As Tan Yin pondered this suspiciously, she followed Chu Hang into the elevator. But luck wasn’t on her side — the elevator, which had originally held only her and Chu Hang, suddenly flooded with a large crowd of Chinese literature department students, male and female alike, as it descended to the third floor.

Among them was a guy busy chatting and gesturing animatedly to a girl beside him, not watching where he was going. Since he could only see Chu Hang in the elevator anyway, he didn’t think twice and simply kept walking straight into the elevator.

But while he didn’t think twice, Tan Yin very much did — because he was now heading straight in her direction. The elevator was already crowded, and Tan Yin had nowhere left to retreat, watching helplessly as he was about to walk right into her!

Was she really going to get exposed in this elevator today?!

But just when it seemed there was no way out, Chu Hang, who’d apparently developed quite a taste for slick maneuvers today, executed another stunning shift, once again demonstrating what real technique looked like. With a light sidestep, he positioned himself precisely in front of Tan Yin, and the literature department guy walked straight into Chu Hang’s shoulder instead.

The guy, a head shorter than Chu Hang, looked up at him and said cautiously: “Hey, it’s pretty crowded today — I see there’s still space behind you, mind moving back a bit?”

Uh oh! Chu Hang might be a bit cold, but he wasn’t unreasonable — faced with such a reasonable request, there was no way he’d refuse!

But just as Tan Yin, in a state of complete dread, felt she was about to have no way of hiding and be sent straight to the dissection table, she heard Chu Hang’s cold voice —

“I’m tired. I don’t want to move.”

He actually rejected the request, just like that, with total self-assurance…

The literature department guy was clearly stunned too. He let out an “oh” and just accepted this arrangement numbly, turning obediently back around.

Tan Yin stared at Chu Hang in astonishment, marveling: “What a shamelessly straightforward answer, so unapologetically blunt, there’s absolutely no way to argue with it… Chu Hang, I never knew you had such thick skin!”

Having said that, and taking advantage of the fact that no one could see her anyway, Tan Yin cheekily stuck out her hand and gave Chu Hang a thumbs-up.

Chu Hang, naturally, couldn’t hear a word of it. He remained composed, eyes fixed straight ahead, though — whether it was because the elevator was too crowded or not — he seemed somewhat uncomfortable, and, with Tan Yin standing to his back right, he turned his neck slightly stiffly toward the other side.

Tan Yin asked, quite concerned: “You don’t have some early-onset neck problem, do you?”

“…”

With thunderstorms coming so frequently lately, Tan Yin had gone invisible so often that she’d once again come to deeply understand the meaning of “every man is an island.” Once invisible, she couldn’t join in on her friends’ fun conversations, couldn’t attend class or hang out with others, couldn’t even express herself and be heard by anyone at all. And yet, strange as it was, the more this happened, the stronger her urge to express herself actually grew.

She looked at Chu Hang a bit longer, and, emboldened by the fact that he couldn’t see or hear her anyway, Tan Yin grew bolder still.

She rose onto her toes to peek at Chu Hang’s profile: “Your skin’s practically flawless, you know that? Who knew you were secretly such a master of deep cunning inside? But I have to admit, today I’m genuinely grateful for what you just did — it saved me from disaster.”

Having said this, Tan Yin cheekily held up two fingers and made a heart shape: “Chu Hang, love you!”

After making the heart, Tan Yin didn’t think much more of it. The elevator reached the ground floor, and she filed out along with everyone else. But when she looked up at Chu Hang again, she gave a start.

For some reason, Chu Hang’s entire face had turned red. Not just his cheeks — even his ears had gone red.

The two of them had just walked out the doors of Zhixing Building, one behind the other, and cold wind carrying raindrops blew in from outside — yet even buffeted by that wind, Chu Hang’s face remained flushed.

Tan Yin couldn’t help pulling her clothes tighter, and glancing at Chu Hang, she clicked her tongue. “Big brother, you’ve got some heat building up inside you, huh — how are you this flushed in this cold weather?”

“…”

Tan Yin circled back to the dorm, and once she’d made sure no one was around, grabbed a quick bite to eat, then, without a word, headed straight for the gymnasium. Jiang Yilu had already sacrificed herself gloriously in the line of duty — Tan Yin was determined not to fail her mission and to properly dig up some dirt on Xu Yu.

But when she arrived at the indoor basketball court, she found it packed like a concert venue — nearly every seat in the stands was already full.

“Ahh, ahh, look, Chu Hang’s here!”

“He’s basically a walking dose of hormones — he’s genuinely gorgeous, and so aloof too, seriously a god descended to earth! Hey, hey, don’t leave! Ahh! Why did Chu Hang show up for just a second and then leave!”

“You’d better pace yourself — don’t cheer for the wrong team later, don’t forget we’re Gongda’s cheer squad!”

