An uncertain guess gradually formed in her heart. Xu Sui gripped her phone and ran downstairs without even putting on her coat. The small inn’s stairs were wooden, creaking with each step.

Their call was still connected. The sound of wind whooshed on Zhou Jingze’s end. He took the cigarette from his mouth and chuckled softly, his voice low:

“Why are you running? I’m right here.”

Pushing open that door, Xu Sui gasped for breath and immediately spotted the man standing not far away. He wore a black coat, his shoulders darkened by rainwater. Standing under a red billboard, his profile showed sharp, defined lines as he lazily held a cigarette between his teeth, smiling at her.

Often not thinking of you, but upon seeing you, every moment of eye contact makes the heart flutter.

At this moment, someone who should be in another city suddenly appearing before you—saying it wasn’t a surprise would be a lie.

Xu Sui jogged up to the man, grabbing his sleeve and asking: “When did you arrive?”

Zhou Jingze extinguished his cigarette, reached up to pinch her face, his throat rumbling with playful tones: “When a certain little girl was unhappy.”

He had seen Han Mei’s social media post complaining about the emergency landing, learning they were still stranded at the airport. Zhou Jingze messaged Xu Sui for confirmation, but her replies were very brief.

Zhou Jingze guessed his girl was unhappy.

So he came rushing over.

After Han Mei sent him the address, Zhou Jingze bought the nearest high-speed train ticket to Ning City.

After Zhou Jingze found her, he took Xu Sui’s hand and booked them a new hotel. During Xu Sui’s three-day business trip to Shanghai, Zhou Jingze dropped everything to accompany her for those three days.

After returning to Beijing North City, Xu Sui could finally catch her breath. She took a personal day off and slept until late morning at home. She still didn’t let Zhou Jingze stay overnight because during those three days in Shanghai, Xu Sui didn’t dare recall what happened.

By the floor-to-ceiling windows, in front of mirrors, on the desk—he had tried every place he could think of. Xu Sui was thoroughly exhausted, and she decided that after returning home, she absolutely couldn’t let this man enter her house.

At 10:30 AM, Xu Sui woke up from bed, did simple washing up, and planned to order takeout, then organize her seminar report at home and collect some case materials.

Just as Xu Sui was about to pick up her phone, Zhou Jingze sent a message, brief and direct, too lazy to waste even one extra word:

【Door. Your feeder has arrived.】

Xu Sui put down her phone, didn’t even have time to put on slippers, and walked barefoot to open the door. Zhou Jingze appeared in the doorway, his middle finger hooked around a breakfast bag, his left hand holding hot coffee.

“I was about to order takeout.” Xu Sui accepted it, dimples appearing on her cheeks.

Zhou Jingze glanced down at her bare feet. After changing his shoes, he directly swept her up in a horizontal carry, striding toward the sofa and setting her down.

“Next time you go barefoot, I’ll break your legs,” Zhou Jingze half-squatted in front of her, putting on her shoes, his palm gripping her foot as he looked up at her. “Perfect—you won’t be able to run when I’m fucking you.”

“Don’t even think about it.” Xu Sui glared at him, though her cheeks burned.

After Xu Sui finished breakfast, she curled up in her study to work. Zhou Jingze threw the items from the dining table into the trash, took a can of soda from the refrigerator, and was about to pull the tab when:

“Zhou Jingze, come in and help me get a book.” Xu Sui’s voice drifted faintly from the study.

Zhou Jingze held the cola can in his right hand, leisurely walking to the study doorway. Looking up, he saw Xu Sui struggling on tiptoes to reach books on the top shelf.

Because her arms were raised, the beige fitted sweater she wore rode up, revealing a section of slender waist, pale and luminous. Going higher, her ribs were prominent, exposing a large area of tattoo.

Heliotrope&ZJZ

No matter how many times Zhou Jingze saw this string of English, his heart still trembled.

“Aren’t you coming over?” Xu Sui turned to look at him, furrowing her delicate brows.

Zhou Jingze walked over, leaning close, wrapping one arm around her waist. His palm pressed against her ribs, feeling cool, his rough thumb stroking the tattoo slowly and deliberately. Warm breath brushed her neck—daytime lewdness.

Xu Sui unconsciously arched her back, her heart contracting as she tried to dodge backward. Seeing this, Zhou Jingze smoothly lifted her down, his dark eyes carrying playful pressure, his voice low and light:

“If you’d just call me husband, this book would already be down.”

Zhou Jingze raised his hand, easily reaching the medical book Xu Sui mentioned, but as he turned, carelessly, his elbow knocked into a book beside it.

“Thud!” A thick poetry collection fell to the floor nearby. At 1 PM, sunlight was perfect, large gusts of wind surged in, making the pages rustle loudly.

