Lin Tao thought this person was truly too much.

He hadn’t done anything at all — just lowered his eyes, softened his voice, and said two words so casually — yet she felt that long-dormant girlish heart of hers, silent for years, suddenly go thump-thump-thump.

Lin Tao blinked, gazing at the soft crown of the young man’s hair. After hesitating for three seconds, she slowly raised her hand and laid it there, patting gently twice.

The sensation in her palm felt almost unreal to Lin Tao. She didn’t dare linger, quickly withdrawing her hand and saying softly, “If you don’t want to celebrate your birthday, then don’t celebrate it.”

“Aren’t there still Children’s Day, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, National Day, Mother’s Day…” Lin Tao paused, then burst out laughing with her face pressed against the desk. “Mother’s Day doesn’t seem especially fitting for you, though.”

The classroom was still very noisy. Jiang Yan tilted his head, watching the little girl’s slightly awkward smile, and felt that small knot of discomfort and unhappiness in his chest smooth out, little by little.

He lowered his head, eyes and brows full of laughter. “Is this how you comfort people?”

Lin Tao was sprawled across the desk, one arm propped under her head. Hearing his words, she instinctively shot back, “No — this is actually how I comfort dogs.”

“…”

“My neighbor’s golden retriever won’t eat sometimes, and this is exactly how I coax it.” Lin Tao wasn’t lying. Every time she saw the neighbor’s golden retriever, she would go over and pat it on the head a couple of times first.

“…” Jiang Yan laughed, lowering his head and looking at the snacks spread across the desk. His lips moved, and he murmured, “I really have no idea what to do with you.”

The bell rang to dismiss school.

The long and grueling Monday had finally come to an end. Classmates swarmed out of the classroom, and in no time, half of it had emptied.

The duty students for that day walked back and forth at the front and back of the classroom, brooms and mops in hand.

Lin Tao packed up her things, but found that Jiang Yan was still sitting in his seat, unmoving. She hung her bag over one hand — it barely had anything in it — and looked at him. “Hu Hanghang and the others have already left. Why aren’t you going?”

He had fallen asleep again during evening self-study, and his voice was still a little hoarse now. “I’ll leave in a bit. How are you getting home these days?”

“By bus.” There was a bus stop right at the school gate that went directly to the entrance of her residential community.

“Oh.” Jiang Yan smiled, as though something had just come back to him. “Right — you still can’t ride a bike.”

“…Get lost.” Lin Tao couldn’t be bothered to engage with him. She picked up her bag and walked off.

Jiang Yan watched her indignant retreating figure, amusement lingering in his eyes.

Not long after, the classroom was empty.

The last duty student to remain, Wu Wang, stood at the back of the classroom. After waiting for a long time and seeing that Jiang Yan still showed no sign of leaving, he began to stammer, “Th-th-th-that…”

Jiang Yan heard the sound and turned to look at the boy. He spoke, which was rare. “Who are you looking for? There’s no one else in the classroom but me.”

Wu Wang: “…”

The boy gripped his bag straps tightly. “I’m not — I mean, we’re in the same class…”

Jiang Yan made a sound of acknowledgment, clearly with no recollection of him whatsoever. He said flatly, “What do you need?”

Wu Wang swallowed, stopping his stuttering. “The last person to leave the classroom is supposed to turn off the lights and lock the door.”

Jiang Yan said nothing.

Wu Wang felt his heart about to leap out of his chest. “It’s nothing — I don’t mind. I can wait until after you leave, and then I’ll turn off the lights and lock up myself. You can sit as long as you like… I’m not in a hurry.”

When people at Shi High School mentioned Jiang Yan, aside from the rumor that he once took on a whole class of boys from the neighboring Ninth Middle School in a one-on-one brawl and still walked away unscathed, there was also a piece of gossip that had spread over from his middle school days — one that only a small number of boys knew about.

Jiang Yan hadn’t originally been a student at Xi City Middle School. He had transferred in during the second semester of seventh grade.

