◎Early Spring◎

Once Tong Yue left, the house instantly transformed from a forest of a hundred birds to Silent Hill. Chun Zao returned to her seat, no longer able to remain calm. The boy beside her had such a strong presence, like a white tower pressing overhead, that she didn’t dare write too quickly, and the scratching sound of his graphite pencil tip didn’t seem to be writing on paper, but scraping across her scalp.

Initially, with Tong Yue present, Yuan Ye could only find a middle position to squeeze in, but now that Tong Yue was gone and the table had considerable space freed up, he hadn’t moved even a centimeter to increase the distance between them.

Chun Zao noticed this, the corners of her mouth slightly lifting. To resist the urge to smile, she bit her pen tip twice for relief, stubbornly not daring to look at him even once more.

She also didn’t make conversation, afraid of disturbing his problem-solving thoughts.

When writing the last major problem, Yuan Ye glanced sideways at Chun Zao. The girl had already stopped writing and was reading a thick composition materials book, completely absorbed.

But two minutes passed, and she still hadn’t turned the page.

He curved his lips almost imperceptibly, deliberately wrote a letter crookedly, and asked her: “Do you have correction tape?”

The girl’s hand turning pages stopped, her eyes peeking out from behind the book: “Would regular tape work?”

Although both were things explicitly forbidden by teachers, compared to correction tape that looked like white vitiligo, she still preferred using this traditional error-correction product.

Yuan Ye replied: “That works too.”

Chun Zao put down her book, took out a roll of thin transparent tape from her pencil case, and pushed it toward him.

Noticing that he seemed to have only brought one pen with him, she couldn’t help but marvel at the boys’ simple and crude approach, then said: “I don’t need it right now, you use it first. Give it back to me when you’re done.”

Yuan Ye acknowledged with “okay,” took it over, and tore it open with a ripping sound.

After using it to stick something, he never put down that roll of tape, but held it suspended between his left fingers. His slender, distinctly boned fingers casually fiddled with it, as if playing with an oversized ring.

Chun Zao stole glances, feeling somewhat distracted.

Tong Yue’s concise romantic sweet moments replayed in her mind again.

What would it feel like to hold such a hand, or be held by such a hand?

…

Ugh, her brain was starting to steam again.

When Yuan Ye removed that test paper filled with formulas, Chun Zao’s phone buzzed and vibrated on the table surface.

The girl panicked and hurriedly turned away to answer the call.

Only now could he lift his face unabashedly to look at her. Multitasking wasn’t difficult; what was difficult was getting stuck on a certain proof step, even though he already had the final calculation in mind.

He returned the roll of tape to her when Chun Zao turned back.

Chun Zao’s mind was still focused on the call, so she casually took it and stuffed it back in her pencil case.

She put her phone on speaker and stood up to look for something on the table.

Yuan Ye asked: “What’s wrong?”

Chun Zao replied: “Tong Yue says she can’t find her English homework and asked if she left it at my place.”

“Sure enough—” She pulled out an “outsider” from her stack of handouts and held up her phone: “It’s here with me.”

Tong Yue sighed with relief on the other end: “That’s good. If I lost it, I’d be dead. Gao Zhifei is on duty tonight.”

—Gao Zhifei was precisely Chun Zao’s immediate superior, Class Three’s English teacher.

“But I haven’t written the essay yet.” Tong Yue launched another crying-voice attack.

Chun Zao sat back down, flipping Tong Yue’s English handout to the last page: “It’s fine, I’ll write it for you. Your handwriting is quite easy to imitate.”

Tong Yue expressed various gratitude and cute sounds. Chun Zao hung up the phone with a half-smile, half-disgusted expression.

When she looked up again, the boy beside her was propping his chin with one hand, looking over with a smile.

Chun Zao met his gaze, looked away, then turned back. His gaze still lingered there, meaningful.

She felt unsettled under his stare: “Is there something wrong?”

The boy parted his lips: “You’re quite skilled at this, aren’t you?”

Chun Zao was puzzled: “At what?”

Yuan Ye said, “Helping others with homework.”

“Not really!” Chun Zao denied outright: “Her paper was left here first, and tonight we have an English evening study session, but she went back. What else could I do besides this?”

Yuan Ye looked skeptical: “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Then what about last winter break?”

