“First Problem Solved. These are for you.”

In that moment Ning Sui forgot to breathe entirely, and stood looking up at him in a daze.

It was as though all sound around her had been swallowed up. All she could see was his clean, well-defined profile, and that enormous, glorious cluster of balloons.

Among them was one fat, star-shaped golden balloon — and on it were printed the very words he had just said. So their team had been the first out of over two hundred teams to solve that problem.

Her heart was beating hard and hot, as though a swarm of butterflies was trying to burst free from inside a glass jar. Ning Sui felt at a loss for what to do, and reached for something to redirect her own attention.

She bit her lip, pointed at the plump golden star: “Um — I want that gold one.”

Xie Yichen laughed. His voice was low and rich: “Okay, it’s yours.”

The balloons were filled with hydrogen and floated high in the air. He carefully singled out the star-shaped one and handed it to her. Ning Sui gripped the string and gave it a few experimental bounces, watching it with genuine curiosity.

With this many correct, their ranking shouldn’t be low.

Something settled firmly in Ning Sui’s chest. She felt she could safely ask: “Did you get the gold medal?”

“Mm. First place.”

It was evident that Xie Yichen was in a very good mood. Even the corners of his eyes and eyebrows seemed relaxed and open.

He was already so attractive when he wasn’t smiling.

When he did smile, it was something else entirely.

Ning Sui found her own mood inexplicably catching his, and the gloom that had been sitting with her all day was swept clear.

Fine. So she bombed a test — meet it head-on and deal with it. Keep trying after this — believe that if you don’t give up, good things will come back to you eventually.

“Bro, have you found them? The navigation says it should be right — “

Qu Handong and the second-year upperclassman came around the corner from across the street.

He’d been about to say something to Xie Yichen — like, why didn’t you wait up? — but when he lifted his head, he took in the scene in front of him and stopped cold.

Boy and girl, face to face in the glow of a streetlamp, a great armful of colorful balloons drifting gently in the night breeze between them.

Romantic enough to look like a movie poster.

Qu Handong had previously remarked that there was no way all these balloons would fit in the dorm — anyone who wanted one was welcome to take it. Now he could only stand there with his jaw hanging open — oh god. Why hadn’t he thought of that? The same object, an entirely different use?

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

No wonder he was who he was.

Qu Handong’s mind was rioting internally. His only confidant, Liu Chang, wasn’t here — on instinct, he whipped out his phone and snapped a photo of the scene.

Except he hadn’t turned off the shutter sound. The click rang out clearly in the quiet, striking like a bell.

“……”

—

The four of them regrouped and headed toward the outdoor patio together.

Xie Yichen and Ning Sui walked in front. Qu Handong and the upperclassman followed behind.

The upperclassman was in the dark about everything, but Qu Handong felt himself sliding rapidly into the mindset of someone shipping a couple — at the karaoke that night, he’d been too far away to get a good look at the girl. Now, up close, he was genuinely stunned.

Qu Handong introduced himself. Ning Sui smiled with a curved-up lip and mentioned that they’d actually crossed paths briefly at the basketball court before — and so the two of them became properly acquainted.

With those lovely peach-blossom eyes of hers, Ning Sui’s appearance was genuinely radiant — one could even say luminous — but her smile softened the whole effect into something sweet, and she came across as a gentle girl.

Qu Handong thought privately: he’d expected a goddess descended from the heavens — but it turned out what he liked was already a celestial being of a different kind.

Just before they reached the table Lin Shuyu had booked, the male contingent was still sprawled in their chairs playing a game on their phones. Zhang Yuge spotted the newcomers first and flung his phone down to deliver an enthusiastic bear hug to Xie Yichen, grinning from ear to ear: “What the hell — you came to see me and you brought all these gifts? Way too thoughtful, bro!”

The “gifts” Zhang Yuge meant were the big cluster of balloons.

The impact was energetic enough to nearly send them all flying.

Xie Yichen sidestepped him in time and, with an expression of mild disdain, reached for the Holiland shopping bag Qu Handong was carrying and thumped it against Zhang Yuge’s chest. His eyebrow arched with the faintest trace of a smile: “Next time let me catch you having a birthday.”

Zhang Yuge looked inside and his voice pitched upward: “Whoa! My precious half-baked knowledge!”

Back in their high school days, they’d had a running joke — eating these before exams guaranteed that half the material would “bake in,” and then you only needed to memorize the remaining half.

Lin Shuyu saw this and immediately protested loudly, vying for acknowledgment of his own existence: “What about my yogurt and soda?!”

