He Youyuan walked out of the office without looking back, leaving the room in a momentary daze. Jiang Jianbin stared blankly for two seconds, then turned to Li Kuiyi with an expression caught between curiosity and suspicion. “What did he just say?”

“I didn’t quite catch it.” Li Kuiyi kept her eyes lowered and gave a small shake of her head.

“Ah, I see…” Jiang Jianbin trailed off, then waved his hand. “Alright, you go back too. Study hard, don’t get distracted, alright?”

“Oh,” Li Kuiyi said softly, and turned to leave at an unhurried pace.

The truth was, she had heard it perfectly — every single word.

Jiang Jianbin had stripped her of the class president position on an almost laughable pretext, and though she bore no real resentment about it, she had accepted it calmly. She’d thought she didn’t care at all — but then He Youyuan had said what he said, and something unnamed welled up from somewhere inside her, a wave of grievance she couldn’t quite account for. It was often like that: you feel fine after being hurt, convinced it means nothing, and then a friend shows up and says something kind, and suddenly the tears you thought you’d already withheld come flooding out of nowhere.

But how had He Youyuan known what she and Jiang Jianbin were discussing?

Had he guessed that she was the one who had gone to Chen Guoming and made the request that got Class 17 moved to the first floor? Thinking back, that wasn’t entirely impossible — she had first raised the idea at the class committee meeting held after the track change, and He Youyuan, as the sports representative, had been present.

She couldn’t quite figure him out. Sometimes he said or did things that made her think he wasn’t very bright — but other times, he struck her as genuinely perceptive.

She stepped out through the teachers’ office door and exhaled a long breath. Looking up, she found that He Youyuan hadn’t gone far.

She jogged a few steps to catch up, falling into step beside him, and then said quietly to him as they walked: “I’m sorry.”

He Youyuan glanced at her sideways, cool and unhurried: “What for?”

Li Kuiyi knew he was being deliberately obtuse, but she answered patiently all the same: “For wrongly accusing you the other day.”

He stopped abruptly, fixing her with a languid, half-lidded look: “Oh? Are you only realizing now that you wrongly accused me?”

Li Kuiyi was rendered speechless.

He was right. She had known long ago that she’d wronged him — she just hadn’t gotten around to apologizing until now.

He definitely wouldn’t forgive her.

So petty.

With no idea what else to do, Li Kuiyi could only keep walking in silence toward the classroom. After two steps, she noticed He Youyuan hadn’t followed and was still standing perfectly still, watching her with dark, heavy-lidded eyes.

Not knowing what he was up to this time, but feeling vaguely guilty, Li Kuiyi decided she should try to coax him a little. She walked back to stand in front of him, caught his gaze, and said softly: “Come on, let’s go.”

He said nothing, and didn’t move.

Li Kuiyi was about to say something more when she became aware of the openly curious stares drifting over from the classrooms lining the corridor. She felt suddenly very much like the two of them were a pair of animals on exhibit, being regarded without mercy through the glass by an audience of strangers. The feeling made her anxious. She lowered her voice and pressed: “Come on!”

Still no sign of He Youyuan moving. She steeled herself, and from an angle where no one else could see, she quietly caught hold of the hem of his school uniform jacket and gave it a firm tug, pulling him forward.

He Youyuan glanced down at the hand gripping his jacket hem, and something in his chest went abruptly, inexplicably warm. She had only pulled for a moment before letting go — but his gaze drifted slowly to her profile. He watched her, following her, obediently, quietly, one step behind her all the way.

When the two evening self-study periods finished, school was over for the day. Since tomorrow was Saturday — and also the day the incoming first-year students would arrive for registration — the school had given the second-years a full day off.

Li Kuiyi packed up her bag and was just about to push her stool under the desk when He Youyuan stretched out one long leg and, with a casual hook, caught her stool and held it steadily in place.

She knew he had something to say to her.

She actually had some unresolved matters to settle as well, so she sat back down on the stool and took an English practice workbook from her desk drawer to work on the close reading section. By the time she’d completed a piece and a half, the classroom had nearly emptied out. Still she didn’t look up — she waited until she’d finished both passages, then closed the workbook, turned around in her chair, and asked: “So what is it you want?”

