Zhou Zheng’s expression was unusually calm… and composed.

He looked at her: “What did Li Xiaoyi tell you?”

At a time like this, he was still concerned about—the matter between Li Xiaoyi and her.

Scumbag.

Lin Shuang wanted so badly to flip him off and curse at him, gritting her back teeth, her fury turning into a bitter laugh: “He told me plenty, said you two got along quite well, that you’re his good buddy…”

Zhou Zheng cut off her words, admitting firmly and decisively: “I do know you.”

“Not the kind of knowing where you’d merely heard my name in passing, but—you fundamentally knew who I was, knew about my past with Li Xiaoyi, even had some kind of contact with me, that kind of knowing?” Lin Shuang’s gaze burned into him. “Zhou Zheng?”

“Yes.” He lowered his eyes, nodding.

“So we never actually met through a blind date arrangement at all. The first time we met, when we introduced ourselves, you actually already knew who I was, but you pretended not to know me, never mentioning a word of the past.”

Zhou Zheng nodded, adding rashly: “Teacher’s wife mentioned your name… I knew… called to arrange to meet you.”

Lin Shuang was so furious her hair practically stood on end, her pretty face frosted over, her chest tight, holding back the urge to slap him.

“Is this appropriate, what you did?” Her eyes turned cold. “If Li Xiaoyi hadn’t shown up, you wouldn’t have said a word, was it fun keeping me in the dark?”

“It’s like watching a show—watching me openly right in front of you, me chatting with you about the past, discussing old times with you, and I even… actually you knew everything, perfectly clear in your heart, was it fun toying with me?” Lin Shuang’s voice turned icy. “You kept saying you were being sincere and open, and yet, I believed everything you said, but you kept even the most basic thing from me?”

She let go of his shirt, glaring at him with beautiful eyes, her throat rolling, shoving him hard, standing up coldly.

Zhou Zheng stumbled backward.

“I hate most when people lie to me, hide things from me.” She stared at him icily. “You really went too far, Zhou Zheng.”

“I do know you. But do you know me?” His eyes dimmed, his face tense, his expression calm. “Because you don’t know me at all. If I’d been honest—told you that I was Li Xiaoyi’s classmate, that I had some friendship with him during my school years, that because of him we’d had some contact before, though you probably wouldn’t remember—what would you have done?”

Lin Shuang’s lips moved, but she said nothing.

She probably would have been guarded a thousand times over, might even have been repulsed, telling him to get lost.

“Deliberately concealing it is exactly having bad intentions.” Lin Shuang said coldly. “We’ve known each other two years. You could have chosen to tell me at any point, but you specifically chose not to.”

“Because we’re not that close.” His gaze was clear, answering her word by word. “All our past contact was related to Li Xiaoyi. I didn’t want… him to appear again either, didn’t want… to be compared standing next to him…”

This sentence was said unusually softly, the final trailing tone fading into silence.

Zhou Zheng pressed his lips tight, hands in his pockets, lowering his head.

He was likely no match for Li Xiaoyi.

Lin Shuang’s expression was blank, her gaze fixed ahead.

After a moment of silence, Zhou Zheng asked the question he’d wanted to ask all along: “Shuangshuang… do you have even the slightest impression of me? My name, or my appearance?”

Her expression paused for a moment.

Three years of high school, Lin Shuang had been split into three different classes. She’d had too many friends and classmates around her, and besides, most of her attention had been on Li Xiaoyi—it was truly hard to remember a single classmate from her boyfriend’s class.

But in Li Xiaoyi’s description, she could vaguely make out a blurred shadow.

Something to do with math.

Sophomore year, the first time they split into liberal arts and science tracks, she and Li Xiaoyi had gone into different tracks—one liberal arts, one science. Back then, the liberal arts track only had one science subject: math. And her math happened to be particularly poor. Sometimes, unable to finish her math workbook, she’d simply toss it to Li Xiaoyi—he was in the science track, and doing liberal arts math was at least somewhat more manageable for him than for her.

