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Chen Guoming was feeling deeply irritated.

He had only returned yesterday from an out-of-town training program. Already troubled by how far behind Yi High School was compared to the top schools, he had wandered into the men’s bathroom to let off some steam by catching students smoking on the sly. Instead, he happened to overhear two boys talking by the sinks about how the top student in the grade was planning to switch to the humanities stream. His ears pricked up immediately. Which grade’s top student? Surely not the top student from their Year One?

Apart from Year One, which other grade was even doing the arts-sciences split right now?

Fine. Li Kuiyi. Again, it was her.

It was hard to say whether that 100,000 yuan they had spent to recruit her had brought them the city’s top exam scorer or their very own ancestral plague. Truly — in all his years as year-level head, Chen Guoming had never seen a top student cause this much trouble. And now, out of nowhere, she wanted to switch to the humanities stream?

He could not make heads or tails of it, so he had her summoned for a talk. Setting down his insulated mug, he pressed his temples and did his best to keep his tone steady. “Tell me — why do you want to choose the humanities?”

“I find the humanities more interesting.”

As Li Kuiyi spoke, she blinked hard. The air conditioner in Chen Guoming’s office was pointed directly at her, blowing hot air steadily into her face until her eyes felt dry and parched. Amusingly, to avoid any impropriety, the office door had been left wide open — and the cold air rushing in from behind chilled her back to the bone.

Front burning, back freezing. Truly a world divided between fire and ice.

She had expected Chen Guoming to call her in for a talk, but she had assumed it would happen after the New Year’s holiday. As it turned out, Chen Guoming had caught wind of her decision to choose humanities from somewhere, and with quick eyes and even quicker hands, he had intercepted her in the very last class before the holiday.

It was all Pan Junmeng’s fault. He had bellowed across the classroom in sheer disbelief: “Li Kui, you’re choosing humanities?!” — drawing the eyes of every classmate around them. That was almost certainly how the news had spread.

“You find the humanities more interesting?” Chen Guoming repeated her words back to her, his gaze sweeping over her with a look of skepticism. “Does that mean you have no interest in the sciences?”

It was impossible that she had no interest, was it not? Otherwise, how could she have excelled in those subjects?

Li Kuiyi answered honestly: “It is not that I have absolutely no interest. I simply weighed up the field I would want to study deeply and long-term in the future, and concluded that the humanities suit me better.”

Chen Guoming narrowed his eyes. “What field do you want to study?”

“I want to study Chinese — whether literary studies or linguistics, I am open to either.”

Chen Guoming was somewhat taken aback. It was rare for a Year One student to already have such a clear sense of what they wanted to study. The more common situation was for people to reach the end of the college entrance exam still having no sense of their future direction, filling in their applications at random, and only after arriving at university discovering what a peculiar mess of a choice they had made.

Faced with a student this focused and purposeful, he should have felt heartened.

But he could not feel heartened right now. He drew a sharp breath. “Literature or linguistics… what made you think of studying that?”

Li Kuiyi found the question rather strange. “Because I love it.” She said it, then felt her answer was too offhand, and added, “And I believe I have the capacity to study it well.”

Hearing that, Chen Guoming smiled knowingly. He understood perfectly — children were such simple creatures, with their grand declarations of passion that trumped everything else. He had seen this kind of student before. He relaxed a little, leaning back in his chair, and spoke in a weighty, earnest tone: “I understand that you’re interested, and it is perfectly normal for a young woman to enjoy literary and artistic things. But let me remind you — a Chinese Literature department is not what you imagine: sitting around reading books all day, writing elegantly, savoring flowers and moonlight at your leisure. If you go in with that attitude, you will most certainly be disappointed. Furthermore, you say you have the capacity to study it — I do not deny that — but a Chinese Literature department does not require great intellectual capacity. Its bar is low; anyone can study it. So I advise you not to squander your abilities.”

Squander? Li Kuiyi’s brow furrowed slightly. She very much wanted to ask: then what subject, in his view, would not be a squandering? People always assumed that humanities subjects required no real thinking. What — did humanities students learn with their toes?