“Well who’s fault is it that our Gongda basketball players are either not good-looking, or good-looking but empty-headed and all muscle, with zero charisma! Look at A University’s team — Chu Hang alone crushes all our Gongda guys. And there’s also that Xu Yu, from the law school, who’s got that roguishly handsome vibe going too. And apparently he’s a lot easier to approach than Chu Hang, supposedly he’s really funny and easygoing — once the game’s over I’m definitely going to go ask him for his WeChat.”

…

Tan Yin wandered through the crowd for a while and roughly pieced together the situation.

Today was a practice match between A University’s school basketball team and neighboring Gongda’s team, and even though it was just a practice match, both teams and both fan bases were treating it with the utmost seriousness — this was because the rivalry between A University and Gongda ran deep and long-standing. Both A University’s and Gongda’s basketball teams were renowned nationally as powerhouse teams, and with two tigers unable to share one mountain, every meeting between them turned into an all-out battle to the death. And setting all that aside, for some reason, nearly every year, some kind of love-triangle drama tended to break out between players on the two teams — two guys fighting over one girl, that kind of thing — which lent the rivalry between the two teams a complicated undertone bordering on national grudge-match intensity. Every practice match was fought as fiercely as an official game, each side determined to crush the other. And because both teams were so strong, no matter which side won, the margin was always narrow, victory hard-fought and exhausting for both — and precisely because victory came at such a cost, both teams took every single matchup between them extremely seriously.

Today, aside from A University students, the only other people present were Gongda students, all here to cheer on their respective schools.

After wandering through the stands for a while, Tan Yin started feeling short of breath and stuffy in the chest — with the thunderstorm today, the indoor gym was already stuffy and hot, and the large overhead lighting fixtures in the gym’s ceiling only made things worse. With the crowd so packed, Tan Yin had to be extremely careful weaving back and forth just to avoid getting bumped into…

She thought it over and, without further hesitation, decided to head straight down onto the indoor basketball court itself. Since she was invisible anyway, as long as she stood carefully just outside the boundary line, she wouldn’t have to worry about being bumped by passing spectators — and besides, wouldn’t watching Xu Yu up close make it easier to dig up dirt on him? She’d have to keep her eyes wide open and watch closely to see whether Xu Yu played dirty, whether he’d secretly pull some underhanded, sneaky move on his opponents when no one was paying attention.

Tan Yin had originally been proudly focused on watching Xu Yu, watching him warm up and test his shooting touch, and with every one of his movements, bursts of commotion kept erupting from the stands outside. Tan Yin, fully absorbed in watching Xu Yu, saw him stop practicing and start adjusting his wristband while talking to someone beside him — and just then, the commotion in the stands suddenly escalated dramatically, with shrieks and whistles erupting one after another…

Tan Yin belatedly turned her head and only then saw Chu Hang, back on the court once more.

His face looked almost translucently pale under the lights, and in this scorching, high-energy atmosphere, he carried around himself that same untouchable coldness. Most people, when cold, come across as withdrawn or excessively arrogant, but on Chu Hang, it never felt that way at all — his coldness carried a kind of refinement, like fine Joseon white porcelain, making people feel that he ought to be this cold, that he ought to be untouchable.

At that moment, Chu Hang completely ignored the shrieking from the stands and the ardent gazes of the girls around him. He lifted his eyes slightly, pressing his lips together, looking toward somewhere behind Xu Yu, then quickly averted his gaze again. He was still wearing his white shirt.

Seeing Chu Hang, Xu Yu walked over to greet him, glancing at his outfit. “Not playing today?”

“Mm.”

Xu Yu looked a bit regretful. “Fine then, guess you’re just here to watch my heroics up close from the sidelines. You architecture guys are all like this, staying up all night on designs — I’ve tried to recruit you onto the team so many times, and every time you tell me you don’t have time to practice or play.”

“I’m not playing. I just finished lunch.”

“Coming on for the second half then?”

“No. You’ve got most of your starters today anyway, and I’m not even on the team.”

Xu Yu clapped Chu Hang cheerfully on the shoulder. “Fair enough. We won’t need you to save the day today anyway — our team’s going to pull the score apart on our own.”

Chu Hang, seemingly a bit distracted, gave an absent “mm,” then walked off toward the bench area on the sidelines. And once he wasn’t playing, the excited anticipation that had briefly flared up in the crowd gradually cooled off too.

The referee’s whistle blew, and the game began. The two powerhouse teams were indeed evenly matched — one side scored, the other quickly answered with a three-pointer. Even someone as uninterested in basketball as Tan Yin could feel the fierce, exhilarating intensity of the game unfolding. Xu Yu was practically the focal point of the entire match, his shots flashy and stylish every time, each basket drawing a wave of applause. And yet, though he was so dazzling, and Tan Yin’s supposed “key surveillance target,” for some reason her gaze kept drifting, unbidden, toward Chu Hang, sitting on the sidelines watching the game…

Chu Hang picked up a bottle of mineral water and drank.

