Lin Weixia quickly understood what Ban Sheng was referring to — the incident where he had walked in on her delivering Liu Sijia’s letter for her and mistakenly believed it was she herself who was asking him out. She had originally intended to explain, but at the time a crowd had flooded back into the classroom and she missed the best moment to do so.

There was nothing to be done about it now. Lin Weixia spoke directly: “Sorry.”

“As Sijia’s friend, I hope you’ll go and apologize to her,” Lin Weixia said, looking at him steadily.

She didn’t want her friend to be hurt.

Ban Sheng stepped forward — his tall, slender shadow pressing down over her. The corner of his lips lifted into a sardonic curve:

“Why don’t you go tell your friend not to cling so tight?”

Lin Weixia fell silent for a moment, then spoke: “Everyone has their own independent thoughts and will — it’s not my place to interfere. I’m only speaking in terms of right and wrong. Standing her up was your problem. Please go to her.”

“What’s in it for me?” Ban Sheng leaned forward, something in his expression threatening to surface.

Lin Weixia was taken aback. She pressed her lips tightly shut and said nothing more. Ban Sheng slowly straightened up, left those words hanging, and walked away — the implication clear:

“Think about it yourself.”

Liu Sijia took three days off. During the days she was absent, Lin Weixia went to basketball club mostly on her own. Then, before Thursday arrived, she finally received a message from Liu Sijia.

An unknown number: 【Sorry Weixia — I worried you. These past few days the weather turned colder and I caught a bad cold. Between that and Ban Sheng standing me up, my mood was terrible, so I didn’t go to school and didn’t reply to you.】

Lin Weixia typed in the reply box and sent: 【It’s all right — are you feeling better now?】

The unknown number: 【Yes, much better — just still a little weak all over. The truth is, that day I didn’t actually get into his pool at all. Even going to his house was me pretending to run into him by accident. I sneaked a photo of him and posted it to Weibo — partly out of vanity, and partly to use the buzz and rumors to claim him as mine.】

【But he doesn’t care at all what I do.】

Lin Weixia was about to type something to comfort her when Liu Sijia sent a long follow-up message:

【He stood me up and kept finding ways to reject me. I’ve never been knocked back like this in my whole life — I felt so humiliated I chose to run away. But this afternoon he sent me a message on his own initiative, and he apologized.】

【At the same time as apologizing, he told me point-blank to stop thinking about him. Impossible — I’m not giving up. Because I genuinely like him so much. It’s like tasting something addictive — now all I want is him.】

Lin Weixia stared at that last sentence and went still. The phone screen glowed with a dim blue light, reflecting a face that had gone quietly distant.

Ban Sheng really did have a way of making people try the poison. Once addicted — they only wanted another taste.

She typed back: 【All right. When are you coming back to school?】

The next morning, Lin Weixia had been busy in the kitchen since early. She arrived at school with her bag on her back and a thermos in hand, nearly late.

Lin Weixia sat down in her seat, catching her breath — a loose strand of hair stuck to her cherry-red, faintly gloss-damp lips, which she pushed aside with her hand, reflexively looking in the direction of Liu Sijia’s seat.

Still the long curly hair, the white mother-of-pearl bracelet. Liu Sijia sat in her seat, a group of girls clustered around her, saying:

“So you were just sick — we were so worried.”

“So Ban Sheng had something come up and that’s why he cancelled — and he even explained himself to you.”

“Right, Sijia — while you were gone the school was full of wild rumors,” another girl chimed in.

Ning Chao, who happened to be walking past doing his duties, gave a contemptuous smile. He genuinely couldn’t understand these girls — just a few days ago they were all talking about this Liu young miss behind her back, and now here they were fawning over her again.

Absolutely nauseating.

Perceptive as Liu Sijia was, she could hardly not see through it. She raised an eyebrow and performed enthusiasm: “Oh? I didn’t hear about any of it — what a shame.”

Liu Sijia gave her pen a twirl, then immediately suggested taking them all out to dinner that weekend, wherever they chose. The girls’ faces lit up with brilliant smiles.

That move dispersed those rumors quickly.

Ning Chao finished his duties and quickly returned to his seat. As he looked for his books, his gaze swept over Lin Weixia’s face and came back, visibly startled:

“What were you doing last night?”

Lin Weixia looked as though she had stayed up through the night — her complexion not quite right, her eyes reddened from the late hours, the area beneath her long lashes a dusky shade.

Ning Chao’s gaze moved to the thermos on the edge of the desk — the fragrance had already seeped out through the seams. He grinned and asked: “Is this for me?”