Later, her math homework got passed on by Li Xiaoyi to a classmate in his class. Li Xiaoyi said that person had a good relationship with him, was quite helpful, did math problems especially fast—where it would take him an hour to do the problems, that classmate could probably manage it in fifteen minutes.

Lin Shuang remembered she’d teased Li Xiaoyi about being lazy and unaccomplished, but she herself loved to play and was in a relationship, truly couldn’t finish those math workbooks and pop quizzes. When she went to Li Xiaoyi for emergency help, he could always quickly return the homework to her, and at a specified score too—for instance, if she wanted that pop quiz to score a 90, then the quiz that got made up afterward would definitely be a 90, not a point more, not a point less.

Lin Shuang had once been quite impressed by this skill.

Every time she received the math homework Li Xiaoyi passed to her, Lin Shuang would give Li Xiaoyi some snacks, asking him to pass her thanks along to this math genius.

As for the other things Li Xiaoyi mentioned, she truly had no strong impression, but at the very least, her meetings with Zhou Zheng had been few, or if they’d met, she hadn’t had much of an impression—or perhaps Li Xiaoyi had never formally introduced Zhou Zheng, or he’d blended into the crowd and simply been overlooked by her.

“I only remember, sophomore year, someone helped with my math homework. Later when we split classes again in junior year, no one helped anymore, and Li Xiaoyi said that person had been assigned to the honors class.” She asked him, “Was that person you?”

Zhou Zheng nodded: “It was me.”

He couldn’t quite tell if it was bitterness or relief in his heart—that in the end, the only thing that had made an impression on her memory was this single standout skill of his, math.

Lin Shuang still felt some lingering anger. This man before her, who had known about her embarrassing past back then, who had seen her show off her affection with her first love, yet had stayed silently by her side for so long—that wasn’t exactly aboveboard behavior. Based on her usual temper, she really could have just turned around and broken up with him, but this anger just wouldn’t vent itself out, after all, ten years ago Zhou Zheng had also served as her math tool.

Oh right, if it weren’t for him, maybe her sophomore year math could have improved more, and her college entrance exam score could have been a few points higher, and she wouldn’t have ended up at such a mediocre university.

Lin Shuang kept a cold face, completely uninterested in dealing with him.

She grabbed her cigarette pack and went to the balcony to smoke.

Zhou Zheng watched that faint glow of fire—the silver lighter, once again back in Lin Shuang’s hand.

That night in bed, the two of them lay with a wide river’s worth of distance between them. Lin Shuang lay with her back to him, her phone’s light glowing dimly, typing away.

Zhou Zheng silently glanced at her a couple times, then closed his eyes.

In the middle of the night, the two of them gradually drifted closer in sleep, turning over, limbs bumping into each other.

Unclear how it started—in any case, while Lin Shuang was still half-asleep in a daze, at some moment there came a flicker of consciousness, and Zhou Zheng had already pulled her tight against him, and everything that followed happened naturally, impossible to resist.

Under the cover of darkness, neither of them made a sound, the movements on the bed rising and falling, twisting.

The man on top of her seemed as if he hadn’t had any in eight lifetimes, the fierce, deep kisses building layer upon layer. Zhou Zheng pinned down her limbs, thrusting hard into her body.

Their entangled breaths were rushed and disordered, a kind of extremely suppressed emotion.

Lin Shuang could feel that unruly force—he put all his strength into her, shaking her until she ached and trembled, on and on without stopping.

Finally, sweat dripped down onto her. She, exhausted, wrapped her arms around him, touching his sweat-soaked body and head.

The two of them nestled together.

“These past few times… what did you and Li Xiaoyi talk about?” He stared at the ceiling above, asking her softly.

“You want to know?”

Zhou Zheng actually didn’t want to ask, but he couldn’t bear this kind of torment.

“I want to know.”

“He told me he was sorry, said his quiet disappearance had been understandable—during that period, he’d gotten in a car accident and was injured, his family, afraid of drawing trouble to themselves, forced him to draw a clean line with me. Right after that his father got cancer, and the family lost its standing too. By the time he tried to find me again, it was already a case of being fated apart, and we’d lost each other in the confusion.”