But she held her tongue. She knew that once she argued with Chen Guoming, the matter would drag on forever. She pressed down the feeling rising inside her and said calmly, “First, I want you to know, Teacher, that my desire to study Chinese Literature is not a momentary impulse, nor is it about enjoying flowers and moonlight. Since I love it, I certainly will not let that love remain confined to fantasy. I have done my research. I know what a Chinese Literature department covers, and I have listened to relevant courses offered by top universities online. Whether it is literary history, literary theory, or literary criticism on the literary side, or pragmatics, phonology, and the rest on the linguistics side — I am genuinely interested in all of it. It is on that basis that I said I want to study Chinese Literature. Second — yes, the bar for Chinese Literature is low, but I am not satisfied with hovering at the entrance. If I am going to study something, I want to study it deeply. If I were to go deep into the field, the question would not be whether the discipline is worthy of my abilities — rather, if my abilities could rise to even one ten-thousandth of what this discipline demands, I would already count myself fortunate.”

There she goes again.

Principled rebellion, backed by logic every time.

Chen Guoming felt helpless. Ever since she had squared off with him in this very office the last time, he had known: this girl was stubborn to the core. Whatever she believed was right, she would do — with no regard for practical reality. Since that was the case, he saw no point in going around in circles. He went straight to the point: “You are young right now, your grades are good, and school life comes easily to you, so you tend to take things for granted — as though the future is entirely within your feet. But once you finish university and enter society, you will discover that life is not an idealized thing.”

Li Kuiyi understood what he was saying. She was silent for a moment, her face and voice equally expressionless. “So what you mean is — I should choose the sciences and study a more promising major in the future. Is that right?”

“For a child from an ordinary family, that is at least a choice that carries no risk,” Chen Guoming said.

The moment the words left his mouth, he saw a shadow pass over Li Kuiyi’s expression. He knew the words were blunt, and for a fifteen or sixteen-year-old, they were bound to sting.

She was still his student, after all, and he had no wish to wound her. He softened his tone. “It is not that I don’t support you having your own ideals — only that you cannot look at the world with your eyes covered. ‘Master mathematics, physics, and chemistry, and you’ll fear nothing the world can throw at you’ — surely you’ve heard that saying? Do you really think it spread without any foundation? The reality is, the entire environment operates this way. If it were someone else sitting here today, I would not say so much — because if they’re choosing humanities because they can’t manage physics or do well in mathematics, fine, let them study humanities, there’s no better alternative. But you are different. You have the ability to do well in the sciences. You have far better options available to you. If you truly love literature, you can audit those courses at university, or even pursue a double degree. Sometimes, not turning your passion into your major is precisely what lets you sustain your interest in it over time — isn’t that so?”

Li Kuiyi lowered her eyes and said nothing. She could hear the genuine sincerity behind Chen Guoming’s words. Whether or not he was right was a separate question — but he was speaking out of true concern for her future.

Of course, she could also hear the bias woven through those words.

She wanted to say: it does not have to be this way. There are people in this world who love literature, who love history, who love philosophy. But in the eyes of some, loving these things signifies emptiness — idle fantasy, a failure to keep one’s feet on the ground. Was that not deeply unfair? And if one stepped back a thousand paces: even if someone chose humanities simply because they could not grasp physics, what of it? Failing to understand physics is not a crime. If everyone could understand physics, what need would there have been for Einstein?

Chen Guoming watched her sit in silence for a long while and could not read her thoughts — whether his stubborn mule of a student had actually been persuaded, or whether this was merely the calm before the storm. He pressed her: “What do you think?”

Li Kuiyi suddenly lifted her gaze and turned the question back on him: “If everyone switches to the sciences because of the prevailing environment, will the environment not become even worse? What do we do then?”

Her voice was crisp and clear, which only made the question sound all the more cheerfully innocent. Chen Guoming was successfully provoked into a laugh.

“That is not your concern.”

“Then whose concern is it?”

Chen Guoming spread both hands wide. “This country is vast, its talent abundant — there will naturally be someone to worry about it.”

“If someone is already worrying about it, why is the situation still like this? It means not enough people are worrying about it.”

Chen Guoming paused. “What — you want to be the one who worries about it?”

“Why can’t I?” Li Kuiyi fixed her gaze on him.

