The two of them talked for a bit more, and Tan Yin, faced with Jiang Yilu’s deadly interrogating stare, finally said goodbye to Chu Hang first.

Jiang Yilu crossed her arms, staring at Tan Yin: “What exactly is going on between you two?”

“Well… it’s a long, long story…”

Tan Yin had no choice but to answer Jiang Yilu’s questions one by one. When Jiang Yilu finished listening, her face was full of envy and longing: “Isn’t this exactly mutual secret pining? This poem-like beautiful love—why can’t Xu Yu learn a thing or two from it?”

Tan Yin got curious: “So what’s the progress between you two?”

Jiang Yilu looked thoroughly depressed: “We agreed to divide up the colonies together, and now I’m the one who’s stuck! Xu Yu’s colony is putting up such stubborn resistance, refusing to submit. Given how fast things have been developing between us lately, I really thought he’d confess by now! But I waited a whole week and he made no move at all! It’s infuriating!”

Tan Yin comforted Jiang Yilu for a while, then Chu Hang’s call came—he was already waiting downstairs at the girls’ dormitory. Before leaving, Tan Yin ordered a dessert delivery for Jiang Yilu, and only then did she leave with an easy mind.

The short walk down the dormitory stairs felt strangely nervous and endless to Tan Yin. She was walking at a perfectly normal pace, and yet everything felt like slow motion. When she stepped out of the dormitory door and saw Chu Hang standing not far away, it still felt as beautiful and unreal as a midsummer night’s dream.

Only soon she realized this wasn’t her own illusion, because that boy—so striking he seemed to have stepped out of an oil painting—whose face was usually so indifferent, the moment he saw her, his faintly furrowed brows relaxed like a night-blooming flower unfurling, and the corner of his mouth curved into the faintest, lightest smile. Then his eyes, resolute and gentle, walked toward her.

Tan Yin’s father used to lecture her constantly that young people who didn’t study hard in college were wasting their youth.

That wasn’t wrong. Only now, in this moment, Tan Yin realized there should have been a second half to that sentence.

Young people who didn’t fall in love properly in college were also wasting their youth.

Walking arm in arm with Chu Hang was naturally quite enjoyable, but the stares from those around them made Tan Yin somewhat uncomfortable. She’d endured plenty of sidelong glances before because of the banner incident, but this was different—she didn’t care about the banner, but she cared about Chu Hang. Faced with looks that were obviously ill-intentioned or overly probing, she still felt uneasy.

Chu Hang, by contrast, was far calmer than Tan Yin. In the cafeteria, he held her hand with one hand while smoothing back the hair the wind had blown loose with the other, his movements natural and intimate, utterly unbothered by anyone’s stares—open and unashamed. While they were in line, when Tan Yin wasn’t paying attention, he even leaned down and kissed her cheek.

The meal itself was simple, but under Chu Hang’s gaze, Tan Yin somehow found it tasting vivid and delicious.

After the meal, the two of them found an empty classroom on the first floor. Tan Yin didn’t waste any time—she spread out her books and earnestly asked Chu Hang to tutor her.

It had to be said, Chu Hang had a gift for explaining things clearly and simply—structural mechanics of statically indeterminate structures, material mechanics, multi-span continuous beam structural mechanics, concrete design, truss theory mechanics, structural mechanics… The more Tan Yin listened, the more absorbed she became. She suddenly felt an unprecedented grasp of architecture, as if she could sense force itself flowing through the wind. For a moment, her passion for learning surged so high she wanted to rush outside and shout—

Today, force belongs to me!

Unfortunately, just as Tan Yin’s heart was ready to claim kingship over the world of mechanics, Chu Hang was not pleased at all.

He stopped explaining, pressed his lips together, and looked at Tan Yin: “You can actually absorb all this?”

Tan Yin, still drifting along the river of mechanics, answered without a second thought: “I can absorb it!”

But the moment she said this, Chu Hang’s expression didn’t look great. To match his expression, he closed the textbook.

“We’ve studied for an hour. That’s enough. Let’s stop here for today.” Chu Hang paused, then explained in an unnatural tone, “Because a person’s high-efficiency concentration window is limited. If you keep going, you’ll get diminishing returns. Better to balance work and rest.”

Tan Yin got a bit anxious: “Chu Hang, I can absorb it! We’ve studied for a whole hour? I didn’t even notice. I feel like I’m still in great shape, I can keep going, my efficiency won’t drop!”

But no matter how Tan Yin insisted, Chu Hang wouldn’t budge. He made no move to continue teaching.

“We can continue tomorrow.”

Tan Yin said anxiously: “How can learning wait?!”

“Then should I wait?”

“Huh?”

Chu Hang pressed his lips together, looking like he’d reached the end of his patience and yet had no way out: “I know it’s not that you can’t absorb it—it’s that I can’t teach it anymore.”

Tan Yin was stunned.

