This semester the school had ordered new tracksuits for the PE teachers, quite good-looking ones—if you covered up the six characters printed on the back reading “Jiangcheng Experimental Elementary School,” you’d never guess it was a uniform.

It was just that the female PE teachers all tended to be fairly tall and active, so the clothes were made a bit large.

The smallest size Zhu Qisen could find for Zhu Wenshu was still a bit big on her.

Standing in front of the full-length mirror in the changing room, she felt a bit like a kid who’d snuck into an adult’s clothes.

“Hey, Zhu Qisen, do you have any safety pins or something?”

Zhu Wenshu asked, adjusting the hem, her head down. After waiting a while with no response, she looked up and found Zhu Qisen leaning against the railing, staring at something.

“What are you looking at?”

“Look over there, at the equipment room.”

Zhu Qisen pointed in a direction.

The school field had been renovated last year, and to make construction easier, a few prefab sheds had been built alongside it. After the work was done, they hadn’t been torn down, and had instead been allocated to the PE department as an equipment room, saving the teachers from having to haul things up and down all the time.

Right now, the parents and children were all gathered in the middle of the field, taking photos, running around, making a lively racket that carried all the way to the office building.

Only near the out-of-the-way equipment room, a man stood off in the corner, far from the crowd, looking around constantly.

Zhu Qisen: “Don’t you think that man is a bit off?”

Yeah, this was off.

Zhu Wenshu thought, why on earth would Ling Chen show up in a place like this?

Zhu Qisen: “Doesn’t it look strange?”

Indeed, so strange.

Ling Siyuan had told her that Ling Xingyan would come to the sports day.

So why was Ling Chen here too?

Zhu Qisen: “So many parents here today, it’s a mixed crowd—could he be trying to pull something while things are chaotic?”

That made sense.

With this many people around today, wasn’t he afraid of getting photographed?

Ugh, but actually, being photographed wasn’t such a big deal.

An uncle coming to watch his nephew’s sports day, that should be fine, right?

“Zhu Qisen, I’m going down to check on the kids, you—”

Zhu Wenshu turned her head and found Zhu Qisen narrowing his eyes at Ling Chen, then pulling out his phone and dialing the security guard.

“Hello, Master Zhou? Where are you? Oh, oh, hurry over to the field, by the equipment room. There’s a suspicious, sneaky-looking man dressed all in black, yeah, yeah, carrying a big black bag too, no idea what’s in it, go check it out quick—if there’s a problem, kick him out right away.”

Zhu Wenshu: “…?”

By the time she came back to her senses, this man had already hung up and was heading down to the field to defend the school.

“Zhu Qisen! That’s my student’s parent!”

Security guard Master Zhou was extremely dedicated—the moment he hung up the phone, he tossed it aside and dashed off to the field.

By the time Zhu Wenshu got there, Master Zhou was already right up in Ling Chen’s face, demanding he take off his sunglasses and mask.

Just as Ling Chen was about to raise his hand, Zhu Wenshu lunged forward and blocked him.

“Misunderstanding, misunderstanding, Master Zhou, this is my student’s parent.”

Master Zhou said “Oh,” but couldn’t help sizing Ling Chen up, muttering to himself.

“What kind of parent dresses like this, wearing sunglasses on a freezing winter day like some street performer collecting money for playing the erhu.”

Zhu Wenshu: “…”

Ling Chen: “…”

Once the security guard left, Zhu Wenshu let out a breath and turned to ask Ling Chen.

“Why did you come?”

He was carrying a bag the size of a suitcase, yet handling it as easily as a small purse, leaning lazily against the wall, his eyes behind the sunglasses fixed on the gloomy clouds on the horizon.

“Ling Xingyan asked me to.”

Zhu Wenshu: “Huh?”

Ling Chen: “He couldn’t carry all this stuff, begged me about it all night, drove me crazy.”

“Oh…”

Zhu Wenshu understood that some parents liked to put on a show, but wasn’t Ling Xingyan worried about overdoing it?

She looked down at the bag in Ling Chen’s hands again.

“What’s in there?”

“No idea, Ling Siyuan had me bring it, said it was needed for sports day.”

Zhu Wenshu eyed it suspiciously, craning her neck to look.

Seeing this, Ling Chen simply handed the bag over to her.

Zhu Wenshu unzipped it, and a square light-up sign came into view.

There was a lot of stuff inside; she couldn’t see everything clearly, but she reached in and, past a pile of snacks, found a button.

When she pressed it, the first thing to light up was a big anime magical-girl transformation icon.

Below it, a rainbow of small lights spelled out twenty-four characters plus one punctuation mark—“Impeccable natural beauty, Experimental Elementary School’s number one beauty, Teacher Zhu, go go go!”

Blinking and sparkling, so cringe that Zhu Wenshu nearly curled her toes hard enough to summon her dream apartment with a river view out of sheer secondhand embarrassment.

“Don’t take this thing out.”

Zhu Wenshu took a deep breath. “Or I’ll have security throw you out.”

Ling Chen was also stunned for a moment, clearly only just now seeing what was written on the sign.

After a beat, he said “Oh,” and behind the mask and sunglasses, there was no telling whether he was smiling.

