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“Xiao Li Kui, I’m sorry. I’m such an idiot, I really am. I thought you were angry because I forgot about our plan to go eat spicy hot noodles together — but then when you said coldly that I don’t need to go out of my way to ask you math questions anymore, I finally realized you were jealous! Ha! Ha! Ha! You were jealous! How much do you love me?! This is the first time in my life that anyone’s been jealous over me — I have to say, it feels amazing!
“But your jealousy completely defies logic (and you’re supposed to have such excellent logical thinking). I’ve only known Chen Lu Yi for ten days — why would you ever think she could take your place? Please. You are my number one best friend in the entire world. Is that a title that just anyone can come and shake? You’re really underestimating me, Fang Zhixiao — you’re making me sound like some fickle flirt (well, maybe in romance, a little).
“So, to state clearly once more: I was so caught up watching a handsome guy play basketball (you know handsome guys are my lifeblood) that I forgot to go save us a seat at the spicy hot noodles place. It had absolutely nothing to do with being with Chen Lu Yi and forgetting about you!
“Next Monday, if they’re playing basketball again, let’s go watch together, okay? Or we could skip that and just go eat spicy hot noodles instead — you pick.
“Okay, here’s the tragic part: I was writing you this letter during self-study when our homeroom teacher caught me, and the letter was confiscated (I’m deeply relieved it was a letter to you and not a love letter to some boy). So I had to write you another one after class. I was a little worried while I was writing it — scared that you’d be too angry to wait for me and would’ve already gone home.
“So I wrote fast, and my handwriting is basically airborne at this point. Can you even read…”
The letter ended there, unfinished.
Li Kuiyi lay on her stomach on the bed reading it, her legs kicked up behind her, swinging contentedly back and forth. “Number one best friend in the entire world” — the kind of thing only kids below the age of eight said — and yet it was effortlessly enough to delight her.
She supposed she was still, at heart, something of an idealist. She had once read someone say: don’t expect others to treat you as their best friend. Just mirror back whatever affection you receive — that’s enough. She thought anyone who could manage that must be very cool. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t capable of calibrating her emotional investment based on what she received. If she had decided someone was her best friend, she needed to know she was that person’s best friend too. Without that, she would rather not have the friendship at all.
She picked up her phone and sent Fang Zhixiao a message: “Agreed — your handwriting is completely unreadable.”
Fang Zhixiao: May the world be free of overly proud and prickly people. Amen.
Li Kuiyi: …Hmph.
She rolled around on the bed a few times, hair and sheets thoroughly tangled, and then suddenly remembered something. She picked up her phone again: “Stop liking He Youyuan. And don’t go watch him play basketball next time.”
Fang Zhixiao: Why?
Li Kuiyi: He really is incredibly petty. I don’t want to say bad things about him, because he did help me once (you know — that’s why I added him on social media in the first place). But you’re my best friend, and I think I should warn you.
Fang Zhixiao: Relax, I just appreciate his looks — it’s not the same as how I feel about Su Jianlin.
Li Kuiyi: You literally said your heart was swooning.
Fang Zhixiao: That was just one moment! He’s that handsome — any casual little movement he makes is going to make a person’s heart flutter, but his personality really isn’t my type. I like the cool, imperious ones who basically ignore me. Hehe.
Li Kuiyi: The type you described doesn’t sound much better than He Youyuan, honestly…
Fang Zhixiao: Shut up.
Li Kuiyi’s mood had fully restored itself. She was even humming softly as she went to shower. When she came out, damp hair piled on top of her head, she sat down at the desk and pulled out a sheet of stationery.
Not the decorative kind — it was a red-lined formal sheet, and she wrote with matching seriousness, character by careful character.
“Dear Principal Wang:
I am Li Kuiyi from Class One of the first year, and I am writing to you with a request…”
Her purpose: she wanted to ask the school to reduce the mandatory morning run from five laps to two. She found the daily ordeal genuinely unbearable — it felt like being torn apart from the inside out every single time. And she was simply not the kind of person whose body responded to training. She had spent the better part of the year running before the middle school entrance exam, with no measurable improvement to her times or her general physical condition.
For the physical fitness component of the entrance exam, she had scraped through because her academic scores could compensate. No one had said anything. But now — what reason could she give Liu Xinzhao for not wanting to run? And even if Liu Xinzhao agreed, what would her classmates think? They’d probably say: “Why should you get a pass?” — because everyone hated running, so what gave her the right to be exempt?
The best approach, then, was a petition. She could bring the letter to class tomorrow and ask classmates who agreed to sign it.
She had been a little nervous about whether anyone would be willing, but the signing went more smoothly than she’d expected. Teenagers had nothing in abundance except a slightly reckless streak of enthusiasm; if one or two people led the charge, the rest would laugh and sign along. No one was too worried about the consequences. For one thing, there was safety in numbers; for another, Class One was the honors class, and students in honors classes knew they tended to be treated with more leniency; and for a third, whether this letter would actually reach the principal at all was still very much in question — the lock on the student mailbox was already rusted through, and frankly, sealing the letter in a bottle and tossing it into a river might give it a better chance of being found than putting it in the school mailbox.