A Chinese test paper fell out, along with a ID photo, fluttering down to the ground.

This time Xu Sui wasn’t as lucky as that time in the university medical office. The blue-background ID photo landed face-up, once again exposing her youthful secret completely.

Xu Sui’s eyes tightened as she was about to step forward.

The man had longer legs. With one stride, he stepped forward to pick up the test paper and photo. Winter sunlight streamed through the blinds, falling on the photograph.

The boy in the photo had extremely short hair, single eyelids, prominent brow bones, a straight nose and thin lips. Looking at the camera, his slightly elongated eyes showed a hint of impatience.

His temperament was cold and sharp yet tinged with rebelliousness.

The person in it was Zhou Jingze.

Zhou Jingze squinted at the photo but couldn’t remember when he had taken it, asking:

“Where did this come from?”

“High school, the top 100 rankings board.” Xu Sui replied softly.

Looking at the spirited teenager in the photo, Xu Sui could never have imagined that she had kept this photo for ten years.

When studying at Tianzhong High School, after Xu Sui secretly began liking him, she started following that figure with her gaze. In the first half of sophomore year, there was a slight seating adjustment in class.

Zhou Jingze moved his desk directly into her group. When Xu Sui heard the sound of desks moving behind her and glimpsed the black backpack hanging on the desk corner, her heart beat rapidly.

She finally didn’t have to constantly look forward to biweekly group changes, thinking this way she could be a little closer to him.

Xu Sui was the group leader, responsible for collecting homework. Her daily task after morning reading was to count whose homework was missing and then chase them for it.

Several times, Xu Sui counted homework books, hoping Zhou Jingze’s name would be on the missing list, so she’d have an excuse to ask for his homework, getting closer to him.

Even if just to say one sentence.

But excellent student Zhou Jingze basically never missed homework assignments. There was just that type of person who, even if they skipped evening self-study the night before to play games or go play basketball, would still turn in homework on time, perpetually occupying the first place in their grade.

The one time the young master got lazy.

That morning, the boys in the back rows wailed miserably. From their chaotic conversation, Xu Sui learned that a group of them had stayed up all night at a bar watching World Cup matches and betting on games.

The losers looked pained, saying they wanted to jump into the school’s artificial lake.

“Zhou-ye, Old Zhang says he’s going to jump in the lake. As someone who won so much he doesn’t even have underwear to wear, won’t you comfort him?”

Zhou Jingze leaned against his chair back, looking lazy, spinning the pen in his hand absent-mindedly, his tone drawling:

“Go ahead and jump. I’ll be responsible for fishing you out.”

Old Zhang cried louder, accusing: “You evil capitalist.”

Zhou Jingze arrogantly raised his brow bone in response, then lazily sprawled on his desk to catch up on sleep.

Xu Sui held a stack of homework, walking through the rowdy corridor. As she approached the last row, her heart pounded like drums. She clutched the homework tightly, her elbow pressing the papers out of shape, her voice trembling:

“You didn’t turn in your biology homework.”

Her voice was small, but he still heard it. His eyelid moved, and he struggled to lift his head from his arm, his voice hoarse:

“Tsk, forgot to do it.”

“Let me copy yours.”

Xu Sui was stunned for a second before realizing he was asking to borrow her homework, her eyelashes lifting:

“Ah, okay.”

Xu Sui fumbled through 12 workbooks to find her own, so flustered that one book fell to the ground. He stood up, a hand with distinct bone structure reached over, his shadow falling on her side.

He pulled away the workbook. A faint tobacco scent approached, then the shadow moved away.

Xu Sui didn’t dare look at him, her gaze falling on the boy’s slender neck as he bent his head writing. She noticed his prominent vertebrae and lean yet broad shoulders.

Zhou Jingze copied quickly. Finally, pinching a corner of her workbook to return it, he looked at her with a half-smile, a low breath rolling from his throat:

“Didn’t expect that for a girl, your handwriting is quite messy. Made it pretty hard for me to copy.”

“Boom!” The temperature on Xu Sui’s face rose sharply. She hurriedly snatched back her workbook and rushed to hand in the homework to the class representative amid a series of urgent bell rings.

She did tend to write in cursive. Even teachers had mentioned that such handwriting would lose points for presentation. Xu Sui had never taken it to heart. When returning to her seat, she secretly thought she must practice calligraphy well this time, striving to earn his approval.

Even just a casual “your handwriting seems to have improved.”

That would count as approval too.

But later, when Xu Sui had improved her handwriting and even teachers began praising her, Zhou Jingze never missed homework assignments again.

Until once, when the Chinese teacher had everyone exchange papers to grade pop quizzes, whether by heaven’s mercy or not, her paper ended up in Zhou Jingze’s hands.