Not long after he transferred, the monthly exam came around. He immediately landed at the top of the entire grade, becoming Xi City Middle School’s most talked-about top student and campus heartthrob at the time.

However, less than a month after the exam, someone suddenly posted a thread on Xi City Middle School’s online school forum, with a title that was nothing short of alarming:

[Does anyone know? Jiang Yan, who just got first place among seventh graders this month, once stabbed someone with a knife.]

The post roughly claimed that Jiang Yan had stabbed a classmate with a knife at his previous school, leaving the classmate in a vegetative state. But because Jiang Yan’s family had money and connections, the matter had been suppressed.

The incident had caused an enormous uproar at his old school, and Jiang Yan had been unable to stay there, which was why he had transferred to Xi City.

When the post first appeared, most people didn’t believe it. After all, Jiang Yan had always been warm and approachable at school, never putting on airs.

Whenever classmates had questions they didn’t understand, he would answer them with patience.

There were plenty of replies under the post:

[No evidence, no case — if you’re so bold, post some proof. Anyone can talk trash.]

[Exactly. I think the poster is just jealous that he studies well and looks good.]

[These days people just hide behind the internet to slander others. If you’re so brave, come out and say it to their face.]

…And many more of the same kind.

Before long, the poster who had gone silent returned to the thread and posted two images.

One showed Jiang Yan crouching on the ground in a motorcycle jacket, with a boy in a school uniform lying before him — a knife buried in his abdomen. And Jiang Yan’s hand was gripping the handle of that knife.

The other was a photo of Jiang Yan in a detention uniform, his head shaved to a buzz cut.

When those photos appeared, they stirred up a storm of a thousand waves.

Several users who had originally defended Jiang Yan quickly deleted their own replies.

The post’s heat refused to die down, and it finally caught the school administration’s attention. The forum moderator deleted the post the moment they saw it, and banned the accounts of several users who had made a high number of replies. School leadership pressured the teachers, forbidding any students from spreading the matter.

The situation was swiftly suppressed — but that night, many students had witnessed it.

Even if no one dared speak of it openly, it still circulated quietly in small circles, and people’s attitudes toward Jiang Yan became ambiguous.

Some believed it, some didn’t, and some remained neutral.

After all, some people hadn’t seen the post themselves and had only heard about it secondhand.

At the time, Wu Wang had been among the first wave of students to see the post. One of the early replies defending Jiang Yan had even been his. But after the poster shared the photos, he had deleted his own reply and settled into a neutral stance.

Later, as the students who had witnessed it graduated year after year, the incident gradually faded from memory.

In the year Wu Wang graduated from middle school, many students had passed the entrance exam into Shi High School, and naturally, this piece of gossip began circulating among the boys again.

But very few people knew.

And Wu Wang, as one of that tiny number of people in the know, had buried this secret deep in his gut the moment he found out he and Jiang Yan would be placed in the same class in their second year of high school.

He would never dare gossip carelessly.

After all, what if the next one to die was him?

“…” Wu Wang pulled himself back from the memory and sat down in the empty seat beside him.

Jiang Yan watched his movements, his expression still as calm as ever. “Go on home.”

“?” Wu Wang froze.

“Turning off the lights and locking the door, right?” Jiang Yan looked back down at his phone. “Got it. You go on ahead.”

“Then… goodbye?”

Jiang Yan glanced back at him. “Yeah.”

Wu Wang snatched up his bag and bolted out of the classroom. At the door, he paused to look back at the older boy.

The classroom was hollow and silent. The older boy sat alone in his seat, head bowed, his silhouette solitary, his whole being radiating an aura of loneliness.

“…”

Wu Wang quickly stopped that train of thought. The older boy wasn’t lonely — not at all. The older boy was perfectly happy every day sitting with his deskmate, living a life sweet as honey and oil.

Lonely, his foot.

They were the ones who were lonely.

