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Li Kuiyi had been well-practiced in the art of self-deception since she was young.

When she was in the third grade of primary school, she came home one afternoon to find her younger cousin — her second uncle’s son — sitting with a large Wangwang snack gift set, munching away. The moment he saw her, he quickly tucked the bag behind his back and pressed his lips together, completely still. Her cousin was four years old at the time, a little chubby boy who thought of nothing but food and had no cunning to speak of. Li Kuiyi knew instantly that it was her grandmother who had told him: eat in secret, don’t let your older sister see.

She looked at the festive red corner of the bag peeking out from behind his back, and felt a quiet flicker of contempt. Then she deliberately walked up to her grandmother and said, “Nothing to hide — who’d even want it.”

She was like a mussel that had swallowed a grain of sand. The grain scraped and stung, but she secreted layer after layer of nacre around it, and told herself it was a pearl.

When she started middle school, Fang Zhixiao would appear at her side with armfuls of snacks, asking whether she wanted chips, whether she wanted chocolate, whether she wanted puffed crackers. Li Kuiyi would shake her head with the composure of a very mature young person: “I’ve never really liked those things.”

She said it with such conviction that she didn’t notice anything was wrong — she had long since forgotten the existence of the sand. She had come to believe, genuinely, that the pearl was something born from within her all along.

And so, when today’s situation arose, the first thought that came to her mind was: give up.

Give up on this friendship.

She knew clearly that this was not a solution. But it was very nearly her instinct — you take one step back from me, and I want to take ninety-nine steps back from you, and then I can comfort myself: you didn’t hurt me, because I was the one who chose to leave.

She had started, once again, to wrap and polish that grain of sand, layer by layer.

12:20 arrived. Fang Zhixiao had not come.

It would be so much easier if Fang Zhixiao were her enemy. Then she could storm over, grab her, and deliver a thoroughly satisfying confrontation — the way she had, in the first week of middle school, when that boy with dyed hair had harassed her, and after she’d retied the straps of her camisole, she had picked up the book in her hand and brought it straight down on his head. The smack had cut through every bit of noise in the classroom.

But Fang Zhixiao was her friend. Her best friend.

Thinking of that, Li Kuiyi clenched her fingers, frustration simmering: Since you are my best friend, I will grudgingly give you five more minutes. Only five. The last five.

If you don’t come, there will truly be no coming back from this.

She kept standing beneath that tree. The midday sun beat down without mercy, and the small canopy offered little shade. Her sweat-damp fringe stuck to her forehead in clumps, throbbing like a second pulse.

“Li Kuiyi — what are you doing standing here?”

Someone called her name.

She looked up — Qi Yu, again. She seemed to keep running into him.

His eyes curved into a gentle smile. “Aren’t you hot?”

“I’m… waiting for someone.” She hadn’t entirely pulled herself out of her own mood, and the answer came out slightly sideways.

“I guessed as much.” He walked up to her and scratched his head. “Do you know any good places to eat around here? I always eat in the cafeteria, so I haven’t really explored.”

Li Kuiyi pointed at the spicy hot noodles shop beside them. “This one’s decent, but it’s quite spicy.”

“That might not work — isn’t spicy food supposed to be bad for injuries?” Qi Yu shook his head.

“Who got injured?” Li Kuiyi asked, caught off guard. Her first thought was He Youyuan, since this wasn’t exactly his first basketball-related injury.

“Zhou Ce,” Qi Yu said. He studied her expression for a moment, then explained, “He’s our class’s sports representative. He twisted his ankle during basketball just now — seems like it’s fairly bad. He Youyuan took him to the nurse’s office, and I came out to pick up lunch for them.”

“Oh.” The response came automatically. Then, realizing how indifferent she sounded toward her own classmate, she added, “I hope he gets better soon.”

Qi Yu heard her deliver this awkward formality and suppressed a smile, responding with equal solemnity: “I’ll be sure to pass your well wishes along.”