Last winter break?

Chun Zao froze, her pupils gradually dilating. She suddenly realized something, looking at Yuan Ye in shock. No way—impossible. She desperately tried to suppress her heart that was about to leap from her body, but her burning ear tips were enough to betray her. She stubbornly played dumb in her last-ditch resistance: “Last winter break? What about it?”

Yuan Ye wasn’t in a hurry to expose her, continuing their word game: “Let me give you another hint? Shengxin Internet Cafe near Chengkang Gate.”

“Hm? Where?” Chun Zao tilted her head, beginning her clumsy acting.

The boy was amused into more laughter by her “kitten head tilt”: “I remember when I first moved here, I ran into you one evening.”

“We talked about the internet cafe near Chengkang Gate, and you said you’d never been there.”

“But why did I see you there during last winter break…”

—To be precise, that wasn’t the first time Yuan Ye had seen Chun Zao. Even earlier, on the honor roll, he had already had a vague impression of her.

Being good at remembering faces was one of his behavioral habits, allowing him to reasonably avoid “social accidents” and maintain some interpersonal relationships that didn’t require emotional investment but were superficially necessary.

Not to mention these faces that frequently appeared on the same bright red surface.

As someone who had been getting first place and competition awards since childhood until his hands went soft, Yuan Ye had long lost interest in all ceremonial commendations, so he rarely stopped for them. That day, he was still pulled to a stop in front of the ranking board by his first-year roommate, who cared about his ranking. Yuan Ye glanced along with him, his gaze casually sliding down and stopping at a girl’s name. It was the first time in his life he’d seen the surname “Chun,” with the single given name “Zao”—very unique, full of vitality, inexplicably making one think of early spring solar terms, tender green stretching grass, or the blue-white vast sky.

He looked at her photo. Among the boys and girls on the board, few didn’t wear glasses; this girl was one of them. Her features were observable at a glance, her expression somewhat indifferent but direct, as if able to penetrate the display case glass. Her bangs were scattered messily across her forehead, and her slightly pressed lips showed almost no trace of a smile.

On the contrary, somewhat… stubborn? Sharp? Closed for business?

Anyway, she didn’t look easy to get along with. At the time, he didn’t pay much attention, just casually urged his friend: “Did you find it? Is it that hard?”

“You think everyone is as easy to find as you?” The other almost punched him.

Later came the Spring Festival.

After his mother passed away, such family reunion days were only torture for him. The house without his mother’s presence was like a desolate ruin. After Yuan Yi remarried, the home gained some vitality belonging to a woman and child, but Yuan Ye only felt it becoming more withered and desolate. So every year after New Year’s Eve, he would isolate himself in internet cafes, playing games in a world without day or night.

Regular internet cafes didn’t welcome minors, but there wasn’t anywhere completely to go.

After all, over the years, he had thoroughly explored those bell towers or swamps that could shelter this adolescent monster.

That day was the third day of the New Year. Yuan Ye stored his backpack at the city library and went alone to the internet cafe in Chengkang Gate’s small commodity market. This was a treasure place privately dubbed “Minor’s Paradise” by Yishi students, where many students had bought cigarettes and used the internet.

During winter break, the internet cafe’s private rooms were fully occupied. Yuan Ye could only settle for the second-floor hall. After logging in, he played two intense rounds of CS: GO, but the room’s thick, murky smoke made him dizzy and his eyes sting, so he took off his headphones and went to the window for fresh air.

The second-floor window was open, facing a narrow alley.

The connected storefronts were built underground with no light penetration and limited specifications, so even being on the second floor felt low and oppressive.

As for the scene in the alley, it was naturally all visible.

Unexpectedly, there were still people smoking outside.

A man and woman, probably a couple, wearing matching black down jackets. The boy was moodily holding a cigarette; the girl wore a short skirt with yellow hair highlighted with a streak of crimson.

She was on the phone, her voice crisp: “Have you arrived?”

“Oh, okay, I’ll wait for you by the trash can next to Shengxin Internet Cafe.”

After hanging up, she looked at her boyfriend: “She said she’ll be here soon.”

The boy nodded, exhaled a smoke ring, and that thick smoke smell wafted up with the airflow, inescapable.

Yuan Ye frowned and decided to return to his seat.

