there was an umbrella she could borrow somewhere.

She was still looking around when Xie Yichen — from some unidentifiable location — produced a jacket and lifted his arm, draping it over her head like a veil.

Ning Sui felt a large piece of white fabric settle softly onto her head.

She flinched slightly, confused. “What is this?”

“Sun-protective jacket. A spare.”

Xie Yichen looked at her for a moment. “Don’t move yet — it’s crooked. Let me fix it.”

Ning Sui gave a small “oh” and obediently lowered her head. There was a soft rustling of movement, and she could sense him leaning toward her, tugging the edge of the jacket into place from behind.

His warm breath fell against her for just a moment. He didn’t linger, but Ning Sui’s lashes still moved involuntarily. After a beat, she turned to look.

She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination — but this person was not only staring at her, his eyes were also unmistakably curved at the corners with a smile, the arc of his lips steadily widening, as though he were in a very good mood.

Ning Sui smoothed the stray wisps of hair at her temples, covering the edges of her ears. “No one actually sits and watches a game dressed like this.”

“Mm.” Xie Yichen tilted his head toward her, measured and unhurried. “But — we can’t let the coconut get a tan.”

“……”

Up close, his profile was half-lit by the sun. The long, dark lashes, beautiful as a raven’s wing, cast a thin, feathery shadow. His brow was clean and defined, his nose bridge strong, his jaw and chin framed with sharp, handsome lines.

Something fluttered softly against her heart — that small stone was acting up again — and time seemed to hesitate for just a brief moment.

Ning Sui looked at him for a few seconds, then changed the subject. “There’s something I wanted to tell you.”

“Mm?”

She packaged it with elaborate ceremony: “There’s one piece of good news, and one piece of bad news. Which would you like to hear first?”

Xie Yichen glanced at her, without any real pause: “The good one.”

“?”

Good news first just means there’s no worse news to come.

How could anyone want to hear the good news first!

With a lack of confidence she couldn’t quite suppress, Ning Sui’s gaze drifted downward on its own, passively studying the shoe prints and dust caught on the red court surface.

Xie Yichen seemed to pick up on something. He lifted his eyes and looked at her carefully. “Then the bad one first.”

Ning Sui drew a breath and said, slowly, “It’s just — I only just realized that I have a class tomorrow evening. I might not be able to go to the dance with you.”

Xie Yichen’s movement paused for a fraction of a second. His reaction wasn’t large — he still looked at her the same way. But Ning Sui felt that those pitch-black, sharp eyes were somehow unnervingly bright, leaving nowhere to hide.

“Can’t skip?” he asked.

“Yeah, they’re recording attendance via facial recognition.”

To sound credible, Ning Sui added several more sentences at once. “The professor added it at the last minute. I didn’t know at the time, and I missed the group notification afterward — I only found out today.”

Xie Yichen looked down with a quiet expression, his gaze unreadable.

After a long moment, he gave a clean, crisp lift of his chin. “Okay. Then forget it.”

Ning Sui had braced herself for him to be upset. Being stood up doesn’t feel good, no matter who you are.

But watching his expression, that didn’t seem to be how he felt at all.

At that moment, the match on the court seemed to have entered an intense climax. Ning Sui noticed for the first time that several impossible-to-ignore gazes were repeatedly sweeping in their direction. The girls nearby, who had apparently seen the two of them sitting here talking for so long, were also sending openly curious looks — clearly trying to work something out.

She couldn’t help asking, “Aren’t they all waiting for you?”

“Yeah.”

“I have a feeling the girl across the way is photographing you.”

Xie Yichen glanced up — not toward the girl, but directly sideways at her.

Ning Sui’s pulse skipped irregularly without stopping. She steered the topic: “If I’ve been sitting here with you too long — I’m not accidentally going to end up in someone’s photo and get posted to the Qingda forum, am I?”

She said earnestly, “I’m worried they’ll edit a bag of spicy chips onto my head.”

Xie Yichen studied her for a moment, then finally looked up and across at the other side.

“I don’t think she’s photographing me. More like she’s photographing the sunset.”

