Lin Shuang pulled out the USB drive, smiling brightly as she tucked it into his palm.
Zhou Zheng lowered his head, gripping the small, smooth drive.
“There are some other things too, things I found at Li Xiaoyi’s house.” Lin Shuang dug through the box, pulling things out. “Little stories I recorded.”
A couples’ diary from their second year of high school—every day she’d jot down some trivial little thing, then press Li Xiaoyi to write a line in response.
Lin Shuang flipped open the pages folded down at the corners, her slender finger pointing to a line:
[Today’s math test came back—thanks to the top student for helping me out during the ten-minute break, I actually got 82. Next time tell the top student not to be extra and write the solution formula on the back of the big questions, it’ll give it away, the math teacher asked me why I knew the formula but didn’t answer the question Orz.]
[Understood, the top student says he got it.]
Lin Shuang laughed: “This entry, must be from when I forgot to do my homework the day before, then went to Li Xiaoyi for a rescue—ten minutes and you actually got me an 82, how impressive. I can picture the scene, must have been thrilling and hilarious at the time. I must have really admired you back then.”
She ruffled Zhou Zheng’s fluffy hair.
Zhou Zheng silently stared at the colorful black text on the page.
“And this one, it’s about a rainy day, you ran into us halfway and gave us your umbrella, hah, so I must have known your name back then. Otherwise how would I have called you Classmate Zhou.”
[………That person who handed us the umbrella must have been Classmate Zhou, right, he heard me say thanks and then just turned and ran off in the rain, what a strange person…….]
“And this one, was I with Li Xiaoyi giving you a New Year’s gift? A pair of shoes, wasn’t it? I picked the same style in two colors, I can remember this now.”
[Does Classmate Zhou like those sneakers? But you two need to agree not to wear them at the same time, one white one black—too similar to matching couple shoes, that won’t do.]
“And here, after the class split for senior year, you went to the honors class, and Li Xiaoyi could never find anyone to help with homework again. The two of us wistfully missed our departed math whiz.”
The couples’ diary was thick, starting from some day in their first year of high school and not stopping until right before graduation in their third year—short entries a few sentences long each day, spanning over two years. In their writing, Zhou Zheng appeared only rarely, a mere four or five times.
As Lin Shuang had sat in Li Xiaoyi’s house carefully flipping through that couples’ diary page by page, the sweetness of that first love back then had turned to wistful loss, yet every appearance of Zhou Zheng nearly ached her heart with bittersweetness—the man sleeping beside her now, who had faithfully guarded her, had even buried that overlap in their pasts for ten years, never once revealing a hint of it to her.
She knew what he wanted, yet he had never once demanded anything of her.
Having combed through every memory concerning him, she was certain—and willing to give it to him.
Zhou Zheng closed the couples’ diary and pushed Lin Shuang down onto the bean bag sofa.
His cheeks and jaw were clenched tight with effort, his eyes wide, the corners reddening faintly with strain, his whole body wound tight to the point of breaking, trembling from the tension, his voice hoarse.
“These past few days……. over at Li Xiaoyi’s…… this is what you were looking for?”
“What did you think I was doing?” Lin Shuang reached up to smooth his brow, her voice gentle. “I also found a workbook with your handwriting in it, found a message you’d written in Li Xiaoyi’s yearbook, found your junior year class photo, I even found a photo of the two of us together…….. we actually have a photo together, at Li Xiaoyi’s birthday party, in the KTV, you were standing in the corner, that was our first photo together, don’t you think it’s quite the coincidence…….”
“Zhou Zheng, were you the one sitting in the row in front of Li Xiaoyi, the one whose back was all I ever saw whenever I went there?”
“Were you the boy running laps around the sports field, quietly passing by us?”
“Were you the boy wearing canvas shoes in the snowy winter, and when I asked if you were cold, you said no, and immediately walked off to avoid me?”
She’d forgotten, but that didn’t stop her from finding it all again now, piecing back together that scrap of memory.