Li Kuiyi immediately waved her hands. “No, no, no — we’re not even close. Saying that would just be strange.”

“Understood.” He smiled at her warmly again, no longer teasing. “I was going to ask you something at the drinking fountain this morning, but I forgot.”

He dropped his gaze for a moment, then looked back at her. “I want to know — that problem I showed you the day before school started, did you leave it blank on purpose?”

Li Kuiyi hadn’t expected him to bring that up. She hesitated for a moment, uncertain how to respond. Her eyes lowered slightly, half-veiling the clear brightness in them, as she thought it over carefully. “Yes.”

He wore the expression of someone whose suspicion had just been confirmed, his smile shading into something a little rueful. “Why?”

She chose her words with care: “It’s an old habit of mine. Sometimes, if I think a problem isn’t challenging enough, I can’t be bothered to write it out… My middle school math teacher said it was a bad habit — that it would make me careless.”

“Hah!” Qi Yu drew a breath and wrinkled his nose in self-deprecating amusement. “And here I was feeling quite pleased with myself at the time, thinking I’d managed to edge out the top scorer from the middle school entrance exam.”

Li Kuiyi gave a small smile and said nothing. Her thoughts were drifting too much to catch the significance of what he’d just let slip —

Qi Yu had recognized her the first time they met.

Her face had appeared in the news coverage after the middle school entrance exam results were published. That summer, he had gone back to those articles again and again, until he’d memorized not just her face, but every one of her scores by heart. He had spent a long time measuring the gap between them. He had a great deal of confidence in his own abilities, and coming in third place in the city wasn’t something he found unacceptable in itself — but when he looked at that nearly thirty-point difference, he couldn’t quite decide whether what he felt was indignation or envy.

Nearly thirty points. It had hit him hard.

So when he ran into her at the optician’s that evening, he had seized on her almost without thinking — with barely a second’s consideration — and “taught” her that problem. Perhaps somewhere in the back of his mind, he had desperately wanted to beat her at something, just once.

Looking back now, he could only laugh at who he had been in that moment. What consoled him was that they were now in the same school, the same class. Over three years of high school, every exam — large or small — could become a reckoning.

“I won’t keep you any longer — I should go get their food.” Qi Yu’s smile returned, and he gave Li Kuiyi a small wave. “See you this afternoon.”

Li Kuiyi came back to herself and nodded. “See you this afternoon.”

After Qi Yu turned away, she quickly raised her arm to check the time: 12:24.

Fang Zhixiao, you had better appear this instant.

To her relief, it was as though the heavens had heard her. Fang Zhixiao came running down the small path from the school gate, her bag flying out behind her, waving and calling: “Xiao Li Kui, I’m here!”

What made her heart sink again: Fang Zhixiao had dragged someone along with her. The very same girl who had been pressed up against her at the basketball court.

…Hmph.

The corner of Li Kuiyi’s mouth, which hadn’t even had time to lift, went flat as a board.

Fang Zhixiao launched herself at Li Kuiyi, out of breath, and immediately started rubbing her face with both hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is entirely my fault. I got too caught up watching the handsome guys play basketball and forgot everything else. Li Kui, please don’t be angry — okay? Okay? Please?”

She puffed out her cheeks and made her most pitiful face.

Useless. Li Kuiyi kept her expression cold, turned her head to one side, and said nothing.

“You know what my brain is like — it just short-circuits sometimes.” Fang Zhixiao smacked the side of her own head in frustration. “To make up for it, lunch is on me today, and I’ll buy you an ice cream after every evening study session this week — okay?”

When Fang Zhixiao said all this, her tone was exaggerated, but inwardly she felt perfectly secure. Three years of knowing Li Kuiyi — she understood her temperament. All bark, no bite. She’d put on the most impenetrable cold front imaginable, and then the moment someone coaxed her even a little, she’d be fine again.