He pressed his brow down with an ambiguous expression, paused, and then said, at a measured pace, “Though in that department, you should have more experience than I do. After all — ‘the person is beautiful and so is the scenery’ — certified by a photography expert, no less.”

Ning Sui: “……”

The most active guys in the game were all from the computer science department. They’d been playing basketball, but their attention had already drifted in this direction. They whispered among themselves.

“Who’s Yichen talking to?”

“My eyesight is terrible — I can’t tell from this far. Can someone look properly?”

“I can’t see clearly either, but I think it might be a pretty girl?”

They were no longer able to contain themselves. With their eyes they communicated hey, what’s going on over there, are you still playing or not?

No one had seen Xie Yichen get close to a girl before, let alone sit down and talk for this long. They were genuinely curious.

Ning Sui noticed the murmuring on that side too. Before she’d said anything, Xie Yichen set down his towel and stood up. He looked at her directly. “No class after this?”

Ning Sui nodded instinctively.

“Alright, let’s grab dinner later then.” His half-finished cup of mung bean ice slush was deposited into her hands as a matter of course. He gave a low, easy laugh. “Hold this for me?”

“……”

And then he went back onto the court.

The guys inside clapped him on the shoulder as he returned. They reset the game, starting fresh from scratch.

In truth, Ning Sui had never seen Xie Yichen play basketball before. She hadn’t known he’d be this kind of player — aggressive, always targeting the weakest point in the opposing defense, his coordination with his teammates flawless. When he had the ball and went for a three-pointer or drove to the basket on his own, he finished clean, decisive, with no wasted motion.

Genuinely the most impressive player on the court.

The girls watching from outside were louder than any of the others, phones out and recording nonstop.

Ning Sui watched for a while. She pressed her lips together and, before she knew it, had quietly taken out her phone, blending in and discreetly taking a few photos herself.

One of them caught the moment he went up for a shot — the hem of his jersey lifted by the motion, and with just a little more, just a tiny fraction more, the photo would have revealed his abdominal muscles. The timing of the shot was remarkably precise.

Something fluttered in Ning Sui’s chest. She looked at the photo again carefully, then locked her phone screen.

As she looked up, she caught the girl sitting next to her apparently sneaking glances at her.

Something felt subtly off. Her phone screen on her lap was reflecting faintly. Ning Sui picked it up and used it as a mirror to check herself — then her expression went completely still.

— Why was there such an enormous bow on her head?

She looked more carefully and realized it had been made from the two sleeves of the sun-protective jacket, tied into a bow.

Help!

How long had she been sitting here like this?

“……”

The sun had shifted westward. Half of the basketball court was gradually settling into cooler shade.

Ning Sui decisively removed the “veil” from her head. She left her things on the bench and moved to a spot a little further inside.

She stood there composing herself for a moment, then walked back, retrieved Xie Yichen’s jacket and the mung bean ice slush, and held them in her arms.

She’d barely settled back down when a clear, cool female voice came from beside her. “Hi.”

Ning Sui glanced up. A girl with pale, soft features appeared. She started slightly at the sight of Ning Sui, but recovered quickly and asked directly, “Hey, what department are you from? Computer science?”

“No, I’m in the mathematics department.”

“Oh.” The girl looked her up and down. “I just saw you talking to Xie Yichen. Do you two know each other well? Are you friends?”

In all honesty, the girl was quite pretty — the delicate, pert type.

Aside from her gaze, which was slightly unfriendly, and the fact that her intentions were written plainly all over her face.

Ning Sui’s eyelashes moved. “Yes.”

The girl nodded at that. “Then could you move over a bit?”

Ning Sui: “?”

“I’m pursuing him right now.” The girl raised her chin, announcing it as a declaration. “I’m going to give him water when he comes off the court, and this spot is closest to the court.”

“Oh.” Ning Sui glanced at the bottle of sparkling water the girl was gripping tightly. “Then you might not know him very well.”

The girl’s expression stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“He likes drinks that are very, very sweet.” Ning Sui looked down at the ground, keeping her expression neutral. “Next time you come, try a cola or a Fanta. Bring two mangoes as well — it might come across as a bit more thoughtful.”