He Youyuan gave her an odd look, then reached into his large black schoolbag with one hand and rummaged around before producing a beautifully wrapped gift box, which he held out to her.

Li Kuiyi froze. She hadn’t expected him to have a new birthday present ready for her.

And if he had it ready now, that meant he had prepared it in advance — but how could that be? He had just been angry with her earlier, refusing to even accept her apology.

“Go ahead, take it.” Seeing her not reaching out for quite a while, he said with rough impatience.

“You didn’t have to…” Li Kuiyi stumbled over the words. She had been about to say “you didn’t have to prepare a new birthday present for me” — but before she could finish, the sound of Fang Zhixiao’s voice came bursting in from the doorway like a small storm: “Li Kuiyi, what are you still dragging your feet for? Are you secretly rendezvousing with some wild man in here without telling me?”

Both of them startled. They whipped their heads toward the classroom door at the same time.

Fang Zhixiao had appeared in full force at the doorway, and the moment she saw the two of them, her mouth dropped open in shock. She had only been saying it for the fun of saying it — how had she actually managed to get it right? Li Kuiyi was genuinely in the middle of a rendezvous with a wild man!

Well — “wild man” was perhaps a stretch. More like… a, uh… familiar acquaintance.

Caught in the act of this “rendezvous,” she didn’t know whether to be thrilled or mortified.

Li Kuiyi and He Youyuan’s faces flushed hot simultaneously. They made brief eye contact and then looked away just as quickly. Nothing improper had been happening — and yet somehow it felt exactly like being caught in the middle of something. Probably because of Fang Zhixiao’s choice of words, which had been nothing short of audacious — “rendezvous,” “wild man”…

He Youyuan’s breath tightened. He stood up, tossed the gift box into Li Kuiyi’s arms, grabbed his schoolbag, and walked out — pausing only to retrieve the can of cola from the windowsill. As he passed Fang Zhixiao, he shot her a cool, measured look: honestly — talking without thinking; was he some kind of “wild man”?

Not that it mattered. Fang Zhixiao interpreted the look to mean she had ruined a moment for them.

When He Youyuan had disappeared around the corner, she let out a slow, sly smile, pointing at the gift box in Li Kuiyi’s arms with undisguised curiosity: “Come on, what’s in there?”

“Just a birthday present.” Li Kuiyi forced a calm expression, hoisted her bag, and stepped out.

“Ohhh—” Fang Zhixiao drew out the syllable meaningfully. “I can tell just from the box — someone put real thought into that. Hurry up and open it, let’s see.”

Li Kuiyi was also curious about what He Youyuan had come up with this time. Carefully, she began to unwrap the box. Inside it was a thick bed of pink raffia grass, and resting on top of the raffia was a small square of paper. Leaning toward the glow of lights still on in the building, she made out the handwriting on the note:

“Not alive. Not scary.”

“What does it say, what does it say? Let me see.” Fang Zhixiao leaned in and read it in one quick sweep, then let out an exaggerated exclamation: “He’s so thoughtful!”

Thoughtful, Li Kuiyi thought inwardly. He’s just paying for his mistakes.

She reached into the raffia grass and felt around, and from inside pulled a smaller box — labeled “FUJIFILM,” and bearing a drawing of a silver camera.

“Oh my gosh — it’s a Fujifilm CCD camera!” Fang Zhixiao erupted into delight. “He really knows how to pick a gift! What girl could say no to owning a little camera?”

But Li Kuiyi bit her lip.

The camera was genuinely appealing — but it was probably expensive, wasn’t it? She didn’t want to accept something so costly from him.

“Do you know how much this kind of camera costs?” she asked Fang Zhixiao.

Fang Zhixiao thought it over: “Compared to a DSLR, CCD cameras are actually not that pricey! For a Fujifilm… probably around six or seven hundred.”

Six or seven hundred was still very expensive!

As students, they rarely had much money. When friends had birthdays, the gifts they exchanged were usually things that could be sorted out for a few dozen yuan — mugs, plushes, scarves — and almost never crossed the hundred-yuan mark.

He Youyuan, couldn’t you just have given her a book?

Seeing that Li Kuiyi’s face wasn’t showing the expression one normally makes when receiving a gift, Fang Zhixiao looked pained: “You’re not going to refuse it, are you?”