But today was different — because she had completely misread why Li Kuiyi was upset.

Li Kuiyi took a breath and adjusted her expression, then turned to look at the girl beside Fang Zhixiao, asking evenly: “Is this your friend?”

Seeing Li Kuiyi willing to speak at all, Fang Zhixiao exhaled with relief and grinned, taking the girl’s hand and pulling her forward. “This is my current desk neighbor — her name is Chen Lu Yi.”

Then she pulled Li Kuiyi toward the girl and said, “This is Li Kuiyi, my former desk neighbor. You’ve probably heard of her — she’s this year’s…”

Fang Zhixiao kept chattering away, but Li Kuiyi didn’t catch a word of it. She’d only heard two things: “former” and “current”…

Ha. Former.

Ha. Current.

“Oh — can you guess her birthday from her name?” Fang Zhixiao asked Li Kuiyi excitedly.

Chen Lu Yi.

What was there to guess? It was obviously “June First” — Children’s Day.

But Li Kuiyi said, “I can’t.”

“That’s so slow! It’s obviously June First!” Fang Zhixiao crowed triumphantly. “Did you notice — both of your names have the character for ‘one’ in them!”

And that’s your reason for becoming her friend?

Fang Zhixiao kept going: “We can’t get spicy hot noodles now anyway — how about we go to that noodles place? Xiao Li Kui loves noodles best.”

How very thoughtful of you, remembering what I like to eat.

Chen Lu Yi had no objections. So Fang Zhixiao looped her arms around both of them and steered them toward the noodle restaurant near the school gate. Li Kuiyi was still stiff with irritation, leaning backward, being dragged along almost entirely by Fang Zhixiao’s arm around her waist.

Fang Zhixiao dashed to the counter to order: “Two bowls of braised potato and beef noodles — one with a fried egg on top!” She turned back to Chen Lu Yi: “What do you want?”

Li Kuiyi felt her mood improve, just slightly.

Chen Lu Yi said, “I’ll have the same as you both.”

…Tch.

The restaurant wasn’t too crowded. The three of them found a table and sat down. Fang Zhixiao and Chen Lu Yi sat on the same side, while Li Kuiyi sat alone across from them.

She looked at their arms touching and tilted the corner of her mouth downward, thinking: three people really is a crowd.

Chen Lu Yi seemed to be a fairly quiet person as well — she sat and listened to Fang Zhixiao hold court, and occasionally caught Li Kuiyi’s eye across the table, letting a soft smile form at the corners of her mouth.

“I’m telling you both,” Fang Zhixiao said, looking back and forth between them with an air of disbelief, “you two really are remarkably alike, and you’ve never even met. For instance, you’re both absolutely terrifying at math. The way I fell for Li Kui — it started at our first class meeting in middle school…”

Their first homeroom teacher in middle school had been a young man who taught math and didn’t have much experience. At their very first class meeting, he’d gotten through everything he had to say in just a few sentences. To keep the atmosphere from becoming awkward, he wrote a fun math problem on the board and announced he’d like to test everyone’s thinking.

“Fun math,” as it turned out, was really just a competition-level problem.

He surveyed the heavy, bewildered expressions below him, and privately admired his own cleverness. The problem had some bite to it — he was confident that 99.9% of these little gremlins wouldn’t solve it before the next class meeting.

And then he encountered the 0.1%.

Fifteen minutes later, Li Kuiyi raised her hand. “Teacher, may I try?”

She wrote until the entire board was covered, then dusted the chalk from her hands and walked back to her seat at a light, easy pace.

It was in that moment that Fang Zhixiao decided she would be Li Kuiyi’s friend.

Because she could solve very, very difficult math problems, the resting cold expression on her face transformed, in Fang Zhixiao’s eyes, into a symbol of “depth,” “composure,” and “cool reserve.”

This was a charm that Fang Zhixiao — a self-confessed math disaster — had absolutely no defense against.