The passageway had a draft. Lin Tao buried her face in Jiang Yan’s chest, fingers curled tight around a fistful of his shirt, her breath coming out heavy — mixed with the sound of the wind, indistinct.

Jiang Yan didn’t ask anything more. The warm flat of his palm moved slowly against her back in quiet, soothing circles.

Though this spot had fewer people, it wasn’t empty. Before long, the sound of footsteps and voices drifted closer.

Lin Tao pulled back from his arms in time, steadied her breathing, and composed her expression.

She reached out with her hand — slender, pale fingers — and smoothed the crumpled part of his shirt that she’d been gripping, her words carrying not an ounce of conviction. “It’s nothing. I just missed you.”

Jiang Yan was thrown off by this sequence of events. After a good moment he found his voice again, clicked his tongue softly, bent a finger, and lightly flicked it against her smooth forehead. He gave a helpless laugh. “Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?”

Lin Tao looked up at him, the corners of her eyes still flushed and damp, her voice soaked with genuine aggrievement and accusation. “Yes. You are an idiot.”

“……”

Jiang Yan paused. He realized that the situation might not be as simple as he’d assumed. He reached out and touched the corner of her eye. His fingertip came away hot with her tear, and something in the center of his chest pulled tight — as if a needle had been pressed into it, leaving behind an aching, stinging sensation.

He stepped forward without caring who might be watching and held her gently, murmuring quietly, “What happened? Tell me.”

Lin Tao didn’t move. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder and called his name in a very small voice. “Jiang Yan.”

“Mm?” He raised a hand and touched her hair. “I’m here.”

“I just saw something,” Lin Tao said, looking at him. Her voice was slightly choked. “Something very bad.”

Jiang Yan stilled for a moment. His eyelids flickered, and he quickly understood. “Something to do with me?”

Lin Tao pressed her lips together and said nothing.

The silence was as good as confirmation.

Jiang Yan looked at her for a moment — not sure whether to feel relieved or something else entirely — and interlaced his fingers with hers. His voice dropped low as he explained, “Don’t believe it. It’s all fake.”

“I didn’t cheat on you, and I haven’t gone off pursuing other girls. You’re the only girl I have.”

“……”

Lin Tao had no idea his mind had wandered to that conclusion. She stared at him with an expression somewhere between bewilderment and disbelief.

As if to ask: what on earth are you going on about?

Jiang Yan looked at her, equally puzzled. “Was it not someone spreading rumors that I cheated?”

“……” For a moment, Lin Tao didn’t know what expression to put on her face. She hesitated briefly, then chose honesty. “No. It was about something from when you were in middle school.”

Jiang Yan went quiet.

Before coming to Xi City for middle school, he had actually started at a different school and made it to second year. But back then, due to Yu Fengyian’s influence, he’d been a delinquent — skipping class constantly, grades in ruins. Then something bad happened, and he took two years off school, before eventually transferring here.

During those two years off, Jiang Yan hadn’t wasted the time either. Yu Fengyan had hired a private tutor for him, and he managed to catch up on everything he’d fallen behind on.

So after transferring to Xi City, Jiang Yan had always been seen by teachers and students alike as a model student — excellent in both conduct and academics. Nothing bad had happened since.

Jiang Yan thought deeper and it clicked. “Was it about my old middle school?”

“Yes.” She answered quietly.

He asked again: “The story about me stabbing someone?”

“…Yes.”

Hearing this, Jiang Yan exhaled. His thumb traced light circles against the back of her hand. “The stabbing had nothing to do with me.”

He paused, then continued: “But the fact that he was hurt — that did start because of me.”

The Jiang Yan of his middle school years had skipped class, smoked, hung out at bars, and gotten into fights. All the things a good student wasn’t supposed to do, he did.

Youthful and hot-blooded, cold in nature, cold-tempered, with no sense of when to back down or give an inch — he attracted trouble from every direction.

In the first half of his second year, Jiang Yan and a friend got into a dispute at an internet café outside school with some boys from a vocational school, over fighting for a computer terminal. They became rivals.

Over the weeks that followed, the two sides clashed repeatedly. Jiang Yan didn’t like complications, so he arranged a proper showdown — one fight, winner takes all; the loser submits, and after that, the road is wide for everyone.

That particular fight was where things went wrong.

