After the start of school, the days passed faster and faster.
The parasol trees beside the Year Two teaching building had sprouted fresh buds, and tender green leaves bloomed once again along the branches. Sunlight filtered through the intricate tangle of boughs, casting dappled, fragmented shadows on the ground below. The creeping fig along the base of the wall had grown day by day, its vines gradually covering the entire surface.
Bright, clean windows. Scattered desks and chairs. The clear sound of voices reading aloud.
Not long after the new semester began, Class 18 of Year Two underwent several rounds of seat reshuffling. The front-to-back order stayed the same; the main change was lateral shifts between columns. The original first column moved entirely to the fourth column position, and the other three columns shifted over in the same sequence.
After being moved to the fourth column, Lin Tao chose the window seat — claiming, in her own words, that sitting there would allow her to photosynthesize more effectively.
Jiang Yan calmly pointed at the sun-drenched corridor. “You might as well stand out there. More photosynthesis that way.”
Lin Tao didn’t bother arguing with him. She stacked a pile of books on the window-side desk, sat herself down, and said in a firm, clipped tone, “I decide where I sit.”
Jiang Yan chuckled softly and, without objection, sat down on the aisle side. He absentmindedly sorted through his practice papers. “Fine. You decide.”
The new seating arrangement was soon settled.
Lin Tao tidied up her desk, then dug out of the drawer a manga that Meng Xin had lent her some time ago and began devouring it with great enthusiasm.
Jiang Yan, busy with his practice papers, spared her a glance and tapped the top of her head with his pen. “Have you finished the papers I gave you?”
Lin Tao covered her head and scooted toward the wall. “Finished them ages ago.”
She pulled several sheets of paper, written full from edge to edge, out of the drawer and handed them over. “Can you find me some papers with a slightly lower difficulty level next time? I spent the entire weekend on these.”
“Too easy won’t help you.”
The last time Jiang Yan had looked through her physics notes, he’d realized that her bigger problem was actually her unwillingness to dig deeper into the subject. Whenever she got a question wrong once, she’d make the same mistake on a similar type the next time — in short, she couldn’t generalize from one instance to another.
Proof of that was right in front of him now.
“You’ve done this type of question before — the ones related to conservation of mechanical energy.” Jiang Yan turned his head to look at her, raising an eyebrow slightly. “Still getting it wrong?”
“……” Lin Tao propped her elbow on the desk, pressing her fingertips to her brow bone. She was genuinely bewildered. “Have I? I don’t remember that at all.”
Jiang Yan said nothing. He raised his pen and marked a cross beside her answer, then continued to the next one. Before three more questions had passed, another cross. And then three crosses in a row after that.
“……” He set down his pen. The tip of his tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek. “Tell me honestly — did you actually put in any effort on these papers over the weekend?”
Lin Tao couldn’t help covering her eyes, and muttered under her breath, “Maybe I just wasn’t that serious about this one particular paper……”
Jiang Yan let out a cold sound. He reached over and took away her manga, which she’d been hiding face-down on the desk, and said with light nonchalance, “When you can write a perfect-score paper, I’ll give it back.”
“?” Lin Tao stared at him in complete disbelief. “A perfect score? Are you kidding? I haven’t gotten a perfect score since the third grade.”
“Which makes writing one now all the more impressive.” Jiang Yan gathered her completed papers and put them away, then fished another paper workbook out of his bag and slid it over to her. “This week’s.”
“……”
Lin Tao genuinely felt like crying.
She was only in Year Two.
Why did it already feel like Year Three?
Lin Tao scolded him inside her head while silently accepting the papers.
After a while, noticing he was still sitting in the classroom, she puffed out her cheeks and asked, “Aren’t you going to practice today? Isn’t the league competition next Monday?”
Jiang Yan didn’t look up. “Going in a bit.”
Lin Tao let out a quiet sigh of relief, planning to sneak the manga back once he left.
