Out on the sports ground, the music for the flag-raising ceremony had already begun. A breeze came sweeping in from all directions, carrying his voice away.

And yet Lin Tao heard every word with perfect clarity — each one distinct and unmistakable.

She looked up to the front of the formation, where the young man stood with his back straight and tall. The corners of her lips curved upward, little by little, until her heart felt like it had been submerged in a jar of honey — sweet to the point of bubbling over.

Xu Huanhuan, who had arrived late, slipped into the gap Lin Tao had left in front of her. Seeing Lin Tao’s smile-lit face, she leaned in close. “Hey! What are you thinking about? You’re grinning like that?”

Lin Tao startled as though she’d been caught off guard and took a small step back. She recovered quickly. “Nothing — I just remembered that results are coming out soon. I’m excited.”

Old Yu had mentioned at the end of morning reading that he would bring the grade sheet to math class.

Xu Huanhuan was a slacker who happened to sit among high achievers; the mere mention of results was enough to fill her with despair. “Friend,” she said, her face lifeless, “if you want us to stay friends, don’t bring up grades.”

Lin Tao laughed quietly. “It’s fine. You’ll get used to it eventually.”

“……” Xu Huanhuan gave up struggling. “Fine. I’ve been sitting between two top students — I suppose I’ll turn into a real scholar myself one of these days.”

Lin Tao pressed a hand to her shoulder with great solemnity. “You’ve got this, Little Sunflower!”

Xu Huanhuan rolled her eyes. “Get lost.”

The long, tedious flag-raising ceremony passed quickly under Xu Huanhuan’s non-stop grumbling. Not long after it ended, the bell rang for first class.

Math.

Old Yu had come to the classroom early, and once everyone had gradually settled in, he picked up the grade sheet from the desk and began slowly, “So, our class did very well this time. Eight students made the top fifty for the year group, and twenty-five made the top hundred.”

“Our scores are absolutely on par with the key-stream classes.”

Up at the front, Old Yu held forth; down at their desks, Lin Tao was whispering to Jiang Yan. “Hey, Jiang, how many do you think you ranked this time?”

Jiang Yan was fighting off drowsiness at this hour — the corners of his eyes were rubbed red, his gaze heavy and unfocused. He answered with supreme indifference: “Oh, probably just first in the year group.”

“……” Granted, the accelerated class hadn’t taken this exam, but there were still several top-stream classes above Class 18 that were no less capable. Lin Tao couldn’t quite fathom where his confidence came from. “I’d believe you if you said first in our class. But first in the year? Are you dreaming?”

She herself had abandoned that kind of impractical dreaming back in kindergarten.

Jiang Yan looked at her. The morning light came in behind him, leaving his features clearly defined; amusement chased away a trace of his drowsiness, and his voice was clear. “Are you slow, or what?”

“Whoever’s slow knows it themselves.” Lin Tao felt she was a perfectly sensible and self-aware person. I may like you, but I’m not going to blindly think you’re perfect at everything because of it.

Jiang Yan tilted his head down, resting his chin on his forearm, his eyes bright. “Then let’s make a bet?”

A bet?

That word brought the memory of her own foolish, failed wager rushing back. Determined to redeem herself this time, Lin Tao lowered her voice. “About what?”

Jiang Yan reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose, then said as his hand dropped, “Just bet on whether I’m first in the year or not.”

“Then I bet you’re definitely not.” Lin Tao thought he must be taking her for a fool — having tripped over the same stone once, would she really let it happen again?

Absolutely not.

“Fine. Same terms as before — the winner decides the prize.” Jiang Yan sat up straight, lowering his head slightly; the smile at his lips was clear to see, and the light from the window brushed the side of his face in a golden glow.

At the front, Old Yu finished his long preamble and finally began reading out the scores. “The students from our class who made the top fifty this year are: Lin Tao, Zhou Qiqi, Fang Xin… Du Wenbo, Jiang Yan.”

Old Yu read through the list, then looked up toward the first row. “Among them, our classmate Du Wenbo scored 706 points, placing second in the year group.”

Hearing this, Lin Tao felt it was practically impossible for Jiang Yan to have taken first.

But the next second, Old Yu shifted his gaze further along. “Jiang Yan edged ahead by a single point to take first place overall in this placement exam.”

Lin Tao: “……”

Old Yu led the applause, his tone overflowing with pride. “Let’s give them a round of applause, everyone.”

A wave of clapping erupted through the classroom, thunderous and enthusiastic, loud enough to make Lin Tao’s ears ring.

Lin Tao felt she had to take back what she had said earlier.

She had stepped into the same trap twice. She was the fool — not him.

Amidst the noise, she heard someone beside her give a soft laugh. She turned, and came face to face with the young man’s gaze. She let out a breath and conceded. “Alright, you win. I admit defeat.”