The vocational school kids played dirty. Someone had privately brought a knife, and in the chaos, stabbed one of their own — blood everywhere.

Small-scale roughhousing was one thing — nobody was used to seeing actual blood. The moment it happened, both groups panicked and scattered in every direction.

Jiang Yan, not knowing what had happened at first, was grabbed by the arm by a friend and dragged toward an alley.

But before he left, he looked back — and saw the boy lying in the alley. After a moment’s hesitation, he shook off his friend’s hand and ran back.

His friend yelled at his retreating figure: “Going back is death! Do you understand that?!”

Jiang Yan stopped. He pointed at the injured boy and turned back, his young face blazing with fury: “If I don’t go back, he’ll die!”

His friend froze for a second, heard the wail of a siren in the distance, let out a shudder, and bolted for the alley entrance — then, as if resigned to his fate, spun around and came running back after Jiang Yan, cursing as he ran: “I must owe you something!”

Two half-grown boys, neither of them trained in first aid, with no idea what to do.

After calling for an ambulance, Jiang Yan reached out and grabbed the knife handle to pull it free — but seeing the blood pouring without stop, he moved to press down on the wound instead, both of them frantic as ants on a hot pan.

Fortunately, the police and ambulance arrived quickly.

The injured, unconscious boy was rushed to hospital. Jiang Yan and his friend were taken to the police station for questioning and evidence collection.

Jiang Yan wasn’t clear on all the details that followed. He only knew that when Yu Fengyan came to take him away, the boy had been resuscitated but was now in a vegetative state — no one knew when he might wake up.

As for school, though the Jiang family’s connections had kept him from being expelled, rumors about him having stabbed someone spread like wildfire.

Someone had taken unauthorized photos. How his pictures from the police station had leaked, he never knew.

Jiang Yan hadn’t bothered investigating. Shortly after all of this, Fang Hai passed away. He took leave from school and spent a very long, directionless stretch of time in a fog.

……

When Lin Tao had heard the whole story, she was quiet for a long time.

The incident itself wasn’t what troubled her — because she believed him. She trusted him without any particular reason, simply and completely.

What gave her pause was the mention of his family. Of his father, who was already gone.

Lin Tao found herself tangled and disoriented. She thought of what Hu Hanghang and the others had once mentioned — about a father who had made things difficult for him — and she didn’t know where to begin.

As Jiang Yan told the story, his heart was relatively calm. He had no particular feelings about it. The years of self-ruin in middle school were a path he’d chosen himself — nothing to regret. What mattered was that he had found his way back in time.

But he didn’t know what Lin Tao was thinking now that she’d heard everything. Seeing her remain silent, he felt a creeping unease in his chest.

“You……”

After a long silence, Jiang Yan was just about to speak when Hu Hanghang’s voice called out again: “Brother Yan.”

Lin Tao surfaced from her thoughts and met his slightly anxious gaze. Her heart ached in a way she couldn’t put into words. She pressed her lips together. “I believe you. I’m just thinking about how many more secrets you have that I don’t know about.”

“You’ve said it yourself — whenever I’m unhappy about something, I can talk to you.” She took hold of his hand. “I hope you feel the same way. That anything on your mind, you can talk to me about.”

“I want to be the kind of girlfriend who can share the weight with you. Not someone who just hides behind you and knows nothing.”

“Whatever you turn out to be — I will always be right here with you.”

Jiang Yan hadn’t expected Lin Tao to say any of that.

Not accusations. Not interrogation. Not a tearful tirade demanding to know how he had become the way he was. Just: no matter what you are, I will stay by your side.

Jiang Yan had always thought of his own heart as fairly hardened. It would have to be, given that all this time had passed and he still hadn’t been able to let go of his resentment toward Yu Fengyan.

But in this moment, he felt the heart that had been hollow for so long crack open somewhere in a small corner — and then something filled that crack. The cold, hard, sharp-edged interior began softening, little by little, until it became full and warm.

Jiang Yan gripped her hand tightly. His eyes closed gently, sealing away the tide of emotion beneath them. His long lashes trembled faintly.

After a long while.

He swallowed quietly and said, in a low voice, okay.

The two of them lingered in the stairwell for so long that by the time they came out, the boys’ group had only Jiang Yan and his few friends left.

The six of them stood together at the track. Jiang Yan was at the far left.