After class, the papers were passed back to Xu Sui. When she saw the handwriting on it, she felt like she was dreaming, unable to believe it. Zhou Jingze had left a comment, his writing sharp and cold:

Your handwriting looks good now.

Below the score was the grader’s signature: Zhou. Next to it was a red punctuation mark that had bled slightly. Xu Sui felt like she was that little dot—small but yearning for the sun.

Like a candy God had rewarded her with.

Xu Sui carefully treasured this candy.

The test paper was eventually folded and tucked into her diary.

People are like this—unconsciously greedy. Once they taste sweetness, they want more.

Tianzhong’s exam seating system was arranged by ranking, and the top 100 rankings were updated immediately on the school bulletin board.

Not long after transferring, Xu Sui couldn’t quite keep up with the curriculum, and her grades weren’t stable. But to get closer to Zhou Jingze, she buried herself deeper into studying, always being the last to leave evening self-study and getting up before dawn to memorize texts.

She was never someone with much natural talent. Xu Sui knew that only through effort could she go a little further.

During daily afternoon exercise runs, the evening sun draped over them, baking their skin dry with a layer of sweat on their foreheads. Xu Sui ran while struggling to memorize vocabulary words. When she got to “one-sided love,” she paused, then smiled self-deprecatingly.

She wondered if “hard work pays off” really worked.

It turned out that sometimes hard work does pay off. During final exams, Xu Sui improved by over 80 places, jumping to second place in the entire grade. When school posted the rankings and classmates told her the news, Xu Sui was a bit dazed.

Boys in the back rows went to bother Zhou Jingze, who was still sleeping, shaking his shoulder: “Buddy, you’re first place again.”

“What else?” Zhou Jingze still didn’t lift his head, his voice hoarse.

“Awesome,” his companion gave him a thumbs up, saying, “But the study machine behind you got pushed down. Second place changed this time.”

“Oh, who?” The boy’s tone was casual and perfunctory.

Xu Sui’s hand holding her pen paused. She tried to focus on calculations, but the formulas in front of her wouldn’t fit together.

“Xu Sui, that really quiet girl in class,” his companion said.

Xu Sui faced away from them, her heart tightening as she held her breath listening. She wanted to know Zhou Jingze’s evaluation, wanted to know if he remembered her.

The boy’s face lifted from his arm. He rubbed his tired face with his knuckles, seeming to smile, his voice raspy:

“Pretty good.”

These two words exploded fireworks in Xu Sui’s ears. Her mood became somewhat excited, so much that she was distracted during classes all day. After evening self-study ended, people gradually left the classroom.

Xu Sui walked out of class, walking along the campus corridor surrounded by emptiness, only senior students pushing bicycles and walking together shoulder to shoulder, discussing exam answers.

Xu Sui stood in front of the bulletin board, quietly looking at the first place name—Zhou Jingze, right next to second place—Xu Sui. For some reason, a twisted sense of intimacy arose in her heart.

The moonlight was bright. She looked up at the teenager in the photo on the bulletin board. Xu Sui glanced around—no one was there. Possessed by some impulse, she hurriedly tore down the photo and fled in panic.

So the test paper, along with the photo, had been preserved by her until now.

Zhou Jingze suddenly remembered the basketball game in sophomore year when Xu Sui fainted and he took her to the medical office. A photo had fallen out. Zhou Jingze picked it up without looking and, seeing her anxious expression, just wanted to tease her.

“Someone very important?” Zhou Jingze looked at her with a half-smile.

Xu Sui nodded, her long eyelashes trembling: “Yes, very important.”

Now it seemed that very important person was him.

There was another important reason why Xu Sui had torn off the photo—because Zhou Jingze’s name was written under his photo, with her name right next to it.

Now Zhou Jingze knew everything. She seemed to like him too much, with nowhere to hide.

All these years, he seemed to be the only one who could make her heart flutter.

“The lake grass grows deep and long; my heart has nowhere to hide.”

Zhou Jingze reached up to pinch her nose, looking at her: “Silly girl.”

Years later, Zhou Jingze stood before Xu Sui holding that photo and test paper. He took the pen from her hand and carefully added two characters between Zhou Jingze and Xu Sui.

He showed the photo to Xu Sui. She looked up, her heartbeat uncontrollably accelerating. Zhou Jingze lifted her chin, looking at her, speaking each word clearly and solemnly:

“Understand? You weren’t having unrequited love.”

Under the faded blue background photo, the two names side by side were somewhat blurred. Zhou Jingze had added the characters “belongs to” between them, reading together:

Zhou Jingze belongs to Xu Sui.

I am yours, always have been.