Chu Hang looked into Tan Yin’s eyes, his voice carrying a bashfulness he was clearly trying hard to suppress: “It’s not your problem. It’s mine.”

Before Tan Yin had fully processed this, his low voice, tinged with a cool quality, sounded again—

“An hour of explaining mechanics while looking at you is already my limit.”

“Looking at you, I can’t concentrate. I can’t teach anymore.” Chu Hang pressed his lips together, then said, giving up on himself, “If you really want to keep studying, maybe I should call Chen Ziqiang or Zhang Chen over.” After saying this, he glanced at Tan Yin again, then, with absolutely no sense of guilt, reversed himself. “Never mind, forget it. I don’t feel safe about that.”

Tan Yin didn’t understand at first what was unsafe about it, but once it clicked, she was torn between laughing and crying: “Chen Ziqiang has had a girlfriend for years, and isn’t Zhang Chen chasing Anna right now? What’s unsafe about that?”

“In any case, if it’s a man, it’s unsafe.” Chu Hang clearly didn’t want to elaborate, his earlobes turning slightly red, refusing with utter seriousness. “Still no.”

Tan Yin couldn’t help laughing: “You should know, back when the school first started its one-on-one mentorship program, my assigned partner was Chen Ziqiang—if he hadn’t broken his leg and been unable to help, I’d still be receiving his ‘precision poverty alleviation’ right now!”

“Well, now I’m your benefactor, and you’re my little poverty case.” Chu Hang said calmly, “I believe this one-on-one aid relationship of ours is exclusive. Since you’ve accepted my assistance, you can’t go find someone else to tutor you halfway through.” After saying this, he couldn’t help adding, “Besides, neither Chen Ziqiang’s nor Zhang Chen’s grades are as good as mine.”

“Oh…”

“But Tan Yin, are you…” Chu Hang paused, then said stiffly, “more fond of studying than you are of me?”

“Huh?” The conversation had jumped so abruptly that Tan Yin was momentarily lost. The subtext in Chu Hang’s words…

She asked carefully: “Are you seriously getting jealous of studying too? Isn’t it a good thing that I love studying? Otherwise wouldn’t bad grades embarrass you?”

“I wouldn’t be embarrassed no matter what grades you got.” Chu Hang pressed his lips together, then suddenly seemed to remember something. “So if my architectural model and I both fell into a river together, which would you save?”

Chu Hang glanced at Tan Yin, feigning nonchalance. “Oh, just asking casually. Just answer however you really feel.”

But after saying that, he added, in a way that gave away exactly how much he cared: “You should think carefully before you answer.”

“…”

Watching Chu Hang, who clearly cared desperately but was putting on an air of breezy indifference for appearances’ sake, Tan Yin found it absolutely hilarious. How had she never noticed before how adorable Chu Hang actually was?

Tan Yin put on an exaggeratedly conflicted expression: “That’s actually a pretty hard question… You know how much a model means to an architecture student. The model represents my hard work… falling into the water with my boyfriend, so of course I’d choose…” She deliberately paused, looking across at Chu Hang.

Though he tried hard to suppress it, a flicker of disappointment and melancholy still showed on Chu Hang’s face. At that moment, his expression, stubbornly serious as he endured it, actually looked rather pitiful, radiating a kind of endearing maturity that made it hard not to feel for him.

Tan Yin couldn’t bear to tease him any longer. She looked into Chu Hang’s eyes and said in one breath: “Of course I’d choose my boyfriend.”

Almost the instant the words left her mouth, Chu Hang’s eyes lit up with a triumphant sparkle at this unexpected answer. Though he tried to hold it back, the happiness on him overflowed regardless.

Tan Yin’s heart suddenly felt like it had fallen into a honey jar. She thought—so this is what being in love feels like. So when you truly like someone, you care about their feelings, you notice every subtle expression on their face, you feel happy because they’re happy—and liking this feeling really can change a person.

This beautiful, simple emotion had transformed Chu Hang—cold and distant, seemingly above worldly concerns—into this awkward, slightly childish boy in front of her.

Tan Yin rested her chin on her hands, looked earnestly into Chu Hang’s eyes, and repeated: “I choose you.”

“Because I also have a secret to tell you.”

Chu Hang looked up.

Tan Yin smiled: “It was love at first sight for me too, with you.”

Chu Hang was completely stunned. Beneath his shock, his expression carried a mixture of sweetness and delighted surprise.

“Actually, I already liked you when I was pretending to be blind,” Tan Yin said, looking earnestly at Chu Hang. “I ran the test several times, and you were the only one who ever came forward on your own to offer help.”

“And if it had been someone else who came forward that day…”

Before Chu Hang could finish his question, Tan Yin cut him off: “If it had been someone else, then it wouldn’t have been love at first sight.”

“Hm?”

“Because I only like you.” Tan Yin thought about it, but her tone was certain. “You might not believe it, but I think there’s fate at work somewhere in all this—because it happened to be you who showed up at that exact moment, that’s what made it love at first sight. If we hadn’t met then, I believe the next time we met, it would still have been love at first sight.”