He was wearing a pure white long-sleeve shirt today, black trousers. When he crouched down, his back pressed close against the thin fabric, his spine visible beneath, the line of it clean and fluid.

The whistle sounded.

Six figures shot forward at once. The white figure among them pulled far ahead.

Lin Tao stood at the starting line.

Watching him run farther and farther forward, the light falling behind him — as if he had outrun the light itself.

When the 50-meter event ended, the bell rang right on cue. Over the course of one class period, all three classes had finished testing.

Only a small portion of students had failed the first test and were held back to rerun it. Meng Xin, having spent the whole class helping Zhou Li record scores as class representative, was among the last to finish and didn’t get started until the very end.

Because of her standout performance in the 50-meter test earlier, Lin Tao had been intercepted by Zhou Li and asked to help record the remaining students’ scores. Jiang Yan stayed behind too, keeping her company on the sidelines.

The students who had failed the first 50-meter test were all girls. There were quite a few of them — lined up in groups of four, six or seven rows deep.

Lin Tao and Zhou Li stood at the finish line, with some distance between them. Jiang Yan sat on a rack behind Lin Tao, and within a three-meter radius of him, there was barely another person.

When the first group finished, the four girls came over to give Lin Tao their times. Upon spotting Jiang Yan sitting in the back playing on his phone, their voices went wobbly with a mix of nerves and excitement.

Lin Tao hadn’t noticed anything off at first. It was only when the second group came over that she sensed something wasn’t quite right.

After recording the last girl’s time, Lin Tao held back one of the shorter girls and asked curiously, “Are you afraid of me?”

“Ah…no, no I’m not.” Then the girl’s eyes darted over Lin Tao’s shoulder.

Lin Tao understood immediately. She tilted her pen toward the person behind her. “Of him, then?”

The shorter girl shook her head again, her voice even wobblier than before. “N-no no no no.”

Then she bolted.

“……”

Lin Tao sidestepped a pace, her gaze on the starting position of the track — and since it was empty, she turned and looked at Jiang Yan. “Do you want to step away for a bit?”

Jiang Yan lifted his eyelids and looked at her. “Why?”

Lin Tao cradled the name register and flipped through it absently. “Have you noticed that with you sitting here, nobody dares come near?”

“……”

Jiang Yan hadn’t really been paying attention — but when he noticed someone across the way pull out their phone to take a candid photo, he put his phone away, stood up, and stepped down from the rack. His shadow fell over the better part of the light in front of her. He said flatly, “I’ll go to the court.”

“Alright.”

Lin Tao still hadn’t looked at him. The way she was keeping her distance was rather pointed.

It wasn’t until she heard his low laugh that she paused what she was doing. She raised the name register to shield her face — and from behind it, winked at him.

Jiang Yan felt his eyelid twitch. This was bad.

A single wink from his girlfriend and he already felt hopelessly reeled in.

He said nothing and just walked away.

Lin Tao found it vaguely baffling — but a new student came up to report her time before she could think about it further. Once the last entry was recorded, Zhou Li, standing nearby, smiled and said, “Young love, hm.”

Lin Tao touched her nose uncomfortably, shifted a step to the side, and murmured under her breath, “Teacher Zhou, don’t you think you’re being a little nosy?”

Zhou Li let out a hearty laugh and didn’t pursue it.

Then it was Meng Xin’s group.

Running was Meng Xin’s weak point. She could shuffle through the 800 meters and scrape a passing mark, but for anything requiring explosive power — like the 50 or 100 meters — she had never passed. Back in the previous year’s fitness assessments, she had always gotten through by softening the teacher up and persuading them to adjust her score.

This time around.

Zhou Li looked at the stopwatch, then at Meng Xin, and gave a faint smile. “I’d almost believe you walked that.”

Meng Xin: “……”

Lin Tao couldn’t hold back a laugh either.

Zhou Li didn’t say much else. He just dropped two words: “Run again.”

Meng Xin ran back and forth three or four more times. By the time the last light was fading from the sky, she still hadn’t hit the passing mark.

Everyone else had finished. Only Meng Xin was left. Lin Tao was sitting nearby holding the name register when she suggested, “Teacher Zhou, Meng Xin really can’t run short sprints. How about I run for her?”

“No.” Zhou Li watched the figure shuffling in from the starting line, his tone completely flat. “Come back and run again next week.”