“I’ll head over first.”

She took a couple of steps, but Zhu Wenshu still felt uneasy and turned back to glance at Ling Chen.

He was looking down, seemingly reading the words on the sign.

Zhu Wenshu: “…”

She turned around, touching her own face.

She should have put on at least a little makeup today, if she’d known.

Back on the field, under the PE teachers’ organization, the parents and students had already begun warming up.

Zhu Wenshu wove through the crowd, and when she ran into Ling Xingyan, exchanged a quick greeting but didn’t linger, joining the other teachers in organizing the competitions.

The sports day was held by grade level, without much ceremony—the grade director said a few words and then got right down to business.

Seven and eight-year-old kids were at the age where they were a handful for anyone, and the parents treated this as a chance to relax too. The atmosphere quickly heated up, and Zhu Wenshu, as recorder, hustled around everywhere with her clipboard.

But the more energetic the parents and students got, the more Zhu Wenshu found herself thinking about the silent figure off in the corner.

Whether it was worry that he’d whip out that supremely embarrassing light-up sign, or simply worry that he’d be recognized, Zhu Wenshu kept glancing over that way between events.

Each time she looked, she found him a little closer than before.

By the time the sports day was halfway through, Ling Chen had somehow, without anyone noticing, drifted into the crowd of parents, occasionally taking out his phone to snap photos.

There really was truth to the saying that “good fortune nourishes a person”—even in a sea of people, Zhu Wenshu always managed to spot him at a glance, as if the only bright spot on this overcast day had gathered on him like a spotlight.

Too bad there was a gap between people.

While Ling Chen quietly shone over there, his cousin’s competition results were, frankly, disastrous.

Zhu Wenshu looked at the win record on her clipboard and couldn’t help but sigh.

Thinking back to the little essay Ling Siyuan had once written, Zhu Wenshu felt she really ought to remind Ling Xingyan to pay a bit more attention to his own physical condition, on top of making money.

It wasn’t a serious competition, sure, but with him losing over and over like this, it couldn’t feel great for a little kid either.

Sure enough, Zhu Wenshu glanced over at Ling Siyuan beside her—his face was still flushed like a red apple, but watching the other kids win match after match, he looked ready to cry from envy.

As the sports day drew to a close, the last event was the parent-child relay.

The kids still had plenty of energy, but most of the parents had already run out of steam, dragging their feet as they lined up by group.

Ling Siyuan hadn’t won a single event today and was already quite unhappy, and seeing other kids showing off all over the field, his mouth was pursed practically up to the sky.

So he quietly went and stood at the very back of the line, thinking, if Dad’s going to drag us down, let him—I’ll pull off a stunning comeback with the last leg.

Who knew that Lu Zixi from the neighboring group had also gone to stand at the back, and was frantically waving at a young man off to the side.

“Big brother! Big brother! You go stand at the last spot over there! Pass the baton to me later!”

Ling Siyuan: “?”

“Lu Zixi! Everyone else has their dad or mom—why do you get your big brother in the competition!”

Lu Zixi ignored him entirely. “Big brother! Hurry up!”

Seeing this, Ling Siyuan turned around to complain to Zhu Wenshu.

“Teacher! Lu Zixi is having her big brother compete!”

Hearing this, Zhu Wenshu looked over and, sure enough, saw Lu Zibin—Lu Zixi’s brother—had appeared on the field at some point, taking over from his nearly fifty-year-old father.

He even smiled and greeted Zhu Wenshu. “Teacher Zhu, my dad’s getting up there in age, so I’m standing in for him.”

“Oh, right.”

Well, Zhu Wenshu certainly couldn’t say no to that—you couldn’t very well make an elderly father run the race—so she could only turn to comfort Ling Siyuan instead. “Yuanyuan, friendship first, competition second. Zixi’s dad is tired, we can’t…”

“Then I’ll call my uncle too!”

Ling Siyuan didn’t even wait for Zhu Wenshu to finish before waving toward the other side. “Uncle! Uncle! Come quick! If Lu Zixi’s brother gets to compete, you can too!”

“Hey, Yuanyuan!”

Zhu Wenshu didn’t even have time to stop him before she saw Ling Chen, somewhere in the crowd, turn his head to look over.

Fortunately, he only glanced at Ling Siyuan and didn’t respond at all, turning and walking away instead.

Ling Xingyan was still sitting on the ground catching his breath, halfway through a bottle of mineral water, and looking at the already-lined-up relay teams, he stood up with great reluctance.

Being exhausted was one thing, but having someone “tsk”-ing next to him on top of it was another.

Ling Xingyan turned around, annoyed, and found Ling Chen had, at some point, come to stand beside him.

“What are you tsk-ing at, what do you mean by that?”

“Me?”

Ling Chen crossed his arms, looking off into the distance. “I’ve got no intention of running in your place.”

“…”

Ling Xingyan gulped down another mouthful of water. “Then what are you hovering around me for?”

Ling Chen: “Afraid you’ll drop dead of exhaustion.”

He really was about to die of exhaustion.

But that wasn’t a reason for Ling Chen to be sarcastic about it.