“I’m thinking about returning it. It’s too expensive,” Li Kuiyi said quietly.

“It is a little too much.” Fang Zhixiao sighed. She understood the pressure Li Kuiyi was feeling — receiving something like this would make you want to give something back of equivalent value, which was a genuine strain for a regular student. She knew Li Kuiyi had money saved, and could afford a comparable gift in theory, but Li Kuiyi’s savings were earmarked for university. They weren’t to be touched lightly.

But thinking about reciprocal gifts, something flashed into her mind. “Didn’t you give him a pair of sports glasses for his birthday? Those should have been worth several hundred yuan too, right?”

“Not quite — the glasses came from my dad’s shop. Even though the retail price is several hundred, the actual cost was very low. You know how it is with eyewear — enormous markups.”

“Oh, come on — what does cost matter!” Fang Zhixiao had her own logic about this. “If the retail price is several hundred, that means your family could have earned several hundred from that pair. By giving them to him instead, you gave up the chance to earn that money — isn’t that the same as spending several hundred on a gift for him?”

Li Kuiyi: “…”

Was that really how you were supposed to calculate it?

She couldn’t sort out in a split second whether cost price or retail price was the correct way to think about it. Regardless — the gift being expensive was only one of her reasons for wanting to return it. The other was that she had no intention of accepting He Youyuan’s feelings.

“Come sleep over tonight?” Li Kuiyi suddenly changed the subject. She couldn’t keep hiding things from Fang Zhixiao any longer. She wanted to be honest with her — about everything between her and He Youyuan.

Fang Zhixiao wrinkled her nose: “But me and your mom…”

“Don’t worry about that. My mom took my little brother to our grandmother’s. She won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”

“Alright then.”

Back at Li Kuiyi’s apartment, Fang Zhixiao had been ready to dig for gossip — but Li Kuiyi made her do her homework first, promising that once the homework was done, she would be rewarded with a bombshell piece of news.

The incentive worked far better than any amount of self-discipline could have. Fang Zhixiao picked up her pen and got straight to work.

There was quite a lot of homework, and by the time it was all finished, it was close to midnight. Fang Zhixiao rushed to wash up, while Li Kuiyi followed her usual routine and began reviewing. The new material for the day wasn’t much, and she finished quickly, then picked up her phone to check her messages.

The moment she unlocked the screen, a message from He Youyuan popped up: “Did you open the present?”

Li Kuiyi tapped her fingers lightly against the back of her phone case, unsure how to respond. After spending so much time with him, she could almost picture the scene on the other end of the screen — him like a little puppy, waiting patiently for her to say she liked the gift.

Then she caught herself and thought: why am I imagining things? Maybe He Youyuan had sent the message and immediately put his phone down and gone back to his games.

With that thought, her mind felt considerably lighter, and she typed back: “I did.”

He Youyuan replied instantly: “Did you like it?”

Li Kuiyi didn’t answer directly. She said: “It’s very beautiful.”

She hadn’t actually opened the camera’s box yet and had no idea what it really looked like — but she trusted He Youyuan’s taste.

He Youyuan replied with a cold-faced “OK” emoji.

Around that time, Fang Zhixiao came out of the bathroom. Li Kuiyi set her phone down, gathered her things, and went to shower. When she came back, she climbed into bed with her phone, nudged Fang Zhixiao — who was leaning against the headboard chatting with someone on QQ — a little to one side: “Scoot over.”

Fang Zhixiao shuffled her bottom over.

Li Kuiyi settled against the headboard, opened her phone, and saw that He Youyuan had sent another message.

He Youyuan: Don’t you have anything to say to me?

Li Kuiyi: Thank you.

He Youyuan: …Not that.

Not that? What did he want — her to thank his eight generations of ancestors?

Li Kuiyi: Then what did you want to hear?

He Youyuan: Forget it. You can’t force a ripe melon from a reluctant vine.

Li Kuiyi: …

Fang Zhixiao, noticing she was also on her phone, leaned over curiously: “Who is it? He Youyuan?”

Li Kuiyi put her phone face-down without ceremony and said: “A riddle-speaker.”