Meng Xin desperately wanted to curse, but she understood the importance of reading the situation. “Teacher Zhou! Give me a break — I genuinely cannot run.”

Zhou Li picked up the name register and glanced through it. “How did you pass the fitness assessment last year?”

Meng Xin paused, then lied with a straight face. “I…just ran it.”

He smiled. “So you can run, then. Come back next week.”

Meng Xin: “……”

Damn.

The moment Zhou Li was gone, Meng Xin began cursing his entire family line. “Is that guy messed up or what? It’s just a fitness test! Why does he have to be so serious about it?!”

Lin Tao was busy sending a message to Jiang Yan and looked up with a smile. “Maybe Teacher Zhou pays special attention to you.”

Meng Xin was horrified. “Is that not called targeting me?!”

“……”

In the late afternoon, fine clouds spread across the distant horizon. Sunlight filtered through in scattered rays, and the whole campus was wrapped in the soft colors of dusk.

Lin Tao and Meng Xin had just reached the area near the sports courts when they saw Hu Hanghang and the others coming out from inside, carrying their clothes, visibly in high spirits.

Jiang Yan walked behind the rest, head tilted down, typing a message.

The next second.

Lin Tao’s phone buzzed. He had replied —

Done.

Lin Tao didn’t text back. Instead, she called out his name. “Jiang Yan.”

The group of guys all looked up at once, and Lin Tao and Meng Xin walked over.

The smile hadn’t fully faded from Hu Hanghang’s face.

Lin Tao asked, “Pangpang, why are you so happy?”

“We just lost a game.”

“……” Lin Tao paused and confirmed that he had indeed just said they lost, not won.

Hu Hanghang grinned and picked up the rest of the story: “Next month the school has a league tournament. Brother Yan challenged them to a game — he’s going to get payback for us.”

Lin Tao found that surprising. Jiang Yan didn’t seem like someone who’d want to draw that kind of attention.

That question was answered over dinner.

“Wasn’t it you who said they seem a bit intimidated by me?” Jiang Yan took out his wallet to pay the bill. There were two yuan left over in change, and he picked two lollipops from the counter and told the server, “Keep the change.”

He turned and handed both lollipops to Lin Tao, then explained: “I figured that joining a basketball tournament might help fix my image.”

He looked at her, completely earnest. “Positive energy. Unity and friendship.”

“……” Lin Tao hadn’t expected that reason. She stood there with the candy in her hand, momentarily unable to process it. “Are you serious?”

Jiang Yan looked at her. The flat line of his lips curved just slightly. “Half serious, half not.”

The guys who had been playing tonight — Jiang Yan had fought with them before, back in middle school. At the time, both he and Guan Che had good grades and good looks, and were popular with the girls at school.

But Jiang Yan had a cold personality, so very few girls ever directly confessed to him — most would at most slip a love letter into his desk. Guan Che was different — he called every girl “older sister” or “little sister” and always had a flock of them around him.

In third year of middle school, Guan Che turned down a girl’s confession. The very next day, he got jumped.

After taking a beating, he found out that the girl who had confessed to him was the younger sister of one of the boys who had cornered him. When Guan Che turned her down, she’d gone home inconsolable.

Boys that age were a bit young but quite hot-headed.

Guan Che had taken an inexplicable beating and, understandably, wasn’t willing to let it go. He rounded up Jiang Yan and some other boys from the class and returned the favor the very next day.

Jiang Yan’s buzz cut was the result of an injury sustained in that fight.

Tonight they’d run into each other again on the court completely by accident. Some of them still nursed a grievance over the old incident, but at this age, a street fight wasn’t the appropriate way to settle things anymore. With the school tournament coming up next month, they put the grudge on the court instead.

Jiang Yan hadn’t actually intended to agree at first. But then he reconsidered — he’d been at school long enough, and he really hadn’t participated in a single group activity. Apart from taking first place twice in major exams, he hadn’t exactly built up a positive, upstanding image for himself. Joining a basketball tournament didn’t seem like it could hurt.

Lin Tao listened to his explanation and looked him over several times before she couldn’t hold back a laugh. “I actually think it might take you a while to fix that image.”

“The rumor about you single-handedly taking on an entire class of boys is already deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of our fellow students.”

Jiang Yan: “……”

Author’s Note: Brother Yan: Make way, I’m about to redeem myself. (not really)