The next morning, Lin Weixia brought breakfast for her seatmate, and Ning Chao smiled and thanked her cheerfully. High school friendships had a particular charm in that regard — as long as you stayed in the same class, you could sample breakfast foods from every corner of the city, from the neighborhoods where your classmates lived.

During the breakfast break, their classmates watched as the carton of milk Ban Sheng drank every morning without fail was now given to Lin Weixia instead. Everyone at school knew that his one exclusive privilege went to Lin Weixia alone.

What no one knew was that the two of them were in the middle of a cold war.

Ban Sheng still gave her the milk, but he hardly spoke to Lin Weixia anymore — he had even unilaterally cut off all eye contact between them. This had, after a while, left Lin Weixia feeling genuinely upset.

On Tuesday, after finishing their morning exercises, Lin Weixia returned to her seat to rest. Qiu Minghua walked in with a grin plastered across his face and held out a carton of milk to her, saying with a laugh:

“Here.”

Lin Weixia did not take it. She was slumped across her desk, her mood a little gloomy. She lifted her head and asked quietly, “Where is he? Can’t he come give it to me himself?”

“Hey, come on, don’t make things difficult for me, Lin. If you don’t take it, Master Ban will chop me into pieces and throw me in the ocean to feed the sharks.” Qiu Minghua forcibly shoved the milk into her hands and then bolted from the room as if his feet were greased, vanishing in an instant.

Lin Weixia rested her fair arms on the desk, staring at the milk in her hands. She turned toward the window. Out in the corridor, Ban Sheng was leaning lazily against the railing, playing with his drone, the vertebrae at the back of his neck slowly rising into relief as he bent his head.

She let out a quiet sigh.

For three full days now, they had not exchanged a single word. On the surface, Lin Weixia still appeared calm and detached as always, but she was frequently distracted, drifting off even in the middle of listening to someone speak.

Fang Mo noticed something was off with her soon enough. She tugged at Lin Weixia’s sleeve and asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Ah, nothing.” Lin Weixia replied.

Lin Weixia decided she would go find Ban Sheng and have a talk. But every day after school he vanished without a trace, so she figured she would head over to Basketball Court No. 6 and see if she could catch him there.

Evening came, and the sky burned like fire — like God had knocked over a palette of paint, leaving bold, vivid strokes across the heavens.

Lin Weixia stood at the entrance of the basketball court. Cold air seeped up from the floor, deliciously refreshing. She walked in, her amber eyes quietly sweeping the court in a slow arc.

Ban Sheng was not there — only a few boys playing basketball, and Li Yiran, who was lying on his back across the bleacher steps with that natural expression of his that said he had given up on life entirely.

He lay there like a vampire who used his good looks as a weapon.

But Lin Weixia quickly spotted the basketball with “Ban Sheng’s” painted on it in three characters, along with his wrist guards.

The person himself was nowhere to be found.

Lin Weixia walked over, a fine sheen of sweat having formed on her forehead, and asked:

“Senior, where’s Ban Sheng? I need to find him about something.”

Li Yiran lazily lifted his gaze and looked at her, then delivered his words like a slap of cold water: “He’s not seeing you.”

Lin Weixia did not linger. She never fought a drawn-out battle — she turned and walked away. After only a few steps, a voice came from behind her, its emotion impossible to read:

“I heard you made that whole group of my sister’s friends cry the other day?”

Li Shengran had not been involved, but she ran with Liu Sijia and that crowd.

Lin Weixia stopped and turned around, bracing herself for Li Yiran to confront her. Instead, she found him still lying there in the same spot, giving her a thumbs-up and saying approvingly:

“Well done.”

“You’re different from Li Shengran,” Lin Weixia remarked.

A cold, sharp glint flickered through Li Yiran’s dark eyes. He laughed slowly: “My sister is different.”

“Whether she lives or dies is none of my business.”

The way he said it made Lin Weixia feel that the rumors about the two siblings not getting along were indeed true. Li Yiran continued, tossing the beer can in his hand into a trash bin as he spoke:

“Ban Sheng has a bad temper, but he’s been more than good enough to you.”

Li Yiran lay back down on the floor, his next words cutting straight to the bone: “He never gets involved in other people’s messes — but you? He got involved.”

“And how did you repay him?”

He had no desire to say anything harsher than that. He lazily closed his eyes, signaling that she could go.

Lin Weixia did not argue. She turned and walked forward, her long lashes lowered, concealing the weight of her thoughts.