There she goes again.

The reckless courage of a child!

Chen Guoming’s head ached terribly. The one consolation was that there was only one Li Kuiyi in the year group — if there were several more, he would hand in his resignation on the spot. In fact, even one Li Kuiyi was already making him desperate to go home.

The heavens seemed to have heard his thoughts, for at that very moment, the melodic sound of the end-of-school bell rang out across the campus. After two seconds of silence, the entire school building erupted: chairs scraped across floors, footsteps thundered from above, and several boys even broke into wolf howls: “Awoooo — awoooo — school’s out! We’re on holiday!”

A bunch of kids who had no idea how good they had it! Chen Guoming grew even more agitated. Why were students at other schools all so well-behaved?

He let out an almost imperceptible sigh, and when he looked at Li Kuiyi, his gaze carried a trace of authority: “No one said you cannot. Having these ambitions is a good thing — as a teacher, I naturally hope that you will grow up and contribute to society. But what does a teacher hope for even more than that? That you will live well! There is an old saying — ‘when poor, cultivate yourself; when prosperous, benefit the world.’ You must first understand your circumstances objectively before you can consider anything deeper. This world is not a realm of chivalry — you cannot simply charge into it armed with nothing but passion. Right now, hearing this, you probably think your teacher is mercenary, worldly, and crude. When you grow up, you will find this is simply reality — but by then, regret will come too late!”

“What if I do not regret it?” Li Kuiyi asked quietly.

“How can you guarantee you will not regret it?”

Li Kuiyi thought for a moment, then said: “I cannot guarantee it — just as you cannot guarantee that choosing the sciences will light a brilliant path ahead of me. The one thing I can try my best to do is this: if I fail to reach the standard of success that others hold, I will not use other people’s values as a weapon against myself. Every choice carries some regret. Regret is not frightening — but to fixate on that regret and be at war with oneself, that is the most wasteful way to spend a life.”

Chen Guoming’s expression went momentarily blank, as though he had not expected her to say something like that.

He offered no further rebuttal, only gazed quietly at her. After a long moment, he finally moved his lips and said: “…Alright, go on back.”

Li Kuiyi could not read his expression — she could not tell whether it was resignation or disappointment. She too paused in silence for a moment, said “Goodbye, Teacher,” then turned and left his office. In the instant she stepped through the door, she heard a long, drawn-out sigh behind her.

Had she truly chosen wrong?

She always held her position firmly — but there were times when even she had no certainty inside.

Outside the school building, the sky had gone completely dark. Most of the classrooms had switched off their lights; only a handful still held two or three students finishing their classroom duties. Li Kuiyi drifted absentmindedly down the long corridor, and glancing up without thinking, she saw a solitary crescent moon rising in the eastern sky — sharp as a blade, radiating a cold, clear light.

She suddenly remembered: she and He Youyuan had arranged to meet after school today to look over notes.

They had agreed to meet at a bookshop-café called “You Jian.” The second floor had a discussion area and a printer — perfect for their “business negotiations.”

She wondered if He Youyuan had already arrived.

Li Kuiyi hurried down the stairs, returned to the classroom to pack up her bag, pulled on her gloves and wound her scarf around herself, then set off briskly toward the school gates.

The heavy snow from a few days ago had begun to melt. Thawing weather was the coldest of all — even with a scarf, the winter wind still worked its way into her nose as she walked, leaving a sharp, aching sensation. Every breath released a puff of white vapor, vivid against the night. Perhaps because of the holiday, her classmates had scattered quickly, leaving the campus eerily quiet. Only that crescent moon kept pace with her, drifting now past the silhouettes of distant trees, now through thin wisps of cloud.

Li Kuiyi could not help slowing her steps, and the moon seemed to slow along with her.

She thought of when she was small. Even then she had noticed — the moon always followed wherever she went; if she ran, the moon ran too. She found it wondrous, but had no way of asking the adults around her how this could be. They would never bother with a useless little question like that. Not until she started primary school, and had a teacher, did she finally voice the question. That teacher — perhaps to protect the poetry of childhood — told her: the moon likes you, so it follows you. She was overjoyed. She decided the moon must be like a small dog she kept up in the sky. From then on, she was no longer afraid to walk alone at night, because when she was small, the moon truly was very bright — bright enough to shine right through forests and window panes.

