Shi Niannian didn’t hear clearly and asked, “What?”

Jiang Wang swallowed and straightened up, clenching his fist.

The young man’s body temperature and scent still lingered around, difficult to ignore. Shi Niannian also sat up properly, tugging at her pant legs to cover her ankles.

“Weren’t you preparing a speech?” When Jiang Wang spoke, his voice was still hoarse. He turned his head and coughed, “Practice here, there’s no one around.”

“Here?” Shi Niannian was taken aback.

“Mm, I’ll practice with you.”

Shi Niannian took the speech from her pocket, looked up at Jiang Wang once, then back at the speech, and took a deep breath: “Respected… leaders and… and tea-teachers.”

She didn’t continue. She frowned, silently repeating the first sentence twice in her mouth, and tried again: “Respected…”

After about three attempts, she was still stumbling, unable to speak smoothly.

She slumped dejectedly on the cushion, arms wrapped around her legs: “It’s still not working.”

“Try once more?” Jiang Wang coaxed her.

Shi Niannian looked at him: “Why don’t you… Go instead?”

“I’m not the top student.”

Jiang Wang moved a bit closer to her side, took the speech from her hand, scanned it, and read fluently but slowly: “Respected leaders, teachers, dear classmates.”

“Respected leaders,” Shi Niannian struggled to say each word individually, “Teachers… dear classmates.”

“That’s pretty good.” Jiang Wang ruffled her hair and continued reading the next line, “I am Shi Niannian from Class 3, Grade 2.”

The young man’s voice in the empty and cluttered room was as clear as an electrified sound wave, threading through the eardrum into the brain.

It seemed intimate and cozy on this quiet night.

His warm breath fell on her ear, and Shi Niannian felt her earlobe beginning to tingle.

She took a deep breath: “I am from Grade… Grade 2… Class 3…”

She didn’t finish. Jiang Wang was too close, one hand loosely coming around from her other shoulder, his chin resting on her shoulder blade, leaning extremely close as they looked at the same speech.

Her heart was pounding like a drum.

As if she had heart disease.

And she was having trouble breathing.

It was uncomfortable.

Jiang Wang didn’t notice her discomfort and only said: “It’s okay, let’s try again, take it slow, say each word one by one.”

Shi Niannian slowly said it again, and this time it was quite smooth.

“I am honored to stand here as a student representative to speak.”

“I am honored to… stand here as a student representative, to speak, speak.”

“Stand here to speak.”

“…stand here to speak.”

The two sat side by side, with Jiang Wang saying a sentence and Shi Niannian repeating it. Time passed quite quickly.

By the time the bell rang for the end of the first evening self-study period, they had just finished practicing the first paragraph.

Jiang Wang: “Try saying the entire first paragraph at once.”

“Okay.” Shi Niannian nodded, and when she began, she was even a bit nervous, “Respected leaders and teachers, dear… classmates…”

It was incomparably better than when she had been silently practicing in the classroom at the beginning. There were still some stumbles, but she could quickly adjust, and it didn’t seem abrupt.

As Shi Niannian continued reading, she gradually began to smile.

“This year, our school has in various aspects…”

Midway through her sentence, Shi Niannian suddenly stopped and turned her head toward the door.

Jiang Wang, after all, had hearing loss, and even with a hearing aid, his auditory sensitivity was not as good as Shi Niannian’s. He asked, “What’s wrong?”

Before Shi Niannian could answer, he also heard the voice outside the door: “Why is there a light on in this abandoned storage room?”

Immediately after, the iron door outside was heavily knocked twice: “Is anyone there!?”

Shi Niannian was so scared that she immediately stood up: “What do we do?”

“Shh.” Jiang Wang covered her mouth, “Don’t speak.”

Jiang Wang pulled her to a cabinet on one side and crouched down.

The sound of unlocking could already be heard outside the door.

Jiang Wang didn’t care whether they were discovered or not, but if he and Shi Niannian, a boy and a girl, were caught like this, when the news spread, who knew what kind of rumors would circulate among their peers amid adolescence.

The light bulb still hung from the ceiling, suspended by a wire, swaying slightly.

Jiang Wang embraced Shi Niannian entirely from behind, one hand still covering her lips, like holding a curled-up kitten. He could feel her body tensing up.

The door was opened from the outside, and a leg stepped in.

The security guard held a flashlight, shining it into the dim corners of the room not illuminated by the light bulb, while slowly moving closer step by step.