Fang Zhixiao set her own phone down too. She lay down beside her, wrapped her arms around Li Kuiyi’s, and said with a grin: “Okay okay okay — this bombshell gossip. Tell me everything. I’m all ears.”

Li Kuiyi’s cheeks went faintly warm. She said, haltingly: “It’s just… some time ago… He Youyuan… he suddenly told me… he likes me.”

Her voice by the last few words had shrunk to something barely audible.

Fang Zhixiao shot upright: she couldn’t tell if she’d heard wrong or what. “What?! Say — say that again!”

Once is awkward, twice is fine. Li Kuiyi braced herself: “He Youyuan told me he likes me!”

No sooner were the words out than she preemptively reached over and pressed her palm over Fang Zhixiao’s mouth. It didn’t stop Fang Zhixiao from snapping her eyes wide open and beginning to writhe violently on the bed, like a fish on a cutting board that didn’t want to be filleted.

“Shh — don’t shout.” With that warning, she removed her hand.

Fang Zhixiao’s expression of shock was still frozen on her face. It took her a long moment before she managed, as if coming back to herself: “You mean — He Youyuan has already confessed to you?”

“Yes.”

Fang Zhixiao’s excitement surged and she was almost about to shriek — but then she seemed to catch herself, as if remembering something: “When did this happen?”

Li Kuiyi was deliberately vague: “Just — a little while ago.”

“Exactly when?” Fang Zhixiao narrowed her eyes, looking very much like a detective conducting an interrogation.

“It was… I think… the day before the high school entrance exams. June thirteenth…” Li Kuiyi’s voice grew less and less confident as she spoke.

“June thirteenth!” Fang Zhixiao’s fury erupted: “He confessed to you on June thirteenth, and it’s almost September and you’re only telling me now?! Li Kuiyi — you hid this from me for that long?!”

“I’m sorry.” Li Kuiyi tucked her chin against Fang Zhixiao’s shoulder. “If I had gotten together with him, I would have told you right away. But I turned him down, so I figured — why stir things up unnecessarily…”

Fang Zhixiao wasn’t having any of this explanation. She turned her back on her in a huff: “You don’t consider me a real friend at all. I’m cutting ties with you!”

Li Kuiyi reached around and held her by the shoulders from behind, rocking her back and forth, pressing against her: “But I’m telling you now, aren’t I? Don’t be upset — okay?”

“Hmph!”

“I’ll buy you a month’s worth of ice cream? Or the sour-and-spicy noodles from Rao’s? I’ll get you that Doraemon figurine? You pick…”

After sulking for a little while on her own, Fang Zhixiao turned back around, face still set in stern lines: “I’ll stop being mad on one condition. You have to tell me everything that happened the day He Youyuan confessed — every expression, every look, every single word. If I’m satisfied with the story, I’ll forgive you.”

There’s nothing in the world quite as compelling as good gossip!

Li Kuiyi nodded so vigorously her head nearly came off. In order to appease Fang Zhixiao, she summoned every ounce of her storytelling ability and recounted the whole scene from start to finish. Fang Zhixiao, lit up by the gossip, went through a whole range of reactions — staring into the distance imagining the scene, stifling giggles behind her hand, clicking her tongue with relish… When the full account was done, she wrapped herself in her blanket and twisted on the bed like an overexcited caterpillar.

“Ahhhh — he’s so cute, he’s so pitiful! He just wanted to take you on a little outing, what did he even do wrong?! How could you be so heartless and turn him down like that?!”

Li Kuiyi: “…”

So it was all her fault?

But afraid of getting Fang Zhixiao upset again, she didn’t argue, and dutifully accepted the blame. In a show of sincerity, she also told Fang Zhixiao about the spider incident.

The result was a torrent of anguished reproach from Fang Zhixiao: “He put such genuine thought and care into that gift for you! How could you, you cold and heartless woman, accuse him of doing it on purpose?!”

Li Kuiyi was quite certain that if the person who had done this had been someone plain-looking, Fang Zhixiao would have said he had low emotional intelligence — proof, if any were needed, of just how deeply her filter for handsome guys ran.

“I apologized to him,” Li Kuiyi said.

“Well, at least there’s that.”

