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His palm rested over her warm eyelids, sending a cool, firm sensation against them. She couldn’t help but stir, her lashes brushing across his palm.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, baffled.

He didn’t speak. She only sensed that his breathing was heavier than usual, trembling slightly — as though he were suppressing something. After a long pause, he finally opened his mouth, his voice low, moist, and hoarse: “Don’t move.”

Then his hand left her eyes.

Li Kuiyi slowly opened them, dazed, with no idea what had just happened. He Youyuan, however, bent down and picked up the bags from the ground, dusted them off, came around behind her, and helped her put hers on.

“You…” Li Kuiyi turned around, wanting to ask him what on earth he was doing. She’d barely gotten out one syllable before he reached out both hands and gently turned her head back to face forward.

“I said — don’t move.”

“Why?”

“No reason. Please.” His voice was very quiet.

Li Kuiyi’s curiosity was fully piqued. This person was usually so full of bluster, always loved dangling the phrase “beg me” — so why had it turned into “please” today? His tone was restrained and controlled, as though someone had done him a great wrong.

“You’re really very strange,” Li Kuiyi couldn’t help saying.

He Youyuan didn’t argue. He let out a soft “mm,” hoisted his own bag onto his back, and said: “Let’s go. You walk in front, I’ll follow behind. No turning around to look.”

All the way home, Li Kuiyi kept wondering what was wrong with He Youyuan tonight. She wanted to ask him directly, but she knew he definitely wouldn’t tell her. She wanted to sneak a look back, but she was afraid that if he truly had some embarrassing predicament, it would only humiliate him. So she never did.

When they reached the entrance of Yujing Yuan residential compound, He Youyuan didn’t linger as he usually did. He said quietly from behind her, “I’m heading back,” and then he was gone, fleeing as though his life depended on it. Li Kuiyi finally looked back — but she still couldn’t make sense of his strange behavior tonight, and in the end could only chalk it up simply to “men are just unpredictable creatures.”

The next day when Li Kuiyi arrived in the classroom, He Youyuan was already reading. She put down her bag, picked up her cup from the desk, and went to get hot water — deliberately going out the back door and passing by his seat, fixing him with a long, deliberate stare. He caught her intention; his face flushed quickly, and he held up his book so only his eyes showed, glaring at her over the top of it.

When Li Kuiyi came back with her water and reached into her desk drawer for a book, she suddenly felt something warm inside. She looked down — it was a bottle of milk, with a sticky note attached. Like a thief, she carefully peeled the note off, clutched it in her palm, and glanced around out of the corner of her eye. Seeing no one paying attention, she opened it with an air of complete indifference.

“I didn’t mean to ignore you last night. Don’t be upset.”

I’m not upset. Do you think everyone is as petty as you?

Li Kuiyi smiled and began slowly tearing the sticky note into tiny pieces to make sure there was no evidence. Once it was shredded, she found the whole thing rather amusing — the comings and goings between boys and girls at school were like an undercover operation, conducted not only out of sight, but requiring the destruction of all evidence afterward.

To be honest, she was a little worried — she was afraid that the footage of He Youyuan pulling her hand as they ran across campus might have been caught on security cameras. If so, she and He Youyuan would once again have to prove to Chen Guoming that they weren’t in a relationship. But this time was different from before — she suspected that if they faced such an accusation, they would be left speechless.

Even though they really weren’t together. But still — guilty conscience.

For the next several days, Li Kuiyi was on edge inside. Every time Jiang Jianbin’s gaze drifted in her direction, she was convinced he was about to come over and speak with her. And Jiang Jianbin did indeed call her in for a talk once — but it wasn’t about her and He Youyuan. It was just the routine kind of encouragement and guidance he gave to top students.

Li Kuiyi finally relaxed.

She continued to help He Youyuan with tutoring every afternoon after school. When he was unable to attend evening self-study and a teacher covered an important concept in his absence, she’d take notes and then explain it to him herself. But mostly, she focused on drilling math problems with him, building up his repertoire of core problem types; teaching him to summarize and distill answering strategies from the model answers in humanities subjects; teaching him to think about what knowledge points a question was truly testing beneath its surface.

He Youyuan wasn’t a slow student — teaching him was relatively manageable — but his thinking was far too scattered and simply refused to be reined in. For example, she had helped him summarize a template for “the function of a sentence” questions, and he did use it on the next weekly exam. But the question asked about the function of the final sentence of an essay, and in his answer he wrote: “Captures the reader’s interest in reading further.”

Li Kuiyi was immediately dumbfounded. “The essay is already over — whose interest are you going to capture?”

He replied with complete conviction: “The last sentence is so brilliantly written that it can make readers want to read the whole thing again!”

