·
Zhou Fanghua realized that something had gone wrong between Li Kuiyi and Fang Zhixiao a week later. That day, a light rain was falling. After lunch in the canteen, she and Li Kuiyi were squeezed under a small umbrella together, heading to the school store to buy a few gel pen refills. By chance, they ran into Fang Zhixiao halfway there. Zhou Fanghua pressed her lips into a gentle smile, raised her hand to wave hello — but Fang Zhixiao coolly turned her face away. She glanced at Li Kuiyi beside her and found that Li Kuiyi, too, had her eyes cast down, as though she hadn’t seen the person in front of her.
The two umbrellas drifted past each other in silence.
Zhou Fanghua had already noticed, these past few days, that Li Kuiyi was in low spirits — at mealtimes she often fell into a vacant stare, picking at a single piece of green vegetable several times without managing to get it onto her chopsticks, chewing each mouthful of rice with mechanical slowness, as though she had fallen into some nameless, suffocating fog.
Although Li Kuiyi was a person of few words, she wasn’t a closed-off person. She would complain to Zhou Fanghua about her homeroom teacher and about a certain boy in class with a sharp tongue; she’d turn pink and let slip a few things when Zhou Fanghua asked, with curious interest, about her and He Youyuan……So when Li Kuiyi didn’t proactively bring up why she was in a bad mood, Zhou Fanghua didn’t rush to ask. She knew: she didn’t want to talk about it.
No wonder she didn’t want to talk about it — she and Fang Zhixiao had had a falling out.
Could even such good friends have difficulties between them that were hard to resolve? Zhou Fanghua found it rather surprising, honestly, because in her eyes, though the two of them had quite different personalities, they had both shown each other tremendous tolerance — she’d always assumed they would go on tolerating everything about each other, forever.
Zhou Fanghua cast another quiet sideways glance at Li Kuiyi, saw her still stubbornly keeping her gaze lowered, and couldn’t help reaching out to hook one of her fingers, then gently asked in a low voice: “What happened……between you two?”
As soon as she’d asked it, she felt a pang of regret — because she knew herself: she wasn’t asking purely out of concern. There was also a faint, shadowy, voyeuristic curiosity about other people’s troubles. And especially since she had once envied the closeness between Li Kuiyi and Fang Zhixiao — now watching a crack appear in it, the feeling inside her was all the more complicated and unclear.
Li Kuiyi didn’t hide it: “We had an argument.”
“Oh? Why?”
“I’m not sure.” Li Kuiyi shook her head. “It seems like it was over something small.”
The argument had unfolded quickly — so quickly that Li Kuiyi still didn’t know how it had started. She only knew that when Fang Zhixiao said “can you dial back the possessiveness,” a hollowness opened up inside her for a moment. The sensitive self-respect of a teenage girl would not allow her to continue arguing. So she forced on an indifferent air, said “fine,” and fled in a panic.
In the days since, she’d been waiting — waiting for Fang Zhixiao to send her a QQ message, or write her a note, telling her that she’d said it in a fit of emotion, that she didn’t think her possessiveness was strong at all. She thought: if Fang Zhixiao said those things, she would definitely be willing to forgive her, because they were best friends——
But she waited, and it never came.
The QQ chat window between her and Fang Zhixiao was as still as standing water. At the very top, it still showed the nickname she’d changed to as a joke just a few days ago: “Fang Zhixiao (Sworn Enemies Edition)” — which now, in hindsight, carried a strange, absurd, prophetic kind of irony.
The phrase “sworn enemies” was something they’d hurled at each other constantly, baring their teeth in mock fury, countless times. Yet what they hadn’t anticipated was that when their friendship truly fractured, those two words would never be spoken at all.
Zhou Fanghua didn’t probe further. Without knowing the full story, there was no real advice she could give. She sighed quietly, squeezed Li Kuiyi’s hand, and offered a dry, hollow word of comfort: “Don’t feel too down. Maybe you both just need a little time.”
“Mm.” Li Kuiyi returned the grip. In that moment, something rose up in Zhou Fanghua’s chest — an inexplicable feeling, something close to having this person all to herself. She knew it wasn’t something she should feel, but still, it brought her a quiet, inexplicable happiness.
