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“…That’s how everything happened. I’m sorry — it was I who made Teacher Huang storm off.” After class, Li Kuiyi caught up with Liu Xinzhao and explained what had taken place during PE.

The more Liu Xinzhao heard, the more astonished she became, because she never could have imagined Li Kuiyi doing something like this. Whether in her own impression of her, or in the praise she’d heard from other teachers in the office, Li Kuiyi was always composed, intelligent, meticulous, and measured.

The very picture of what a model student should look like.

The girl standing before her had her hands clasped behind her back, her head slightly bowed, her voice soft and quiet — the very image of someone who had done something wrong. But those eyes still tilted upward stubbornly, looking at her, full of life, with something that seemed like longing deep within them.

Liu Xinzhao tilted her head and looked into her eyes, asking gently, “Li Kuiyi, do you truly believe you did something wrong?”

Li Kuiyi’s gaze flickered for a moment. She pressed her lips together and said nothing.

“To have done something wrong means that if I could do it over, I would definitely make a different choice than before. So — if this could be done over, would you still step forward and question Teacher Huang’s approach?” Liu Xinzhao continued.

Li Kuiyi bit her lip. She hesitated for a long while. In the end, she found she could not deceive her own heart, and nodded.

“I knew it.” Liu Xinzhao smiled — a smile that held both helplessness and understanding. “You never actually believed, deep down, that you did anything wrong.”

She lowered her head even further.

“I’m not here to criticize you, because… I also don’t think you did anything wrong.”

Li Kuiyi looked up in shock.

Liu Xinzhao smiled warmly and quickly added, “If what you’ve told me is accurate, that is.”

In that instant, Li Kuiyi felt as though a gentle, tender breeze had filled her completely. The dark, clear pupils in her eyes trembled faintly in their sockets. Her lips parted — but nothing came out.

Liu Xinzhao gave her head a reassuring pat. “Here’s what we’ll do: go and get Jiang Yilin for me. I’ll hear her account of things first, and then I’ll speak with Teacher Huang as well. Whatever comes of all this, I’ll let you know in due course. For now, go back and focus on your studies — don’t let your mind wander.”

Li Kuiyi’s gaze still hadn’t left Liu Xinzhao’s face. She simply nodded in a daze, as though the hand that had patted her head were magical, already leaving her lightheaded.

She was not the kind of student who could easily get close to a teacher. All her life, there had always been some classmates who had very warm relationships with their teachers — ones who could exchange harmless jokes with them, who could visit their homes without a second thought. She was not like that. In her eyes, teachers were elders, and she happened to be someone who didn’t know how to get along with elders. Between herself and her teachers, there had always been the most ordinary kind of contractual relationship: you impart knowledge, I absorb it, never crossing the line — respectful, and distant.

But Liu Xinzhao was different. Perhaps because she was a young woman. Perhaps because she taught Chinese — the subject Li Kuiyi loved most. So she had a natural pull toward her.

She seems to understand me.

Li Kuiyi floated in this incomparable sense of happiness — in a warm daze as she went to fetch Jiang Yilin, in a warm daze as she returned to her seat. Zhou Fanghua and Pan Junmeng immediately crowded around her in alarm. “Did the homeroom teacher criticize you?”

She shook her head in that same warm daze. “The homeroom teacher is a good person.”

Zhou Fanghua: “…”

Pan Junmeng: “…”

During the evening self-study session, Li Kuiyi tore through three sets of Chinese exam papers.

“Are you out of your mind — who drills Chinese exam papers?!” Pan Junmeng had at least ten thousand objections. Chinese was the most thankless subject — whether you studied it intensely for two weeks or didn’t study it at all, your score would likely come out about the same. So practically no one wasted time on Chinese outside of class.

“Maybe that’s how she got 145 in Chinese on the middle school entrance exam,” Zhou Fanghua said quietly from the side.

Pan Junmeng: “…”

After school, Li Kuiyi stayed in the classroom waiting for Fang Zhixiao. She knew Fang Zhixiao was on cleaning duty today and wouldn’t be down for a while, so she passed the time softly reviewing English vocabulary at her desk.

Class One’s cleaning duty was held before the evening self-study period, because Liu Xinzhao worried about students going home too late at night. The classroom emptied out quickly, leaving just her and Zhou Ce.

“Hey, class rep — why haven’t you left either?” Zhou Ce pulled out his phone and started playing a game, glancing up at her from under his eyelids as he struck up a conversation.

Li Kuiyi turned around. It was only when she noticed Zhou Ce that she suddenly realized — since He Youyuan and Fang Zhixiao sat so close together, they were probably in the same cleaning group, which meant He Youyuan was also very likely still on duty.

“I’m waiting for a friend.”

“Is it the friend who scolded us last time?” Zhou Ce asked without looking up.

“Um…” Li Kuiyi was briefly at a loss for words. After a moment, she nodded stiffly. “Yes.”

Zhou Ce laughed. “I’ll tell you something — birds of a feather flock together. You and your friend are both pretty fierce.”

He clearly already knew about what happened during PE.

Li Kuiyi forced a dry laugh and steered the conversation away with visible awkwardness. “Are you waiting for He Youyuan?”

“Oh? You know his name?” Zhou Ce looked up, and smiled. “Of course — who doesn’t know our dashingly handsome Prince Highness!”

Good grief, here we go again.

What was wrong with the people around He Youyuan? Why were they all so obsessed with calling him “prince”? Even if they had time-traveled from medieval Europe, surely they’d have adapted to modern society by now.