She was done with him.

After the lesson of that experience, every night at ten past ten, they would wrap up their tutoring session, turn off the lights, and head home. But one evening, when they came out of the classroom, they walked straight into Zhou Fanghua, who was just emerging from the Class 1 classroom. The three of them stared at each other and froze on the spot for a moment, sinking into a sea of awkwardness.

Afterward, at dinner, Li Kuiyi explained to Zhou Fanghua that she was only tutoring He Youyuan because he had helped her first — but Zhou Fanghua just pressed her lips together and smiled without saying a word.

Why are you smiling, Li Kuiyi’s face went red, and she buried herself in her rice bowl.

Of seven days in the week, Saturday was the one day He Youyuan didn’t walk her home. On those days, Li Kuiyi would stop by the little magazine stand near the school gate, buy a magazine, and take the bus home alone.

This particular Saturday was her turn for cleaning duty. After sweeping the classroom, she came out to find the sky had already darkened. The street food stalls outside the school entrance were fragrant with tempting smells, and she suddenly felt hungry. She bought a teriyaki onigiri and stood nibbling it while browsing through the magazine stand. She was in luck today — she found a copy of October and a copy of Harvest, and decided to buy both. She was just about to dig her coin purse out of her bag when she suddenly heard someone call her name from behind: “Li Kuiyi?”

She turned around to see Liu Xinzhao, who had an elderly white-haired woman on her arm — the two of them appeared to be out for a stroll.

Liu Xinzhao introduced her: “This is my grandmother. I’m taking her for a walk nearby.” Then she bent down and raised her voice near the old woman’s ear. “Grandma, look — this is one of my students.”

The old woman understood, and repeated it loudly twice: “A student, I know — your student.”

Li Kuiyi raised her hand to say hello, but when it came time to speak, she realized she had no idea how to address the old woman. Should she call her grandmother, the same as Liu Xinzhao? Or just grandma? Or great-grandma, perhaps?

Liu Xinzhao saw her struggle and smiled. “Just call her grandma.”

“Hello, Grandma.” Li Kuiyi finally managed her greeting, a little shyly. She was used to interacting with Liu Xinzhao at school; running into her outside, and catching a glimpse of a social role she occupied beyond the identity of teacher, felt slightly unfamiliar.

Liu Xinzhao glanced at the two magazines in her hand and asked, “Buying books here?”

“Yes.”

“Good, good — reading books is good,” the old woman suddenly beamed, radiating unusual warmth. “You must read more books so you can get into a good university, and then you’ll have a future.”

Words of such obvious instructive intent from a grandmother somehow carried no irritating edge — they only made the listener feel she was a rather endearing old lady. Li Kuiyi nodded dutifully. “Yes, yes.”

The old woman, pleased that Li Kuiyi agreed with her, happily gave Liu Xinzhao a firm pat on the arm, bragging proudly: “Our girl studied hard! Got into Beijing Normal University! You know it? Beijing Normal University! In Beijing — Beijing is a wonderful place…”

Li Kuiyi was genuinely astonished and looked up at Liu Xinzhao.

She had always loved listening to her teach Chinese class, yet had never known she was a graduate of Beijing Normal University. Now that she thought of it, Li Kuiyi had done research on Beijing Normal University before — its Chinese literature department was excellent, and she had long admired it.

Liu Xinzhao tilted her head and watched her grandmother helplessly, but made no move to stop her.

The old woman rambled further and further off topic. Then Liu Xinzhao sighed softly and said quietly to Li Kuiyi, “Grandma is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s now — she’s forgotten a lot of things, but she remembers these details clearly, and tells everyone she meets.”

She must love you so deeply, Li Kuiyi thought immediately.

“Sorry to have shown you something so personal,” Liu Xinzhao said, reaching out to gently pat her on the head.

“Not at all, not at all.” Li Kuiyi shook her head quickly.

Liu Xinzhao smiled softly. “Go buy your books. I’ll take her for a little walk up ahead.”

“Alright — goodbye, Grandma. Goodbye, Teacher Liu.”

Li Kuiyi listened to the old woman’s murmuring drift in and out of earshot as she watched the two figures slowly walk away. She suddenly couldn’t figure it out: if Liu Xinzhao had graduated from Beijing Normal University, why had she come back to teach in this small city? Even if she hadn’t stayed in Beijing, going to a larger city would have offered better career prospects.

If she herself ever had the chance to leave, she was definitely not planning to come back — there was nothing here that made her want to stay.

Could it be that Teacher Liu’s character is simply too noble — her ambition, to revitalize education in her hometown?

By comparison, I’m really too pragmatic, Li Kuiyi thought.