The light rain fell in a fine, intermittent drizzle. Two days without sunshine, and Liu Yuan City’s heat finally eased somewhat. The sky cleared, and the daylight had a clean, clear quality — not harsh or glaring. In class, Jiang Jianbin asked the students by the windows to open them, let the sunlight come straight in, saying he wanted to air out the dampness in the classroom.
But it wasn’t long before he noticed that the sunlight was falling in bright, vivid patches across the face of the girl sitting in the center of the room, lingering there for a long time without moving, and the color of her eyes, lit up by the light, seemed paler than usual — she didn’t appear to be focused.
Li Kuiyi daydreaming in class? Now that was a rare sight, Jiang Jianbin reflected inwardly. Even so, he called Li Kuiyi out for a talk after class. In his view, Li Kuiyi’s state of mind could only be connected to her grandmother’s passing — she simply hadn’t come to terms with it yet — so he didn’t reproach her, only offered the platitude that the departed are gone, and those still living must go on living well.
Li Kuiyi nodded. Jiang Jianbin saw that she was cooperative enough, and let her go back.
Why she’d been daydreaming in class — Li Kuiyi couldn’t quite say herself. She only felt that the things she’d experienced these past few days were too surreal, as if someone was trying to shatter the inner world she’d spent seventeen years constructing, then rebuild it from scratch.
Only now did she suddenly realize: she had been far too idealistic before. She had believed the world operated according to a certain set of principles — that even if things were imperfect in places, overall it was a good world.
But in reality, everyone was simply living for themselves — betrayal, deception, abandonment, contempt, harm — all of it came easily.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen these things before. It was just that, to protect herself from being hurt, she’d held too firmly to the world she had created in her mind — the world where she was right — and that world’s values were freedom, equality, individuality, moral integrity, and love.
Apparently not everyone played by those rules. Or more precisely, most of the people within her field of vision never had — she simply hadn’t seen it clearly until now.
Li Kuiyi badly wanted to write Liu Xinzhao a long letter, telling her about every confusion and every question she had. But after picking up her pen and writing an opening, she tore the paper to shreds. She tried several more times, and eventually lost even the strength to hold the pen.
So she had no choice but to bury herself in studying — endless memorization, practice problems, and review notes. Compared to the great questions of life, the small problems on these exam papers were remarkably easy. She worked through them smoothly and fluently, and found herself sinking into that flow with relief. She also used spare scraps of time to put together a revision plan for He Youyuan, telling him what study materials to buy, how to use them, and what kind of feedback she expected in return.
When she’d finished all of this, she finally felt a deep, settled satisfaction. She leaned back in her chair and let out a long, slow breath.
As she’d expected: dwelling too much on things does no good. Better to come back down to earth.
Another Saturday arrived. At dusk, Li Kuiyi went to the school gate to catch a bus. The sunset that day burned with a strange intensity, as though the sky along the horizon had caught fire — tongues of flame rolling one over another, blotting out nearly half of the sky.
Li Kuiyi squeezed onto the bus. All the seats were taken, so she stood near the back door, one hand gripping the overhead rail. Just as she was pulling out her earphones to put them in, she noticed something — in the seat directly in front of her was a familiar silhouette. He was looking down at his phone, his slender back gently curved, and the brilliant, blazing light of the late evening sun was filtering through the bus window onto the top of his head, making his hair look golden, loose, and soft.
For that single instant, Li Kuiyi’s heart hammered in her chest.
She almost wanted to reach out and tap him on the shoulder — but reason told her that He Youyuan couldn’t be here. At this time of day, he should still be in his Beijing art studio, attending a sketching class.
She bit her lip and stared at the back of his head, willing him to turn around on his own. Perhaps her gaze was too intense — after a moment, the person really did lift his head from his phone, put a hand to the back of his neck, rolled it to one side, and glanced around.
The instant he turned his face, Li Kuiyi felt the disappointment settle in. Oh — it wasn’t him.
How could it have been him? It was never going to be him.
She gave a self-mocking little smile, took out her phone, and sent He Youyuan a message.
Li Kuiyi: Just now on the bus after school, I ran into someone.
Li Kuiyi: Looks a lot like you.
The moment she’d sent it, the bus gave a sudden lurch, and she grabbed the overhead rail quickly, stuffing her phone into her pocket. It wasn’t until she’d gotten off the bus that she fished it out again to check. He Youyuan had, of course, already replied.
He Youyuan: Just got out of class.
He Youyuan: How much did you miss me?
I miss you, my foot!