Li Kuiyi frowned, but in the end couldn’t hold back. She asked quietly, “Why do you call him ‘Prince Highness’?”

Even saying those four syllables out loud made her feel deeply embarrassed.

Zhou Ce hadn’t expected her to ask that. He blinked a couple of times and said, “Oh — his childhood nickname is Wangzi. It means ‘prince.'”

Li Kuiyi: “…”

Well. That was indeed an answer she had never anticipated.

After nearly twenty minutes of waiting, the once-bustling campus had grown quiet. Then came the sound of footsteps — thud, thud, thud — from the direction of the stairwell. Li Kuiyi looked up, and there was the Prince Highness himself, deigning to make his appearance.

He didn’t seem particularly affected by recent events. His expression was as casually arrogant as ever.

He and Li Kuiyi made eye contact for one brief moment, then he immediately shifted his gaze away and walked straight to the back of the classroom. He rapped his knuckles on the desk of Zhou Ce, who was deep in his game: “Let’s go.”

“Hold on, hold on — let me finish this round!” Zhou Ce hollered.

He Youyuan let out an irritated tsk, stood with his hands on his hips in an idle slouch, and prodded him: “Hurry up.”

His gaze drifted aimlessly around the Class One classroom. Every so often it would sweep past a familiar figure. Her desk was tidy — not many books on the surface, no stray objects. She herself was equally tidy: school uniform worn crisp and neat, a short ponytail tied up, exposing a clean, slender stretch of neck.

He Youyuan curled his fingers inward and looked away.

Zhou Ce’s head was bowed over his phone, locked in fierce combat, his eyes practically glued to the screen. His desk had a physics workbook spread open on it, a few exam papers piled messily on top, and beside all that — a can of cola, already opened.

Cola.

He instinctively looked up toward the windowsill beside Li Kuiyi’s seat — the can of cola he had given her was, as it turned out, gone.

It had still been there yesterday. And the day before.

It had vanished today, of all days.

Should he suspect this coincidence?

He reached out and picked up the cola can. There was less than half a can left, sloshing gently as he tilted it. Zhou Ce lifted half an eyelid without pausing his game. “You want some?”

He Youyuan said lightly, “You’ve got an injured foot, and you’re still managing to buy cola.”

Cola —

Li Kuiyi’s eyes went wide.

That couldn’t be the can she’d given Zhou Ce, could it?

And why did He Youyuan’s tone have that subtle edge to it, like he was being pointed without quite saying so? Had he already figured out that this was the can he’d given her? And was he actually bothered by it?

“I didn’t buy it — it was…” Before Zhou Ce could finish his sentence, he heard the sound of a chair scraping forward from the front of the classroom. He looked up from his screen to find that Li Kuiyi had bolted like a rabbit, grabbed her bag, and was already halfway out the door.

“Huh, what’s she…” Zhou Ce stared blankly at where she had just been, pointing at the now-empty space. “She’s the one who gave it to me. You know her, right? She’s the girl from last time who said you bumped into her…”

Know her? They were practically entangled by fate.

He Youyuan was absolutely seething.

The last time he had come to Class One and seen that she still hadn’t drunk the cola, he had already been furious — which was exactly why he’d gone out of his way to bump into her. And now, as it turned out, she’d gone and given it away entirely!

That was his cola. He had kindly given it to her, taking into account that she was practically dying of thirst, and she had the audacity to give it to someone else? Had she gotten his permission? Had she?

And on top of that, she’d given it to his own good brother. How charming — using a borrowed flower to make an offering. She had really mastered that trick, hadn’t she?

He asked coldly, “Why did she give you cola? Does she like you?”

“What kind of logic is that?” Zhou Ce was even more bewildered. “Giving someone a can of cola means she likes them? Besides, it wasn’t like she gave it to me on her own — I was the one who asked for it. You don’t even know — ever since I couldn’t go to the school store, I’ve been desperately craving…”

“Why did you ask her for cola? Do you like her?” He Youyuan cut him off, his tone still unfriendly.

“No — seriously, man, is there anything in your brain besides the word ‘like’?” Zhou Ce simply put his phone down. “Are you trying to add to the pile of romantic gossip that’s already following you around?”

He Youyuan shot him a sideways look. “We agreed not to bring that up.”

Zhou Ce propped himself up and stood, stuffed his phone into his pocket, slung an arm around his shoulder, and grinned cheerfully. “Alright, alright — not bringing it up. Let’s go, time to head home!”

He Youyuan felt just the tiniest bit better inside.

Just the tiniest bit.

Even if Zhou Ce had been the one to ask her for the cola, she still shouldn’t have given it to him, should she?

Look how guilty she acted, fleeing like that.

The lights in the school building went out one by one. The vast campus fell into an open, quiet stillness; if you spoke, you could almost hear your voice echo back from somewhere distant.

And there she was again, under that same streetlamp, waiting for someone. A slender, narrow silhouette, as though traced in the amber glow.

He again deliberately walked past her, and gave her shoulder a light bump.

He watched the astonishment flash across her face, and found it deeply amusing.

Zhou Ce beside him cried out dramatically, “You absolute scoundrel — the moment you started heading this way, I knew you were going to bump into her! I called it, I totally called it — I saw everything this time, I really did!”

He Youyuan didn’t even bother to deny it. He raised an eyebrow slightly. “I bumped into you. Do you need me to apologize?”