As the year’s end approached, the temperature remained maddeningly unpredictable — hot one moment, cold the next. Sometimes mornings were still warm and pleasant, only for the sky to turn overcast by afternoon, with fine drizzle interspersed with flurries of snow that swirled and fell without gaining any real momentum, yet managed to leave the air and ground thoroughly damp and clammy, cold and sticky on the breath.

One wave of illness swept through the class and then another, with as many as four students out sick at the same time.

But overall, a festive atmosphere still pervaded the campus. After the National Day holiday, students had not enjoyed a single complete break — they had nearly forgotten what vacation tasted like. The three-day New Year’s holiday of 2015, then, could only be described as uplifting.

On the last day of 2014, there was no evening self-study. The moment the dismissal bell rang, a cheer erupted across the school grounds, and within five minutes, the teaching building was completely empty — not a single silhouette remained.

The temperature had climbed back up over the past couple of days. Li Kuiyi had only put on a sweatshirt and a thin knit sweater under her school jacket, though she had wrapped a scarf around her neck. She walked out through the school gate with her head tucked down. She had given He Youyuan the day off — no tutoring arranged — but He Youyuan had bolted the moment school ended, without sending her home, without even saying a single “Happy New Year.” She felt a tiny sting of disappointment.

This time last year, he was still setting off little firecrackers in front of her.

See, men are just unpredictable, Li Kuiyi thought indignantly. She wasn’t going to tutor him anymore. He could fend for himself.

She was deep in her sulk and walking at a slightly faster pace than usual, moving along in silence, when a dark figure suddenly darted out from the side and startled her. She steadied herself and looked up — He Youyuan, wearing a black windbreaker jacket, was standing in her path, languid and vivid, grinning at her.

“Want to go ring in the New Year?” He tilted his chin up at her.

Li Kuiyi let out a dismissive “humph,” walked around him, and said lightly, “No.”

He Youyuan heard the pouting note in those words, caught her arm, and stepped in front of her. “Who upset you this time?”

“You.” Li Kuiyi lifted her eyes to look at him.

He seemed surprised. “Me?”

He quickly ran through everything that had happened today in his mind, and couldn’t identify anything that might have upset Li Kuiyi. The only thing was that he had bolted when school ended without saying anything to her — but he had done that because he wanted to…

“Was it because I didn’t wait for you after school?”

Li Kuiyi said nothing and turned her face to the side.

He Youyuan had his answer. He apologized and explained at once: “I’m sorry — it wasn’t that I didn’t want to wait for you. I just wanted to come back first and get my mountain bike so I could ride you to the New Year’s celebration… I was trying to give you a surprise.”

Li Kuiyi saw the bike parked nearby and knew he was telling the truth, but she still didn’t turn back to face him. “But I don’t like that — making someone feel bad first and then revealing it was supposed to be a surprise.”

“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.” He Youyuan was at a bit of a loss, and could only shake her arm gently.

Li Kuiyi was also wrestling with whether to forgive him. After a brief silence, she sniffled and forced herself to keep a straight face. “Well then — where are we going for New Year’s?”

He Youyuan looked at her and smiled. “Near Hongchuan Bridge — you can set off fireworks there, and lots of people go.”

Fireworks were prohibited in the city center, but Hongchuan Bridge was near the outskirts, so fireworks were indeed allowed there — though it was a bit far. Li Kuiyi bit her lip, thought it over, and shook her head. “That won’t work — it’s too far.”

She couldn’t be out with a boy until the middle of the night, even if she did like him a little.

“We won’t actually stay there until midnight,” He Youyuan said. He had known she’d worry about this, and from the very start he’d had no intention of keeping her out so late — he felt that would be disrespectful to her. “There’s a fireworks display at eight o’clock tonight — it lasts twenty minutes. After it ends, we can play with sparklers for a bit and then head back. Would that be alright?”

Li Kuiyi lowered her gaze and considered for a moment while He Youyuan watched her tensely.

Then she suddenly spoke up. “What are sparklers?”

He Youyuan hadn’t expected that question. He let out a bewildered “ah,” then blankly gestured with his hands and said, “They’re like a stick about this long — you hold one in your hand and light it, and it shoots out sparks, very pretty.”

“Oh, those things.” Li Kuiyi nodded. “Isn’t that what they’re normally called — little spray flowers?”

He Youyuan: “…”

Miss Pineapple, you are truly, deeply unromantic.

He conceded with a laugh: “Fine — little spray flowers. So, do you want to go with me?”

“Oh.” Li Kuiyi pursed her lips, kept her eyes averted, and held her head high. “Fine, then.”

He Youyuan wheeled his mountain bike over, and Li Kuiyi noticed for the first time that it now had a rear seat attached — when she and he had gone to see that film together, there had been no rear seat on the bike.