“But…” Tan Yin suddenly thought of something. “Since you originally thought I faked being blind for fame and clout, and never even confirmed it with me, and just kept misunderstanding me all that time—how did you later… how did you change your mind and end up liking me? After all, it wasn’t until you were honest with me that we cleared up the misunderstanding. So doesn’t that mean, before that, in your eyes I was someone without even basic principles or boundaries, all for the sake of going viral? Was someone like that even worth your attention or affection?” Tan Yin paused, then said quietly, “I always feel like my image in your mind before wasn’t very good—first a possible attention-seeking internet celebrity faking blindness to exploit people’s goodwill, then someone who couldn’t win you over and drew angry comics out of spite, then a student who came in dead last and shamelessly hung a banner about it…”

“The impression wasn’t great,” Chu Hang admitted, turning his head to the side. “Honestly, I thought you were nothing but flaws.”

“…”

Chu Hang, being this honest is going to cost you your girlfriend.

“Especially since the gap between my first impression of you and everything after was just too huge. I really couldn’t process it.”

Tan Yin was curious: “So what was your first impression?”

“You were standing at the intersection looking completely lost, clearly unable to see and unable to cross the street, but you just bit your lip and wouldn’t ask anyone for help. I found that hard to look away from.”

So the thing that had made Chu Hang fall for her at first sight was her fake “pitiful little thing” persona?

“Then I found out you’d faked it, and I got so angry I never even bothered to confirm it with you.”

Tan Yin muttered: “If I sound that terrible, why do you still like me? Chu Hang, do you actually like me?”

Chu Hang pressed his lips together: “Back then, it seemed like your flaws were as numerous as stars, and your good points were as scarce as the sun.”

Tan Yin was starting to get annoyed, but Chu Hang just laughed. He looked at her and said, deliberately, word by word: “But when the sun comes out, all the stars disappear.”

“I realized that even if you had ninety-nine flaws and only one good point, that one good point happened to hit exactly the spot I was weakest for—as if it had grown specifically to target what I like. So even with the misunderstanding, I couldn’t help paying attention to you.”

Tan Yin found herself at a loss for words. She felt shy, and a little giddy, but mostly moved: “Chu Hang, even though some of it was a misunderstanding, I really do have a lot of flaws. You’ll probably discover more in the future, but I’ll work hard to fix them!”

“No need.”

“Hm?”

“No need to fix anything.” Chu Hang smiled. “This is good as it is. If being in a relationship, if liking someone, means demanding the other person change for you, then that kind of relationship isn’t worth having. You’re you. You’re lovable. Your flaws are lovable too.”

This time Tan Yin truly felt her heart flutter. She had never been a perfect person—sometimes impulsive, sometimes careless—yet Chu Hang had no wish to change her at all. Whatever she was, that’s what he wanted.

Having someone willing to embrace your true self—that was truly a happy and fortunate thing, especially when that someone was Chu Hang.

Tan Yin was touched to death inside, but out loud she still couldn’t resist teasing him: “If the other girls at school saw you like this, they’d definitely say you’d broken character. Jiang Yilu even said that dating you for years wouldn’t get her a single sweet word—how come you’ve changed so much?”

Chu Hang didn’t let Tan Yin keep talking. He silenced her with a kiss.

It was a lingering, gentle kiss, but toward the end Chu Hang’s breathing grew visibly unsteady, and beneath the gentleness crept a kind of possessive intensity. Just before things spiraled out of control, Chu Hang pulled himself back from the brink and stopped the deep kiss. He looked at Tan Yin, somewhat annoyed with himself.

“Sorry.”

But this utterly insincere apology was followed immediately by him leaning down again to give Tan Yin a second kiss. Then a third. Then a fourth.

Tan Yin, kissed slowly and thoroughly, every inch of her mouth traced and explored, found herself completely unable to hold her ground. A current of unsettling electricity ran up her spine. Held in Chu Hang’s arms, she had no room to resist at all, and could only let him take whatever he wanted, her mind hazily thinking that Chu Hang probably wasn’t just a reincarnated fox spirit—he might also be some kind of kissing-fish spirit.

When Chu Hang finally released her, both of them were flushed and trembling slightly, hearts racing.

“Only you get to see this.”

Tan Yin, still lost in the lingering heat of that kiss, even her voice sounded soft and melting: “What?”

“This side of me. Only you get to see it.”

“I only break character for you.”

Damn it, Tan Yin thought, that was a direct hit to the heart. Chu Hang said his good points grew right where her weaknesses were—but weren’t his sweet words also aimed precisely at hers?

Who could possibly resist a line like that?

For a moment, Tan Yin thought—thank goodness they’d only just gotten together. If, later on, Chu Hang’s character broke completely, would she even stand a chance of defending herself? She might really just die on the spot.