Li Kuiyi was just about to scold him for being so self-absorbed, when her eyes fell on the message she’d actually sent him: really miss you.
A perfectly objective statement had somehow turned into something embarrassingly sentimental.
Li Kuiyi cringed, typing quickly: “About that……you could tell I meant to type the wrong thing, right?”
He Youyuan: I couldn’t tell.
He Youyuan: Which word did you type wrong?
Li Kuiyi knew he was doing this deliberately, yet she still explained: “What I meant to say was, I ran into someone on the bus today whose back looked a lot like yours.”
He Youyuan: So doesn’t that still mean you were thinking of me?
Li Kuiyi had nothing to say to that. She sent back a string of ellipses and turned off her phone screen, ignoring him.
That night, Liu Yuan City was hit by another downpour. The daytime had offered a brief reprieve, but the sky had stayed overcast — and now, come evening, the rain came crashing down again like water being dumped from basins and ladles, and the temperature dropped sharply. Students all wrapped themselves in their school uniform jackets.
When evening self-study let out, the rain had not let up at all. Li Kuiyi carefully held up her umbrella and moved slowly toward the school gates in the flow of students heading home, head down to watch where she stepped, careful not to land in any puddles. The rain had brought out many parents gathering by the arched stone bridge with umbrellas for their children, effectively blocking the path to the school gate in an impenetrable crowd.
Li Kuiyi shuffled forward slowly in the press of people. Then someone carelessly stepped on her foot — a dark footprint appeared instantly on her white sports shoe. She hissed in irritation, staring at the toe of her shoe, thinking she’d been so careful and still hadn’t escaped it. Right then, a girl beside her gave a small squeal of excitement, apparently meaning to nudge her own friend with her elbow, but not noticing in time — she nudged Li Kuiyi instead: “Look, look, there’s a really cute guy on the bridge!”
Li Kuiyi was jolted, and instinctively looked up.
At the highest point of the arched bridge, beneath the dim, pale light of the streetlamps, in the pouring rain — a boy stood holding an umbrella. A section of pale, slender wrist bone extended from the cuff of his dark jacket, the faint trace of blue veins just visible. He was looking across the curtain of rain, his gaze passing over many heads, and he gave her a light, easy smile.
Li Kuiyi stared at him, her body carried forward unconsciously by the flow of people.
Even with his face in clear view, she still didn’t dare believe it was really him. He wasn’t supposed to be here, was he?
And yet her heart was hammering, thud thud thud — it startled her into quickly tilting her head to clamp the umbrella handle between chin and shoulder, then pulling the Apple Watch off her wrist and stuffing it into her pocket.
With that accomplished, Li Kuiyi raised her eyes once more, looked across the flowing crowd, and saw that he too was moving forward with the current. He was tall, standing a head above the people around him, and she found him easily — she could see that the easy smile still lingered at the corner of his mouth, and he was looking at her in an unhurried, casual way.
She had no idea how he’d found her in the vast, surging crowd.
When they spilled out through the school gate, the crowd scattered in all directions, and the space around her finally opened up. Li Kuiyi took a deep breath of cool, sharp air, kept her eyes straight ahead, and walked on — past the “Scholar’s Mansion” residential compound, across another intersection — until the people around them had thinned to almost nothing. Only then did she turn her head. Predictably, she met his eyes. In the dark expanse of the overcast sky, there was almost no sound — only the rain striking the surface of the umbrella, a taut, steady drumming.
She gripped the umbrella handle, wanting to ask how he’d suddenly come back — but before the words could leave her mouth, he stepped toward her, stopped in front of her, and said with complete earnestness: “You said you were thinking of me.”
“What about the art studio — how did you explain it?” Li Kuiyi heard the slight tremor in her own voice.
“I requested a half-day leave. I’ll head back tomorrow morning.”
She gave him a look: “Why go to all that trouble?”
He Youyuan smiled and reached out to pinch her cheek: “Have you forgotten? Tomorrow is your birthday.”
“I hadn’t forgotten — but you really didn’t have to……” she started to mutter. Before she’d even finished, He Youyuan lifted his umbrella over her head, took the one from her hand at the same time, shook the water off it, and said as he folded it up: “I did, actually.”
He handed the folded umbrella back to her, and the moment she took it, he bent down and scooped up her other hand, cradling it in his.