But Fang Zhixiao still couldn’t fathom it: “Why did you have to turn him down at all? He’s so handsome! In this era where pretty girls are everywhere but handsome guys are nowhere to be found, do you know how rare it is to look like he does?!”

Li Kuiyi didn’t know the answer either.

It wasn’t that He Youyuan had nothing to attract her. He was good-looking. When he sang, his voice carried this particular youthful quality. He would sometimes look at her with bright, shining eyes. Occasionally there would be a glimpse of something fragile and unguarded in him… If she were already in university, or already working, she thought she might have been willing to try being with him even without strong feelings.

But she was in high school right now. There were things far more important than falling in love waiting for her to do, and she had to weigh up what mattered. Compared to her future, the things about him that drew her to him didn’t amount to much.

“I need to focus on my studies,” she said, pulling the blanket up over her head — the most irrefutable reason she had.

“Ugh—” Fang Zhixiao scratched at her hair in exasperation. “Studying matters, yes, but so does a handsome guy! You’re letting a once-in-a-lifetime chance slip right past you!”

Li Kuiyi pressed herself against her and murmured: “But studying — it’s the only way out I have after I leave home. I can’t afford to get it wrong.”

Fang Zhixiao heard that, and it was as if all the air went out of her at once. Her heart ached quietly. “You’re right. I’m sorry — I shouldn’t have been pushing you toward a relationship. You’re right, you should study hard, get into Peking University, go to a big city, earn a lot of money, and cut all ties with this place for good!”

Li Kuiyi smiled in the dark, though it was silent — and then she heard Fang Zhixiao add: “And then I’ll come find you and cling to your coattails. Take care of me, okay?”

“Deal. When the time comes — if I’m poor, I live for myself alone; if I prosper, I’ll keep Fang Zhixiao in comfort!”

The two of them dissolved into laughter and chatter, talking about this and that, and eventually fell into a deep sleep. When they woke the next day, it was already noon.

Li Jianye had gone to the shop. The apartment was empty. Li Kuiyi volunteered to cook — she made rice and stir-fried a small section of yam. The yam came out a mushy, overcooked disaster, and it tasted so terrible that Fang Zhixiao nearly gagged. There was nothing for it — Li Kuiyi decided to go down to the braised-goods stall outside to buy some cold dishes and braised meat to round out the meal.

Fang Zhixiao couldn’t very well sit alone in someone else’s apartment, so she insisted on coming along.

Li Kuiyi was still in her pajamas and hadn’t bothered to change — it was fine, really; her pajamas were just worn-out old clothes, perfectly presentable enough to go outside in. But she did need to put on proper undergarments before going out. She opened her wardrobe drawer and took out a tube top.

Facing the wardrobe, back to Fang Zhixiao, she took off her pajama top.

While she was putting on the tube top, Fang Zhixiao said with a mischievous grin: “Turn around and let me see if you’ve been developing properly lately.”

“You’re being disgusting,” Li Kuiyi said, flushing.

Which only made Fang Zhixiao laugh harder, and then she asked with unbridled audacity: “Does He Youyuan know you’re flat-chested?”

It was the first time anyone had ever connected her body to a male classmate in the same sentence, and Li Kuiyi’s face burned hot enough to steam dumplings. She threw herself at Fang Zhixiao and gave her a thorough pummeling, and only stopped when Fang Zhixiao doubled over laughing, swearing she would never say anything ridiculous like that again.

After lunch, Fang Zhixiao pulled two teen magazines from her schoolbag. They each took one and read for a while, then swapped. By the time they had gone through both magazines, it was nearly five in the afternoon. Figuring Xu Manhua would be getting back soon, Fang Zhixiao said she had better leave before running into her and making things awkward.

Li Kuiyi walked her to the main entrance of the complex and watched her zip away on her small electric scooter in a cloud of happy speed.

When Li Kuiyi returned home, she found that Xu Manhua and her little brother were already back — they must have come in through the east gate, which was why they hadn’t crossed paths.

She hadn’t thought anything of it at first. But as she passed her brother’s bedroom door, she saw him with the gift box He Youyuan had given her in his hands, straining at the seams, clearly trying to force it open.

“What are you doing with my things?!”

Li Kuiyi walked over and reached to take it back. But her brother, seeing her coming to grab it, panicked — still unable to get the box open — and in a fit of frustration flung it to the ground.