Jiang Yan seemed to know exactly what scheme she was hatching. He glanced sideways at her. “Come with me.”
“Why? I don’t want to.” Lin Tao refused right away. “I’m not going. I’m staying in the classroom to work on the papers. I’m a good student who loves to study.”
He tilted his head and smiled — looking perfectly pleasant on the surface, with a head full of ulterior motives. “You can write them there too. I’ll find you a spot out of the sun.”
Lin Tao shook her head with a blank face. “No good. The court is too noisy. It’ll disturb my concentration.”
Jiang Yan let out a long, drawn-out “oh” and was just about to say something when Hu Hanghang and the others appeared at the back door of the classroom holding a ball, waiting for him. “Yan bro, let’s go.”
He turned back to signal them a moment, then looked at Lin Tao again. “Not coming?”
“Not coming.”
Jiang Yan nodded. “Fine.”
He was already wearing athletic wear today — no need to change into a separate basketball uniform. He stood up and peeled off his school uniform jacket, tossing it on the desk.
Lin Tao watched him. Her eyes curved slightly. “Play well.”
Jiang Yan, tall above her, met her gaze and bent down to reach into the drawer for his wrist guard, which he fastened around his wrist without a word. Then he left.
Only before leaving, he casually took Lin Tao’s manga with him as well. “Taking the book with me. You stay here and study.”
The words study were deliberately bitten out with extra weight — each one particularly crisp and clear.
Lin Tao: “……”
The basketball court at Tenth High was built wide and spacious. No matter when you walked past, there were always people coming and going inside. Especially lately, with the league competition approaching, the court was nearly full every lunch break, orange basketballs arcing back and forth through the air.
Class 18 had a fixed practice spot. Perhaps because of Jiang Yan, this spot was rarely occupied by anyone else. Even on the odd occasion when students from other classes happened to be there when they arrived, one look at Jiang Yan and they would automatically clear the space.
The spot was near a corner, with a long bench beside it.
Normally the bench was just used to set clothes and water bottles. Today, however, someone was sitting on it — and what was more, that someone was sitting there doing a practice paper.
This drew quite a few glances from others at the court:
“What the — this girl is doing homework at the basketball court?”
“Look more carefully. That’s not just some girl. That’s the school tyrant’s girlfriend.”
“Probably here to keep company with the school tyrant, right?”
“Suddenly I understand why the school tyrant is consistently first in the grade. With such a hardworking girlfriend, how could he not do well?”
……
Lin Tao, sitting off to the side with her head buried in her paper, was entirely unaware of all of this.
Before coming to the court, she had tried to wrestle the manga book back from Jiang Yan — not only failing completely, but getting physically dragged to the court alongside it.
She had only gotten through about a third of the paper when Jiang Yan wrapped up a half-game session, tossed the ball to someone else, and found a substitute.
He sat down at the other end of the bench, tilted his head back for a few gulps of water, then let his gaze settle on Lin Tao’s practice paper. He tapped a finger toward it. “This one. Wrong.”
Lin Tao suddenly covered the paper with both hands. “I’m going to check after I finish.”
Jiang Yan nodded without comment. He tightened the bottle cap and set it aside, and let his gaze drift to the figures running across the court.
Lin Tao followed his line of sight and watched for a while too.
The sun wasn’t too harsh at this time of year. The sunlight was warm and even, pleasant on the skin — and very easy to make one drowsy.
Lin Tao yawned several times in a row, looking a little wilted.
“Tired?” Jiang Yan glanced at her.
She rubbed at her eyes. Her long, curled lashes were pressed into a little tangle. “A bit.”
Jiang Yan reached out. His finger pad pressed against the outer corner of her eye, delicately lifting a single long lash free. He pressed his thumb down on it lightly and flicked it away, then looked at her again. “Want to head back and sleep for a bit?”
“I don’t think so. There’s not enough time left now even if I go back. I’ll sleep in class this afternoon.”