Even after she grew up and understood how it all worked, every time she lifted her head and saw the moon, a sense of comfort still rose in her heart — like watching her little dog come wagging its tail toward her. The moon was no longer just an ordinary celestial body. In her eyes, it had become following, and companionship, and the tangible form of romance. Later, when she read Zhang Ruoxu’s “Spring River, Flowers, Moon, Night” and came across the line “not knowing for whom the river moon waits,” her heart began to beat violently. In that moment, she was utterly convinced: the person the moon was waiting for was her.

She could not help but wonder — when Li Bai wrote “I raise my cup to invite the bright moon, and together with my shadow we are three”; when Su Shi wrote “May we both be blessed with long life and share this moon a thousand miles apart”; when Zhang Jiuling wrote “The bright moon rises over the sea, and we share this moment from the ends of the earth” — did each of them also believe, in that moment, that they were the one the moon was waiting for?

The moon holds no feelings of its own — it is the feelings of people. That brilliant white moonlight passes through all of time, shining upon each person the moon waits for, and in that moment, she sees herself through the shadows of everyone who ever lived. Li Kuiyi understood then: so this is what literature means.

It was not a vague and ethereal illusion — it was an arrival at reality.

These moments of trembling in the soul brought no practical use whatsoever, yet they were the things that made her profoundly happy. It was for this reason that she sometimes sensed a subtle feeling of destiny — she thought that in this life, she was probably going to be a “useless” sort of person.

Li Kuiyi sniffled and pulled her scarf tighter around her neck. Outside the school gates, she ducked into a small shop, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a box of ice cream. She could not tell whether she was happy or sad right now — but she simply wanted some.

Then after a thought, she pulled out a second box, intending to give it to He Youyuan, in the hope that he would, in light of the ice cream, cheerfully purchase her notes.

And there it was — the source of her own uncertainty. She was too contradictory. When speaking of the present, she clearly needed money very much. When speaking of the future, she carried on as though money was beneath her notice.

Hands trembling slightly as she cradled two boxes of ice cream, Li Kuiyi made her way to the bookshop-café and headed straight upstairs to the second floor.

The place was nearly empty, and unusually quiet. He Youyuan was already there, as expected. The heating was generous — he had taken off his down jacket and sat in just a thin shirt, looking relaxed and fresh, working through practice problems at the table. He was probably deep in thought; his black ballpoint pen spun back and forth between his long fingers.

This person usually looked so carefree and aimless, but when he was working hard, there was something grounded about him.

Li Kuiyi walked over. Her shadow fell across He Youyuan, and he looked up.

Truly a fine pair of eyes — dark and deep, with a faint glimmer of light in them. But the moment he opened his mouth, the illusion shattered completely: “So you do know how to show up?”

Beauty was, in the end, a facade.

Li Kuiyi decided he was simply looking for trouble. She was a little late, yes, but not by much. As if buying someone’s notes made him a king.

Fine — for the sake of the money, she could endure.

Li Kuiyi sat down across from him and placed the ice cream on the table. “Do you want some?”

He Youyuan seemed startled for a moment. His gaze moved back and forth between her face and the ice cream a couple of times. Then, with a carefully casual tug of his lips, he picked up one of the boxes and said: “I could eat one.”

Then he suddenly seemed to remember something. He bent down and reached under the table for a paper bag, pulling out two cups of something from inside. He raised one hand to brush the tip of his nose, looking almost a little sheepish. “That… I bought hot cocoa.”

Ice cream. Hot cocoa.

They really were not in sync — between the cold and the hot, they would end up with stomach trouble before long.

Evidently both of them realized this simultaneously. They exchanged a glance, equally awkward.

He Youyuan gave a quiet click of his tongue, then reached over and popped open both the ice cream and the hot cocoa. He scooped a large spoonful of ice cream and dropped it into the cup of cocoa. The ice cream melted rapidly. He picked up a stirrer, gave it a stir, took a sip, and smacked his lips. “Warm cocoa — not bad.”