There was a camera in there!

Li Kuiyi’s heart lurched. She rushed over and picked the box up, and couldn’t keep the sharpness out of her voice as she snapped at her brother: “If anything inside this is broken, I will personally stomp every single one of your Ultraman figures flat, and you will use your New Year’s money to pay me back!”

Her brother, faced with both her fury and the threat to all his Ultraman figures, burst into howling tears.

Xu Manhua was in the kitchen sorting through the free-range eggs, cured pork, and other things she had brought back from their grandmother’s house, when she heard the crying. She came running out at once, a string of sausages still in hand: “Where is your sense of being a big sister?! He’s a child — he doesn’t know any better! Can’t you talk things through properly instead of making the whole house erupt into chaos?!”

Li Kuiyi didn’t enjoy fighting, but she wasn’t afraid of it either. She raised her voice: “He doesn’t know any better, but you do — how come you never taught him not to touch other people’s things?”

“Other people? Is he a stranger to you? He’s your brother!“

“Right — he’s my brother and I’m his sister; we’re all family. So by that logic, it should be totally fine if I stomp a few of his Ultraman figures, shouldn’t it?”

Xu Manhua found herself with nothing to say to that, so she turned on the brother instead: “Crying, crying, always crying! Didn’t I tell you not to provoke your sister?! So you went and grabbed her things anyway — and now look!”

The brother, with this fresh round of scolding piled on top, cried even louder.

“That’s not my property — it belongs to my classmate. If it got damaged, he’d have to pay for it.” Li Kuiyi, without a shred of sympathy, said her piece and then went to her room, pulling the door shut behind her.

She shut out the crying and scolding from beyond the door, and opened the gift box. She took the small box out from under the raffia grass. She hadn’t originally intended to open it, but she needed to check whether the camera had been damaged from the fall.

She opened the small box. Inside was a compact, beautifully made camera — silver-white, with a soft sheen to it — accompanied by a card reader, a lithium battery, and other accessories. The odd thing was, when she opened the box, three palm-sized sheets of paper fluttered out.

Li Kuiyi picked them up —

Two movie tickets, and a small note.

“Giving you a chance to take your brother out to the movies. If you don’t want to go with me, you can invite someone else (Qi Yu excluded). I’m generous. No hard feelings.”

What on earth is this nonsense?

Li Kuiyi immediately burst out laughing — she wasn’t sure whether it was out of exasperation or amusement.

And suddenly she understood what He Youyuan’s message the previous night had meant.

“Don’t you have anything to say to me?” — It turned out he had been waiting for her to invite him to the movies.

What nerve. The absolute cheek of it. He had already bought the tickets himself, yet instead of inviting her, he had been waiting for her to invite him.

Li Kuiyi checked over the camera and, once she confirmed it was completely undamaged, relaxed at last. She picked up the two movie tickets and looked at them properly — it was a recently released wuxia film with solid reviews, playing at Huiyun Cinema, at the five-twenty showing today.

Huiyun Cinema?

That was barely two minutes from her residential complex. Just cross two streets.

Five twenty?

Li Kuiyi raised her wrist and looked at her watch: it was already five past five.

She immediately grabbed her phone and sent He Youyuan a message.

Li Kuiyi: He Youyuan!!!

Before she could type the next line, He Youyuan had already replied.

He Youyuan: Only thinking of inviting me now?

He Youyuan: Wait for me.

Li Kuiyi paused, finger hovering over the screen, and quietly deleted the text she had been typing.

She hadn’t planned to go to the movies with him at all. Her original plan had been to tell him to take a friend or a family member instead, and to drop the tickets off to him…

How had this ended up as the two of them going to the movies together?

It was all He Youyuan’s fault for typing so fast.

Li Kuiyi sat in her chair, frozen, for thirty seconds. Then she leaped up, grabbed a small backpack, shoved in the camera, her phone, and the movie tickets, slung it over one arm, and charged out the door — pausing only long enough to lock her bedroom behind her.

Though the cinema was only a short distance from her complex, getting from her unit to the main gate was quite a walk in itself — she would have to run if she didn’t want to be late.

She ran faster than she ever had. About seven or eight minutes later, when the sign for Huiyun Cinema came into view, she was gasping for breath, completely out of air.

