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Right now, Li Kuiyi was regretting it. Regretting it deeply.

She knew He Youyuan was the type to light up at the smallest ray of sunshine, yet she had still offered to tutor him — and gone and made a pinky promise with him on top of it. Sure enough, karma came swiftly: he clung there and refused to leave, and it took her a full twenty minutes of coaxing before she finally managed to send him home.

What had she gotten herself into?

Li Kuiyi watched his silhouette disappear into the night, let out a long, heavy sigh, and turned to walk into the residential compound. She didn’t know whether her decision to tutor him was right or wrong. She only felt a vague unease, as if she might fall into some kind of abyss because of it.

This unease wasn’t groundless. She had noticed — she actually enjoyed watching him cry, watching him laugh, liked the way his eyes lit up without the slightest attempt at concealment as they fixed on her. Even his temperamental edges she now found, in some corner of herself, kind of endearing.

Wasn’t that pretty much doomed?

Li Kuiyi could do nothing but accept this helplessly, and ran home as quickly as she could. She pulled out the school-printed test papers from her bag and sat down to work through them, trying to drown her thoughts in knowledge. Fortunately, her focus had always been solid — after two multiple choice questions, He Youyuan was already out of her mind. It wasn’t until she had finished all her homework that she finally picked up her phone and checked her messages.

A flurry of messages from Fang Zhixiao exploded across her screen.

Fang Zhixiao: Li Kui! I’m coming to sleep over tonight!

Then, a little while later:

Fang Zhixiao: You’re not home yet? Why aren’t you replying?

Then two missed calls. Li Kuiyi had her phone on silent and hadn’t picked up.

Fang Zhixiao: You have it on silent again, don’t you? Ugh, you’re so annoying!

Fang Zhixiao: You’re seriously going to make me explode!

Li Kuiyi read through these messages, figuring Fang Zhixiao must have something urgent to tell her. She immediately called her back. Fang Zhixiao answered quickly and was instantly grumpy: “What’s going on with you? I sent you so many messages and you didn’t reply to a single one.”

“I just finished my homework. You know I don’t keep my phone on me when I’m studying. What’s the matter — why are you in such a rush to find me?”

“Heh heh, I’m coming over to sleep at your place. Leave the door unlocked for me.”

Li Kuiyi frowned slightly: “You’re not home yet?”

“On my way back. But I still want to come to yours.” There was a trace of shyness and bashfulness in Fang Zhixiao’s voice. “I have something I want to tell you.”

“Walk slowly then, and be careful!” Li Kuiyi said, concerned.

“I know, I know.” Fang Zhixiao ended the call.

What could be so earth-shattering that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow? Li Kuiyi couldn’t figure it out. She glanced back at her phone and noticed two messages from He Youyuan as well.

He Youyuan: I’m home.

He Youyuan: Get some rest soon. Good night~

Li Kuiyi stared at the little tilde after “good night” in a daze, and the longer she looked, the more it seemed like a small wagging tail, swaying back and forth.

Should she reply? Would saying “good night” back be too suggestive?

Ugh, this was so annoying!

Li Kuiyi put down her phone and went to wash up.

She had barely finished getting herself ready and returned to her bedroom when another message from Fang Zhixiao arrived: “Li Kui, open the door!”

Li Kuiyi, still simmering over the way Fang Zhixiao had been putting friends second lately, typed back viciously: “You deserve to spend the night outside!” — but even after typing it, she skipped over herself and merrily ran to open the door anyway.

The moment Fang Zhixiao stepped inside, she threw her arms around Li Kuiyi in a big hug, burying her face in her neck — the very picture of an overwhelmingly bashful young girl. Li Kuiyi felt ticklish and was both confused and amused, and asked quietly: “What on earth has gotten into you?”

“I’ll tell you in a bit.” Fang Zhixiao was still keeping her in suspense, but her face had gone pink all over, like someone who had done something mischievous. Li Kuiyi was dying of curiosity.

Li Kuiyi found Fang Zhixiao’s toothbrush and cup, nudged her into the bathroom and told her to clean up properly, then climbed into bed herself and flipped idly through a magazine she’d picked up from the headboard.

