“Does he bother you like that a lot?” Zhou Fanghua asked, her brow slightly furrowed.

Li Kuiyi shook her head. “Not really.”

She didn’t think He Youyuan was being mean to her — it felt more like baiting, purely for the sake of having some kind of presence. Like this cola thing right now. Did he actually want a cola? Not necessarily. If he did, he’d have bought one himself. She was fairly sure that if she didn’t get him anything, he wouldn’t even be bothered about it — because the point had already been made the moment he stopped her.

At the school shop, Li Kuiyi only picked up a sandwich for herself. Of course she wasn’t going to buy He Youyuan an ice-cold cola. She fully intended to hand that ten-yuan note back to him the moment she got back.

But standing at the counter to pay, she changed her mind. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her ruffled. At that moment, her eyes fell on the coffee machine near the register. A thought flickered through her. She called out to the shopkeeper: “Can I also get a coffee — Americano, hot.”

“Hot Americano?” The shopkeeper looked at her, seeming uncertain.

“Yes, hot,” Li Kuiyi confirmed.

A hot Americano tasted more or less like Chinese medicine. He Youyuan — that’s what you get for always looking for excuses to make your presence known. See if the bitterness doesn’t kill you.

On the way back, Li Kuiyi rehearsed what she was going to say.

Back in the classroom, she steadied herself, walked straight to He Youyuan’s seat, held out the coffee, and adopted her most mild and innocent expression: “So — temperatures are still unstable at the moment, and it’s probably better not to have anything cold. And the monthly exam starts tomorrow — getting sick right now would be really bad timing. So I got you a hot Americano instead…”

Doing something deliberately underhanded made her feel oddly self-conscious, and she kept one eye on his reaction. But He Youyuan simply looked up at her, staring, and to her surprise, a faint and suspicious flush of colour crept up his face.

Li Kuiyi’s heart sank. She stopped talking, set the coffee down on his desk with a thud, and retreated quickly to her own seat.

He Youyuan — please, please, don’t go reading into this.

She really should not have tried to trick him, Li Kuiyi thought, tearing open her sandwich with a vague sense of regret. That person was extremely self-absorbed — what if he took this as her caring about him?

She’d barely swallowed the last bite when the listening exercise period before evening study began, and the opening bars of the Serenade of the Sea drifted from the speakers. Li Kuiyi quickly gulped down the food in her mouth, pulled out her listening workbook, and flipped to the latest page — skimming the questions and answer choices before the exercise properly began.

After the first section, something soft landed on her with a thwap from behind. She stared at the paper ball for a moment, then couldn’t resist — she opened it. A few small, slightly unsteady characters: Fine. I’ll do as you say.

Oh god—

Li Kuiyi genuinely wanted to bang her head against the desk.

At least the monthly exam was the next day. Though she and He Youyuan shared the same exam room, their seats were far apart, so no matter how much he entertained delusions, he couldn’t bother her for the time being. She put her mind at ease and focused on the exam.

The monthly exam lasted two days. Immediately after it ended, the school showed rare mercy and gave students the whole evening off.

Li Kuiyi, as usual, stopped at the little magazine stall by the school gate to pick up a copy of a magazine, then boarded Bus No. 6 home. Just as she leaned back against her seat and put in her earphones, her phone buzzed twice. She looked — it was a friend request on QQ.

It was Yan You.

Li Kuiyi quickly tapped to accept, forgetting about music entirely.

Yan You: Hi class president, it’s Yan You!

Li Kuiyi: I know, hi.

She replied, and then nothing came back for a while. Li Kuiyi imagined Yan You must be typing something quite long.

Sure enough.

Yan You: Class president, my mum told me about what you discussed with her! I didn’t message back sooner because I didn’t want to distract you before the exam — I’m really sorry about that. I’ve thought this over carefully. I think it’s better not to put you and our classmates to all that trouble. I can manage the difficulties for now. But I still want to thank you so much for being willing to do this for me. I’m really touched, and so is my family — they all said I’m very lucky to have a classmate like you, haha.

Lucky —

It was the second time Li Kuiyi had heard this word from Yan You or her family. She felt they must all be genuinely lovely people — to still speak of luck, under circumstances like these.

Li Kuiyi hesitated for a moment, but said it anyway: “Actually, it wouldn’t be any trouble. I’ve already thought through how to approach the school about moving the classroom. You don’t need to feel burdened by this.”