He was looking carefully; they couldn’t hide for long.

Jiang Wang touched her cheek with his cool fingertips and pointed to the door.

Shi Niannian turned her head to look at him in confusion, bringing the distance between them to a minimum. Her heart beat violently once, fiercely breaking through her chest, filled with a strange sense of destiny.

Jiang Wang’s thin lips parted slightly as he pulled up Shi Niannian’s hood to cover half her face and mouthed the word “run.”

Shi Niannian came to her senses and nodded frantically.

Jiang Wang found a small pebble from the ground and held it in his palm. When the security guard rounded the cabinet and discovered them, he forcefully threw the pebble at the light switch.

It moved at lightning speed; Shi Niannian almost heard a “whoosh” by her ear, and the next second, everything was pitch black.

Jiang Wang grabbed her hand: “Run!”

The howling cold wind swept past their ears. In the vast campus, the bell for the end of class had just rung, with lights on in every classroom in the teaching building. The snow had stopped, but it still covered the ground and trees.

They ran out of the dilapidated, abandoned storage room, with someone shouting and chasing after them, unable to stop.

It was like entering another world.

They held hands, connected in the vast sea of people.

The sound of footsteps on snow, the wind, and the sound of breathing.

Shi Niannian felt as if she had never run with all her might like this before. The surging waves in her heart all turned into gentleness wrapped around her fingers.

She looked at Jiang Wang’s back as they ran.

Her heart thumped twice more.

Then Jiang Wang pulled her into a nearby bicycle shed, and she crashed into his embrace.

Only after making sure that the security guard hadn’t followed them did he lean against the wall to catch his breath. Shi Niannian’s stamina wasn’t as good as his; she was breathing more heavily, hands propped on her knees, panting lightly.

Jiang Wang’s hot breath fell on her neck, accompanied by a smile: “Exciting, huh?”

She nodded, saying, “Exciting.”

Jiang Wang laughed again.

He looked down at Shi Niannian, his throat feeling a bit dry.

Some things, once the first signs appear, easily become uncontrollable afterward.

Jiang Wang was certain of his feelings for Shi Niannian, but she looked so young—you could probably convince people she was in middle school—innocent and pure. So he had never really developed any substantial desire for her as a man, especially since Jiang Wang didn’t consider himself a person driven by desire.

But just now in the storage room was the first time.

Now was the second time.

And Shi Niannian hadn’t even done anything; she merely looked at him with those clear, timid eyes, and he was completely unable to resist becoming aroused.

He didn’t even dare to look at her again, afraid that the spark would become a wildfire.

“You go back first,” Jiang Wang said hoarsely.

Shi Niannian asked, “Aren’t you… coming back?”

He curved his lips: “Understand the concept of misdirection?”

So Shi Niannian returned to the classroom first. Jiang Wang stood in place for quite a while, his temple throbbing. It took a good while for the fire burning inside him to be barely suppressed.

Jiang Wang was quite busy during the subsequent period. He had a competition with his team soon, and his condition hadn’t fully recovered, so he could only intensify his training every day.

Meanwhile, Shi Niannian continued to practice her speech diligently. When Jiang Wang came to school, he would practice with her, but they didn’t dare go to that abandoned storage room again, instead finding empty classrooms to practice.

Chen Shushu, as the cultural and entertainment committee member, had been preparing for the New Year’s Eve gala performance. Their class was presenting a ballet, with Chen Shushu herself performing on stage.

And Jiang Ling was running to Xu Zhilin’s office with math test papers every day, rarely displaying her usual three-minute enthusiasm.

The weather was getting colder day by day.

When Jiang Wang came out of the swimming pool, he saw Xu Ningqing leaning against the car door. He raised his hand in greeting.

Jiang Wang walked over: “Why are you here?”

“Looking for you, Brother Wang is too hard to make an appointment with, so I’ve come personally to ambush you,” Xu Ningqing joked.

Jiang Wang took out his phone to check the time.

“Alright,” Xu Ningqing put his arm around his shoulder and joked, “You’ve grown up, don’t be so clingy, you know? I see you’re either training or with that girl.”

Jiang Wang laughed vaguely.

The billiard hall was already full of people. Fan Mengming’s belly was against the edge of the pool table, but his shots were quite accurate.

A group of rich kids gathered together, with the adjacent table filled with drinks and food.

Jiang Wang sat on one side without much interest, only responding faintly when others greeted him.