As time passed, Lin Weixia’s reason returned to her. She knew she had gone too far with what she said. She did not know what he had been through, but from the way he and his father interacted — the distance between them, the texture of that relationship — she could sense it.

To say something like that to Ban Sheng was like handing him a knife.

Ban Sheng was cold by nature, heavily guarded, effortlessly composed in handling matters, with a touch of tactful smoothness. He had always lived by the principle of not crossing others unless others crossed him first. And yet — a person like that, when she had been facing bullying at school:

He had stood in opposition to everyone, for her sake.

Rushing to save an animal in danger and hurting someone with careless words were two entirely different things. For the latter, she truly had been in the wrong. Lin Weixia sat at her desk, her gaze drifting instinctively toward the tall, upright silhouette of the boy not far away, a troubled look settling in her eyes.

Lin Weixia, you have no conscience.

Still, she had been thinking this whole time about how to apologize to Ban Sheng. When it came to coaxing people, she had always found it a headache.

She had not yet figured out how to go about it when the school launched a sweeping campaign to confiscate mobile phones. The reason was a sixteen-point educational directive issued by the provincial authorities, combined with a recent inspection team sent down from above to assess mobile phone usage among high school students across the city.

As a result, Shengao had recently been cracking down hard on students secretly bringing phones. The enforcement had become so strict that even Year 3 students were not exempt. For a time, complaints echoed from every corner of the school — but there was nothing anyone could do.

The school had significantly ramped up its enforcement for this major inspection, and for the foreseeable short term at least, phones were banned.

The first afternoon class had not yet begun when Old Liu received an urgent notice from the school administration and came striding into the classroom, ordering the entire class to step out into the corridor for a surprise phone inspection.

Student council members conducted checks in batches, sweeping desks, chairs, and every corner of the room. In the end, they turned up more than a dozen phones — and even unearthed a pair of socks Qiu Minghua had stashed in his drawer, prompting the entire class to look at him with expressions of pure disgust.

Old Liu was so furious he puffed up like a blowfish: “Look at your socks — they’ve gone stiff from the smell! Do you think the school is your own home?”

“The school is my home, and everyone loves it — isn’t that what you always say, sir?” Qiu Minghua shot back with a glib smile.

Old Liu was so thoroughly speechless he could not get a single word out. He waved a large hand and told the students to hurry back inside. Liu Xiping called four students up to the front and handed each of them a metal detector, instructing them to check whether anyone had a phone hidden on their person.

Lin Weixia was also called up by Old Liu. She was assigned to check Group Four — which happened to be the group Ban Sheng was in. Standing at the front of the room, she looked through the crowd of figures toward where Ban Sheng sat.

Qiu Minghua couldn’t stand still even while waiting — he was craning his neck sideways, turned to the back, chattering at Ban Sheng nonstop. Ban Sheng looked utterly unbothered, leaning against the wall and slowly drinking his cola.

Qiu Minghua’s mouth must have run on too long, because Ban Sheng, cola can in hand, extended one finger and tapped it lightly against the can, giving him a cool, dispassionate look. Qiu Minghua fell silent of his own accord.

Lin Weixia checked one group of seatmates, and the next group happened to be Li Shengran. The moment Li Shengran saw her, she looked visibly annoyed, deliberately slamming her book down on the desk to make a loud sound, drawing repeated glances from the people around them.

Even so, Li Shengran had no choice but to spread her arms and cooperate, her expression perfectly composed and self-assured.

Lin Weixia’s face remained expressionless. She took the detector, bent forward, and swept it across Li Shengran’s shoulders, arms, and waist. The results showed nothing.

Li Shengran’s body gave off a sweet, heady perfume. The expression on her face was one of smug satisfaction. She slanted a look down at Lin Weixia, and the people nearby, catching her lead, let out mocking snickers.

Just as Li Shengran was about to sit back down, Lin Weixia stopped her. She crouched and ran the detector over Li Shengran’s feet.

Beep — beep beep. The rapid sound of the metal detector going off rang out.

Lin Weixia looked straight at her. Li Shengran’s breathing grew heavier. With clear reluctance, she bent down and pulled a phone from inside her square-toed leather shoe, tossing it into the collection basket with a loud clang.

Lin Weixia moved through the checks one by one. When she reached the last person in the final group, what came into view was a broad chest, and the name tag pinned to the left side read: Ban Sheng.