Zhang Yuge opened the bag: “It’s in here, it’s in here!”

Lin Shuyu: “Yes! Dad, I love you!”

Zhang Yuge, satisfied, pointed to an empty table nearby and said to Xie Yichen: “We piled your gifts over there — don’t forget to take them when you leave.”

Xie Yichen glanced over. There were bags and gift boxes in all shapes and sizes, a wonderfully miscellaneous assortment. But one pink-wrapped package was particularly eye-catching — neatly tied with a bow.

He curved his lips upward: “Thanks for putting all this together.”

Zhang Yuge made a dismissive sound: “Don’t be like that with us.”

The head seat had been left open, but Lin Shuyu rushed over and pulled out the straightforward plastic stool with a very servile flair: “Please — sit.”

Xie Yichen didn’t take it. Instead, he walked to the far end of the arrangement, stretched out his long legs, and settled down with easy grace.

The two long tables had been pushed together — the Qinghua dormitory group and the upperclassman sat on one side, while the Yunnan crew sat on the other. This put Ning Sui directly across from him.

The restaurant staff tucked the balloons away inside to keep them safe. The star-shaped one was tied to the back of Ning Sui’s chair.

Liu Chang and Qu Handong glanced at each other at the same moment, then reined themselves in — no point being obvious. They settled for exchanging a silent, eloquent look of mutual understanding.

As soon as everyone was gathered, the dishes they’d ordered arrived with an almost suspiciously swift efficiency. The cheese-crusted pizza gave off an intensely rich aroma, and Xie Yichen told everyone to eat while it was hot, so they all pulled on their gloves and dug in with enthusiasm, chatting as they went.

Liu Chang was mid-inhalation of food when he asked: “So what did you rank?”

Qu Handong broke into a delighted grin — he couldn’t contain that bright, buoyant energy no matter how hard he tried, and he didn’t even bother building suspense: “Regional champions!”

“No way!”

“Honestly expected nothing less from your department!”

The table erupted in exclamations and admiring comments. Qu Handong teased Liu Chang: “Chang — how did you know we’d definitely win? That’s a lot of faith in us.”

Liu Chang looked at him with an air of serene calm: “Of course. Wasn’t it obvious, with Brother Gu and A’Chen there?”

Qu Handong: “……”

Zhang Yuge, still gnawing on a chicken wing, asked with animated curiosity: “Prize money — how much?”

Qu Handong proudly splayed five fingers: “That many.”

“Fifty thousand! That much?!”

Ning Sui suddenly recalled that time at the “Worry-Free General Store,” when she’d thought Xie Yichen was going for a high-five with her — and they’d ended up with their palms pressed together for a long time. The exact details were fuzzy in her memory, but she remembered thinking his hand felt very large, and warm, and dry.

Her chest went a little hollow with that thought, and her gaze wandered — right into Xie Yichen’s.

The table was a long, narrow Western dining table, which meant the two of them were sitting face to face at quite a close distance. He was wearing something similar to what he’d had on last time — a work jacket, but this one was in navy blue. The casual, graffiti-printed moto style made the whole picture of him look sharp and striking, his jaw and brow clean-cut.

Ning Sui felt she should say something. She picked up a glass of lemon water and brought it to her lips: “You’ll probably be a bit more relaxed for a while after this?”

Xie Yichen looked at her, the corner of his mouth lifting gently: “More or less. I’ll probably be busy with Shanying things, and then it should be finals season.”

Ning Sui made a sound of acknowledgment and lowered her eyes to drink.

Xie Yichen: “And you?”

Ning Sui’s lashes fluttered. She swallowed the sip of lemon water before finally raising her eyes with natural ease. “About the same as before — musical theater rehearsals will take up quite a bit of time.”

The server set a plate of perfectly cooked ribeye steaks in front of each of them. Xie Yichen began cutting his with a knife and fork, and without looking up, asked: “Do you have plans for the New Year?”

“Not yet.” Ning Sui paused. “You?”

Xie Yichen kept his eyes downcast, his tone easy: “Not sure. Three-day holiday — there should be something worth doing.”

Ning Sui: “That sounds nice.”

She’d replied before realizing he wasn’t necessarily inviting her — it might have just been an observation. An idle statement of fact.

Ning Sui ate the last crust of pizza slowly, then added in an unhurried voice: “If you have some free time, I could let you work on my Artificial Intelligence assignment. Something to pass the hours.”

“……”

Xie Yichen looked at her with an expression full of layered, difficult-to-read meaning.

