After the haunted house adventure, the seven of them were thoroughly spent, with no energy left for anything else. They headed straight out of the amusement park.

The summer air outside was heavy and thick. The group made their way back to the hotel where they had eaten lunch earlier, collected the belongings they had left in storage, then found a dessert shop nearby and stayed there until the sun had begun to set.

Lin Tao had quite a bit to carry. When they finally left the dessert shop, she called Fang Yisong. Her original plan had been to ask Fang Yisong to send a driver to pick her up, but Fang Yisong had just left the office and was passing by the area — so she offered to swing by and drop off Meng Xin, who was heading in the same direction, at the same time.

By the time Fang Yisong arrived, the boys had already gotten into their own car and gone.

The moment Lin Tao and Meng Xin got in, they both put their heads back and fell asleep.

During a red light, Fang Yisong glanced into the rearview mirror at the two girls sleeping soundly in the back seat, shook her head with a quiet smile, and reached out to turn up the air conditioning a notch — then lowered the window open by the width of one finger.

Outside, the green shade swayed. The breeze left its trace as it passed.

That evening, after dinner and birthday cake, Lin Tao and her parents drove Meng Xin home. On the way back, Lin Tao told Lin Yongcheng and Fang Yisong about the day’s events at the amusement park.

The atmosphere in the car was warm and easy.

Once home, Lin Yongcheng and Fang Yisong settled into the living room to chat. Lin Tao sat with them for a while, then felt the weight of drowsiness settle over her and excused herself to go wash up and get ready for bed.

Outside, the summer night was thick with stars. A slender crescent moon cast its cool, white glow. Cicadas sang endlessly from beyond the window, and the shadows of trees shifted like slow water.

Lin Tao finished her evening routine and sat down at her desk, taking all the letters out of her bag.

Jiang Yan had given her seventeen letters in total. The first sixteen had already been opened — only the one for age seventeen remained sealed.

During the afternoon at the hotel, Jiang Yan had told her that his gift for her was inside the letter for seventeen.

Lin Tao set the already-opened letters aside and carefully unsealed the last one.

Each of the previous sixteen letters had contained a single sheet of paper, with Jiang Yan’s words written on it for the version of her that had existed at that age.

This one held more than just a sheet of paper.

Lin Tao withdrew everything from inside the envelope and spread the contents out one by one.

The first was a property transfer document.

Jiang Yan had transferred a property registered under his name into Lin Tao’s name.

Lin Tao found the address on the agreement. It was the building where the internet café was.

She went still. For a moment her chest felt full — entirely, completely full, without a single empty space left.

When she came back to herself, Lin Tao set aside what she had been holding and reached for the letter beneath everything else. She unfolded it and found two lines written there:

Once, this was everything I had.

Now, you are everything I have.

Not long after the birthday, School No. 10 resumed the third-year supplementary classes that had been pushed back before the break, and homeroom teachers were notified to inform their graduating students to return on the twentieth of August.

The new semester arrived on summer’s heels.

After school resumed, all third-year students moved to the third-year teaching block. Class 18’s classroom was on the fourth floor.

Removed from the noise and bustle, what stretched ahead now was a line of unbroken green-shaded trees — and the approaching battle that would decide the shape of the future.

With the new semester came small shifts in Class 18’s roster.

Tao Jia — who had transferred from the humanities track to the sciences track not long into the second year — transferred back to the humanities track when the third year began.

No one knew the reason behind all of Tao Jia’s back-and-forth.

No one except Lin Tao.

A young girl’s flutter of feeling had its beginnings in something that played out like a scene from a drama — a rescue, a moment of helplessness turned to safety. But stories always remain stories, and real life has a way of being more dramatic still.

In the story, the boy saves the fragile, helpless girl, and that is where their connection begins. In reality, the thread that was meant to carry them forward had simply failed to hold.

The girl carried her quiet heartbreak away, kept her distance from the boy, and the story closed there — as a new one began elsewhere.

As for what Tao Jia had once done, Lin Tao had never dwelled on it, had never spoken of it to anyone. Everyone has a line — and as long as that line isn’t crossed, there is nothing to set in motion.

Thinking of that, Lin Tao glanced sideways at the person sitting next to her, currently bent over a test paper, and on an impulse, gave his shin a light kick.

The unexpected contact made Jiang Yan’s hand jerk, and the tip of his pen dragged a long line across the page.

He let out a soft sound and looked at Lin Tao, genuinely puzzled. “What did you kick me for?”

“Felt like it.” Lin Tao looked at him with a touch of deliberate unreasonableness in her tone. “I find you irritating.”

“……” Jiang Yan laughed quietly, shook the dust from his trouser leg, and made no further comment. “Suit yourself.”

That unchallenging response gave Lin Tao the distinct feeling of throwing a punch into cotton — her energy had nowhere to go.

She pressed her lips together and pushed a little further, deliberately picking a fight. “Are you saying you don’t like me anymore?”

“……”

“You don’t, do you? You barely even talk to me anymore.” Lin Tao finished speaking and looked down at her hands, adopting a perfectly convincing air of being on the verge of tears.