Jiang Yan sat in the classroom for a while. It wasn’t until his phone received a message that he stood. Just before leaving, he suddenly remembered the large bag of snacks stuffed in his desk drawer. He thought it over, then pulled them out and took them along.

He walked out and took a few steps before Jiang Yan turned back to look at the brightly lit classroom. Then he retraced his steps, turned off the lights, and locked the door.

By the time he reached the school gate, over ten minutes had passed.

Under the Chinese parasol tree by the school entrance stood a young man in a black baseball jacket, his mask hanging from one ear, his brow and jaw sharply defined, his features clean and decisive. He was looking down at his phone.

The moment Jiang Yan stepped out of the school gate, he saw the young man talking with a few girls — seemingly being asked for his contact information. He walked over.

The girls took one look at Jiang Yan and scattered faster than rabbits.

“Damn, couldn’t you have come just a minute later?” Guan Che put away his phone — the friend request still unsent — and said, “That reputation of yours really does live up to its name.”

“Thank you for the compliment.” Jiang Yan accepted the words with perfect calm.

“You’re seriously shameless, aren’t you.” Guan Che glanced at him, his gaze dropping to what he was carrying. He leaned in curiously. “What’s that?”

Jiang Yan stepped aside to dodge him, not answering, and just said, “Let’s go.”

“Some nerve.”

The two walked side by side toward the road nearby, wound through a bustling alley, and ducked into a shop after several twists and turns.

At the entrance stood a sign.

On it were four large characters:

“Cultivate the Mind and Character”

And beside those, in two small, unassuming characters:

“Internet Café”

That was quite the peculiar name.

The moment Jiang Yan and Guan Che entered, the small young man sitting behind the counter put down his phone and smiled. “You two finally showed up. The second half of the night is all yours — I’m off shift.”

“Go, go.” Guan Che took off his jacket and stepped behind the counter.

The young man had already packed up his things, and now hoisted his bag and headed out the door.

Jiang Yan set the bag he was carrying down at his usual spot and went inside to wash his hands.

When he came back out, he saw Guan Che with a computer on, happily chomping away at a bag of potato chips — crunch, crunch, crunch.

He walked over and kicked the leg of Guan Che’s stool. “Who told you to eat my stuff?”

The kick sent Guan Che lurching, nearly toppling off the seat. “I eat a few chips and this is what I get? Given our relationship, I can’t have a few of your snacks?”

“You can’t.” Jiang Yan walked around to the empty seat beside him and sat down. He opened WeChat on his phone and held it in front of Guan Che’s face. “Pay up.”

“Oh, come on…” Guan Che looked at his completely serious expression — this was not a joke — and gave in. “Fine, I’ll transfer it. Happy now?”

He took out his phone and scanned the QR code.

The payment went through automatically, and a confirmation screen popped up with the amount charged.

“What the — Jiang Yan, are you even human?! I ate one measly bag of chips and you charged me two hundred yuan?! Are you out of your mind?!”

Jiang Yan laughed, ignoring him, and put on his headphones to listen to music.

Guan Che kept muttering on and on.

The internet café’s glass door was pushed open from outside. The automatic motion-sensing lucky cat at the entrance slowly called out, “Welcome.”

Guan Che spotted two girls and stopped mid-sentence with a smile. “Ladies, are you doing an overnight stay or just browsing?”

“Overnight.” The girl who spoke scanned the café’s interior with the practiced eye of someone experienced, and asked, “Do you have private rooms?”

Guan Che glanced at the main console nearby. “We do.”

As he spoke, he kicked Jiang Yan’s stool. “Hey, hurry up. Take these guests up to the private rooms upstairs.”

Jiang Yan removed his headphones, picked up the key card from the table, and stood. He looked at the two girls standing by the counter.

“…??”

Could someone please tell him why these two looked so much like his deskmate — and his deskmate’s best friend?

Author’s note: — From today onward, Tao Tao follows the male lead’s script 🙂

Thank you for your support — red envelopes for everyone today!