“I wish I could go back to then, I could have talked to you more, or hugged you, told you—ten years later you’ll end up spending your life with the girl you secretly loved, would that have made you happier back then?” She said gently. “Zhou Zheng, even ten years ago, you were already so, so good—I just didn’t see your light back then.”
Zhou Zheng’s throat caught; he reached out and covered her soul-stirring, clear eyes with his hand, sealing her lips with his own hot, trembling mouth.
His hot, rushed breath fell against her cheek, muffled and damp, carrying his scent.
He impatiently pried her lips open—this kiss messy and frantic, his tongue plunging in recklessly, sweeping over the smooth walls of her mouth and the rows of her teeth, tangling with her small tongue, sucking again and again, as if confirming and searching for something.
Lin Shuang closed her eyes, tilting her head back, gently responding to his kiss, her fingers threading into his hair, cradling his head, submissively opening her soft body, wrapping her limbs tightly around him, soothing him.
After a long while, Zhou Zheng finally settled, moving the hand covering her eyes away, cupping her cheeks.
She saw his eyes, red and glistening, and couldn’t help laughing: “Did I upset my little snail spirit again?”
His voice came out unbearably hoarse, carrying a strange kind of vulnerability and sensuality: “I won’t allow you to do this.”
“Be grateful. I’ve never been this good to anyone.” She pouted. “Do you have any idea how much I went through with Li Xiaoyi to find all this, how many people I tracked down, how much time it took—for the rest of my life, no one else will ever get this from me again.”
Zhou Zheng stroked the tail of her brow, resting his forehead against hers, murmuring: “Shuangshuang, don’t be this good to me.”
What had he ever done to deserve her putting in this much effort for him.
“There’s no better than this, no holding back now.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Let me tell you now, I’m no dutiful, virtuous wife type—once we’re married, what’s yours is mine, and what’s mine stays mine. If you dare act one way before the wedding and another way after, you’re dead.”
“Mm.” He kissed her, sticky and lingering, his voice spilling from his throat.
“Also, you’re not allowed to get fat, not allowed to go bald, not allowed to get soft and lazy.” Her eyes shone like stars. “Even as you age, you have to become a mature, dignified middle-aged man, a sharp, handsome old man in the end.”
He pictured that scene, and his heart couldn’t help leaping too, laughing low: “Okay, I promise you all of it, I’ll never drag you down.”
The rest of their lives still stretched ahead, many, many years they could spend together.
“Such a wonderful day.” Lin Shuang kissed his chin. “Beautiful scenery, a lovely companion—want to do it again? Mark the occasion?”
His voice came out deep and uneven, rough yet clear in quality, murmuring something against her ear.
Lin Shuang’s eyes suddenly lit up, unable to hold back a smile curling at the corner of her lips, and the two pressed their lips together again, quickly. He drew in a deep breath against her lips, scooping up her soft waist.
At some point, vigor became a verb, invading every fraction of her senses. She narrowed her eyes, fingers wandering unconsciously over his arms, shoulders, and back, feeling the taut force and impact beneath the thin layer of muscle—vigorous, unrestrained, controlled, unhurried yet all-conquering as he pleased her.
She loved this feeling of being drenched in sweat, knowing someone loved her without reservation, as if she’d always deserved to be loved and cherished, deserved to enjoy every gift offered up to her.
After a tender, drawn-out bout of lovemaking, Lin Shuang lay half-wrapped in the bedsheet, lazily draped over Zhou Zheng’s back, tracing his features with her fingers.
Her fingertip traced along the straight bridge of his nose, the peaks and curves of his lips, the sharply defined line of his jaw. Zhou Zheng wasn’t a first-glance handsome type, but his features held up well to scrutiny, needed careful appreciation and refinement—she thought he’d probably age slowly, this kind of bone structure wouldn’t sag or change shape easily, lean and firm, like air-dried beef, the kind that got better with chewing the older it got.
Air-dried beef?
What a strange comparison.
Zhou Zheng looked through the items in the box that Lin Shuang had brought back—”memories of him”—viewing his younger self from another angle.
