“Teacher Zhou?”

In the darkness her voice was clear and crisp, carrying a hint of playful mockery: “Upright and aboveboard Teacher Zhou.”

“I don’t have bad intentions.” Zhou Zheng corrected her.

“Then do you have improper thoughts about me?”

“No.” His tone was hurried, tinged with something close to embarrassed indignation.

“So then?” Lin Shuang furrowed her brow slightly. “This excessive attention you paid me, remembered for ten years—what’s the reason behind it?”

He didn’t feel he’d paid her excessive attention—it was simply that her presence had been too overwhelming.

“Can’t you just be straightforward?” Lin Shuang couldn’t help but shift her feet under the blanket, kicking him in the leg. “Do you think I have this kind of patience for just anyone?”

Zhou Zheng took a breath, reaching out to catch her leg, circling her slender ankle, rubbing it with his thumb. Lin Shuang couldn’t help but twist away, but he pulled her along with a smooth motion, dragging her into his warm embrace.

She was warmed by his body heat, narrowing her eyes, too languid to resist.

“You… were probably like the sun, dazzlingly bright. I was always involuntarily drawn to you, then would think about it in my heart for a long while.” His voice was very quiet, his hand unconsciously lingering on her leg. “Sometimes I’d run into you at school by chance, and I’d feel happy in my heart. Seeing you and Li Xiaoyi, I’d also feel envious… but back then I really didn’t think about doing anything, I just wanted to look, that was enough.”

“This is basically a secret crush.” Lin Shuang concluded. “So you had a secret crush on me back then, silently watching me?”

“You could put it that way.” Zhou Zheng didn’t want to admit it, yet had no choice but to.

Lin Shuang opened her eyes. In the darkness, it felt as if a colorful dream balloon was floating—she held the string of the balloon in her hand, yet couldn’t stop its light, buoyant drift upward.

She’d never lacked for secret admirers—the love letters she’d received in high school could have filled an entire drawer—but somehow, right now, she inexplicably felt happy.

So it turned out, in these ten years, there’d been someone standing quietly at the edge of the story, silently watching her, and finally… step by step, walking toward her.

She pinched him, chuckling: “Zhou Zheng, you’re quite the wild one—right under Li Xiaoyi’s nose, openly wearing the badge of a helpful good friend, while secretly coveting his girlfriend.”

“I wasn’t coveting you.” Zhou Zheng argued.

“No?” Lin Shuang mocked. “You think I don’t know what high school boys use those trashy romance novels in your old bookshelf back home for?”

Zhou Zheng’s face suddenly turned red.

“Hypocritical, harboring ulterior motives.” She snorted coldly. “And then, ten years later, taking advantage of a blind date arrangement, premeditated, concealing the past, seizing the opportunity, utterly deplorable.”

“Shuangshuang…”

He felt she was twisting the facts, yet couldn’t argue his way out of it.

Lin Shuang turned over, her back to him.

Zhou Zheng’s arms suddenly felt empty. He couldn’t help but touch her shoulder.

“Don’t think that just because you’ve confessed a little, I’ll forgive you easily.” Lin Shuang settled into a sleeping position, her tone flat. “You haven’t even apologized properly.”

“I’m apologizing to you, I’m sorry.” Zhou Zheng took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have hidden it from you.”

“Too late. You haven’t even realized your own mistake. Purely acting from your own standpoint, tossing my feelings aside—how is that any different from Li Xiaoyi? You two are equally detestable.”

Zhou Zheng felt stifled—how had he ended up being equated with Li Xiaoyi.

When it came to being unreasonable, Lin Shuang had a natural advantage.

She fell asleep quickly enough, her sleeping posture utterly carefree.

Zhou Zheng touched her long hair spread across the pillow, sighing softly.

Once things were out in the open, the atmosphere between the two of them was completely off—no more warmth and affection, if anything the relationship grew colder. Lin Shuang ignored Zhou Zheng for several days straight, wearing an expression that showed she found everything about him unpleasant.

Zhou Zheng couldn’t figure out what was on her mind.

Sometimes Lin Shuang would corner him, asking bizarre questions.

“Why did you help me with my math homework back then?”

“It wasn’t that I wanted to help you with your math homework.” Zhou Zheng explained. “It’s that Li Xiaoyi didn’t have time, couldn’t finish the homework, and dumped it all on me, begging me repeatedly to help.”