After a pause, Yan You replied: “Honestly, class president — I don’t especially want this to turn into something that makes me the centre of everyone’s attention. Maybe I’m just not brave enough.”

Li Kuiyi read that and kept her fingers still for a long time. She wasn’t sure what to say that would feel adequate. Anything she could think of seemed too thin, because she genuinely understood what Yan You meant.

Another message came: “There aren’t any empty classrooms on the first floor. If things were moved around, it would almost certainly mean swapping rooms with another class — and that could set off a chain reaction affecting the whole year group’s layout, all for one person. I don’t think I have the courage to face that.”

Li Kuiyi had considered this possibility, but had assumed people would be willing to help. Reading this now, she realised she’d made two mistakes: first, she’d been too quick to assume; second, she’d only thought about whether her classmates were willing to offer their goodwill — not about whether Yan You could bear the weight of it, nor about the ill will that might come hidden within it. If the classroom really were moved, there’d inevitably be grumbling among students, and for Yan You, that would be the English speech contest situation all over again.

Li Kuiyi’s fingers paused over the screen: “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it through carefully enough.”

Yan You: No — you didn’t go ahead and do it without asking. You asked my mum to talk to me first. That shows you thought about it very carefully. Class president, thank you for caring about me like this. I’m so grateful.

Hearing that, Li Kuiyi felt a wave of embarrassment.

Li Kuiyi: I haven’t actually been able to help you at all, and yet here you are saying something so kind. That’s mortifying. Please — if anything comes up in the future, don’t hesitate to come to me.

Yan You: I will [smiling face].

The reply settled some of the guilt, though Li Kuiyi still felt a little deflated — she couldn’t think of a solution that worked for everyone. She let out a soft sigh, put in her earphones, and listened to Chen Yixun’s Bitter Melon.

Two days later, the monthly exam results came out.

Li Kuiyi was still first in the humanities class, and her score was forty-two points higher than the second-place student, Zhang Yun. When Jiang Jianbin read out the results in class, the whole room let out a collective gasp. After class, though, Zhang Yun put her head down on her desk and cried.

Forty-two points was a gap others might not feel personally — but the person in second place certainly felt it.

During evening study, Jiang Jianbin found Li Kuiyi for a talk. Leaning against the corridor railing, he squinted at her and said: “Good, the results are holding. But don’t get complacent. You have to understand — the students who could have matched you all went to the science track. Out of everyone who placed in the top thirty across the year group at the time of the split, you’re the only one in our class. So outscoring second place by forty-two points right now doesn’t mean much — wait until second and third year, when everyone’s built up a stronger foundation. Then if you’re still that far ahead, that means something. But don’t limit yourself to this one classroom. There’s always someone better, always something higher. In the university entrance exam, it’s the provincial ranking that matters. You have to maintain a mindset of never being satisfied with where you are…”

He went on at length. Li Kuiyi kept nodding throughout. The truth was, how far ahead she was of others had never affected her sense of things — whether she was studying well or not in a given period was something she knew from the inside, not by comparison.

The honour board in the public display area had been updated with new names. Li Kuiyi stopped by with Fang Zhixiao after school to have a look. In the humanities section, her photo practically crowded out everyone else’s — the top rank across the year group, plus the top score in all six subjects, was hers.

Fang Zhixiao curled her hand into a fist and held it up to Li Kuiyi’s mouth like a microphone, gritting her teeth as she “interviewed” her: “Ms. Li, how does it feel to dominate the board?”

“Honestly, a bit awkward,” Li Kuiyi grinned.

Fang Zhixiao looked like she might faint. “Just you wait — I’m coming for you tonight.”

Li Kuiyi glanced over at the science board too. No surprises: Qi Yu, Xia Leyi, Qin Weiwei in order at the top. Nothing particularly interesting — though the science board did have more variety in its photos, with the top scores in individual subjects spread across different people at least.

Li Kuiyi had barely turned away from the board when He Youyuan, Zhang Chuang, and Qi Yu arrived right behind her. He Youyuan stood looking at the humanities board for a moment. Zhang Chuang leaned in and couldn’t help muttering, “This is genuinely deranged — she’s turned the honour board into her own personal match-three game. Absolutely unhinged.”

He Youyuan said nothing. He’d placed twenty-seventh this exam — five places lower than where he’d been at the time of the subject split. That was just how he was: when he had something to strive for, he could push himself without limit; when the drive wasn’t there, he barely wanted to pick up a pen. But somehow, looking at seven identical photos on the honour board right now, he felt, for the first time, that his own score was a little embarrassing.