“Want to play a round?” Xu Ningqing asked.

Jiang Wang stood up, taking a pool cue from someone nearby.

Tall with long legs, his posture when hitting the ball was beautiful, outlining a proportionate and graceful line of broad shoulders and narrow waist.

The two were evenly matched.

It was Jiang Wang’s turn to hit again. He held the cue and bent down, raised his eyes to aim, and just as he was about to use force, his phone rang.

Shi Niannian was sitting in her bedroom. It was almost ten o’clock at night after she had finished organizing the difficult points from her recent mistakes. She took out the speech again.

Having practiced with Jiang Wang these days, she was doing quite well. She had recited this speech so many times that she could recite it from memory.

After reading it twice, she took out her phone.

“Are you asleep?”

She typed the words, hesitating whether to press send.

Then she felt that these three words seemed too intimate, so she deleted them and tossed the phone aside.

After reading the speech once more, she pressed her lips together and retrieved her phone again. Her fingers lingered on the screen before finally typing.

In the bedroom, only one desk lamp was lit, casting a fuzzy outline around the young girl. She typed very seriously, looking stern and proper, even a bit nervous.

“Why didn’t you come to school today?”

Normally, Jiang Wang would return to school for evening self-study, but not today.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and pressed send.

On the other side, Jiang Wang put away the pool cue, took out his phone to look, curved his lips, and tossed the cue to Fan Mengming.

“Who is it?” Fan Mengming asked.

Xu Ningqing noticed the hair tie on his wrist. Wearing thick clothes in winter, it hadn’t been visible at first. It looked somewhat familiar. He raised his eyebrow slightly and went over to point at it, asking: “Hers?”

An ambiguous “her,” the surroundings quieted for a moment, then erupted with a wave of gossipy cheers.

Jiang Wang responded with an “Mm.”

Xu Ningqing laughed: “Are you a pervert, stealing something like this from someone?”

Xu Ningqing very much believed in his sister’s ability to lack common sense and didn’t think that the relationship between the two had already developed into an ambiguous one that was hard to clarify. He only thought that Jiang Wang had stolen the hair tie.

Jiang Wang didn’t care, glanced at him, and dropped a “you guys play” before walking out of the billiard hall with his phone.

Shi Niannian waited for two minutes and couldn’t help feeling dejected and disappointed.

She couldn’t tell if Jiang Wang hadn’t seen the message or thought she was too annoying.

She dragged herself up, shuffled in her slippers to the bed, and had just lain down when her phone rang.

It wasn’t a text; it was a call.

She was startled, fumbled to answer, put it to her ear, and very softly said “Hello.”

Jiang Wang leaned against the corridor wall outside: “Why aren’t you asleep so late?”

She rarely talked on the phone, felt a bit uncomfortable, and didn’t know what to say, only responding with an “Mm.”

“I’m with Xu Ningqing,” he explained, then asked, “How’s the speech preparation going?”

“It’s okay.” Shi Niannian hugged her knees, curled up sitting at the head of the bed.

After saying this, she felt like Jiang Wang was doing all the talking while she was only responding with a few sounds, seeming perfunctory and not very good.

But what should she say…

She paused, then opened her mouth, her voice very small: “Do you want to hear it?”

Jiang Wang smiled: “Sure.”

Shi Niannian could already recite it without looking at the paper. She rested her chin on her knees and slowly said each word.

Even much later, when thinking of this night, what Shi Niannian would first recall was the light from her phone in the dim bedroom, the young man’s breathing clear in her ear, tingling through the current.

After quietly listening to her finish, Jiang Wang was about to speak when the door of the billiard hall next to him was pulled open.

Fan Mengming poked his head out: “Brother Wang, stop favoring the little sister, a bunch of people inside are eagerly waiting for you to nourish them!”

Laughter erupted.

Shi Niannian fell silent, hearing him say coldly to them: “Get lost.”

After some noise, it became quiet again.

Neither of them spoke anymore, nor did they hang up, just staying silent for quite a while.

Shi Niannian called his name.

“Jiang Wang.” Her voice was very obedient.

One of them sat on the quiet, dim bedroom bed, the other stood in the corridor of the billiard hall, the door panel isolating the noise and clamor.

The young man’s sideburns were cut very short, the line of his jaw with sharp angles, effortlessly raising an excessively cold aura. He was silent for a moment, then smiled.

His deep voice rippled out.

“You miss me.”