Warm cocoa. The name was reasonable yet somehow slightly uncanny. Li Kuiyi burst out laughing on the spot. She truly had to hand it to his way of thinking.

She did the same, making herself a cup of “warm cocoa.”

Opening her bag, Li Kuiyi pulled out all the notes she had compiled and stacked them in a thick pile in front of He Youyuan. “Have a look.”

But remembering his peculiar thought process, she asked one more question: “On Christmas Eve, when I asked whether you wanted my notes, why did you say no?”

“Clearly you don’t understand — that is called a gentleman refusing charity offered in contempt.” He picked up one of the notebooks and flipped through it, not looking up.

As if you were any kind of gentleman. Li Kuiyi curled her lip in disdain.

But as he flipped through, he raised his head, his voice trailing off thoughtfully: “So why did you ask me whether I wanted your notes?”

“I heard you had been studying seriously.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Who told you? Qi Yu?”

“Fang Zhixiao told me.”

“Oh.” He nodded, then lowered his eyes and continued browsing the notes — but the corners of his mouth curved silently upward.

After that the two of them said nothing more. He Youyuan studied the notes attentively. His grades were average, but he knew well enough that the most valuable part of any set of notes was the thinking behind them. If they were simply a record of what the teacher had said in class, the notes were worthless, and there would be no reason for him to buy them.

As for Li Kuiyi’s notes — at first glance they seemed quite plain: not many colors or markings, the only striking feature being her beautiful handwriting. But as He Youyuan turned the pages, he was genuinely startled. Li Kuiyi, he discovered, was a monster of synthesis. He could not even work out how she had managed it — they were only in Year One, and some people had been studying for half a year without knowing what they were even studying, yet she had already integrated all the knowledge points into a series of mini-topic modules, with layered progression and crystal-clear logic. And her notes also included summaries of commonly tested errors, answer-writing terminology and techniques, and extended applications of similar question types.

He Youyuan had always considered himself quite intelligent. Without putting in any real effort, he still ranked comfortably in the upper-middle range of the year group. He had not even dared to imagine what he could achieve if he actually tried. But looking at these notes, he suddenly felt a small deflation — this was no longer a question of effort or lack of it. Even if he grew an extra brain, he might not have this kind of thinking capacity.

He lifted his gaze and let it settle on the girl across from him. She was holding her cup of “warm cocoa,” reading a book she had pulled from the nearby shelf. Most of her face was buried in her scarf, leaving only her clear, composed eyes visible. He stared at the top of her head for a long while, as if trying to see through to the architecture of her mind.

Li Kuiyi seemed to sense something. She looked up, vaguely distracted.

He Youyuan dropped his gaze instantly. His heartbeat sped up, just slightly. He quietly steadied himself for a moment, then, with an air of studied casualness, selected five notebooks from the pile — Chinese, politics, geography, physics, and chemistry — and pushed them toward Li Kuiyi. “I’ll take these.”

Li Kuiyi glanced through them, thinking he had an eclectic taste in subjects. Then again, she was hardly in a position to say so — to produce good notes, she had been studying both arts and sciences herself.

“Sure.”

He Youyuan hesitated for a moment, then held up five fingers. “Five hundred?”

That was real money. Li Kuiyi was quietly astonished inside, but kept her expression carefully composed, doing her best not to let the smile escape. She replied with studied indifference: “Fine.”

The moment she said it, she turned around, opened her bag, and took out a folder of papers. From the folder she retrieved two sheets of A4 paper and held them out to He Youyuan. “Sign a contract, then.”

A contract?

He Youyuan took it and looked. The contract contained only a few lines, the gist of which was that he was not permitted to photocopy or resell her notes. He gave a light snort and held up the paper. “Does this thing have any legal force?”

“None whatsoever. It relies entirely on conscience.” Li Kuiyi shook her head and said calmly, “But if you dare to violate it, I will make many photocopies of the contract, and paste them all over your classroom — and the canteen, and the bathrooms — with your photograph next to them.”

He Youyuan: “…”

The contract was drawn up in duplicate. Once both had signed, each kept a copy. Li Kuiyi opened her folder and slipped her copy back inside.

“So you’re choosing the humanities?” a voice across the table said, apparently out of nowhere.