Qi Yu stood quietly behind the two of them. He looked at the board for a long moment, then slowly lowered his eyes.

He wasn’t going to beat her. He never had, and he wouldn’t in the future. It wasn’t only that they were on different tracks — at least in terms of this honour board, she had done something he hadn’t.

After the monthly exam, the provincial education inspection arrived as expected. The whole school swung into action: deep cleaning, decorating classroom culture walls, preparing public demonstration lessons. Alongside this, the school’s management rules tightened considerably — no eating anywhere except the cafeteria, no drinking water during class periods, students caught not doing the morning exercise routine properly were pulled aside and reprimanded… The students were run ragged and grumbled without end. Of course, all the grumbling stayed private — the teachers had instructed everyone that if any “strangers” asked them questions about the school, they’d better give smart answers.

After a long stretch of suffering, the end finally came with a piece of genuinely exciting news: the school was holding a spring sports day!

It was scheduled for late April, when the weather was warming up and the heavy layers of winter clothing could finally come off — a good time for running and jumping. Two weeks before the sports day, each class began its own recruitment drive, and the class sports representatives became extremely busy people.

Class Seventeen’s recruitment went relatively smoothly — due in no small part to the fact that the class sports representative happened to be very good-looking.

He Youyuan slapped a stack of registration forms down on Li Kuiyi’s desk first and told her in his bluntest tone that she, as class president, had a responsibility to lead by example. Faced with all the expectant eyes around her, Li Kuiyi had no choice but to sign up for standing long jump — even though she could only manage around one metre eighty, it was still the sport she was least terrible at.

After going around the whole class, the only female event that remained unregistered was shot put, so He Youyuan dumped that one on Li Kuiyi too. She protested immediately: “I’ve only ever seen shot put on television.”

He Youyuan said: “Perfect opportunity to experience it in person, then.”

Li Kuiyi: “……”

Because the class had so few boys, each one had to take on several events. He Youyuan alone had signed up for four — reaching the school’s maximum allowed number of events per person.

Friday morning at eight, the sports day officially opened.

During the march-in, most classes kept things straightforward — students in uniform walking in formation and chanting slogans. Only a handful of classes had ordered custom class shirts, and those groups stood out noticeably. The most striking was Class One: they had not only shirts but a simple choreographed routine. Xia Leyi, carrying the class banner, was dressed in a full Cardcaptor Sakura cosplay outfit and immediately became the focal point of the entire stadium.

After the flag raising, the school leadership gave a round of speeches that lasted long enough to put everyone to sleep, before the sports day was finally declared open.

Li Kuiyi had no events in the morning, but as class president she was far from idle — eyes sweeping in all directions, ears attuned to everything, running wherever a classmate needed a towel, water, or encouragement. The girls’ 800-metre heats were underway on the track, and Zhao Jiawei, Fang Zhixiao, and Xia Leyi were all competing, so Li Kuiyi’s cheering had to cover all three of them at once.

“Zhao Jiawei, go!”

“Fang Zhixiao, go!”

“Xia Leyi, go!”

The runners streaked past and Li Kuiyi clenched her fists, rising on her toes to watch them disappear down the track. She was watching intently when, without warning, the faint scent of lily-of-the-valley drifted into her breath. She turned — it was He Youyuan.

He still had his school jacket on, collar turned up, zipper pulled all the way to the top — but his lower half was a pair of black athletic shorts, leaving it entirely unclear whether he was hot or cold.

“Do you have an event?” Li Kuiyi asked.

“After they finish, it’s the boys’ 800 metres.”

“Oh.”

Li Kuiyi turned back to watch the track.

A light voice drifted down from above: “You really are generous with your support.”

Li Kuiyi knew he was referring to her cheering for all three girls, and said plainly: “Friendship first, competition second.”

A few girls nearby had already been stealing glances at He Youyuan. Without making it obvious, Li Kuiyi moved a little further away. After a while, the runners came back around. At the front was a girl with two plaited braids — clearly a PE-stream student. Xia Leyi was in second. Li Kuiyi called out: “Xia Leyi, go!”

Fang Zhixiao was currently in fifth, running well enough, but she kept reaching up with one hand to press her flyaway fringe flat. Li Kuiyi called out in frustration: “Fang Zhixiao — stop touching your fringe while you run!”

Laughter rippled through the crowd around her.

