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For a brief moment, Li Kuiyi also wondered whether she had come across as too forceful in front of He Youyuan — did she really need to express herself that way? Should she hold back a little? After all, every strand of society’s ideology tells girls that in front of the person they like, they should learn to show vulnerability — that is what makes a person endearing.

But what did that person who shows vulnerability have to do with her, Li Kuiyi?

She knew He Youyuan liked her, but she didn’t know what he liked about her. She hoped he liked her as a specific, concrete person — not that he had developed some so-called desire to protect her.

So He Youyuan, I am standing before you right now with complete sincerity, laying bare my truest self. In me, you will find ambition — find desire — find aggression — find contradiction and conflict — find sensitive nerve endings… If, after seeing my world clearly, you no longer wish to like me, then, suit yourself.

Of course, I think I probably like you a little too. So I also want to go and take a look at your world, to explore what the real you is like.

The art studio was in an office building near the school. The building housed a great number of educational tutoring institutions — learning centers, English schools for children, early childhood development centers — their colorful signboards hung across the outer walls in a dazzling jumble. The “Little Red Elephant Art Studio” sign was wedged among them, not particularly conspicuous.

Walking inside the building, Li Kuiyi said, “So the Little Red Elephant Art Studio is actually an arts exam prep school. When I used to see it, I thought it was a place that taught young children to paint.”

He Youyuan pressed the elevator button and smiled slightly. “The name has a childlike charm.”

Li Kuiyi nodded in agreement with an earnest expression. “Very fitting for someone as immature as you.”

“Fine, I’m immature.” He Youyuan dragged out his words, stepped into the elevator, crossed his arms, and leaned lazily against the wall of the car. He shot her a quick sidelong glance, then muttered under his breath, “At least I’m not at all immature in front of other girls.”

Li Kuiyi caught his meaning without warning, and her breath caught ever so slightly.

Why bring that up all of a sudden…

She didn’t respond. She just gripped the straps of her schoolbag and stood completely still, staring straight ahead like a wooden figure. He Youyuan’s face burned too; he turned his head and fixed his gaze on his own reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator car. The cramped, enclosed space — and the people inside it — were equally ill at ease.

He had never felt the distance from the first floor to the eleventh floor stretch so endlessly long.

A soft ding rescued the two awkward, bashful young people. They forced themselves to wear expressions of composure and calm, and stepped out of the elevator together.

“Do you think we’ll run into any classmates?” Li Kuiyi belatedly worried.

“We won’t. I’m the only arts student in our class. There are a few students in our year who study fine arts, but it seems they haven’t started looking for a studio yet.”

“Oh.” Li Kuiyi followed him into the art studio. “Then why did you start so early?”

“I’ve been going to these arts exam prep studios since middle school,” He Youyuan said. “Because arts exams are different from regular academic exams — they require a lot more information and resources. If you don’t learn about things in advance, and only start making choices right before intensive training begins, you’ll end up flustered and directionless.”

Li Kuiyi found this very sensible. “How well-informed you are really does affect the quality of your choices.”

After looking around inside, she had to admit that the studio’s appearance didn’t quite match her expectations. In her imagination, an art studio should be a place full of artistic atmosphere — plaster statues, colors, lines visible everywhere… Instead, she discovered that the studio was actually much like a school: classrooms, offices, walls displaying outstanding works…

They stopped in front of the display wall of outstanding works.

Li Kuiyi wasn’t being modest — she genuinely felt she had no real aesthetic appreciation. She had never been to an art museum; art class at school had been practically meaningless; aesthetic education was simply a gap in her upbringing. She stared at one of the works for a long time, unable to figure out why the colors on the apple were arranged in patches that didn’t blend smoothly — and honestly, that apple was painted far too yellow.

He Youyuan noticed she had been studying that painting for quite a while and became displeased. He hadn’t brought her here to look at someone else’s work. He directly pulled her over to a landscape painting, his eyes radiating pride. “What’s so interesting about jars and apples? This is a plein air painting I did in Wuyuan after the rain. You can take a proper look at this.”

Li Kuiyi had been about to scold him for being so self-absorbed, but the words got stuck and wouldn’t come out. In the aftermath of rain at dusk, the sunset glow blazed brilliantly — the horizon painted in soft pink, cream yellow, and the green of spring days. Within that warm, hazy sunset, the mountains and trees carried a touch of cool undertones; the colors were vivid and romantic, and she couldn’t help but recall the bouquet of flowers he had once given her, equally dreamlike.

He seemed accustomed to using color this way — passionate, vivid, intensely emotional.

“Is it beautiful?” he asked.

Li Kuiyi said sincerely, “It is.”

She admired it for a little while longer, and when she turned around, she found He Youyuan looking down at her with a smile curling at the corners of his mouth — satisfied and unhurried, as though her answer had pleased him greatly.

How unbearably smug this person is! She had clearly come to uncover deeper layers of him, yet in the end, he was still exactly the same as ever.

But this was him, wasn’t it?

He was someone who wore his emotions openly, as clear and transparent as crystal — even sunlight couldn’t cast a shadow through him.

