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The school grounds were planted mostly with evergreen trees, the kind that made it easy to forget time was passing in the unremarkable everyday. But the weather was growing undeniably colder day by day, and with each breath, there was a dry, crystalline sharpness in the air.

The 7th of November was the Start of Winter — and also the first day of the midterm examinations.

These midterms were a joint exam across four schools: No. 1 Middle School, Experimental Middle School, No. 8 Middle School, and No. 15 Middle School. The school took them very seriously, and had even cancelled the large outdoor morning exercise run for the week leading up to them. Li Kuiyi hadn’t participated in the run for a long time anyway, but she still found it absurd: stopping the run in preparation for the midterms implied that the school believed the run was a waste of study time — in which case, why had they been made to run every day to begin with?

She couldn’t make sense of it.

The atmosphere in the classroom grew denser with academic pressure by the day. Students could be seen at every turn pulling teachers aside to ask questions, and many came to Li Kuiyi to borrow her notes. Whenever this happened, she felt a little embarrassed. “My notes are all written inside the textbook. They look a bit messy.”

This was Li Kuiyi’s habit. She only had two notebooks: one for Chinese, filled with classical Chinese vocabulary she had accumulated over time, as well as commonly tested and easily confused characters, pronunciations, and idioms; and one for English, densely covered in grammar notes. For all her other subjects, she kept her notes directly inside the textbooks.

She found this approach very convenient for reviewing. Although it looked disorganized at first glance, to her everything was laid out with perfect clarity. The knowledge from the textbook and the teacher’s supplements sat together as one organic whole, and whenever she closed her eyes to recall something, she could picture the layout of every page in the textbook — what diagrams it contained, what text ran alongside those diagrams, and what annotations and additions she had made beside that text.

Zhou Fanghua, when she first saw Li Kuiyi writing directly in her books, had been astonished. “Does it all fit?”

Li Kuiyi said: “Completely.”

Later, Zhou Fanghua realized that she didn’t copy things down word for word as the teacher spoke, but instead extracted key phrases and shaped them into her own expression — sometimes a few shapes or diagrams, sometimes a mind map, sometimes a guiding question.

Fair enough. Zhou Fanghua came to see that this method of note-taking was probably very efficient, but it wasn’t something she herself could adopt. She needed to write down everything the teacher said, word for word. Only then did she feel safe. If she tried to take notes the way Li Kuiyi did, there would almost certainly come a day when she’d stare at some keyword and struggle desperately to recall: what did I mean when I wrote this?

Faced with these notes that seemed to come with their own built-in encryption, the other students beat a retreat and went to borrow from Qi Yu and Xia Leyi instead. Even so, Li Kuiyi was far from unbothered — classmates asking her to explain things remained as frequent as ever.

The day before the exams, even the advanced competition class had its lessons cancelled. When the evening study bell rang at the end of the night, Qi Yu tapped Li Kuiyi on the shoulder from behind. Once she had turned around, he said: “This Saturday is my birthday, and the midterms will just be finished. I’m planning to have a little get-together — are you free?”

This Saturday… Li Kuiyi quickly worked out the dates. So his birthday was the 9th of November.

She hesitated.

When she’d attended classmates’ birthday gatherings before, Fang Zhixiao had always been there. Even among people she didn’t know well, there was never any real awkwardness. But for Qi Yu’s birthday, she imagined he’d probably invite Xia Leyi, He Youyuan, Zhang Chuang, and perhaps some middle school friends as well. If the conversation turned to middle school topics, she’d be left out.

At that moment, Qi Yu turned to Zhou Fanghua beside her and asked: “What about you? Are you free?”

Li Kuiyi and Zhou Fanghua exchanged a quiet look.

Both understood perfectly — they were free, but each needed the other’s company. And so, having read each other’s minds, they both gave a small nod.

“Great.” Qi Yu smiled. “Then after the last exam on Saturday afternoon, we’ll all head over together.”

“Sounds good.”