He Youyuan chuckled softly and said: “You have a talent for this.”

Li Kuiyi didn’t know how he’d ended up behind her again. Since there was no avoiding him, she might as well have it out: “Why don’t you cheer?”

“Don’t feel like it,” he said.

“You’re the sports representative and you can’t be bothered? That’s very irresponsible.”

He Youyuan looked down at the crown of her head, thinking to himself: you don’t understand — as a good-looking person, casually cheering for girls and sending mixed signals is a violation of basic decency.

With the final half-lap of the girls’ race still to go, He Youyuan tugged down his jacket zip, shrugged it off, and dropped it straight into Li Kuiyi’s arms. “Hold this for me for a second, class president. I need to go check in.”

Li Kuiyi stood there holding the jacket like it was something on fire, drawing looks from all sides. She wanted nothing more than to throw it on the ground and step on it twice — but she couldn’t. He’d called her “class president,” which neatly legitimised the whole thing: holding the jacket was just part of her duties.

The scent of lily-of-the-valley from his school jacket was stronger now, enveloping her gently.

The girls’ 800-metre heats ended. The runners came off the track one by one, breathing hard. Li Kuiyi hurried over to Zhao Jiawei and handed her a bottle of water, helping to pat her back and ease her breathing. Zhao Jiawei’s face had gone red all over — her time hadn’t been fast enough to qualify for the final.

Fang Zhixiao and Xia Leyi had both made it through, and their classmates surrounded them now. After a while, Fang Zhixiao came to find Li Kuiyi, saying she wanted to watch the boys’ race together.

“Whose jacket is that?” Fang Zhixiao said, still catching her breath, instantly suspicious.

“Someone in our class,” Li Kuiyi hedged.

“He Youyuan’s?” Fang Zhixiao narrowed her eyes.

How did she guess that so precisely? Li Kuiyi was exasperated. “Yeah. He went to compete, and I’m the class president, so I’m holding it.”

Fang Zhixiao gave her the look of someone whose suspicions have been confirmed, and drawled with a grin: “No need for all those explanations, my dear class president.”

Li Kuiyi’s face felt warm.

On the track, the boys had settled into their starting positions. The starting pistol fired and they shot forward. He Youyuan was in a white sleeveless vest — light and fast, like a sudden bolt of spring lightning. Cheers and shouts of his name rose all around the track. The one disappointment was that there was also a PE-stream student in the boys’ field who was simply untouchable. He Youyuan finished second.

Coming off the track, several water bottles were thrust toward him. He took none of them and walked directly to Li Kuiyi and asked for his jacket. She handed it over, and with Fang Zhixiao right there, she didn’t say anything to him.

Hopeless, He Youyuan thought. No eye for these things — doesn’t even know to hand me a water.

In the midst of all her running around, Li Kuiyi didn’t forget to go up to the stands and find Yan You in their class’s section, leaning close to ask quietly if she needed the bathroom. Yan You shook her head quickly and told the class president to go on about her business.

In the afternoon, Li Kuiyi finally took the field herself.

Both her events — standing long jump and shot put — were scheduled for Friday afternoon. Long jump came first. She’d been a little nervous initially, but when she saw that many of the other female contestants were jumping shorter distances than her, the nerves settled. When her turn came, she stepped up to the line, clenched her fists.

“Li Kuiyi you’re the best!” That was Fang Zhixiao’s voice.

A slow, easy male voice followed: “Go.”

Li Kuiyi bent her knees slightly, leaned forward, swung both arms twice, and leapt.

“Number 037, first attempt — one metre, eighty-four,” the judge announced.

Not bad, she thought — a normal performance. She smiled and walked back to the starting line. In standing long jump, each competitor had two attempts, with the better of the two counting. She set herself up again, gave everything she had, and launched forward — but her foot slipped on the landing, and she sat down hard on the ground.

The watching students burst into laughter. Even the judge couldn’t quite suppress a smile, though he remained entirely professional: “Number 037, second attempt — one metre, thirty-five.”

Li Kuiyi picked herself up, brushed the dirt off her backside, looked up — and found Fang Zhixiao and He Youyuan both doubled over laughing, arms wrapped around their own middles, not sparing her the slightest consideration. She walked over and shot them both a glare, then twisted open a water bottle in a huff.

Once all the competitors had jumped, Li Kuiyi saw her score was actually decent and felt rather pleased with herself. She gave those two a lofty “hmph”: “What are you laughing at — my first jump was excellent, thank you. I placed eighth!”