She glared at him: “Do you know this was hurting me? Do you know how terrible my math got that sophomore year?”

“………”

What could he say? At a time like this, how could he argue with her—he could only grovel and admit fault: “I’m sorry.”

“What good is sorry, my college entrance exam score fell into this math pit, while you became the math top scorer, and I, I ended up at some bottom-tier provincial university.” Lin Shuang kept a stern face.

“………..I’m sorry……….”

Lin Shuang suddenly remembered something else: “So then, that little box at your old home, the things inside—whose girl were those from?”

Zhou Zheng silently glanced at her, a hint of quiet resentment.

“Hm?” She jutted her chin out, arms crossed, wearing the air of a noble queen.

“Yours.” Zhou Zheng said quietly, as if caught red-handed.

She laughed with a “humph”: “You secretly kept my things? Or did you steal them?”

Zhou Zheng frowned, arguing: “No.”

“Then how’d you get them? Explain each one to me, one by one.”

Zhou Zheng took a deep breath: “Those few snacks, that was from when I helped with your math homework, Li Xiaoyi casually pulled them out of his backpack and gave them to me. The gel pen, my pen ran out of ink, and Li Xiaoyi tossed his to me. The handkerchief tissue, one time everyone was eating in the cafeteria, we were sitting at the same long table, and you forgot to take it with you when you left.”

“So we’ve eaten in the cafeteria together before too?” Lin Shuang raised an eyebrow. “Did we talk?”

“Not really. There was one monthly exam, I went to the cafeteria with some classmates, and you and Li Xiaoyi happened to be there too, saw there were seats on our side and sat down.” Zhou Zheng said flatly. “Didn’t talk, everyone around was classmates, how would you have even noticed me, let alone talked to me.”

Lin Shuang clicked her tongue, giving him an odd sideways glance.

“What were you like back then, really?”

Zhou Zheng said nothing.

“And what other things? I remember there was also a small bead—what was that from?”

“Your bracelet. You were taking a walk on the field during evening study break, and the bracelet’s string broke, the other beads all got picked up by others, but I found one.”

“So you were stalking me during evening study on the field too? And secretly kept my things without returning them.”

She remembered that back then, after evening study let out, she’d like to take a walk on the field, either with Li Xiaoyi or with classmates from her class.

“No.” Zhou Zheng’s face reddened. “I’d go run a couple laps on the field during evening study breaks, often ran into you two.”

Indeed, back then everyone liked to chat and stroll around during the evening break, doing a bit of relaxing exercise.

“Were you the classmate running past us at that time? Did you overhear us gossiping too?”

“Mm.” Zhou Zheng lowered his eyes.

“After all those nights, you and Li Xiaoyi were at least fairly familiar with each other by then—did we never greet each other at all?”

She did remember the wind on the field being soft, the moon waxing and waning, many classmates crossing paths by chance, chatting happily together for a while.

“We did, you just don’t remember at all.”

Hello there. Good evening. A wave of the hand, a brilliant smile sliding past—every brush past each other, the sound of wind and breath, all sounds that made the heart race.

“Anything else?” Lin Shuang pressed on, relentless. “Was there anything else? Not just these things, right? Did we have more contact than this?”

Zhou Zheng stood up, seemingly annoyed, refusing to talk to her.

“Zhou Zheng?”

“If you don’t remember, have no impression, then to you, it’s as if it never happened—you don’t need to know.” Zhou Zheng’s tone was blunt, carrying a somewhat bitter undertone. “They’re all inconsequential little things, you don’t need to know, it’s been so many years already.”

“You don’t want to tell me? How much you liked me back then, how much attention you paid me?” Lin Shuang propped her chin up. “Wouldn’t it be nice to win over a bit of my sympathy and affection?”

“I don’t want to. That’s my own business alone.” He said flatly. “Now that you know, you’ll just find it amusing, like listening to someone else’s story, but to me, it’s completely different.”

In the end, he was still self-conscious—self-conscious about how, back then, he’d clung to every little detail, completely looking up at her radiance from below.

He didn’t want to describe too many of the details from back then.

Lin Shuang smiled dismissively, and got up too, parting from him.

She leaned against the window, silently smoking a cigarette, and dialed Li Xiaoyi’s number: “Got some time? Let’s meet up, have a talk.”

The voice on the other end of the line carried a hint of emotion: “Sure.”