What she hadn’t counted on: He Youyuan had already arrived. He was standing at the entrance in perfect composure, beautiful as a statue, drawing the eyes of every person who passed by.

Li Kuiyi sprinted up to him and fought desperately to catch her breath, and saw the faintest twitch of the corner of his mouth — quickly suppressed. He said, loftily: “You live that close, and you’re still this slow.”

Then he held out a water bottle.

Li Kuiyi didn’t stand on ceremony. She took it, twisted off the cap, and downed two good gulps. The cool water settled in her throat, and the rawness finally eased. She had been about to tell him she hadn’t actually come to watch the movie with him — but before she could get a word out, He Youyuan caught her by the wrist and pulled her into the cinema, telling the staff member: “One bucket of popcorn.”

Fine. She was already here. She might as well stay. Li Kuiyi closed her eyes briefly.

While the staff was filling the popcorn, He Youyuan turned his head and looked her up and down.

What?

Li Kuiyi looked down at herself too.

A loose, sleeveless white top — the kind that resembled an old man’s undershirt. Loose black shorts. Flip-flops.

Oh. She’d left in such a rush she’d forgotten to change out of her pajamas.

Her hair probably wasn’t doing much better — she’d only run her fingers through it after getting out of bed and tied a rough ponytail, nothing more.

Now that she noticed, He Youyuan beside her was immaculate by comparison, right down to the tips of his hair. His outfit — shirt, trousers, shoes — had clearly been put together with care. His hair was neat. And there was a faint, subtle scent about him — not the familiar smell of windbell-flower detergent she had gotten used to; this was something else. A cologne, probably.

He couldn’t possibly have gotten dressed and made it here so quickly unless he had already been ready and waiting at home, prepared the moment she sent a message.

He definitely had been. Nothing else explained the timing.

He Youyuan took the popcorn, scanned the tickets, and they made their way together into the screening hall. They were a minute or two late — but the film hadn’t actually started yet; the screen was still showing reminder slides about cinema etiquette. After a little while, the Dragon Mark flew across the screen, the hall fell into hush, and the rich smell of popcorn rose all around them.

Li Kuiyi enjoyed wuxia films and watched with genuine engagement. The only thing was that every time she reached into the popcorn bucket, her hand would occasionally brush against He Youyuan’s.

His hand was quite smooth, she thought.

Not that he took advantage of it — after their hands had brushed a few times, he started waiting for her to take her handful before reaching in himself.

The story built steadily toward its climax. Li Kuiyi was so riveted she forgot to eat popcorn. On the enormous screen, after a battle that had left rivers of blood, the male and female leads were in the middle of a heart-wrenching farewell — just as Li Kuiyi had her fists clenched with worry about whether they would survive — the two of them kissed.

Li Kuiyi: “…”

He Youyuan was equally thrown. When he had been choosing the film, he had deliberated for a long time. There were a number of Western films screening at the same time, but he knew from experience that Western movies had a habit of having the leads kiss for no apparent reason and then immediately fall into bed together. He had worried that kind of scene would make the two of them uncomfortable, so he had specifically chosen this wuxia film. And now, of all things — even a wuxia film had a kissing scene.

He was watching the screen with his own face going red, and then quietly glanced sideways at Li Kuiyi.

Only her profile was visible to him. The shifting glow from the screen washed over it — light and shadow flowing, bright and still. He looked at her, and somehow couldn’t bring his gaze back. It moved across her forehead, her eyes, her nose, her lips…

Lips that curved slightly upward like flower petals.

From the speakers, the low sounds of the two figures onscreen tangled together and wound through the air like a slim serpent, finding their way into his chest, making it itch. He tried to hold his breath — couldn’t. He couldn’t control it. He even felt his breathing beginning to tremble.

The kiss ended. She shifted.

His heart jolted sharply. He turned his face away and sat absolutely rigid, staring straight ahead. A long moment passed before his throat moved in a thick swallow.

You’re being disgraceful.

He gave himself a hard mental slap. He had no right to imagine crossing any line with her.

Besides — her mouth was always so sharp and ready with a cutting word. Her lips were probably just as hard. Kissing her would probably be unpleasant.

That’s what he told himself.