A pale, slender hand got there first and covered the thermos. Lin Weixia shook her head: “It’s for Sijia — she’s not completely over her illness yet.”

Even though Liu Sijia had messaged her very late the night before, once Lin Weixia learned she had been sick, she got up and simmered a pot of slow-cooked nourishing soup.

After morning reading, Lin Weixia carried the blue thermos over and handed it to Liu Sijia. Liu Sijia’s usual aura of cool composure vanished entirely. She said in delighted surprise:

“Thank you! My mom would be ashamed of herself if she saw you.”

During the between-class exercise period, the broadcast cycled through its intro jingle while every homeroom teacher kept blowing whistles and urging students to get downstairs quickly without dragging their feet.

Students were as languid as ever — girls sat in the classroom pulling out small mirrors to comb their fringes into place; boys walked slower than snails, and halfway there their competitive nature sparked up and they started jumping to see who could reach higher on the pillars — only to have the homeroom teacher swat them each on the back of the head from behind.

Sending a group of boys fleeing down the stairs clutching their heads.

Lin Weixia didn’t go down for exercises — she had gone to the office to help the Chinese language teacher sort exam papers. When she was done, she used the bathroom. It was largely empty, with a few girls who had skipped exercises or had stomach troubles coming in.

Lin Weixia gripped the door handle and was about to leave when several familiar voices carried into the restroom. Girls stood at the mirror fixing their hair, their tone contemptuous:

“Hey — don’t you think the new transfer F-student is really something? You know, that Lin Weixia — simmering soup and all that, getting Liu Sijia wrapped around her finger. Does she have any self-respect at all?”

“She puts on an act of being pure and innocent with the boys too — always holding herself so perfectly, like she thinks she’s some kind of goddess. Ha.”

Another girl turned on the tap, her tone lofty: “I don’t like her either. Did you see the bag Sijia gave her? Sijia probably saw that she kept getting mocked for her bag with all the loose threads and pitied her enough to give it.”

Lin Weixia stood there with lowered eyes, her hand on the spinning door handle going still. She waited until the voices outside had completely faded before walking out to wash her hands.

The mirror reflected a face that was cool, detached, and composed.

After the rumors about Ban Sheng and Liu Sijia died down, Lin Weixia found the WeChat contact with the username “ban” in her messages list and sent him a message:

【What do you want?】

She owed him something — she should have settled it long ago.

Whether Ban Sheng was deliberately keeping her waiting or had simply forgotten, he didn’t reply for a long time. Lin Weixia didn’t put too much of her attention on the matter, because their first midterm examination had arrived.

In the week before the midterms, the atmosphere in the class shifted. Aside from the midterms and final exams — the two major assessments — the scores from other tests were not counted toward the tier rating system.

Facing this exam, the class atmosphere was not particularly good. Most people treated every examination as a personal milestone checkpoint, and especially for those teetering at the edge of their grades, a major exam was a moment of reshuffling — and possibly of slipping into F-tier if things went wrong.

A-students reined in their usual ease and careless attitudes and began intentionally reviewing material. F-students, on the other hand, were more earnest and tense than usual — they were typically the ones arriving on campus in the grey early mornings, and the last to leave in the evenings.

Lin Weixia considered herself among the students who studied diligently, but every time she finished her work and looked up at the rows of backs hunched over books, shoulder blades jutting sharply, she felt a little humbled. The A-students genuinely had a higher starting point — sharper thinking and brighter minds.

After the midterms, results came out within about two days.

Ban Sheng remained firmly at the top of the entire year group. Apart from Chinese, where his score was lower, he had clean, excellent marks across all other subjects — especially physics. The teacher was essentially ready to frame his physics score and the logic behind his solutions, hang it at the center of the classroom, and invite students to study and learn from it.

Qiu Minghua tried to be clever: “Come on, Teacher — my boss still has to breathe, you know.”

Ban Sheng held his exam paper, didn’t even glance at it, and set it aside. Without any change of expression, he lifted a foot and kicked the chair in front of him. Qiu Minghua’s chair lurched, and with a thud he toppled to the floor.

The whole class burst into laughter. Old Teacher Li, standing at the front, chuckled once and called someone out directly: “Qiu Minghua — you’re the loudest one laughing, and I feel too embarrassed to say this — but how did you manage to get every single multiple-choice question wrong in physics, including the ones you guessed at?”

The laughter grew even louder.