Falling into the same pit twice.

This was truly a landmark moment of personal embarrassment in her life.

Old Yu moved on from grades to other topics; the classroom atmosphere loosened, and no one was paying any attention to this corner of the room.

Jiang Yan turned to the side, leaning against the wall behind him. His chin tilted slightly upward, drawing a straight, clean line downward — his throat prominent, rising and falling faintly as he spoke. “You now owe me two bets. I will collect on both of them.”

There was an unusual gravity in the way he said it. Lin Tao couldn’t help looking over at him; in his eyes there wasn’t a trace of humour. Her heart gave a sharp lurch. She dropped her gaze and steadied her voice. “So what do you want?”

He didn’t answer. “I’ll tell you later.”

Later.

Lin Tao turned the word over in her mouth, and suddenly felt that “later” seemed impossibly far away for people their age.

She couldn’t help speaking up. “Later — how much later? By then, we might not even be together anymore.”

“We will be.” Jiang Yan’s eyes were soft but serious, filled with something that could not be named. “We’ll always be together.”

Warm sunlight spilled in through the window. The young man’s profile was cast in perfect clarity within the light, and in the moment of looking at him, Lin Tao found herself filled with anticipation for a future that remained uncertain and unknown.

Although it was lunch break, few people in the classroom were actually resting. Before the last class had ended, Old Yu had announced that during the break he would be meeting students one by one in the office, going through the results in order of ranking.

Although the class’s overall performance had improved, quite a few students had dropped compared to their results when they first entered the school.

Lin Tao, for example — who had come in ranked third — had slipped to eighth this time and been flagged by Old Yu as a priority case.

Honestly, Lin Tao didn’t worry much about grades. Rising or falling by any amount felt perfectly normal to her.

Old Yu, however, did not share that view. In his assessment, there was only one explanation for Lin Tao’s drop in performance: she had an early romance going on.

He hadn’t been able to figure out who the other person was, but based on the forum post he’d accidentally seen that morning, the girl appeared to still be at the stage of unrequited longing.

To nip this budding situation in the bud, Yu Bingshan had come up with a plan: call in her deskmate for a chat, and see if he could uncover any useful clues.

By the early afternoon, Old Yu’s office was empty except for him — all the other teachers had gone back to the faculty dormitory to rest. He brewed himself a cup of tea and then pulled out Lin Tao’s entrance scores alongside her exam results to compare. He became even more certain the girl had been impacted by an early romance.

Committed to his duty as a teacher, he felt it was his responsibility to steer her back onto the right path without delay.

Lost in thought, he was interrupted by the top scorer of the year group appearing in the doorway. The young man knocked on the frame with an unhurried hand and said lazily, “Mr. Yu.”

Old Yu immediately pulled himself back to attention and looked over at Jiang Yan. “Ah, come in, come in, have a seat.”

Jiang Yan, blunt as always, sat down the moment he was told to, and opened the conversation himself. “Mr. Yu, I think I’ve made quite good progress this time — didn’t miss the exam, didn’t come last. So let’s keep it quick, just say a couple of things and we’ll be done.”

“……” Old Yu hadn’t expected the boy to be quite this straightforward. He paused before responding. “Jiang Yan, the reason I asked you to come today isn’t mainly about this exam. There’s something else I wanted to ask you about.”

Jiang Yan picked up a small ornament from the desk and turned it over without looking up. “What is it? Just ask.”

“Well, it’s…” Old Yu deliberated for a long time and still couldn’t settle on how to begin. He ran his hand along the side of his tea mug. “How are things going between you and your deskmate?”

Now that was a sensitive question.

Jiang Yan’s guard went up instantly. He raised an eyebrow and deflected smoothly. “Fine. I’m not planning on changing deskmates either.”

“Don’t be hasty — I’m not talking about changing deskmates.” Old Yu released the furrow from his brow. “I just mean — lately, have you noticed anything different about her? Anything unusual compared to normal?”

“……”

He looked entirely lost, which caused Old Yu to sigh inwardly. He decided to come right out with it. “I suspect your deskmate may have an early romance going on.”

“……” Jiang Yan’s grip slipped — the object in his hand fell to the floor with a dull thud. He came back to himself quickly, bent down to pick it up, and kept his voice even. “What makes you say that?”

“Her grades dropped quite a bit this exam — I was thinking about what might be the cause. So this morning I went to the classroom, and do you know what I saw?”

Jiang Yan answered stiffly. “What?”

“Your deskmate was reading something about — how difficult her secret crush was being, or something like that. All of it related to early romance.” Old Yu was deeply troubled. “If she weren’t involved in something like that, why would she be looking at that kind of material? And her grades wouldn’t have dropped that sharply either.”