Her heartbeat had clearly quickened a little under his gaze, yet Li Kuiyi still glared at him fiercely. “You… what are you staring at?” she said, and then turned to leave. “I’m going back.”

“Alright.” He laughed softly. “I’ll see you out.”

What are you laughing at, laughing so irritatingly, Li Kuiyi fumed as she walked.

The start of a new week happened to also be the beginning of December; without realizing it, 2014 was nearly over. The days were the same as always, yet time seemed to pass faster than before — was it because they were growing up?

At dinner in the cafeteria, Li Kuiyi raised this topic with Zhou Fanghua with some curiosity.

“I think it’s exactly because we’re growing up,” Zhou Fanghua said. “When you’re older, you have less and less time to yourself, so each day feels like it flies by.”

Li Kuiyi laughed. “Doesn’t that mean life will only keep moving faster? Like it’s been accelerated and can’t stop — won’t that be agonizing?”

“I don’t know.” Zhou Fanghua shook her head. “It probably won’t be worse than high school, right?”

When they finished speaking, the two of them looked at each other and laughed — a kind of self-deprecating humor in the face of the heavy, tedious academic life they were currently living.

After evening self-study let out, Li Kuiyi didn’t pack her bag and go home. Instead, she stayed in her seat doing homework, writing while waiting for He Youyuan to come over.

The students of Class 17 quickly emptied out, leaving only Li Kuiyi and Zhang Yun. When Zhang Yun noticed that Li Kuiyi hadn’t left, she lifted her head from her math problems, looked over at her with both surprise and confusion, and felt a great wave of unease rise inside her.

But she had no way to ask: Why are you staying behind too?

Ten minutes later, Zhang Yun found herself unable to bear the pressure any longer. She stood up, packed her bag, and left. She was so preoccupied with anxiety that she even forgot to say goodbye to Li Kuiyi.

Zhang Yun had barely walked out when He Youyuan came rushing over from the art studio.

He still had splashes of various colors on him, and he came running over enthusiastically, dropping into the seat in front of Li Kuiyi’s desk. He had just been about to exchange a few playful words with her when she looked up at him and said, “Bring me your midterm exam papers — I want to see where you stand first.”

Jumping right into it, He Youyuan thought, pressing his lips together slightly.

He got up and went to his own seat, bent down and rummaged through it for quite some time before finally gathering all his test papers.

“Here — they’re all here.”

Li Kuiyi took the crumpled stack of papers from him with visible distaste. “Would it kill you to buy a folder?”

“Sure.”

Whatever she said, he’d go along with it.

Seeing his cooperative attitude, Li Kuiyi let the matter drop for now. Starting with Chinese, she went through his papers one by one.

“Your main point-losses in Chinese are in the modern prose reading and the essay. Your multiple-choice answers are quite good — that shows you’ve genuinely put in the work.”

Hearing praise, He Youyuan was just starting to look smug, but before he could even raise an eyebrow, he heard Li Kuiyi say, “I just read through your essay. How do I put this — it has a sort of Dream of the Red Chamber quality to it.”

He Youyuan was both flattered and alarmed. “Is it really that good?” Then he grew suspicious. “Then why out of 60 points did they only give me 42?”

Li Kuiyi rolled her eyes at him and gritted her teeth. “A page full of absurd words.”

He Youyuan: “…”

“Didn’t you write that narrative essay quite well last time? How did your argumentative essay get this bad?” she asked him.

He Youyuan replied shamelessly, “If I knew why, I wouldn’t have gotten this bad.”

“How do you have the nerve to say you don’t know?” Li Kuiyi was exasperated. She tapped her finger on his test paper. “Look at what you wrote here: The famous literary figure Maiersaifu once said… Tell me — who is Maiersaifu?”

Maiersaifu, of course, was myself.

He Youyuan, realizing she had seen right through him, pressed his lips together to hold back a laugh, glancing at her guiltily — but failed to hold it together, and a snort of laughter escaped.

“You can’t even fabricate a decent famous quote, and you still have the nerve to laugh!” Li Kuiyi thwacked him once, but after venting her frustration, she couldn’t hold it in either, and let out a muffled laugh.

This person is truly infuriating — writing essays was just one performance after another from him.

“And another thing —” Li Kuiyi quickly smoothed her expression, put on a straight face. “You’re already in second year of high school. When making arguments with examples, can you please stop using Sima Qian? Give the man some peace!”

……

After struggling through Chinese with him and then looking at math, the problems were even greater. Li Kuiyi discovered that this person didn’t know how to use his scratch paper properly — he’d work a bit here, a bit there, and when a calculation went wrong, he had no way to find the step where the error occurred. Pencil marks were layered over with black pen marks, black pen marks layered over with red pen marks — a complete mess with no order whatsoever.

“Don’t just shrug this off. Developing good scratch-paper habits is foundational to studying math — foundational to studying the sciences, really. You need to lay out your problem-solving process on the scratch paper and treat it as seriously as the solution itself. It will genuinely help strengthen your thinking.”

“But that’s so slow — I won’t finish all the questions.”