After saying goodbye to Qi Yu, Zhou Fanghua stopped tidying up her desk and leaned toward Li Kuiyi, lowering her voice. “What do we do? We have exams for the next three days — when are we supposed to go buy him a gift?”

Right. Li Kuiyi hadn’t even thought of that. She considered for a moment. “How about we give him a book? We can slip out at lunchtime, pop into a bookshop, and buy one. Books are always a safe choice.”

Zhou Fanghua said: “But I can’t leave school on a weekday.”

“Then I’ll get one for you?”

“If we both give him a book, won’t that seem a bit half-hearted?”

“……”

That was a fair point. Li Kuiyi had always found gift-giving an ordeal. One thing she particularly loved about Fang Zhixiao was that she always said outright what she wanted, which saved Li Kuiyi the agony of trying to guess.

Fang Zhixiao appreciated that same quality in Li Kuiyi. Whenever it was time to buy her a gift, all she needed to do was wander through the classics section of a bookshop, and within three minutes, it was sorted. Li Kuiyi never felt it was half-hearted either, because she genuinely loved to read.

“Let’s go home and look it up online tonight,” Li Kuiyi suggested. “See what kinds of gifts are good for guys. And the book can be our backup option.”

“Okay.”

When she got home, Li Kuiyi took out her phone, ready to search for gift ideas. But the moment she opened it, several messaging notifications had already popped up.

She tapped in. She found that Qi Yu had created a group chat and had just added both her and Zhou Fanghua. The group had been renamed “Wishing His Majesty Qi a Most Auspicious Birthday” by someone with the nickname “Highlight.”

Highlight: Oh wow, just joined — are the newcomers guys or girls?

Zhou Ce: So old-fashioned. Are you from the Stone Age?

Li Kuiyi smiled and opened the list of group members. Besides Zhou Ce and Qi Yu, there were also He Youyuan, Xia Leyi, and four or five people she didn’t recognize.

Just as she’d expected, she thought. Thank goodness Zhou Fanghua would be there.

Highlight: @Li Kui — excuse me, why does your name read both super masculine AND super feminine?

Zhou Ce: Don’t just tag people randomly. This is our year’s top student.

Highlight: Top of the year?! My deepest respects — I wouldn’t dare speak carelessly again.

Li Kuiyi burst out laughing. She found it peculiar: Qi Yu was such a composed person — how were all his friends this irreverent?

She closed the chat and opened her search browser, typing: “What are good gifts to give a high school boy?”

Sneakers?

No — too expensive, and too personal. Not the right kind of thing for a friend at her level of familiarity.

A razor?

Li Kuiyi thought for a moment. Did Qi Yu have stubble? She’d never noticed any.

Over-ear headphones?

No — far too expensive.

A gaming keyboard?

No — expensive, and she didn’t know if he even played games.

……

She’d been through the whole list and found nothing suitable. Li Kuiyi scratched her head. Was she being too stingy?

She switched back to the group chat. Many more messages had accumulated.

Highlight: So where are we eating Saturday night? Give me something to look forward to.

Qi Yu: Don’t ask. Wait for an announcement.

Highlight: It won’t be at He Dogface’s place, will it?

Qi Yu: No.

Li Kuiyi was puzzled. Why would they celebrate Qi Yu’s birthday at He Youyuan’s house? Besides, hadn’t he said everyone in his family was a terrible cook? Were they all going there to eat McDonald’s together?

Highlight: @Totally His Type, calling He Dogface, calling He Dogface.

No response.

Highlight: @Totally His Type, I know you’re lurking! Trying to act deep in front of me, are you?

Highlight: @Totally His Type, where’d you go? You’re not actually studying, are you?

He Youyuan had just gotten out of the shower, water droplets still clinging to his hair, and was wandering out of the bathroom while rubbing his head haphazardly with a towel. Seeing his phone blinking non-stop, he opened it to find himself plastered with notifications.

He scrolled up.

“Qi Yu has invited Li Kui and Little Zhou to join the group chat.”