From just a moment ago until now, she’d eaten exactly one slice of pizza — slowly and thoroughly — taken one sip of lemon water, and hadn’t yet touched her steak at all. Xie Yichen slid his own plate into the space between them. “Let’s switch.”

Ning Sui: “Huh?”

He raised his chin lazily, his phrasing succinct: “I already cut it.”

The others were each absorbed in their own conversations. Zhang Yuge, Qu Handong, and Liu Chang were holding forth on life in the Yao Class — lamenting that it was a matter of grind yourself to death or be ground to death — and citing a rumor that one of their ethics professors graded papers by placing them in front of a blow-dryer: any essay light enough to be lifted by the airflow was deemed insufficiently substantial and given a failing mark, so students had universally turned to padding their word count to absurd lengths. A three-thousand-word requirement reliably produced thirty thousand — printed out in a thick stack — so that everyone could essentially publish a book.

Hu Ke’er was hanging on every word with great interest. The table erupted periodically in laughter.

Even if this exchange seemed unlikely to draw much attention from the others, and even if it wasn’t that obvious on the surface — Ning Sui felt as though this person operated with a conspicuous disregard for public awareness.

She curled her fingers slightly, then went along with it and switched the two plates. “Thank you.”

The tips of her ears — pale and fair — were tinged faintly red at the edges, just barely visible through a strand of hair alongside her face. Xie Yichen watched her for a moment, then said with a trailing, drawling tone: “So — you want me to write your Artificial Intelligence assignment for you?”

Ning Sui lowered her head and prodded a piece of beef. “I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t you post in your Moments a few days ago that the course was really hard?”

Ning Sui was quiet for a moment.

She had been venting. The post had been up for about fifteen minutes before Fangfang privately messaged her to say it wasn’t a great idea, and she’d deleted it.

……He’d seen that too?

Xie Yichen said in an inviting tone: “It’s fine — if you really want someone to help, you can just say so.”

That course used Python, which Ning Sui had essentially no background in, so she’d had to teach herself. Around the time of the midterms she’d seriously considered dropping it, but then thought better of it — withdrawing would leave a “W” on her transcript, and her sense of perfectionism made that feel unsightly. So she’d stayed.

She’d marked the course pass/fail. As long as she passed, that was enough. It would just take some effort — a few more late nights — but she felt confident she could scrape through.

Still, extra assurance was always better. The product of Fangfang’s influence was that Ning Sui had always been a person who left no stone unturned.

She hesitated for a few seconds, then, finally tempted beyond resistance, looked up to ask, tentatively: “……In that case — could you help me?”

Xie Yichen leaned back against the chair, his voice drawling: “Well, the thing is — this touches on academic integrity. In principle, I can’t do it for you —”

Ning Sui waited for the rest: “In practice?”

Xie Yichen: “In practice, I also can’t do it for you.”

Ning Sui: “……”

Then what was all that leading up to?

The thought hadn’t even finished a full loop in her mind before she saw him lean forward unhurriedly and lower his voice: “But — we could study together. Anything you don’t understand, you ask me, and I’ll teach you.”

The table held a small candle burning in a steady, wavering flame. The light fell just right, casting a warm orange-gold tint over his eyes — already dark and beautiful — and up close, every individual lash stood out, long and precise as crow feathers.

Ning Sui’s mind went briefly blank. She looked back at him, and asked as if under some strange compulsion: “At Qinghua or at Jingda?”

Xie Yichen hadn’t yet replied when Ning Sui heard a bright clink from beside them — Qu Handong and the others toasting. Lin Shuyu stretched his neck out and called from across the table: “Ning Sui, do you and Hu Ke’er want to order an extra drink?”

The original orders had all been beers. Lin Shuyu, remembering that Ning Sui was allergic to alcohol, worried she might feel left out with only lemon water — but before he could finish asking, Zhang Yuge thumped his chest and declared: “Relax, I already ordered milk tea for everyone — it’ll be here soon.”

Lin Shuyu: “As expected of Brother Fish.”

Zhang Yuge immediately gave him a light swat. “Call me that again and I’m drinking your share.”

The drinking and chatting resumed. Lin Shuyu, curiosity getting the better of him, turned to Xie Yichen to verify directly: “Bro, Liu Chang was just telling me — the school beauty queen from the business school has apparently been trying to run into you every day, showing up at the library and waiting by the basketball court. Is that true?”

Zhang Yuge, freshly intrigued, picked it up with a click of his tongue: “She’s still at it? It’s been like three months.”

Ning Sui’s movements stilled slightly. She lowered her head as naturally as she could manage and sipped her lemon juice.