Once Fang Zhixiao had washed up, she dove straight under the covers. Li Kuiyi tossed the magazine aside and burrowed in after her. Inside the blankets it was dark, perfectly concealing the excitement, the fluttering nerves, the shyness that adolescent hormones had stirred up.

“Li Kui — he kissed me.” Fang Zhixiao brought her lips close to Li Kuiyi’s ear and whispered.

Inexplicably, Li Kuiyi’s own heart started hammering. Goodness — he kissed her. Something that had only ever happened in novels and television dramas had now actually happened to her best friend in real life. The feeling was genuinely strange.

“A kiss… on the mouth?” Li Kuiyi asked, stating the obvious.

“Yes.”

Li Kuiyi felt even more incredulous. Wasn’t that the sort of thing only adults did? Had they already grown into adults without her noticing?

“And… was it like it is in the novels?”

Fang Zhixiao nodded vigorously: “Exactly like it! Can you imagine? Lips are actually so soft — softer than you’d expect. The texture is like jelly.” She was so embarrassed after saying this that she buried her face in the bedsheet, grinning like someone who’d completely lost their mind.

Li Kuiyi still couldn’t imagine what kind of soft that would be, and couldn’t recall the texture of jelly either. What surfaced in her mind instead was the image of Zhou Ce and Fang Zhixiao kissing. But she cut that thought off after two seconds, feeling that she was being truly… somewhat of a deviant.

“Do you want to try it? I could kiss you.” Fang Zhixiao leaned over, half-joking, half-earnest.

Li Kuiyi startled and immediately braced her hand against Fang Zhixiao’s body: “No.” She then realized her reaction was too strong and might hurt Fang Zhixiao’s feelings, so she added quickly: “You just kissed Zhou Ce — I’m not kissing you after that.”

The truth was, she just found kissing as an act profoundly strange. She couldn’t understand why human beings chose this particular gesture to express romantic love. What was interesting, though, was that kisses on the forehead, the hand, the ear — all of those felt perfectly natural to her. But a kiss on the mouth felt wrong in a way she couldn’t articulate.

Two mouths pressed against each other — how bizarre.

She truly couldn’t imagine that happening to herself.

Then it occurred to her: kissing was something that only happened between people in love — not between family, not between friends. Which meant it wasn’t purely an expression of love; it carried, within it, a certain shade of physical desire. If she couldn’t accept this — did that perhaps mean she was…

“What are you spacing out about?” Fang Zhixiao waved a hand in front of her face.

Li Kuiyi turned to look at her, full of woe: “I think I might be physically cold-natured.”

Fang Zhixiao: “What?”

A moment later, Fang Zhixiao rolled her eyes dramatically and said with exasperation: “You’ve never even been in a relationship. What basis do you have for concluding you’re physically cold-natured? You can explore yourself — but please don’t explore yourself so wildly, okay?”

Oh. Fine.

But kissing was still weird, Li Kuiyi maintained.

Over the next few days, Li Kuiyi and He Youyuan each quietly kept their promise, behaving properly and keeping their distance — laying low for the time being. But Li Kuiyi printed her notes twice over, giving one copy to Zhang Yun and another to He Youyuan.

Giving her notes to Zhang Yun was something Li Kuiyi had wrestled with considerably. The gesture seemed to carry a kind of condescension — a blunt, glaring declaration of “I’m better than you.”

Fortunately, Zhang Yun accepted them without hesitation, which made Li Kuiyi internally berate herself once again for judging someone good by a petty standard.

Even so, they did not become friends because of it. They remained classmates, exchanging a smile and a brief greeting when they ran into each other in the canteen or the school shop. After the storm had passed, nothing had changed — except that Wang Jianbo never wandered over to Meng Ran’s seat again. His whole demeanor seemed to have severed ties with the rest of the class. He was always alone now, coming and going by himself.

As the weekend approached, Li Kuiyi had wised up this time and went to make plans with Fang Zhixiao in advance. But one mountain proved higher than the last — Fang Zhixiao said she had already made plans with Zhou Ce for Saturday evening to go go-karting, and planned to sleep in on Sunday morning, then do homework together with him in the afternoon.

Fang Zhixiao asked if she wanted to join. Li Kuiyi declined — she had no desire to be a third wheel.

How had it come to this? Was a boyfriend worth more than a best friend? Always with him, always with him — honestly.