When the midterm results came out, Lin Weixia’s scores outperformed a large portion of the A-students, overtaking Liu Sijia to place third in the class — second was the class representative. Liu Sijia’s scores had inexplicably dropped to ninth place.

For an entire morning, Liu Sijia was called into the office by every subject teacher for a conversation. Each teacher, in bringing up her regression, also mentioned Lin Weixia — praising her natural aptitude for learning, saying her ability was improving day by day. By the time the last teacher finished, Liu Sijia’s patience had worn thin. She stood there with arms crossed, a fully guarded expression, listening coldly to the teacher’s guidance, while casting a glance at the A-tier rankings list.

The homeroom teacher saw this, let out a sigh, and waved her back to class.

Liu Sijia returned without speaking to anyone.

Fang Mo congratulated Lin Weixia and thought she was remarkable. What Fang Mo didn’t know was that Lin Weixia had effortlessly been at the top in her previous school. At Shengao, she had to work harder — the A-students genuinely had a higher baseline, thought more incisively, and were smart.

As for Ning Chao’s results — “catastrophic” didn’t quite cover it.

The homeroom teacher set up peer-support pairs based on the class performance data. Ning Chao became the designated priority case, and the task fell to Lin Weixia.

Lin Weixia planned to use time after school to tutor Ning Chao. Ning Chao had no particular desire to study — he ran a hand over his cropped hair and said with casual bravado:

“Thanks — but I, your grandfather, have no intention of wasting my time on studying.”

Liu Sijia happened to be walking past and heard this. She raised an eyebrow: “You genuinely cannot afford to waste time on studying. You spend every day after school rushing home to skewer meat. Might as well just inherit the family barbecue stall one day.”

Faced with Liu Sijia’s openly contemptuous mockery, Ning Chao wasn’t the least bit bothered. His family really was poor — his family ran a barbecue stall, and his mother was disabled. But he didn’t feel it was anything to be ashamed of.

Ning Chao flashed a full set of white teeth: “You’re right. Not like you — dolling yourself up every day just dreaming of marrying into money one day. I’d feel sorry for whoever that poor baby turns out to be.”

“You — you rotten piece of garbage!” Liu Sijia was furious enough that her neck started going red.

It took Ning Chao less than a minute to drive Liu Sijia to fury. Lin Weixia looked at the exam paper and sighed. These two genuinely had no patience for each other and loved to provoke.

“Then the last period of evening self-study — I’ll go over problems with you,” Lin Weixia proposed.

Lin Weixia didn’t feel particularly compelled to manage Ning Chao’s grades — but all the class pairs had been assigned, and the teacher had specifically spoken to her about it. She couldn’t simply ignore it.

For the last period of evening self-study, after finishing her own work, Lin Weixia moved over to Ning Chao’s side to walk him through the monthly test papers. Ning Chao’s attitude was reasonably cooperative. The classroom lights blazed as white as midday, casting shadows over every textbook lying open on its desk.

The classroom was relatively quiet — just the soft sounds of people discussing or asking each other questions. Ban Sheng had one foot propped on the horizontal bar beneath his desk, lazily twirling his pen, working on a problem.

But the nearby voices came through clearly to him. Ban Sheng stared at the problem, substituting numbers into the formula. Those sounds fell into his eardrums, reverberating as if echoing, growing louder and louder:

“Ning Chao, are you even listening?”

“Yeah — I just kind of feel like dozing off.”

Then came a faint, soft laugh. Ban Sheng felt an inexplicable restlessness well up inside him. And of all times, Qiu Minghua chose to turn around and ask:

“Boss, you free this weekend? Come over and play games at your place. That VR full-panoramic setup at yours is genuinely incredible — the experience is absolutely insane. That is my bliss. I’m in love with your house. Can I move in?”

Ban Sheng cast a glance over — two heads pressed together, Lin Weixia tilted slightly to the side, a stretch of pale, soft neck exposed. Her elbow arched and braced against Ning Chao’s desk. Her long hair, draped behind her, had one loose strand that had fallen onto Ning Chao’s tanned forearm. Ning Chao stifled a yawn and glanced at her from time to time.

The more he looked, the more it rubbed him wrong.

“Boss? Boss?” Qiu Minghua called.

Ban Sheng lowered his head and took out his phone, tapping at something for a while. Then he looked up and replied with two words: “I’m busy.”

At the same moment, a notification appeared on Lin Weixia’s phone. She tapped to open it — it was a message from Ban Sheng, finally replying to the message she had sent the previous Wednesday.

Xia: 【What do you want?】

Ban: 【Spend a day with me this weekend.】