Ban Sheng stood in front of her with both hands in his pockets, lazily relaxed. Lin Weixia tightened her thumb around the detector and stepped forward. The distance between them closed instantly, and she felt the weight of a wordless pressure.

Neither of them spoke.

He extended his arms on his own. Lin Weixia ran the device across his shoulders, his back, then quickly swept his waist from the side and was about to turn off the device.

A low, slightly subdued voice reached her, perfectly flat: “Giving me a pass?”

Lin Weixia had no choice but to steel herself and do a thorough check. Standing directly in front of him, she moved the detector carefully across his waist and legs from the side, the two of them drawing very close.

She caught the familiar scent on him — a cool, dark oud wood fragrance. Her cheek brushed against the fabric of his shirt without meaning to, like a brief electric shock, yet he had no reaction whatsoever, his expression entirely unruffled.

Their posture looked almost like an embrace, yet Ban Sheng was not teasing her the way he used to, nor saying any of the reckless, cutting things a careless troublemaker might. His expression was cold and detached. He even let his gaze drift past her and settle on the problem written on the desk.

Something twisted and strange stirred in her chest.

Like carbonated water — once it settled in the stomach, it was deeply uncomfortable, impossible to push down, and impossible to ignore.

When Lin Weixia stepped back from Ban Sheng, her gaze caught a sudden glance of the globe sitting on his desk. The seam in the middle showed traces of having been pried open with a craft knife.

She hesitated over whether to verify it, but in the end Lin Weixia pretended not to have seen anything and switched off the detector.

After the check was finished, Liu Xiping carried the basket full of various electronic devices away triumphantly, followed by a wave of complaints from the students behind him.

After a full day of classes, and with the heat adding to her exhaustion, Lin Weixia’s head felt fuzzy and heavy by evening. She decided to go to the convenience store just outside the school to get a bowl of cart noodles.

The moment the final bell rang, students poured out of school in a steady stream, the sound of chatter, bicycle brakes, and car horns all tangling together. Lin Weixia was standing at the school gate when someone bumped her shoulder from behind and quietly apologized.

She smiled and said it was fine. Then she looked up and caught an inadvertent glimpse of a familiar, upright silhouette not far away. She froze.

Ban Sheng was standing in front of the bus stop. His school uniform jacket sat crisply on him, making the line of his throat look all the more defined. He was smoking, checking his phone every so often.

He seemed to be waiting for someone.

Before long, a girl with long chestnut-colored hair came running up to him. From where Lin Weixia stood at a distance, her chest tightened — it looked like the senior girl who had come to find him before.

Ban Sheng glanced up from his phone and looked at her, then reached into his trouser pocket and produced a phone, which he handed over.

The senior girl’s face lit up with delighted surprise. She held the phone and gave it a little shake, then produced a can of iced cola from behind her back and offered it to him in thanks.

Lin Weixia was now certain — it must have been the phone Ban Sheng had helped her hide in the globe that morning.

The fiery clouds above had arranged themselves into the shape of fish scales, bathing both of them in shades of orange. Ban Sheng was still scrolling through his phone with the same unhurried ease, not even looking up as he reached out and took the cola she handed him.

He held the can in one hand, his fingers — knuckles clearly defined — curled around the pull tab. He applied just a little force. The tendons on the back of his hand rose, coiled with raw, almost untamed strength.

Click.

White bubbles surged out. This time, the senior girl was not startled away. She looked at Ban Sheng with bright, clear eyes.

Someone must have sent him a message. Ban Sheng leaned against the bus stop, holding his phone in one hand, head bent as he typed with his thumb. With his other hand, he passed the cola to the girl beside him.

The implication was that he had opened it for her to drink.

The girl’s expression shifted between surprise and flustered uncertainty.

Every moment of the scene was absorbed by Lin Weixia from where she stood at a distance — she did not even want to watch what the senior girl did next. The air was thick and stifling. No matter how she breathed, it did not feel right.

Lin Weixia had always been emotionally detached. Even with people she was close to, she never let herself form excessive attachments.

It was how she protected herself.

When had she started to care?

Now, something was rising inside her chest — jealousy, that feeling of caring — like a seed transplanted into a greenhouse and given new conditions to grow in. The bad feelings were spreading wildly, without restraint.

She did not want to see him with other girls.

She did not like him opening cola for other girls.

Ban Sheng really did know how to manipulate her emotions.

He had managed it.