She said it, then bent forward over another yawn, eyelids drooping, clearly out of energy.
Jiang Yan lowered his head and moved aside the things between them, then shifted himself closer. “Lean on me and rest a little.”
“Hm?” Lin Tao tilted her head and looked at him, blank for a moment. A few seconds passed before she caught his meaning. “Isn’t that a bit too conspicuous?”
Jiang Yan met her gaze. A smile curved his lips. “You think there’s anyone at this court who doesn’t already know what’s going on between you and me?”
“……”
Lin Tao thought about it and figured he had a point. Her head soon tilted over, and she settled it against his shoulder. Her gaze drifted out over the court, and something occurred to her. “Aren’t you going back to play?”
“Don’t need to.” Jiang Yan sat up straight, his back against the wire fence, long legs stretched out casually in front of him. He looked down at his phone. “Go to sleep,” he said softly.
“Mm.”
Lin Tao rested her head against his shoulder. The sunlight stung her eyes, so she picked up a practice paper and draped it over her head, blocking out all light and every line of sight.
The court stayed busy and lively as ever.
Only this one small corner was utterly, impossibly peaceful.
A boy scrolling through his phone. A girl sleeping with a paper over her head. The wire fence behind them and the shady parasol trees beyond — all blending into one quiet picture.
The sunlight was bright and soft. Wind came through and stirred the thin paper, curling one corner back to reveal the sleeping girl’s face.
The boy had never seemed to look up, and yet precisely as the paper was about to be lifted away by the breeze, he reached up and pressed it down. His pale, slender fingers held the corner still until the wind passed, and then let go.
Someone quietly raised their phone and took a photo.
Captured in the frame, the two of them looked as though they had stepped out of a manga — beautiful and fresh.
Later that afternoon, Tenth High’s school forum came alive again. The cause was a new photo posted inside the “school tyrant secret admirer” thread.
In the photo, Jiang Yan sat on the long bench at the basketball court, a girl beside him sleeping with a paper over her face:
Jiang Yan and his seatmate Lin are honestly too sweet.
The comments beneath the post kept coming.
Lin Tao’s phone was connected to the internet around the clock, and forum notifications kept updating. She tapped in, and quickly spotted the photo.
It had to be said — whoever took it had real skill. The image quality was high, the angle was perfect. At a glance you could tell it was shot from within five meters and straight-on.
Lin Tao quietly saved the photo, skimmed through the comments beneath it for a while, then logged into the forum account, covered Jiang Yan’s face in the couple photo with a sticker, and posted it into that very thread.
Naturally quite a few comments flooded in beneath the post.
But Lin Tao had learned her lesson from the last time Old Yang caught her, and after casually reading through the comments she logged back out without lingering.
This period was biology — just one character different from physics, though Lin Tao’s marks in the two subjects differed by far more than one point. She consistently scored quite well in biology.
The biology teacher was the oldest teacher in the entire Year Two biology group — deeply knowledgeable, and not the least bit dull to listen to. He often shared interesting supplementary knowledge linked to biology topics, and Lin Tao liked this class quite a lot. She was listening attentively.
During a break between notes, Lin Tao glanced over at Jiang Yan sitting beside her. “……”
She suspected that in Jiang Yan’s world, only physics existed. Out of twenty-four hours in a day, it seemed like half were spent doing physics papers, and the other half either sleeping or watching physics documentaries.
She genuinely could not fathom what it was about physics that could hold his attention so completely.
Right now he was working through a physics paper, already into the calculation questions at the back. Black pen marks were scattered all over the paper. When Jiang Yan worked on problems, he was fully concentrated — none of the languid, careless ease of his usual manner. His pauses were brief. The scratch paper beside him was practically decorative.
Sometimes he even wore a pair of gold-framed glasses — and his whole bearing radiated a bookishness he could not suppress.
Lin Tao watched him for a while, then looked at his paper.