At that, Jiang Yan reached out and took hold of her face, tilting it so she had no choice but to look at him. A hint of amusement glinted in his eyes. “I just find the question too ridiculous to bother answering.”

“You’re calling me ridiculous now?”

“I’m calling the question ridiculous,” Jiang Yan clarified. “The question. Not you.”

Lin Tao gave a small sound of acknowledgment. “I understood you perfectly. You didn’t need to spell it out. Now you’ve made me sound like the ridiculous one.”

“……”

Jiang Yan decided this particular line of conversation was going nowhere useful, let go of her face, and picked up his pen to return to the test paper.

A moment of quiet.

Then Lin Tao thought of something and leaned toward him. “Did you know Tao Jia transferred out?”

“I know.” Jiang Yan’s pen kept moving. He glanced at her briefly. “Wasn’t it you who told me?”

“……”

Lin Tao, who had been preparing to find some new angle for causing a little trouble, reconsidered — and realized that yes, she was the one who had told him about Tao Jia’s transfer in the first place.

It had been right at the start of the new term. Their homeroom teacher, the one they called Old Yu, had held a class meeting — ostensibly to give everyone a sense of the gravity of the third year ahead, though Old Yu’s speaking pace had a way of making urgency feel entirely unwarranted, and leaning toward sleep felt far more natural. At the end of the meeting, Old Yu had mentioned in passing that Tao Jia had transferred out. Jiang Yan hadn’t been in the room at the time, and since Lin Tao had figured Tao Jia would have said something to him before leaving — given that she had feelings for him — she had waited for him to come back and asked, in a roundabout way.

But Jiang Yan had seemed completely unaware of any of it. When Lin Tao brought it up, he had only asked: “What does her transferring out have to do with me?”

“……” Lin Tao had been a little frustrated by that. “Do you really not know that she transferred into Class 18 because of someone? And that she transferred out because of that same someone?”

Jiang Yan had genuinely looked like he had no idea what she was talking about. “No, I don’t.”

Lin Tao had given up after that.

Now, with no fresh grievance to manufacture, she let the matter drop. “Nothing. I was just asking.”

Jiang Yan looked at her. He seemed to understand why she had brought it up at all. He flicked a finger against her forehead. “What are you always getting worked up over for no reason.”

Lin Tao yelped and clapped a hand over her forehead. “What was that for?”

Jiang Yan looked at her — brow furrowed, hand pressed to her head — and suddenly smiled. His long lashes gave a soft flutter.

He drew her hand away from her forehead. His warm fingertips pressed gently against the spot he had flicked, rubbing lightly. “Next time something like this crosses your mind, try thinking about what you actually have right now.”

“What do I have.” Lin Tao looked at him, and something occurred to her. The corner of her mouth curved. “Oh right. I have everything you own.”

About Jiang Yan transferring the alley building into her name — Lin Tao had brought it up with him afterward and offered more than once to transfer it back, but Jiang Yan refused every time, regardless of what she said.

In the end, Lin Tao had stopped pushing and simply mentioned it once to Fang Yisong.

Fang Yisong had seemed a little surprised, but hadn’t asked many questions. She only told Lin Tao that if the two of them were ever to part ways, Lin Tao would have to return it all.

Lin Tao hadn’t argued. She had only said: “Mom, do you believe me when I say that apart from death, nothing could separate us now?”

Fang Yisong had looked at her daughter — seen the certainty in her eyes — and nodded. “I believe you.”

Afterward, Lin Tao asked Fang Yisong to arrange a notarization of the property. If anything were ever to happen to her, the building would revert to Jiang Yan.

This building was everything Jiang Yan had given to Lin Tao. But it was not everything Lin Tao intended to give to Jiang Yan.

What Lin Tao wanted to give him went beyond that.

A home, for instance.

A home that belonged only to him.

Once the third year began, life for Lin Tao and Jiang Yan was much the same as before — except for morning reading, which had been moved up by half an hour, and evening self-study, which had been extended by half an hour. Apart from that, little had truly changed.

After about half a month of this, Lin Tao’s arrangement as a day student hit a small crisis.

Ordinarily, School No. 10’s evening self-study ended at ten-thirty. The third year’s extension pushed that to eleven. And morning reading, originally at six-thirty, had been moved to six — meaning students needed to be in the classroom at six o’clock.

By the time Lin Tao left after evening self-study and made it home, it was already past one in the morning — barely any time to study further, and not much more time to sleep.

The lack of sleep showed during the day. Lin Tao found herself drifting off during Chinese and English classes, and even catching herself sleeping through the first half of morning math lessons on the days those happened to fall early.

After a while, Jiang Yan noticed something was off. During one of the breaks between classes, he asked: “Are you staying up too late at home recently?”

Lin Tao lay with her head on her desk, her eyelids heavy, her voice thick with exhaustion. “I’m not staying up studying — I don’t even have enough time to sleep.”

She yawned, half complaint and half surrender. “By the time I leave school and get home, that’s twenty minutes on the road. Then washing up and getting ready — that’s midnight.”

The season had shifted to early autumn in Xicheng, and while the temperature was no longer unbearable, the air still felt close. Someone in the classroom had switched the air conditioning on, and the cool air drifted across the room.