Jiang Yan gave a flat sound of acknowledgement and drummed his fingers lightly on the edge of the desk. “Or maybe she’s just gotten stupider.”

“Well, that’s not entirely —” Old Yu had almost gone along with this line of thought before he caught himself. “That’s not fair to say. The Year 2 curriculum is harder, yes, but your deskmate doesn’t seem like someone who’s falling behind. So I still think she’s been affected by an early romance.”

Jiang Yan set the ornament back on the desk and gave a light lift of his eyelids. “If my deskmate has a crush, why are you telling me? You should be talking to her directly.”

“I’m worried about upsetting her, that’s why.” Old Yu took a sip of hot tea from his mug. “You spend a lot of time with her — have you noticed her being particularly close to any boy lately?”

Jiang Yan thought for a moment and nodded. “Yes.”

Old Yu’s eyes lit up. He had known it must be something like this. He leaned forward at once. “Who is it? Which class? When I find that little rascal, I’m going to give him a thorough talking-to.”

Jiang Yan rubbed the side of his nose and smiled. “Me.”

“……” Old Yu felt this conversation had nowhere left to go. “Don’t mess around. I asked you here to help your deskmate, not to make things worse.”

Jiang Yan raised his eyes at that and looked at the man across from him, his tone perfectly offhand. “If someone wants to have an early romance, I could watch her twenty-four hours a day and still not stop her. I’d advise you not to get involved either.”

“No, I still need to think of something.” Old Yu looked deeply troubled. “You can go for now. On your way out, send Du Wenbo in.”

“Alright.” Jiang Yan stood, smoothed out his loosely-fitting school jacket, standing tall and straight. “Actually, there is a way to stop my deskmate from having an early romance with someone from another class.”

“What’s your idea?”

Jiang Yan grinned at him. “Have an early romance with me.”

“……”

“My grades are excellent, my self-discipline is strong, and I might even pull my deskmate up to Qingda with me.”

Old Yu regarded this suggestion with profound disdain. “A gentleman does not poach another’s affection. Don’t you dare do anything so morally corrupt and indecent.”

“……”

Jiang Yan swallowed the profanity that rose to his lips.

Damn.

After his conversation with Old Yu, Jiang Yan felt unsettled in a way he couldn’t quite place. He stopped by the bathroom, splashed some cold water on his face, and then returned to the classroom.

The girl was sitting at her desk chatting with someone, a smile on her face. Whatever had been said, she laughed a little louder than usual.

Jiang Yan came in without a word and returned to his seat.

Lin Tao had seen him the moment he walked through the door. Her eyes tracked his figure as he moved, and she noticed something was off about his expression. She asked quietly, “What did Old Yu say to you?”

Jiang Yan looked at her. A drop of water that had lingered on his brow slid down along the edge of it; his eyes were subdued, his tone flat. “Nothing much. He was complimenting me.”

“Are you sure it was complimenting you?” Lin Tao read his face. “You look like Old Yu tore you apart.”

Jiang Yan made a sound of acknowledgement and said with perfect indifference, “He did, actually.”

“……Seriously? You scored that well and Old Yu still came after you?” Lin Tao, who had been fairly unworried about her own drop in grades until now, started to feel a flicker of concern.

“It wasn’t all about me. You came up too.”

“?” Lin Tao stared at him with wide eyes. “Why? What right does he have to criticise me in front of you? That’s talking behind my back. Did you tell Old Yu things about me?”

“……”

I swear, damn.

Jiang Yan pressed a hand to his face, suppressed the unease coiling in his chest, and gave her a sideways look. “Why did your grades drop so much this time?”

“Ah… I just ran into questions I didn’t know how to answer.” In truth, Lin Tao actually felt her scores had improved compared to before — her physics, at least, hadn’t dragged her down as badly. “I honestly thought I did alright.”

“Alright?” Something that might have been irritation flickered in Jiang Yan’s voice from somewhere she couldn’t identify. “Look at everyone in the top fifty for the year. See if there’s a single person whose physics score is lower than yours.”

Lin Tao found that logic questionable and muttered, “Well, if my physics were higher than theirs, I wouldn’t be fiftieth, would I.”

“Fine. You make a great point. Go tell Old Yu that yourself.”

“I will be going to talk to Old Yu about it myself anyway…” Lin Tao wasn’t sure where the sudden sharp edge in his voice had come from. She thought about it, and decided to hold back the retort forming in her throat. She lowered her head and began to make amends. “Okay, fine. I know I dropped a lot this time. It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have not paid attention in class, I shouldn’t have gone to stay up at night on the internet, I shouldn’t have slacked off on my homework, I shouldn’t have been thinking about early romance —”

The words stopped cold.

Jiang Yan looked up. His eyes were disbelieving. “You’re actually having an early romance?”