The first impression, of course, was poverty and a lack of attention—years of boarding school life, going home once a month, dressed shabbily and simply, quiet and unassuming in nature, no phone or any electronic devices, relying on the rental bookshop outside school to enrich his life beyond studies. Because of his excellent grades and even temperament, he hadn’t felt particularly inferior among classmates, but faced with the dazzling Lin Shuang, he’d always felt a flutter of the heart and a low mood.
Just as a moth is drawn to light, he too had been drawn to the vibrant girl—the most beautiful, adorable person of adolescent puppy love, a synonym for perfection.
Lin Shuang curled up against his shoulder, looking over the items together with him.
“I received that pair of shoes Li Xiaoyi gave me—it later became the only pair of shoes I brought with me to college,” he said quietly. “Back then I hadn’t started doing your math homework for you yet, I was just in the same study group as Li Xiaoyi, fairly familiar with him. I didn’t have winter shoes, and you noticed, so you had Li Xiaoyi send me a pair, as thanks for helping with problem sets.”
“It was only afterward that I started doing your homework for you.” He turned to look at her. “Didn’t you notice? I wrote the solution formula next to every problem, so you can’t blame me for your bad math grades.”
Lin Shuang bit his shoulder: “It’s still your fault.”
“Every time I helped with your homework, you always liked giving me chocolate and candy—that was the best thing I’d ever eaten…….”
“Is that so?” Lin Shuang leaned into him, teasing. “Guess I got the short end of the deal—now I’m the tastiest thing around.”
He smiled gently.
“In this photo, your eyes are looking off to the side, were you looking at someone?”
“Probably looking at you and Li Xiaoyi—you two were playing games nearby, pretty loud, you were laughing so brightly.”
“Bright, huh?” She laughed. “What were you feeling at the time?”
“You want the truth?”
“Of course.”
“Wanted to linger a bit longer in that scene, wanted you to glance up and look at me, wanted to become the person beside you.” He said calmly. “Wanted to leave, and wanted to stay.”
“Congratulations, Teacher Zhou, your dream finally came true.”
He turned and kissed her, confessing honestly: “Actually the timing was even earlier. Right at the start of high school, I already knew who you were—that rental bookshop outside school, I saw you there many times, you liked reading romance novels, liked chatting with the shop owner. Later in sophomore year, being close with Li Xiaoyi, I ran into you a few times here and there. After the split for senior year, Li Xiaoyi and I ended up far apart too, but my seat was by the window, and during breaks I could occasionally catch glimpses of you from there, out running laps during evening study break, sometimes seeing you two walking together.”
“After graduating high school, I got my acceptance letter, heard you and Li Xiaoyi were going on a graduation trip together, even planning to study abroad together—I thought, you two would surely stay together for a long, long time, living the kind of life everyone envies. Later the distance only grew wider, and I gradually buried it all away too, thinking maybe someday this secret crush would completely fade with time.”
“Never expected, after coming back to Beiquan, that one day my teacher’s wife would introduce me to a blind date, and I heard your name……..”
“What was your reaction?” She leaned against him.
“I thought I’d misheard the name, but my teacher’s wife mentioned your age and your school, and your family too……. that’s when I realized, it was you, you’d come back. That whole day, I felt like I was floating……..”
“And then my aunt kept pushing you like crazy, you asked me out to meet, and you were so awkward in front of me.”
“I sat there gripping my phone for over an hour before I worked up the courage to call you. The moment I heard your voice, my mind went completely blank……. it felt like all those old memories suddenly came back to life.”
He laughed. “I rushed over right after finishing my open class, my back and palms both soaked with sweat……..”
“But I rejected you mercilessly.”
“But then you opened a milk tea shop right next to the school.”
“You walked into my milk tea shop and became my long-term helper.”
The two exchanged a smile.
“Thank you, Shuangshuang.”
Thank you for everything you’ve given.
He tenderly stroked her cheek.
May I devote my whole life to you, bow my head in service to you forever.