Zhou Ce’s unrestrained laughter hadn’t fully faded when Fang Zhixiao came charging over with her egg pancake in hand, swung her palm, and landed a sharp smack on his arm.

“Watermelon Taro! What kind of taste is that? These are called eyebrow-length bangs! Have you no aesthetic sense whatsoever? You hopeless straight guy.”

Zhou Ce clutched his arm, wincing: “That really hurt, big sis!”

“You deserved it.” Fang Zhixiao shot him a withering look.

“Then why aren’t you hitting him?” Zhou Ce protested, jabbing a finger at He Youyuan without the slightest hesitation — happy to drag his own friend into it. “He’s the one who said she had an antenna on her head! Isn’t that even worse?”

But Fang Zhixiao was a person of principle. In her view, whatever He Youyuan had said was Li Kuiyi’s business to deal with — it was not her place to intervene. Her only responsibility was to bring Zhou Ce and his runaway mouth to heel.

“And you’re still talking back!” She raised a fist again, fuming. Seeing trouble coming, Zhou Ce took to his heels at once. His leg had healed up quite nicely, and in two strides he was well out of Fang Zhixiao’s range. He turned his head back, alive to no self-preservation instinct whatsoever, and made faces at her: “Nah nah nah nah nah.”

That kind of provocative nonsense was more than Fang Zhixiao’s fiery temper could bear. She leapt up and chased after Zhou Ce.

Li Kuiyi and He Youyuan stood there and watched the two of them race off into the distance.

By comparison, the prickly pineapple was actually quite gentle. At least she didn’t go around hitting people, He Youyuan thought.

As that thought crossed his mind, he saw Li Kuiyi walk toward him, gave him a cool, deliberate look from head to toe, and finally let her gaze come to rest on his right hand.

He Youyuan followed her gaze downward.

What was she looking at? He wasn’t holding anything particularly unusual — just a carton of milk.

She spoke flatly: “Don’t you have an antenna too?”

He Youyuan was briefly confused, and then it suddenly hit him — his little finger had, without his noticing, curled up again in that affected little way, like a smug little peacock.

It’s not what you think!

His ears went red in an instant. He stumbled over his words: “You… I — I study fine arts, okay? Everyone who studies fine arts does this — it’s true! It’s just that when you’re drawing, you need a support point… you understand, right? You have to keep your little finger raised…”

So the habit of sticking out one’s little finger was apparently an occupational hazard of studying fine arts — Li Kuiyi had never heard of such a thing before.

She was inclined to believe the explanation, because she could perfectly well imagine the hand position required when drawing. But she still arched an eyebrow at him and gave a faint curl of her lip, her whole expression broadcasting pure skepticism — don’t bother explaining, explanation is just cover. You’re just a delicate little boy who likes to stick out his little finger.

Seeing her expression, He Youyuan became even more frantic, and sorely wished he could tie her up and drag her to his studio that instant, so she could see with her own eyes that he was telling the truth: “I’m not lying! When you’ve been drawing for a long time, your little finger really does lift up on its own — especially when you’re holding something in your hand!”

Li Kuiyi gave an indifferent shrug, conveying zero interest, walked straight past him, and headed directly into a stationery shop. “Stationery shop” wasn’t quite accurate, because in addition to stationery, this shop also sold supplementary textbooks, practice papers, snacks, and all manner of little decorative items and trinkets.

She was going to buy a hair clip to properly press down that rogue strand of hair.

To her surprise, He Youyuan followed her inside and continued rambling on in his bid to “clear his name,” seemingly dead set on convincing her before the day was out: “Don’t not believe me! Zhou Ce has been to my studio — he knows how it is. When he gets back, ask him yourself!”

Li Kuiyi ignored him entirely and focused on browsing the hair clips with her head down.

He Youyuan was seething. He planted his hands on his hips, ran a hand through his hair in frustration, and swept the shop with his eyes. There happened to be both pens and paper in the store, along with one of those simple little drawing boards, and his eyes lit up. He grabbed everything and demonstrated for her.

“Look — this is how I hold things when I draw. When you’re doing shading and hatching, your little finger needs to rest here for support…”

Li Kuiyi deliberately did not look.

He pushed the drawing board in front of her face. “Look.”

Li Kuiyi deliberately turned her head the other way.

He Youyuan grew desperate, and something snapped in his brain — he reached out directly, pinched her cheeks in both hands, and turned her face toward him: “Just look!”

Li Kuiyi: “…”

Her lower eyelid gave the tiniest twitch. Slowly, she raised her eyes — and the look in them was sharp as a blade.

He Youyuan only then, with a belated rush of panic, swallowed hard.

Good grief — how had her face ended up in his hands? Had she offered it of her own accord? Didn’t seem like it… so had he actually taken the initiative to reach out and grab it?

Why would he grab her face? He wasn’t that unhinged, was he? Oh, right, it was because he wanted her to look at his drawing demonstration and so he…

Done for. He really had done it of his own accord. Done for. He really was that unhinged.

Her cheeks were squished into a pout by his grip, her eyes wide with shock, yet at the same time blazing with indignation — and that unruly strand of hair swayed back and forth above, like a stubborn little ahoge.

Rather adorable, actually.

Ah, no — rather inexcusable.

He Youyuan yanked his hand back, instinctively licked his dry lips, and mumbled, “Sorry — I… I didn’t mean to.”

Li Kuiyi’s hands, hanging at her sides, clenched tight into fists. She gritted her teeth and stared at him in cold, direct silence, the longer she thought about it, the more infuriated she became.

He grabbed her face, and then told her he hadn’t meant to?

She was willing to believe that “manslaughter” could happen in the world, but she absolutely refused to believe in “accidental face-grabbing.”