Although it wasn’t the first time they’d held hands, they’d been apart for a month and a half, and when their palms made contact again, a strange warmth turned over in both of them. Li Kuiyi found that feeling unbearably flustering, and she wanted to pull away, twisting her hand to loosen his grip. He turned his head and looked at her sidelong, his voice carrying a note of aggrieved reproach: “You won’t even let me hold your hand?”
“Why do you have to hold it anyway?”
“I’m not even allowed to want to?” His tone was spectacularly aggrieved, and his grip tightened.
Li Kuiyi couldn’t budge him, and relented — but her mouth refused: “You’re really insufferable.”
He Youyuan lit up immediately, craning his head around in front of her face: “You find me insufferable again?”
Li Kuiyi knew he was reading too much into it again. She was indignant enough to snap back: “This time it’s genuine.”
“And which time wasn’t?” He smiled, looking at her eyes as he asked.
“……”
Li Kuiyi had nothing to say to that.
They passed a twenty-four-hour convenience store, and He Youyuan led her inside by the hand. Compared to the rainy world outside, the convenience store was warm and dry, and nearly empty — just a single staff member with their head bent over a phone. It was very quiet.
“I haven’t eaten dinner yet — I’m a little hungry.” As he said this, He Youyuan made his way toward the prepared food section and picked out two bento boxes, holding them up toward her. “Eat something with me?”
Li Kuiyi wasn’t hungry, but a late-night snack seemed fine: “Sure.”
They heated up the bento boxes, each grabbed a drink, and brought everything upstairs to the second floor where it was easier to talk. He Youyuan pried open the lid of the bento box, pushed it toward Li Kuiyi, and snapped apart a pair of disposable chopsticks for her. Li Kuiyi took them and said: “You don’t have to do all this for me.”
“Do all what?” He Youyuan ate a large mouthful of rice and looked up at her.
“Things like opening the lid for me, or peeling the wrapper off the disposable chopsticks.”
“Oh.” He tilted his head, with a small smile. “Why not?”
Li Kuiyi thought about it, then felt she might be taking the fun out of things. He was happy to do it, so let him. Still, she explained earnestly: “It’s not that I’m saying you shouldn’t — I mean that I won’t deduct points from you in my mind just because you don’t. You can relax.”
Based on the romance novels and TV dramas she’d read and watched, she knew that boys had their own rules of courtship — like making sure the girl walked on the inside of the footpath, unscrewing the bottle cap before handing a drink to her, buckling her seatbelt in the car. In short, the boy was supposed to automatically take on the role of caretaker.
She just felt that this kind of childish, formulaic caretaking often obscured the true essence of affection. What she wanted was genuine regard and respect.
“Hmm……” He Youyuan looked at her and said: “I understand what you mean — but honestly, if you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have even noticed I was doing those things. Even if I were sharing this meal with my auntie, or my maternal grandparents, I’d do the same things. It’s just……second nature.”
Ah, well then.
Li Kuiyi lowered her eyes and quietly started on her bento — black pepper beef fried noodles.
“Have you been happy lately?” He Youyuan asked suddenly.
Li Kuiyi felt a tremor in her chest, her eyes growing hot all at once.
She resented him a little for it. Eating was fine, chatting was fine — but why go straight for the heart like that?
Her grandmother’s passing, she’d told He Youyuan about. But the sordid things she’d discovered about the older generation in her family, and the falling-out with Fang Zhixiao — those she hadn’t told him. He had the freedom to say outright: my parents are divorced, my dad had an affair. But she didn’t have that ease. She couldn’t lay her wounds open for others to see. Maybe one day, when she truly stopped caring about all of it, she’d be able to say it out loud.
“Why do you ask?” She wound a chopstick-full of noodles, and asked back, as if unaffected.
He Youyuan pulled a tissue from the dispenser and wiped the corner of his mouth. “Zhou Ce told me.”
Li Kuiyi’s heart lurched, though she didn’t look up — she only paused with her chopsticks. So he knew after all. And Zhou Ce knew too, which meant Fang Zhixiao had told Zhou Ce about their fight.
That kind of thing — how could she have told Zhou Ce? They’d fought because of him in the first place.
“It wasn’t Fang Zhixiao who told Zhou Ce — he figured it out himself,” He Youyuan added. “He asked if I knew about it, probably hoping we could figure something out together, because Fang Zhixiao’s been in a low mood too lately.”