“He said he still loves me, misses our old days together, has never forgotten everything we had together.” Lin Shuang’s tone was low and melancholic.

Zhou Zheng’s breath caught.

At that first reunion of the three of them, he’d been able to tell from the look in his eyes that Li Xiaoyi still hadn’t let go of Lin Shuang, and Lin Shuang’s state of mind had been up and down too, never calm since.

“Back then he was young and ignorant, full of youthful arrogance. Now, turning around, he’s become steady and composed instead, deeply affectionate.” Lin Shuang said calmly.

“People always need to go through hardship before they mature.” Zhou Zheng said dejectedly. “He really has become better than before, in every respect, quite outstanding.”

“Is that so?” Lin Shuang’s voice was cold. “What’s your standpoint for saying that?”

“The perspective of the general public, of a bystander.”

Lin Shuang scoffed with a faint smile.

“How do you feel about him…” Zhou Zheng asked her hesitantly. “Shuangshuang, what do you want to do?”

Lin Shuang didn’t respond.

Zhou Zheng closed his eyes with difficulty, slowly adjusting his breathing, silently waiting for her answer.

Time seemed to pass for a very, very long while. Just as Zhou Zheng thought she’d already fallen asleep, Lin Shuang suddenly spoke again.

“How did you know—without me ever telling you—that among ball sports, I play badminton best, that I like to have soup with my meals, that among fruits I dislike bananas the most, how did you know I read romance novels, like taking relationship quizzes, and so many other little details.” Lin Shuang asked him. “Zhou Zheng, is this normal? Is it because you’re just especially attentive?”

She waited a long while before finally getting his answer.

“Because back then I heard Li Xiaoyi talk about you so much, because you two were dazzling enough that every word and action drew attention.” He replied in a low voice.

“So besides helping with my math homework before, you heard a lot about me?”

“Yes…”

“Did we overlap much back then? Did we see each other often?”

“No, we didn’t see each other much. I usually stayed in the classroom reading.” Aside from his silent watching, the two of them hadn’t had much overlap back then—Zhou Zheng wasn’t someone who liked joining in on the excitement, and Lin Shuang wasn’t the type to run over to the science track’s classroom often either—there were too many boys there, and her presence would have been too eye-catching. Li Xiaoyi was jealous by nature, so the two of them usually hung out off-campus, or wandered the school field, library, and the small grove.

“What impression did you have of me back then?”

Zhou Zheng shut his mouth, saying nothing.

“Tell me!”

“Very pretty, a very nice voice, a good personality too, and a great relationship with your boyfriend.” He dug up her old image from his memory, his tone gentle. “Lots of friends around you, chattering away when talking, a crisp laugh, dressed in nice clothes, would buy lots of things girls like, liked sharing snacks with people, often had your boyfriend do lots of childish things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as taking relationship quizzes, exchanging love diaries every day, stuffing your boyfriend’s backpack full of your own things, forcing your boyfriend to wear nail polish and lipstick.”

Scene after scene, as if he’d experienced it firsthand, deeply impressed.

Back then, he’d been off to the side, watching silently, like watching a dream unfold.

Somehow, though this was an unpleasant and sensitive topic of conversation, a faint smile rose on Lin Shuang’s cheeks.

Those memories she’d once blocked out, now spoken from Zhou Zheng’s mouth, viewed from a bystander’s perspective, instead didn’t carry that same sense of disgust—she even felt that her ten-years-ago self had been quite adorable.

“For someone who supposedly had their nose buried in books and paid no attention to the outside world, weren’t you paying a bit too much attention to your friend’s girlfriend? And knew a bit too much too?” Lin Shuang closed her eyes. “Zhou Zheng, I was pretty good-looking, quite popular in school back then—do you have bad intentions toward me?”

Zhou Zheng’s hand suddenly clenched, his body going rigid, his lips pressed tight.