Chu Hang’s brow furrowed.

…

Chu Hang’s mouth curved up slightly at a beautiful basket.

He broke into an unrestrained, sunny smile, like light breaking through clouds, like the sky clearing after heavy snow.

Almost in that very instant, Tan Yin suddenly understood a line of poetry she’d once read —

“There are two sins in this world — your smile is one, and your not smiling is the other.”

So this was what Chu Hang looked like making these small movements and expressions. Tan Yin thought to herself, my drawings really aren’t good enough yet — some of this spirit, this essence, simply can’t be captured through art alone.

The first half of the game raged on fiercely, and probably thanks to home-court advantage, A University’s team surged ahead. The score, which had originally been closely contested, gradually pulled apart, largely thanks to Xu Yu single-handedly turning the tide. Yet Tan Yin remained somewhat distracted throughout, her attention constantly drifting to the person beside her.

It must be for the sake of perfecting her art, to observe her former subject this closely, Tan Yin told herself. This is just an unavoidable occupational hazard I can’t help! That’s why I’m not popular!

Just as her thoughts were drifting off into this stream of self-consolation, the game suddenly took a dramatic turn. Xu Yu’s play wasn’t dirty at all — it was the Gongda team players who turned out to play dirty. Not long into the match, they’d already deliberately fouled A University’s point guard hard enough to force him off the court injured.

Even Tan Yin, no basketball fan, found this behavior thoroughly repulsive. But before long, the opposing team tried the same trick again. Though the spectators in the stands were too far away to see clearly, Tan Yin saw it with perfect clarity — Xu Yu was dribbling the ball along smoothly when a Gongda player, taking advantage of his bulkier build, pretended to block Xu Yu in a blind spot, but secretly drove an elbow hard into him, and deliberately tripped his foot too. Xu Yu, already moving fast while dribbling, had his balance completely thrown off by this, and he fell hard to the ground — the ball stolen away by the opposing player as a result.

Unfortunately, the referee failed to catch this dirty tactic. Xu Yu, having suffered this underhanded blow, gritted his teeth trying to get up, and only then discovered his ankle had been sprained in the fall. The rest of A University’s players called for a timeout — but no matter how outraged everyone was, it didn’t change anything, and once the timeout ended, the game had to continue.

“Xu Yu, let Li Long take you to the campus clinic to get checked out. Don’t worry about the rest of the game — we’ll hold the score for you!”

Xu Yu gritted his teeth. “I’m fine, I can still push through.”

Tan Yin, standing beside Chu Hang watching the game, felt her own heart clench too — even though she wasn’t a basketball fan, her sense of collective pride as an A University student had been fully stirred up by this match, and she felt genuinely outraged. Weren’t they supposed to be evenly matched rivals? So this underhanded tactic was how their so-called powerhouse team got its wins?

With the point guard already off the court, the substitute brought on to replace him was a freshman this year, still raw both in skill and in team coordination. With him on the court now, nearly all the pressure had shifted onto Xu Yu as small forward — and if Xu Yu went off the court too now… this match would surely be lost for A University!

“Chu Hang, why don’t you go on!” Even knowing Chu Hang couldn’t hear her, Tan Yin couldn’t help herself, circling anxiously around him as she watched the game with growing worry.

But Tan Yin also knew Chu Hang’s personality well enough — he was someone who, once he’d made up his mind about something, rarely changed it. Call it sticking to his principles on the good side, or being rigid to the point of stubbornness on the bad side. And especially as a pampered young master used to comfort, there was no way Chu Hang would engage in strenuous exercise this soon after a meal…

At that moment, Xu Yu’s teammates were trying to persuade him to leave the court, and Tan Yin felt both regretful and somewhat dejected — it looked like this match was already lost for A University’s team.

“Ugh, what a shame, we’re going to lose!”

But just as the situation on the court had turned so dire, Chu Hang’s expression remained utterly composed, as if he’d remain unmoved even if the heavens themselves came crashing down before him. He actually stood up — Xu Yu hadn’t even left the court yet, and Chu Hang was already walking away.

Tan Yin watched Chu Hang’s retreating figure, utterly dumbfounded — how could he be this cold-blooded, seriously, like some emotionless assassin.

Yet, to Tan Yin’s surprise, even though A University’s team had just suffered such a devastating blow to morale, only a few minutes later, the stands suddenly erupted into a wave of shrieks and applause.

Amid that thunderous roar of sound, Tan Yin belatedly turned around, and there was Chu Hang.

He’d come back.