His handwriting had improved enormously. It was no longer as messy as before. Now not only were the character shapes neat, but there was a faint sharpness to the strokes — at a glance it actually looked quite good.
Jiang Yan finished the calculation problem he was on and noticed Lin Tao’s gaze as he set down his pen. He leaned back slightly against the desk. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing.” Lin Tao asked casually, “Have you been practicing calligraphy lately?”
“Still practicing.” Jiang Yan said, then looked at her again. “The copybook you bought me last time is almost finished.”
“I’ll pick out a few more for you this weekend.” Lin Tao said, then leaned over and looked at his paper. She pointed at his handwriting. “Your characters are already looking pretty good.”
“It’s alright.”
“No, don’t be modest — they genuinely look good.” Lin Tao smiled. “At the very least, it’s much better than before. Your old writing looked like incantation symbols when you wrote apology letters.”
Jiang Yan raised an eyebrow. “Are you complimenting me or insulting me?”
“Complimenting you, of course.”
Jiang Yan didn’t argue. “Fine, if you say so.”
……
Over the next few days, Lin Tao spent basically all her time grinding through practice papers.
Come Saturday, Meng Xin made plans with Lin Tao to go shopping. The two headed to the shopping mall in the city center, swept through it thoroughly, and then settled into a dessert shop on the third floor to rest.
“I’m done. I’m completely wiped out.” Meng Xin collapsed flat onto the little sofa, still clearly full of energy despite the complaint. “I heard there’s a new nail salon that opened nearby. Should we go get our nails done after this?”
Lin Tao bit down on her straw. “I’m not going. I’ll just end up picking at them.”
“Fair enough.”
Meng Xin, who had an idea every other minute, finished her dessert at speed, then grabbed Lin Tao and headed out of the mall in the direction of the nail salon.
The salon was in a lane one street over from the mall.
The walk there took them past all manner of shops on both sides — clothes vendors, food stalls, little novelty shops, and even a fish spa.
The nail salon was at the very end of the lane. Good wine needs no bush, as they say — though the shop was tucked away, the crowd inside was still substantial. There were even people sitting on small stools queued up outside the door.
Meng Xin went to take a number and pulled Lin Tao into the back of the line.
Across from this lively lane was a quieter one. Unlike the brightness of the nail salon’s street, the shops in the lane opposite had their curtains drawn, and multi-colored light filtered out through the cracks. A girl or two stood at the entrance of one or two of the shops.
Hardly anyone walked through that lane — and those who did were almost all men.
Lin Tao nudged Meng Xin’s shoulder and lowered her voice. “What is that place over there?”
Meng Xin glanced over and answered quickly in three words: “Red-light district.”
“……”
Lin Tao quietly looked away.
A moment later, two more girls joined the queue behind Lin Tao and Meng Xin, talking at a volume that wasn’t quite quiet. “Ruirui, what’s that place over there?”
The friend’s voice was a bit quieter. “…Red-light district.”
The first girl didn’t quite understand and asked again. “Red-light district?? What is that?”
“It’s……” The answering girl lowered her voice further.
The voice dropped too low — Lin Tao couldn’t make out what she said or how she explained it, only that after she finished, the first girl’s face had gone completely red.
Lin Tao looked away again quietly.
Then a moment later she heard the girl’s startled voice again. “Oh my goodness, does even a guy this good-looking go to places like that?”
Lin Tao was puzzled. She turned and looked in the direction the girl was staring. Meng Xin turned to look too.
In the lane across the way, a tall, slender figure had paused outside one of the shops. He stood there for only a few seconds before lifting his foot and walking inside.
Meng Xin let out an awkward sort of strangled sound. “That… that wouldn’t happen to be the school tyrant’s twin brother, would it?”
Lin Tao: “……”
The two girls behind them were still murmuring in low, shocked tones. “Truly, you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
Lin Tao: “……”
Author’s note: SHOCKING! School tyrant allegedly caught being unfaithful!! Concrete evidence!!