“Practice. Practice enough and it becomes a habit.” Li Kuiyi continued. “Next is the issue of drilling problems. You’ve been doing a lot of practice questions lately and have accumulated a decent volume — that’s great. But you need to pay attention to efficiency. Drilling problems doesn’t mean you’re done once you’ve finished a workbook. Truly mastering one problem is better than blindly grinding through a hundred. You can’t just put your head down and solve — you need to think carefully, learn to summarize and derive patterns from the problems. What you work out yourself is what truly belongs to you. Otherwise, if the question changes form even slightly, you’ll be lost again — that’s knowing the outcome without understanding the reason.”

He Youyuan became a little worried. “Am I starting too late?”

“You’re still fine. First and second year of high school are the golden period for drilling problems. I’ll work through a page of exercises with you in a moment to get a feel for things.”

“Okay.”

If she says it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.

Paper by paper, they went through the exam sheets; minute by minute, time passed. He Youyuan didn’t dare not pay attention — he didn’t want Li Kuiyi’s efforts to go to waste. And he knew that the road paved by all these problems and questions might lead toward a bright future for the two of them.

The two of them had their heads buried in analyzing the history exam when a melodic bell suddenly rang out across the campus, startling them both — they had no idea what the bell was for at this hour. Li Kuiyi pushed back her uniform sleeve and glanced at her watch, and only then realized it was already eleven-thirty.

She was just about to remark on how late it had gotten when the bell stopped — and the classroom lights went out with a sharp snap, plunging the two of them into complete darkness.

“Don’t be scared.” He Youyuan quickly gripped her forearm, and with his other hand dug his phone out of his bag, turned on the flashlight — and at last a little light appeared around them.

“Is it lights-out time?” Li Kuiyi recalled Zhou Fanghua mentioning something about the school cutting power to all the teaching buildings at eleven-thirty to prevent classrooms from being left lit, and to stop students from staying in classrooms overnight.

“Probably.”

There was no way to continue studying, and the two of them had to pack up their bags. Li Kuiyi had just finished zipping her bag when she heard He Youyuan suddenly exclaim as though he’d just remembered something: “Oh no!”

“What’s wrong?” Her heart immediately tightened.

“The school is going to lock the gates!”

“Ah!”

That really was terrible.

He Youyuan snatched Li Kuiyi’s bag from her hand, grabbed her by the wrist, and sprinted out of the classroom. Out of the teaching building, they flew onto the main path. The campus was completely dark — even the streetlamps had gone out — with only a few thin patches of light spilling from the windows of the dormitory buildings. He gripped her hand firmly and quickened his pace.

The wind shrieked past their ears; tree shadows beside the path rushed backward in a blur. Li Kuiyi’s heart hammered like an insistent drumbeat. Having him pull her along was actually much easier than running alone, but he was too fast — her feet barely touched the ground — and the cold air poured directly into her chest, both painful and suffocating.

They ran across the arched bridge on campus. Several security guards doing their final rounds of the night spotted them from a distance and swept a few beams of light across them with their large flashlights.

“Slow down! Don’t fall!” one of the security guards shouted.

Wreathed in those beams of light, he pulled her hand and charged forward, cleaving through the boundless surging darkness — as if this were his most unwavering mission.

At last, the school gate was in sight. The security guard on duty, seeing them running toward him, had left a narrow gap open on the right side of the retractable gate.

“Next time, don’t dawdle so much!” the guard said with a scolding laugh.

“Thanks!” He Youyuan called back without turning his head, swinging their joined hands once as he ran her through the gate.

They turned onto the small lane by the school entrance and the two of them slowed to a stop. The cold air Li Kuiyi had gulped down began churning in her chest, and she coughed several times immediately. He Youyuan exhaled heavily a few times as well, adjusted his breathing, then dropped both their bags to the ground. One hand steadied her arm while the other gently patted her back, helping her catch her breath.

Li Kuiyi felt dizzy, her eyes barely able to open. She instinctively lowered her head, hunching her back, breathing in large gasps — and He Youyuan’s arm loosely encircled her, so that she looked as though she had buried herself in his embrace.

“It’s alright. It’s alright,” he murmured softly.

Her head was so close to the hollow of his neck. He only needed to tilt his face slightly to brush against her hair. Her breath came rushing out in waves, all of it landing on his shoulder and neck — some of the faint airflow even slipped inside his collar, softly grazing his chest.

He Youyuan’s already-disordered heartbeat had not yet calmed, and now his blood suddenly froze in place; his entire body went rigid in an instant.

He knew she didn’t mean anything by it. But he was going nearly out of his mind.

He tilted his face upward slightly, his throat rising and falling dramatically in a deep swallow. The hand resting on her back slowly tightened.

Don’t move. Don’t move.

He didn’t know how much time passed before Li Kuiyi finally felt some relief, her consciousness gradually returning to clarity.

Right in front of her eyes was He Youyuan’s neck. In the dim light of night, she could still make out the faint blue veins beneath the surface.

She realized — she seemed to be far too close to him.

On instinct, she stepped back, dropped her gaze, and was about to apologize to him.

At that moment, a slightly cool hand reached over and covered her eyes.