“Did you install this rear seat yourself?”

“I did.”

Could it really be that he installed it just to take her to see the fireworks? Li Kuiyi thought.

“Is it sturdy?” she asked.

He flicked a finger against her forehead. “What’s there to worry about? This seat can hold two hundred kilograms.”

“Oh.”

He Youyuan reached out and helped her tighten her scarf, then swung himself onto the bike. “Hop on.”

Li Kuiyi climbed onto the rear seat.

“Hold on tight,” he reminded her.

Wouldn’t holding his waist be too intimate? Have they gotten to that point yet? Li Kuiyi wondered, and so she extended her thumb and index finger and pinched a fold of fabric at the side of his waist as casually as possible.

He Youyuan glanced back and shook his head in exasperation. He took her hand by the wrist and placed it firmly at his waist, emphasizing: “Put it here.”

Then he pushed off hard, and she had no choice but to grab on.

Even through the layers of clothing, she could feel it — a young man’s slender waist, lean and firm.

Good heavens, a boy’s waist is actually hard? Li Kuiyi was genuinely puzzled. Doesn’t it hurt their sides when they sleep?

Along the streets, the lampposts, car headlights, and neon signs lit up one after another. He carried her through the veins of the city. She watched the flowing night scenery ahead and suddenly felt free and content — as though the air were full of fresh, lively particles, and all you had to do was breathe in deeply and your whole body would float.

She didn’t know how long they had been riding, but when they arrived at Hongchuan Bridge, it was just past seven-forty.

There were indeed plenty of people here, gathered in small clusters, chattering excitedly. At the highest point of the bridge, the fireworks had already been arranged — though some people couldn’t wait and had already lit sparklers, posing for photos in the brilliant shower of bright stars. Around them, a few vendors had set up stalls selling firecrackers and small fireworks of various kinds.

He Youyuan went and bought a bundle of sparklers and a lighter, handed the sparklers to Li Kuiyi, and kept two for himself.

Light them — sparks streamed out from the tips in flowing showers of light, accompanied by soft, crackling pops, like stars bursting open one by one.

He Youyuan quickly burned through his sparklers, and Li Kuiyi wanted to give him two more. He didn’t take them — he simply watched her play. Li Kuiyi, through the dazzling flare of sparks in her hand, saw him standing against the dark backdrop of night, his head tilted slightly, watching her with complete, undivided attention.

She turned slightly away, her heartbeat quickening.

As the sparkler in her hand was nearly burned down to the end, he walked over and asked the old, familiar question: “Are you happy?”

Li Kuiyi nodded.

She thought he would put on his usual air of feigned indifference and say he was a little happy too — but instead he lowered his eyes, and while helping her light a new sparkler, he murmured quietly: “Actually, this is my first time being close to a girl too. Sometimes I get ahead of myself. If there’s anything I do wrong, you’re not allowed to just ignore me — you have to tell me. Alright?”

All around them it was deafeningly loud, yet she could only hear his voice.

“Alright,” Li Kuiyi said, just as quietly.

“Bang —”

At that very moment, a firework launched from Hongchuan Bridge and tore into the night sky, blooming into a vast ocean of stars above the vault of heaven before raining down in five-colored streams, magnificent and resplendent. Then more fireworks burst upward in a cluster, like the colors inside a kaleidoscope erupting in the darkness, lighting the whole sky at once. Below, the upturned faces of the onlookers were all bathed in light, eyes shimmering and radiant.

Silence. Within all this boundless noise and clamor, Li Kuiyi felt only silence.

The booming of the fireworks in her ears was like the drumbeat of her own heart. She loved to stand in such vivid, dazzling moments and feel — the simple fact of her own existence.

It made her feel that life was a truly beautiful experience.

She smiled without meaning to.

However long the fireworks display lasted, she kept her head tilted back for that long — her neck stiff without her even noticing.

Twenty minutes later, the last burst of light in the sky dimmed. Li Kuiyi finally drew herself back from the wanderings of her inner world and looked over at He Youyuan. His expression was alive too, as though the radiance of a fleeting moment had settled in his eyes.

The fireworks display ended, and the two of them walked side by side across Hongchuan Bridge. The cool night wind passed through their hair.

Near the highest point of the bridge, the ground bore scorch marks from the fireworks, with spent shells scattered all around. They had already walked past when He Youyuan’s eyes suddenly lit up. He turned back, pointed at the discarded cardboard shells, and said with some excitement: “Hey — what if we collected all of this and sold it as scrap? We could probably make quite a bit.”

What kind of terrible idea is that?

Li Kuiyi looked at him helplessly. “Please — we don’t have bags big enough for all of that.” She paused and considered. “Unless… we used your school bag.”