He Youyuan pointed back at the long jump pit and said with unbearable smugness: “I could lie down flat over there and beat your distance.”

People nearby heard it and dissolved into laughter again. Li Kuiyi was furious: “Then go lie down!”

She sulked for a while on her own, and then shot put began.

Given that many students had no experience with shot put, the judge demonstrated the technique before the event started. Li Kuiyi imagined the shot put ball was He Youyuan and channelled all her energy into throwing him as far away as possible. To her surprise, she had an unexpectedly good result — she placed third in the shot put event.

She was overjoyed. She ran to Fang Zhixiao and showed off about it for a long time — for someone like her, any achievement in sports was hard-won.

On the second day Li Kuiyi had no events, but she was still running all over the place helping people. All that activity looked manageable on paper, yet by the end of the day her back ached, her legs ached, and her voice had gone slightly hoarse. When she went up to the stands to check on Yan You, Yan You even pressed a throat lozenge into her hand.

Class Seventeen’s overall tally was modest — not many medals — but He Youyuan alone had taken two golds and a silver, a very respectable haul. The one event where he hadn’t managed to beat the PE-stream students was the 100 metres — that one he’d missed entirely. Li Kuiyi came away with a small bronze medal hanging around her neck, looking very pleased with herself up on the podium.

When the sports day was over, the teachers asked everyone to clean up the stadium, especially each class’s section of the stands. No matter how many times they were told not to litter, the seats were still buried under sunflower seed shells, sweet wrappers, and crisp crumbs. By the time everything was tidied up, it was dark.

Students with nothing left to do had all gone home. Even Fang Zhixiao said she had something on and left early. And so Li Kuiyi and He Youyuan, as class president and class sports representative, stayed behind to handle the final odds and ends: the class banner and class sign needed to be put away, the unopened water bottles needed to be carried to the office…

Li Kuiyi had scooped up two packs of water from the ground, and was just about to head off, when He Youyuan — crouched on one knee on the field, rolling up the class banner — glanced up at her. “Leave those. Just take the flag.”

“But there are four packs in total. You won’t be able to carry them all.”

“It’s nothing.” He stood up and found a length of rope left over from tying the banner. He threaded it through the two packs of water and tied them together, two and two, and hoisted them up, bouncing them in his hand. “About fifty-odd jin, I’d say.”

Only fifty-odd jin?

Li Kuiyi did a quick calculation. “Each bottle is 550 millilitres — if we say each empty PET bottle is about 15 grams, then 48 bottles of water comes to roughly 54.24 jin…” She suddenly looked up in disbelief. “That was a very accurate guess. Were you a butcher in a past life?”

He Youyuan: “……”

If you can’t give a compliment, you don’t have to give one.

After they’d carried everything up to the office, in the light of the corridor lamps, Li Kuiyi saw that the rope had left a vivid red line across He Youyuan’s hand — a clear, clean mark cutting right through the centre of his palm.

That counted as an occupational hazard, surely. She felt a pang of sympathy and couldn’t help looking a second too long.

He Youyuan noticed, and held his palm up in front of her face, giving it a small wave: “You feel sorry for me, don’t you?”

That was probably stepping over a line. Li Kuiyi turned and walked away. She thought she really shouldn’t have wasted her sympathy on him.

He Youyuan laughed behind her and caught up in two easy strides.

“Hey — you remember that long jump, right? Your form was exactly like this—” He Youyuan mimed her falling down as he walked, enacting the whole thing — “and then bam, right down to the ground, ha ha ha…”

He was laughing loudly again.

“Awful person!” Li Kuiyi turned her face away, refusing to watch his performance.

But He Youyuan leaned sideways to bring his head in front of her face, eyes bright and gleaming: “Li Kuiyi — are you embarrassed? Hmm?”

He was too close. She could almost feel the warmth of his breath. She turned her face to the other side — but he followed, undeterred, swinging his head wherever she moved, like an impossibly clingy sunflower.

Unbearable. Absolutely unbearable. This problem needed to be solved.

“He Youyuan.” She said his name suddenly.

“Hmm?”

She didn’t speak. A quiet moment stretched between them.

He Youyuan sensed something off, stopped laughing, straightened up, and looked at her. His voice was a little tense: “What is it?”

Li Kuiyi looked directly into his eyes. She held his gaze until she heard his breathing quicken — then she stepped forward, closing the distance.

“Do you — like me?”