Li Kuiyi was still puzzling over how he had found out, when she followed his line of sight and noticed that her arts-sciences preference form was sitting right on top of the folder.

“Yes.”

He Youyuan suddenly broke into an amused grin, his eyes fixed on her. “Really?”

“Why would I lie to you?” Li Kuiyi gave him an odd look. Seeing him smile like that, she felt a faint alarm beginning to sound inside her. “Don’t tell me you’re also choosing humanities?”

He Youyuan smoothed out his smile, and replied without any particular feeling: “Guess.”

“I’m not guessing!”

Li Kuiyi was fairly certain he would tell her anyway — he would never be able to hold it in.

Sure enough, he bent down, reached into his bag on the floor, and pulled out his own arts-sciences preference form, handing it to her.

Li Kuiyi took it and looked carefully. He had not chosen the humanities stream or the sciences stream — he had chosen a specialized direction: fine arts.

Of course — he could paint.

She had assumed drawing was just a hobby of his, but it turned out he was taking the professional path. She did not know much about the life of arts students, but she understood it meant studying both specialist coursework and academic subjects — just thinking about it made the road seem formidable.

So he must truly love it.

“Will Chen Guoming summon you for a talk?” she asked.

He Youyuan’s eyebrow arched. “Oh? So he already got to you.”

“Yes — that’s why I was late.”

He Youyuan thought that being year-level head under someone like Li Kuiyi could not be easy. This girl was a solid wall.

“He won’t come for me. I’m different from you. Because your grades are good, he cares which stream you choose.”

Li Kuiyi said: “Not necessarily. Actually, based on your current grades — if you can maintain them through to Year Three — getting into a first-tier university shouldn’t be a problem. And if you can keep up this level of effort as well, you should be able to get into a prestigious one. Chen Guoming might very well make that argument to you.”

“Wouldn’t make a difference even if he did.” He Youyuan raised his cup of “warm cocoa” to his lips and glanced at her. “Or — were you persuaded?”

Li Kuiyi did not answer that. She only said, “Really? You look like someone who folds pretty easily.”

He said nothing, regarding her with a quiet, deep gaze. A long time passed before he finally spoke, his tone languid and unhurried — with the air of someone not being entirely serious — asking a question that had nothing to do with any of it: “Scholar, do you know how many times a person can see a full moon in a lifetime?”

Hearing him bring up the moon too, Li Kuiyi’s eyes flickered slightly, but she gave nothing more away. She knew it was not a math problem — but she found herself intrigued enough to calculate anyway: “A human lifetime — let’s say seventy years. Subtract the first and last few years, when the mind is not fully awake — let’s say five years — that leaves sixty-five. The interval between two full moons is roughly twenty-nine and a half days. For ease of calculation, let’s treat it as once a month, the way we commonly think of it. That’s twelve times a year, and over sixty-five years, that would be… seven hundred and eighty. But I am certain that most people do not look up at the moon every night. That figure of seven hundred and eighty would have to be reduced dramatically. So the number of full moons a person is likely to truly see in a lifetime… probably does not exceed a hundred.”

As she calculated, her voice gradually slowed — because she suddenly realized that the number of full moons a person could see in a lifetime was far fewer than she had imagined.

She felt she no longer needed to hear He Youyuan explain why he had asked the question. She already understood.

After she finished her calculation, He Youyuan showed no particular surprise — only let out a quiet sigh. “And you’re really going to study humanities?”

Li Kuiyi still did not answer. Instead she asked: “Where did you come across that question?”

“In a film. I’ve forgotten what it was called — I think it was directed by Bertolucci. You know who he is, right? He also directed ‘The Last Emperor.'”

Li Kuiyi nodded, then asked: “How did the film answer the question?”

“How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

Twenty. Li Kuiyi smiled. Even fewer than her own calculation — but perhaps, she thought, that was the true shape of a life.

She was quiet for a long time before she offered her verdict: “Like a poem.”

He Youyuan gave a faint, easy smile. “It is a poem.”

Li Kuiyi rarely spoke with He Youyuan in such a calm, unhurried way. She had not expected the conversation to feel like this — like something shifting in the darkness, some quiet current moving beneath still water.