Two or three seconds passed. The person across from her said nothing. Ning Sui’s chest began to tighten faintly. She glanced downward — a small wedge of lemon bobbed gently in the water.

No wonder it had been tasting a bit strong.

Just as she was drifting into a mild haze, she heard Xie Yichen’s low voice reply: “I haven’t — I haven’t been going to the library lately, and I’ve been at the courts very rarely. I’ve been focused on the competition.”

Ning Sui blinked. Then she quietly speared the little decorative strawberry sitting on her steak plate and ate it.

In the Qinghua dormitory group chat, at that very moment:

Liu Chang: 【wok, A’Chen just about bored a hole through me with that look.】

Liu Chang: 【zipper mouth.jpg】

Liu Chang: 【Your humble servant was wrong, shouldn’t have gone blurting that out 👀】

Qu Handong: 【LMAOOO】

Qu Handong: 【You were sloppy, little Chang 🐶】

Lin Shuyu’s attention was still fixed on the school beauty, and he asked with the interest of a spectator: “A’Chen, girl is going to that much trouble — and you’re genuinely not interested?”

“That means she hasn’t done her background research,” Zhang Yuge said with a smirk. “Every girl who’s tried that approach of relentlessly tracking him down has left empty-handed.”

“But the other approaches haven’t worked either,” Lin Shuyu said. “Bro — does it bother you when that beauty queen keeps putting herself in front of you?”

Xie Yichen had just set down an empty bottle after drinking. He was now leaning back in his chair, gaze idly dark, and he placed the bottle on the table in front of him. His brow lowered and his eyes swept sideways: “Can we move on?”

“Ooh, ooh, ooh, now he won’t even let anyone talk about it.” Lin Shuyu didn’t register that anything was off and slapped the table in amusement. “I really am curious — what’s the most effective way to pursue you?”

Ning Sui had been quietly eating her salad this whole time, not saying a word.

Xie Yichen seemed to let the question go, and then, without missing a beat, said lightly: “What — are you trying to pursue someone and looking to me for pointers?”

Zhang Yuge understood him well enough. He could tell Xie Yichen felt it wasn’t great to be having this sort of conversation when there were girls at the table.

He was just about to jump in and redirect things when he noticed Xie Yichen pause — and then continue: “Liking someone isn’t a flaw. If you genuinely do, express it directly. If you want an example —”

In the hazy, shifting light, his clean profile was outlined in shadow and warmth. A few dark strands fell across his brow. Xie Yichen’s throat moved subtly. He curved his lips with a careless ease and said: “If it were me — I’d treat that person very, very well.”

……

The weekend atmosphere loosened everyone up. Glasses clinked, laughter spilled. The outdoor plastic-table-and-stool setup had the energy of a street-side food stall, and no one felt the need to hold themselves in check.

Hu Ke’er ordered two peach sparkling drinks and passed one to Ning Sui. Ning Sui accepted and took a sip — sweet and fizzy. She looked down at her plate and realized, without quite knowing how, that she’d eaten her entire steak, and the portion had felt just right — not too much, not too little.

She touched her stomach lightly and noticed the others were all in similar states — slumped into their chairs in various degrees of comfortable collapse, still talking, seemingly with no shortage of things to say.

She was careful not to look at Xie Yichen. After a long moment of letting her thoughts wander, she heard Zhang Yuge’s excited voice cut through the noise: “Comrades — the cake and milk tea have arrived!”

He’d clearly just come running in from outside. In one hand he held an oddly shaped hexagonal cake box, and in the other, a bulging tote bag from some tea shop. The room’s attention instantly converged.

Background music chose this moment to rise up — something Lin Shuyu had queued earlier.

“I summoned the ocean, summoned the mountains, summoned the desert, everywhere full of color and beauty, soaring forward with joy……”

Most people had finished eating and began getting up to stretch. The cake box opened to reveal a light cream cheese cake — formed by five upright numbers: “10011.”

Lin Shuyu leaned in curiously: “What does that mean? That’s kind of cryptic.”

Zhang Yuge puffed his chest proudly: “Guess.”

Shi Fu, Qu Handong, and Liu Chang flanked the table on both sides. Lin Shuyu and Zhang Yuge were in the middle fussing over the cake. Hu Ke’er stared at it for a while and then, hit by a sudden inspiration, made a quiet observation: “Three 1s and two 0s — five guys, with two 0s sandwiched between three 1s?”

Lin Shuyu and Zhang Yuge froze. They slowly turned to look at each other.

“……What the.”