The next second, a girl’s delighted shout came from outside the window: “Chun Zao—over here—”

Memory was unlocked by this distinctive and seemingly familiar name. Something was about to break through the soil. Yuan Ye turned back to look down at the alley below, where another girl had appeared, running quickly toward them.

Her temperament was completely different from the other two, more like the peers he would encounter at school.

The girl’s backpack bounced lightly behind her. She wore a white cotton coat with just a ponytail, a sapphire blue knitted scarf wound around several times and tied, wrapping her pale face into a small bundle.

Just as she raised her head alertly like a mole, looking around cautiously for a few seconds, Yuan Ye’s arm also rested on the windowsill with interest.

Through this, he confirmed her appearance—it was exactly the same-grade girl named “Chun Zao” he had seen on the final exam ranking board.

The weather was very cold. She spoke quickly, thin white mist constantly spilling from her lips: “Sorry, sorry, I’m late.”

“It’s fine.” The yellow-haired girl smiled at her: “We haven’t been waiting long either.”

The girl panted while taking off her backpack, efficiently pulling out a stack of thick handouts: “Check these.”

The yellow-haired girl symbolically flipped through a few pages without careful inspection, just saying: “Do we even need to check what you wrote?”

The girl smiled somewhat shyly, taking credit: “Your boyfriend’s is below, too. I changed to a different handwriting style. Even if your teacher had ten pairs of eyes, they wouldn’t be able to tell.”

The couple looked down to find it and exclaimed: “Really! Chun Zao, you’re so thoughtful.”

Their praise made the girl somewhat proudly brush her bangs.

The yellow-haired girl pushed her boyfriend’s arm: “What are you standing there for? Give her the money.”

“Oh,” the boy finally reacted, taking out a folded red envelope from his pocket: “Here.”

“Count it.”

The girl opened the red envelope and glanced inside: “This seems like more than five hundred?”

“I gave you three hundred extra,” the yellow-haired girl said, stopping her from counting out the excess bills: “Don’t you dare give it back to me and Xiao Lin. You helped us out.”

“Not really, it’s not like I didn’t charge you.”

“But you also put in a lot of labor. It’s New Year, and we’re all old classmates. Don’t be so polite with us.”

The girl was silent for a few seconds, then when she spoke again, she seemed about to cry with gratitude: “You’re all too good to me.”

“Alright—” The yellow-haired girl pinched her cheek nonchalantly: “If you want to thank someone, thank the New Year money.”

She also warmly invited: “Zao, come eat dinner with us later.”

The girl politely declined: “No, I need to go home. My mom is visiting relatives today. If she comes back and finds me not home, she’ll ask all sorts of questions.”

“Alright then,” the yellow-haired girl said regretfully, then asked: “When we’re seniors, will you still help us with assignments?”

The girl hesitated: “Probably not…”

“No way! What will Xiao Lin and I do?”

The girl looked at them both seriously: “Then you’ll be a pair of suffering lovebirds.”

The two burst into laughter.

Yuan Ye, behind the window, chuckled softly.

She looked nothing like someone who would make such jokes, so it was very interesting, with a kind of comical and… cute contrast.

The three chatted a bit more in the alley before the girl called Chun Zao said goodbye and left.

She had come hurriedly, but when leaving, her steps were noticeably lighter, like a lamb that had eaten its fill of tender green leaves and was about to bleat.

Watching her figure disappear around the alley corner, Yuan Ye straightened up from the window and returned to his computer.

After winter break ended, school started, classes were divided, levels determined, and training began—the process rolled on like wheels, station after station, with almost no rest stops. Due to their close classroom proximity, Yuan Ye occasionally saw her around campus. The girl had steady friends, but most of the time, it was her friends chattering nonstop while she listened quietly and unobtrusively, her habitual lip-pressing expression exactly like that two-inch photo he’d seen. The midterm exam for the second semester of the first year was in May, when the late spring air was saturated with the clear fragrance of camphor trees, and the pride of heaven in the display cases was updated. Yuan Ye unusually stopped in front of the board, still in the liberal arts section that had nothing to do with him.

He found that face before stepping away.

This time, he remembered her ranking: fifth place.

Author’s Note: This is Chun Zao’s “donkey ears.” There was foreshadowing in Chapter 4, the male lead had tested her