What she had not expected either was that the very moment she had begun, in the quietest corner of her heart, to cast the faintest glow around the boy sitting across from her — she watched him lean back in his chair with perfect ease and say: “I know this poem in English too. Want to hear it?”

Li Kuiyi: “…”

This person truly could not take a compliment — not even a silent one inside someone else’s head.

“Who wants to hear that!”

She made a dismissive sound, stood up, took out the phone she had specifically brought along today, and walked to the front counter of the bookshop-café to ask the staff how to use the printer. Once the staff member had connected everything for her, she printed out scanned copies of all five notebooks He Youyuan had chosen.

There were a great many pages, and the printing would take some time. She waited with idle impatience, tapping open her messaging app and typing replies to several messages from Fang Zhixiao.

As she was typing, a shadow suddenly fell over her from the side. She looked up to find He Youyuan leaning against the wall beside the printer, arms folded across his chest, giving her a sideways glance.

“What?” she asked, puzzled.

“If you’re going to the humanities, doesn’t that mean you won’t be in the same class as Qi Yu anymore?”

Li Kuiyi could not follow his logic. “I have to be in the same class as Qi Yu?”

He sounded distinctly pointed. “Qi Yu is my brother. You don’t have to pretend around me.”

“Pretend what?” This person was truly baffling.

He turned his gaze away from her and said in a slow, leisurely tone: “You like him.”

Li Kuiyi froze on the spot, utterly baffled. “Who told you I like him?”

“You said it yourself.” He still was not looking at her. His head tilted back slightly against the wall, his voice low. “On his birthday.”

Li Kuiyi blinked hard and strained to think — and then it came back to her. At Qi Yu’s birthday party, when they had been playing Truth or Dare, she had been asked which boy present she liked the most, and she had said Qi Yu’s name.

But still —

“Does something said during a game count as the truth?”

“It was Truth or Dare. You said the truth.”

“Who else could I have chosen? There were only a few boys there — should I have picked Zhang Chuang? Zhou Ce? Gao Guang?” The more Li Kuiyi explained, the more absurd she found the whole thing. So there really were people who took those sorts of declarations literally. Did that mean Qi Yu had taken it literally too? Would he have the wrong idea? Oh no —

She was still fretting when she saw He Youyuan straighten up abruptly, the corner of his mouth tilting upward. “So you don’t like him?”

“Of course not!” She could not help glaring at him.

“I don’t believe you.” He moved a step closer, chin raised slightly, as if trying to confirm something. “What if I had also been —”

He stopped mid-sentence. He flicked the tip of his tongue across his lips, then turned away.

“Believe what you want.” Li Kuiyi gave him a withering look. She could not care less whether he believed her — the only thing that mattered was that Qi Yu did not get the wrong idea.

Beside her, the printer was still working, steadily spitting out page after page, with a rhythmic, relentless sound — like a heartbeat that would not stop.

After a great deal of waiting, all the notes were finally printed. Li Kuiyi gathered them together and dropped them into He Youyuan’s hands with a definitive thud, gave him one last pointed look, then packed up her bag and walked away without so much as a goodbye.

He Youyuan watched her descend the stairs, then pulled on his own outer jacket, tucked the notes into his bag, and followed her out.

Outside, the night was pitch-black with barely anyone around. Only a few lonely streetlamps burned in the dark. He raised his head and looked up. A crescent moon hung overhead, curved like a hook, veiled behind a thin layer of cloud, its radiance somewhat dimmed.

No full moon tonight either.

How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?

He fixed his gaze on the figure of the girl walking ahead, then suddenly turned on his heel and stepped into a small shop by the road.

Li Kuiyi was striding forward with great purpose. She walked under a streetlamp — and then heard someone calling after her.

They were calling her, because they had called her name.

“Li Kuiyi!”

She turned around.

With a loud bang, something burst open in the air above her head. She flinched in shock, instinctively pulling her neck into her shoulders and squeezing her eyes shut. When she forced one eye open just a crack to see what had happened, streams of colorful ribbons came fluttering down — catching the light of the streetlamp as they fell, like countless shooting stars descending all around her.

And there he stood, alone in the darkness, smiling with absolute, uninhibited delight.