Oh. He Youyuan raised an eyebrow. So the person who had secretly been in love with him for three years would be coming too.

But — why had Qi Yu invited her? Were they that close? After all, apart from the two girls, everyone else in the group was an old classmate of theirs.

He Youyuan slung the towel carelessly over one shoulder and pressed down the corner of his mouth, then sent a message in the private group he shared with just Qi Yu and Zhang Chuang.

He Youyuan: @Qi Yu, why did you invite her?

Qi Yu: Who?

He Youyuan: Her!

Qi Yu: ?

Zhang Chuang: Bro, is that name too hot to say out loud?

“……”

He Youyuan turned off his screen. He had no interest in engaging with that.

But his phone kept blinking with incoming messages, and curiosity got the better of him. He opened it again.

Qi Yu: Li Kuiyi?

Zhang Chuang: How bold! You think you can just say that name? The proper form of address is “You-Know-Who!”

Qi Yu: ……

He Youyuan ignored Zhang Chuang and forced his way back into the conversation: “We’re all old middle school friends. Isn’t it a bit awkward to invite her?”

Qi Yu didn’t reply for a while.

He Youyuan: @Qi Yu. @Qi Yu. @Qi Yu.

After a moment, Qi Yu finally responded: “Li Kuiyi messaged me just now.”

“……”

He Youyuan: What did she want?

Qi Yu: She said she wants to treat me to something tomorrow evening.

“……”

He Youyuan: Why does she want to treat you?

Qi Yu’s finger hovered over the screen for a moment, then slowly typed out three words: “Don’t know.”

He Youyuan pulled the white towel over his face and lay there like a dead man.

The exam hall assignments and seating for the midterms were arranged according to rankings from the previous monthly exam, so Li Kuiyi was once again placed in Exam Room One, Seat One.

Because it was a joint exam across four schools, there was naturally an element of competition between institutions. Li Kuiyi knew that, as the city’s top scorer in the middle school entrance exams, her results here would attract significant attention. So she applied herself with the utmost focus.

The first exam of the first day was Chinese.

The joint exam paper was, one had to admit, genuinely well-crafted — moderate in difficulty, with good spread across levels. Li Kuiyi found the questions enjoyable to work through, especially the essay section. While completing the foundational questions and reading comprehension at the start, she had already been mentally planning her essay, and when she wrote it, it flowed without effort. She felt confident the essay score would be solid.

During the midday break, Li Kuiyi walked happily over to the school shop, planning to grab a yogurt. She liked ice cream when she was in a good or bad mood, but she was worried that eating something cold might upset her stomach during exams, so a yogurt would have to do.

She chose a large-cup yogurt with nut granola.

Cradling the yogurt, she carefully unzipped her coin purse and fished out some change. Then, in a moment of carelessness, she fumbled — a coin slipped free and went rolling away across the floor.

Li Kuiyi hurried after it, and just as she was bending down to pick it up, a slender hand with distinct knuckles appeared from beside her — and plucked the coin from the floor before she could reach it.

She looked up in startlement.

The boy was looking at her, a faint coolness in his dark eyes. He straightened, and instead of returning the coin, he closed it in his palm and walked off toward a corner shelf.

“He Youyuan.” She followed after him and held out her hand. “Give it back.”

He didn’t look at her, his gaze fixed on the row of drinks in front of him.

“Give it back,” she said again, finding this utterly nonsensical.

He still didn’t move.

Li Kuiyi had no idea what had gotten into him, and couldn’t be bothered to argue. She simply reached out, took hold of his right hand, and tried to pry his tightly clenched fingers open.

He seemed determined to resist her — he gripped tighter.

In the narrow corner, she stood before him in a small, almost enclosed space. He quietly looked down, watching her bent over her futile effort, and inwardly scoffed. But the clean, delicate line from her nose to her chin was clear and arresting, and her slightly cool, pale fingers pressing against his hand were growing flushed at the tips from the effort. And in a sudden, unguarded moment, it stirred something in him — a wave of feeling rising without warning.

His heart lurched wildly.