“I really am sorry…” He looked into her eyes and said it again, with genuine sincerity.

He Youyuan rarely said “I’m sorry” so directly. Even when he knew he’d done something wrong, he always expressed regret in a roundabout, circuitous way. But this situation was different. Bluntly put, he had laid hands on a girl without her permission — that was a matter of principle.

“I don’t accept it!” Li Kuiyi said fiercely.

With that, she shot him one withering glare, turned on her heel, and walked out — so furious she’d even forgotten to buy a hair clip.

As she turned around, however, she found Fang Zhixiao, Zhou Ce, and the shop owner all standing at the doorway with their mouths hanging open, staring at the two of them as if dumbstruck, their jaws practically on the floor.

They had apparently all witnessed everything.

Li Kuiyi walked past them without looking sideways, without saying a word.

Fang Zhixiao glanced at Zhou Ce, then immediately fell into step beside Li Kuiyi. Her own footsteps were brisk; keeping up was a bit of an effort.

Fang Zhixiao had originally been on the verge of making a teasing remark — something along the lines of “See? He obviously likes you” — but she didn’t quite dare now, because she could feel the low-pressure front coming off Li Kuiyi.

Like a dark cloud pressing down over her head.

She was genuinely angry.

Why, though? Fang Zhixiao scratched her head. From her perspective… the scene just now had looked rather sweet.

But the person involved clearly felt not the slightest bit of romance about it!

Was it because she found the gesture too presumptuous? After all, at this point the two of them were only ordinary classmates — they couldn’t even really be called friends.

And so Fang Zhixiao opened her mouth and launched into it: “He really went too far! Does he have no sense of propriety at all? Does he think that just because he’s good-looking he can do whatever he wants? Does he think every girl in the world wants him to touch her?”

Sure enough, Li Kuiyi turned around with an aggrieved look and said, “You think so too?”

“Of course!” Fang Zhixiao put on an expression of profound moral outrage. “I may like good-looking guys, but I’m not without principles — what he did was simply inappropriate. You two aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend; that kind of physical contact is obviously out of bounds! Ugh, when will these men ever understand that the world doesn’t revolve around them?!”

Exactly, exactly — Li Kuiyi finally felt a tiny bit better. Fang Zhixiao had said everything she’d wanted to say.

Settling back into her seat in the classroom, Li Kuiyi began to regret not having punched him. She hadn’t even yelled at him — she had let him off far too easily.

Next time she saw him, she was absolutely going to vent some of this anger.

For now, she would put it out of her mind. She was not going to let some insufferable guy affect her studying. She needed to concentrate on her morning reading.

She pulled her history textbook from her desk and began memorising.

She’d barely finished one passage — an assessment of Athenian democracy — when Zhou Ce sauntered into the classroom with his usual grin. He walked straight to Li Kuiyi’s seat, pulled a handful of colourful hair clips from his pocket, and set them on her desk: “A certain someone bought these. He says to sort out that spiky thing on your head.”

Li Kuiyi’s fist clenched again.

She really was going to punch him — nothing else would satisfy the hatred in her heart.

Zhou Fanghua leaned over curiously, poked through the hair clips, and asked, “Who’s the certain someone?”

“A dog,” Li Kuiyi said through gritted teeth.

In the end, Li Kuiyi borrowed a hair clip from Zhou Fanghua to pin down the stray strand. Then, when everyone else went down for the morning run during the long break, she quietly stuffed all the hair clips back into Zhou Ce’s desk.

During the last class of the morning, students who had placed in the top ten of their year group in the monthly exams, along with the top scorers for each individual subject, were called out to have their photos taken for the honour roll.

When it was Li Kuiyi’s turn, she remembered what Fang Zhixiao had told her: “You have to smile, okay! If you don’t smile, your face looks too sour — it won’t look good on the honour roll.”

And so Li Kuiyi smiled at the camera.

When the photos were developed and posted on the honour roll bulletin board, anyone who passed by and glanced at it would invariably remark: “Good grief, what an intense expression!”

For in the photo, the girl’s eyes and brows were sharp and striking, her dark irises looking directly at the lens without a trace of concealment — almost aggressively so. Most notably, the corners of her mouth were slightly lifted in an ambiguous expression, somewhere between amusement and provocation, equal parts challenge and mockery.

Fang Zhixiao stood before the honour roll for a long time and finally said: “It looks good — definitely — it’s just a little different from what I had in mind…”

Li Kuiyi thought to herself: sorry about that — I was too furious that day, and I aimed at the camera lens as though it were He Youyuan.

Once all the dust had settled on the monthly exam, the bulletin board display competition results finally trickled in.

As expected, Class Twelve’s bulletin board took first place in the whole school, while second place went to a Year Two class… Class One of Year One didn’t come away empty-handed either, having received a “Special Creativity Award.”

Some classes, however, were rather vocal in their dissatisfaction, arguing that Class One’s display wasn’t nearly as creative as Class Seven’s, and that the school had only given Class One the award out of deference to their academic results.

Class One’s students naturally took exception to this, and a dispute of modest but not insignificant proportions broke out on the school’s online forum.

Before even two days had passed, another post was pushed to the top of the forum’s trending list.

The original poster had attached a single photo with the caption: “Enough fighting — let’s all look at this handsome guy instead.”

It was the photo Fang Zhixiao had sneakily taken of He Youyuan painting the bulletin board.

Fang Zhixiao raised her hand and swore to Li Kuiyi: “I absolutely did not post that! There is no way I would betray you at a moment like this!”

Li Kuiyi believed her.

But she registered a forum account, found the hot post on Yi High’s forum, and left a comment beneath it —

Not good-looking.