“Would it benefit you if I died of exhaustion?”

“Fair point.”

Ling Chen suddenly stuck out his foot and kicked at Ling Xingyan’s shoe. “Then step aside.”

The PE teacher blew the whistle, and the relay began.

By this point, the gap between the teams wasn’t that large anymore, but Ling Siyuan, seeing his own team trailing behind, especially with Lu Zixi shouting and cheering right next to him, was so frustrated he spun in place, stomping his feet.

As the runners ahead finished one after another, Ling Siyuan, unable to bear watching the outcome he already foresaw, spun faster and faster.

Only once the person ahead of him finished running did he realize he’d miscalculated—he wasn’t actually the last leg after all; the parent at the starting line across from him was.

Unfortunately, by this point his team was clearly behind, and there was no way his dad could pull off a miracle comeback.

So Ling Siyuan took the baton with an almost tearful face and ran forward.

As he ran, getting close to the finish line on the other side, he realized the person waiting for him didn’t look like his dad.

Huh?!

“Uncle!”

Fully revived, he shouted as he ran, “Uncle! Uncle!”

Because of his shouting, the other parents who’d already finished turned to look, and one after another wore expressions of disbelief.

You can even bring in outside help for a parent-child sports day?

The tall, long-legged man in the middle, wearing a mask, was clearly not in the same league as these old bones!

Are parents this competitive these days?!

He shot forward like a flash, the track so short and his speed so fast that no one else even had a chance to react.

Zhu Wenshu didn’t get a chance to react either.

By the time she realized what was happening, Ling Chen had already crossed the finish line first, and with a flick of his hand, the baton landed in the basket beside it.

Zhu Wenshu, who had been holding up her phone at the finish line to take photos, forgot everything else, her gaze following Ling Chen’s movement.

He didn’t stop running until the end. As he strode past Zhu Wenshu, she heard his slightly labored breathing beneath the mask.

Suddenly, he reached out and covered her phone’s camera lens with his hand.

“Winning that unfairly isn’t worth photographing.”

Only then did Zhu Wenshu glance at the track and see that, aside from Lu Zixi’s brother, the other parents in their thirties hadn’t even reached the finish line yet.

Thinking of Ling Chen—a chart-topping singer with millions of fans—personally competing in an elementary school’s parent-child sports day, she smiled so wide her eyes curved into crescents.

“You know you won unfairly too, huh.”

Amid the crowd’s cheering, Ling Siyuan came running over as well, circling Ling Chen and shrieking with excitement.

Ling Chen pulled his mask down, exposing his nose.

“Had to keep the kid happy, that’s all.”

“Alright! The winning kids and parents from the relay, look over here!”

Zhu Wenshu’s voice gathered the scattered crowd back together. “Come get your little red flower stickers!”

Officially, sports day was meant to give parents and students a chance to experience the joy of physical challenge and healthy growth, but in reality, the school was just meeting a quota, without preparing any real prizes—just small trinkets, and they’d had the teachers prepare little red flower stickers to hand out to the winning parents and students in each event.

Zhu Wenshu held a thick stack of them, sticking them onto each child’s face one by one, then handing one to their parent as well.

“Yuanyuan ran really fast today.”

Walking up to Ling Siyuan, Zhu Wenshu stuck a flower on him, then held one out to the man behind him too. “Then…”

“I won’t take one.”

Ling Xingyan waved his hand, with due self-awareness. “It’s not like I got first place.”

Hearing this, Zhu Wenshu turned around and found that Ling Chen had, at some point, gone back over to the prefab shed.

She was about to head over when she suddenly felt someone tugging at her sleeve.

Looking down, she found Lu Zixi gazing up at her expectantly.

Lu Zixi’s father was the oldest parent on the field, so she hadn’t gotten a little red flower either.

She’d thought her brother competing would even the score, but hadn’t expected the surprise entry of “Ling Jinjin” to steal the win right out from under her.

By the time Zhu Wenshu finished handing out all the flowers, watching the stack left in her hands, Lu Zixi walked over without a word.

“Zixi did great today too.”

Zhu Wenshu bent down and stuck one on her. “A little red flower reward.”

Lu Zixi didn’t say anything, but still tilted her head to let Zhu Wenshu place it.

Straightening up, Zhu Wenshu handed one to Lu Zibin as well.

“Big brother gets one too.”

While the other parents casually stuck their flowers wherever on their clothes, Lu Zibin glanced at his sister, then peeled off the backing and stuck it right on his own face, smiling at Zhu Wenshu.

“Too bad, didn’t get first place.”

“Second place is great too.”

With that, Zhu Wenshu turned and walked toward the prefab shed.

Ling Chen had just pulled a can of cola out of Ling Siyuan’s gear bag when Zhu Wenshu walked over and held out a little red flower.

“This gentleman gets one too.”

“What is this…”

Ling Chen turned his face away, pulling down his mask to get a drink.

Just as he popped the tab open, something cold and damp pressed against his cheek.

Ling Chen caught, out of the corner of his eye, a pale, bare arm reaching toward him, and with a fizzing hiss, the cola’s bubbles came bursting out, seething in the air.