When school let out on Saturday afternoon, Li Kuiyi had no choice but to head out alone, drifting slowly toward the school gates with her bag on her back.

Winter was approaching, and the days had grown shorter — there was no longer any sunset to watch. But Li Kuiyi didn’t feel like walking, so she decided to take the bus instead. Out of the school gates, she opened her bag and pulled out a pair of earphones. Just as she was about to put them in, she suddenly spotted He Youyuan — standing under a streetlamp, hands tucked in his pockets, quietly watching her with what seemed like a trace of a smile.

She walked over: “Waiting for me?”

“What else?” he said.

“Don’t you have to go to the studio?” Li Kuiyi asked.

“Not time yet — I’ll go a little later.”

“Oh.” Li Kuiyi wound the earphone cord around her finger. “Were you waiting for me for some reason?”

“Come with me,” he said.

“Where to?”

“You’ll see when we get there. It’s not far.”

Li Kuiyi followed him. They went along a small path from the school gates, walked about a hundred meters, then turned down a narrow alley. The alley had a handful of shops — music stores, accessories vendors, that sort of thing — and He Youyuan stopped in front of a tailor’s shop.

Li Kuiyi knew this place. Many students who felt their uniforms didn’t fit would bring them here to be altered — hemming the trousers, taking in the waist, that kind of thing. When the uniforms had first been distributed, Fang Zhixiao had asked her whether she wanted to come and have hers altered too, since the short-sleeved tops were so loose — Fang Zhixiao had wanted hers taken in for a more fitted look.

“Why are we here?” Li Kuiyi didn’t quite follow.

He Youyuan looked a bit self-conscious, a faint warmth rising in his face: “The short-sleeved uniform… the sleeves are too wide at the cuffs… if you ever want to, you could bring yours here to have them taken in.”

Why was he suddenly giving her this suggestion?

Li Kuiyi blinked once, then again, and thought carefully about why he would say the sleeves were too wide — and in a flash, like a bolt of lightning, she understood.

She had always assumed Wang Jianbo’s mockery of her chest had simply been based on what was visible through her clothing. It turned out he had looked through the sleeve opening and seen inside.

Revulsion, and shame — they surged up to the crown of her head in an instant. She bit her lip and clenched her fists.

Then she shook her head and said: “I’m not getting it altered.”

He Youyuan looked at the expression on her face, his heart aching again, though he didn’t quite understand why she was refusing.

Li Kuiyi raised her head and said to him: “I know what you’re trying to say. But I don’t want to change it. He looked through my sleeve opening and saw inside, and he said disgusting things about it — that is his fault, not mine. Even if I had the sleeves altered today, he’d still find other ways to demean me if he wanted to. What if someday he could say something filthy just looking at my face — what would I do then? Wrap my whole head in a cloth? I refuse. I refuse to give even an inch to people like that.”

Just like when she’d started middle school and that boy with bleached hair had undone the ties of her camisole — was she supposed to never wear that style of top again?

No. She wore it anyway. In fact, she’d grown especially fond of spaghetti straps and sleeveless tops.

Which was exactly why she’d known for a long time: restricting freedom in the name of protection was not the right answer.

He Youyuan stood still, his gaze settling on her, and stayed there.

On the surface he appeared cool and reserved, but inside he was anything but — he was always leaping with feeling. Perhaps it was precisely because he lacked something that he was drawn to it in others: he was drawn to calm, understated people. But a person who was cold in the way of a steel plate was terribly dull. What was best, he thought, was to be cold in the way of a tree — still and composed, yet reaching toward the light, upright and full of life.

Li Kuiyi was that kind of tree.

Like now — she finished saying what she had to say, turned, and walked away in long strides, the night wind lifting the hair at her forehead like branches reaching freely toward the sky.

In that moment, he was utterly moved.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, and fell into step behind her.

Li Kuiyi smiled slightly: “I’m not blaming you. I know you meant well.”

He Youyuan had so much he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her everything he was feeling right now, to tell her what she meant to him, to tell her how she drew him in — but he followed beside her for a long stretch, stumbling and hesitating, and in the end could only manage one question: “Would you like to come see my studio?”

What I mean is — I’ve seen your world. Will you come and see mine?