For most people who signed, it was nothing more than a footnote to an otherwise dull adolescence — a story to tell someday: “Back when we were in school, our class…”
Pan Junmeng was the first to sign. He said, “You lack ambition. If you’re writing a letter anyway, why not just ask them to cancel the run entirely? Two laps is still exhausting!”
Li Kuiyi had assumed Zhou Fanghua might be hesitant, but she signed without any fuss: “I truly cannot take running five laps every single day — my calves are aching again today…”
The one who really got the letter around the whole class was Xia Leyi. Class president lived up to the title — she was organized and persuasive, and by the time the letter made its way back through her hands, nearly twenty additional signatures had appeared. She even considered rallying other classes to join, but Li Kuiyi lost her nerve at that point, afraid that if things escalated too far, it would become impossible to manage.
What Li Kuiyi hadn’t expected was that Qi Yu hadn’t signed.
Xia Leyi showed absolutely no surprise at this. She smiled, cupped a hand beside her mouth, and confided in a low voice, “Both his parents teach at this school, so his home life is strict — he’s probably scared of getting in trouble.”
The group stifled their laughter with barely concealed sympathy.
The letter was Li Kuiyi’s idea, so she was the one to deliver it. Since they’d gone to the trouble of making it a whole production, she wasn’t going to waste the effort — she planned to take it directly to the principal’s office. Xia Leyi offered to go with her for moral support.
After the last class of the afternoon, instead of going to dinner, the two of them made their way toward the administrative building — in a manner that managed to be simultaneously conspicuous and furtive.
Xia Leyi patted her own chest. “I’ve never done anything like this in my life. I feel like I’m sneaking around.”
Li Kuiyi nodded, completely in agreement.
The administrative building was heavily air-conditioned, with walls and floors in shades of grey and white, and a long, narrow corridor that felt slightly eerie with so few people around. The principal’s office was on the top floor. They debated for quite a while about whether to take the elevator, since it was generally not accessible to students. In the end, Xia Leyi gritted her teeth and said, “We’re taking it. What’s the point of climbing to the top floor? That’s basically the same as running five laps.”
According to the floor map, the elevator was near the building’s other entrance, so they walked through the corridor, passing the conference room, the broadcast room, the reception room…The dark red furniture was heavy and solemn, the few potted plants doing their best to liven things up.
“…Then you tell me — what exactly happened last night?” A sharp woman’s voice rang out from somewhere further down the corridor. “Give it to me straight. I want a clear explanation!”
Li Kuiyi and Xia Leyi exchanged a glance and walked closer. The voice was coming from the discipline office.
After the woman’s voice, a prolonged silence.
Eavesdropping was wrong, and whatever this was, it clearly wasn’t anything good. They were about to slip past quietly when a familiar middle-aged male voice cut through: “He Youyuan, just recount everything that happened after evening study last night, from start to finish. If nothing happened, no one here is going to accuse you of anything.”
That name was more surprising than the familiar voice.
Both girls stopped simultaneously. They craned their necks to peer through the half-open door.
Inside stood a tall, lean silhouette, and beside him a girl in the same school uniform, her hair in a low ponytail. Facing them were several adults: Year-Level Director Chen Guoming, Class Twelve’s homeroom teacher, and a few others Li Kuiyi didn’t recognize.
To avoid being seen, Xia Leyi yanked Li Kuiyi back from the doorway, and they pressed flat against the wall. Xia Leyi breathed close to Li Kuiyi’s ear: “He Youyuan’s aunt is in there too.”
He Youyuan’s aunt?
There had been a poised, elegantly dressed woman among the adults. Li Kuiyi, working from that assumption, decided she must be her.
Being called in with a family member meant this was serious.
One boy, one girl — was this… a relationship?
He Youyuan’s voice came through, cold and irritated: “I already said it just now. You refuse to believe it. Do you need me to say ‘yes, we’re in a relationship, yes, we were shamelessly kissing on school grounds’ before you’ll be satisfied?”
Kissing on school grounds? The two eavesdroppers outside widened their eyes slightly — for fifteen-year-old model students, this qualified as explosive.
“What kind of attitude is that?!” Chen Guoming was furious. “We called your families here today to resolve things — not to sit here while you waste everyone’s time. The security footage is right there. What exactly do you think you’re arguing about?”
“If you trust the footage that much, why even call me in here? So I can sit and admire my own alleged romantic behavior on camera?”
He was all reckless defiance, burning bridges as he went.
“Wang— !” A clear, melodious woman’s voice interjected sharply — then abruptly caught itself. “…Ah, I mean — He Youyuan…”
The taut standoff inside the discipline office shattered instantly.
Xia Leyi couldn’t even hold it in — a muffled laugh escaped her.
Li Kuiyi, meanwhile, was genuinely baffled. It was mortifying enough that a friend like Zhang Chuang called him “Your Royal Highness” — why did his own aunt call him “Prince” as well?