Jiang Yan pulled his school jacket off and draped it over her. “Why not just board at the school dormitory?”

“I don’t want to.” Lin Tao shook her head. “I don’t sleep well. Dorm life isn’t for me — I can’t handle noise, and I really don’t want to deal with all the social dynamics.”

“Then maybe consider renting a place nearby.”

“Oh.” Lin Tao blinked, thinking it over. “That might actually work. I’ll mention it to my mom when I get home and ask her to look into something in the area.”

“Right.” Jiang Yan tucked the collar of the jacket more neatly around her. “Get some rest. Physics is next.”

“……”

The search for a rental quickly moved up on Lin Tao’s to-do list. She brought it up with Fang Yisong over the weekend, and Fang Yisong immediately arranged for someone to start looking for a suitable unit near School No. 10.

The problem was that most of the area surrounding the school was packed with other school zones. Aside from the old alley neighborhoods, the better-quality residential buildings weren’t especially close to the school campus — and Fang Yisong, who was not entirely at ease with the idea of Lin Tao living alone, had particularly high requirements for safety and security in whatever building they chose.

So what with one consideration and another, by the time the National Holiday break arrived, no truly suitable option had materialized.

Third-year students got very few holidays. The original seven-day National Holiday had been trimmed to three days, with the rest of the time dedicated to supplementary classes. And the three days weren’t even consecutive — the first and second were given off first, with the final day saved for the seventh.

On the evening of the sixth, after the last class of the day and with no evening self-study that night, Lin Tao followed Jiang Yan and went along with Hu Hanghang and the others to the internet café. Before long, Meng Xin showed up too.

Later still, Guan Che arrived from his school next door, backpack in hand.

All seven of them together, with nothing on the agenda but eating, drinking, and making noise.

It was dinnertime, so they headed to a newly opened hotpot restaurant in the alley nearby.

They arrived early enough to find seats in the main hall. Once the order was in, Lin Tao looked at Guan Che’s school uniform from School No. 9 and asked on a whim: “Hey, Guan Che — how come you and Jiang Yan didn’t end up at the same school?”

After knowing each other this long, Lin Tao was aware that Guan Che had taken two years off from school due to health reasons and had ended up becoming classmates with Jiang Yan when he returned — who had transferred back around the same time.

“One mountain can’t hold two tigers,” Guan Che said, lifting his teacup for a sip. “Given the choice between sharing the top spot at School No. 10 and standing unchallenged at School No. 9, I prefer the latter.”

“……”

Meng Xin, who had been sipping tea beside him, lost her composure at that and choked.

Jiang Yan leaned back against his chair with the easy indolence he always wore. His hand rested along the edge of the table, and the coin bracelet on his wrist caught the light, a point of brightness that didn’t move.

He leaned forward, pressed a fingertip to the lazy Susan, and turned the teapot toward himself. His voice was perfectly earnest: “Don’t listen to him. He simply didn’t have the scores to get into School No. 10.”

“……” Guan Che smiled pleasantly. “And didn’t you simply not have the scores to get into School No. 9?”

Jiang Yan let out a quiet sound of disdain, picked up his teacup and brought it to his lips. The steam drifted up around him, softening the lines of his face. “Who scored below the mark for which school — I think we both know the answer.”

Sensing that the two of them were about to escalate into their usual bickering — which inevitably ended in a near-brawl — Lin Tao intervened before it could go any further. “Alright, that’s enough. Let’s eat.”

Jiang Yan and Guan Che exchanged a look, then both turned away at exactly the same moment — but not before each managed one final jab.

Jiang Yan: “Hm. Garbage.”

Guan Che: “Hm. Disgrace.”

Everyone: “……”

Fortunately, the server arrived with the dishes at exactly the right moment, or Lin Tao genuinely suspected the two of them might have actually come to blows.

Once they had eaten their fill, Song Yuan needed to get home, so he settled his share of the bill and left. The remaining six sat in the restaurant for a while longer before heading back to the internet café.

At the café, Meng Xin was immediately pulled into a game session by Hu Hanghang and the others.

Guan Che stayed downstairs, chatting with Xiao Liu and Xiao Qi.

Lin Tao followed Jiang Yan up to his room.

“Have you found a place to stay yet?” Jiang Yan peeled the wrapper off a carton of yogurt, pushed a straw into it, and handed it to Lin Tao.

Lin Tao took it and had a sip, a faint, gentle smell of milk spreading across her lips. “Not yet. My mom says the buildings that are close enough to the school have poor environments and bad management, but the nicer ones are too far away. She’s still trying to figure something out.”

“I see.” Jiang Yan sat down beside her and switched on the television.

Outside the window, the night was clear with stars. The wind came in through the window they had left open — moist and lightly cool, so different from the thick, suffocating heat of summer.

A quiet moment passed.

Jiang Yan turned his head and looked at Lin Tao. “What if—”

“Hm?” Lin Tao looked away from the television. “What if what?”

Jiang Yan reached over and wiped a small smudge of yogurt from the corner of her lip, then said in a mild, unhurried voice: “What if you moved in here and stayed with me?”