Ah.
So she hadn’t trusted her best friend, once again.
Li Kuiyi’s nose stung, and tears fell, dropping into her bento.
“Too bland — seasoning it with tears?” He Youyuan sighed and pulled out a tissue, handing it to her.
Li Kuiyi looked up through watery eyes and glared at him.
She took the tissue and wiped her eyes, then asked: “So you came running back for this? You wanted to help me sort things out?”
“What problem could I possibly solve that your top-ranked student brain can’t?” He Youyuan actually gave a cheerful smile. “Don’t give me too much credit. I came back because you said you were thinking of me — I wanted to see you, help you feel a little less of that missing, and also happen to celebrate your birthday with you.”
Smooth talker.
Li Kuiyi stopped engaging with him, digging out a piece of beef from the fried noodles and chewing it with satisfying fierceness. But then she heard He Youyuan say: “I’m nothing like Zhou Ce. That guy is supremely overconfident, walking around with a savior complex, wanting to make the two of you reconcile — I gave him a proper talking-to.”
She knew he was deliberately baiting her, so she played along: “What did you say to him?”
“I said: those two best friends know each other better than anyone. What business does an outsider like you have meddling? Right?”
He really did have a good sense of boundaries, Li Kuiyi thought. She feigned a grudging acknowledgment: “Fine — you have some self-awareness.”
That sense of restraint sparked in her, unexpectedly, a slight urge to confide. She hesitated, then said: “Honestly, I don’t even know whose fault it was — hers, or mine, or maybe we both played a part. But even if she apologizes to me or I apologize to her, I don’t think this can just be set aside, because she doesn’t seem to think of me as her best friend anymore — and that’s what I care about. If I didn’t care so much, we could just carry on being good friends. But I do care. I don’t think I can tolerate any flaw in a relationship.”
As she spoke, her nose began running again, and the tears wouldn’t stop. She didn’t want to cry in front of He Youyuan, but talking about this, she simply couldn’t help it.
He Youyuan picked up a tissue and leaned across toward her, wiping away her tears. After a long silence, he finally began to speak — in an oddly easy, unhurried tone: “Speaking from my years of experience as someone’s son, someone’s grandson, someone’s nephew — even the truest feelings have their flaws.”
He seemed to be casting his mind back to something, speaking slowly: “Take my mom, for instance. I know she loves me very much. She’s not by my side, but she comes back to see me whenever she has time, gives me plenty of spending money, supports my interests and hobbies. But I also know that when my mom and dad divorced, she actually considered not fighting for custody of me — because her career was on an upswing at the time, and she didn’t have enough time for a child, and she didn’t trust a nanny. In the end, it was my maternal grandmother who said: you have to keep the child, and I’ll help you raise him — and only then did my mom make up her mind to fight for me. Sometimes when I remember that, I feel a kind of sadness. And yet I can feel how much she loves me, so I decided not to let that flaw matter to me. And then there’s my grandmother and my auntie — they both dote on me, but they’ve also had countless moments where they wanted to string me up and give me a good thrashing. And then, since my grandmother and my auntie were helping my mom raise me, my mom couldn’t just coast on goodwill and feel comfortable about it — she actively gives them a support allowance every year. Especially for my auntie, who was so young when she started helping raise me. So my mom just pours money into her — buys her a car, bags, watches — coaxes her into doing it willingly. So even the best of feelings still needs a certain material foundation to sustain it. I don’t know if that counts as a flaw, but looking at it that way, feelings don’t seem to be something unconditional or purely pristine.”
He Youyuan said all of this in one breath, and as he spoke he found himself puzzling over something — Li Kuiyi was a sharp person, not only in academics but in reading the world too. She had the ability to see through things. So why did she keep tying herself in knots over this particular matter?
He looked at her, and saw that she was listening to him with a faintly dazed expression.
Just in that instant, He Youyuan suddenly understood a great many things. He suddenly knew why she walked that pitch-dark road home alone every evening after school — though she kept insisting there were streetlamps, it wasn’t dark, but was it really not dark? Those streetlamps were so high above, and the light they cast down was so thin and faint — and she still wouldn’t open her mouth to ask her parents to pick her up. At the zoo entrance, she had also stared in a trance at the back of that happy family of three. When his father had slapped him, she instinctively asked how he’d explain it at home. When her grandmother died, he’d been treading carefully so he didn’t say the wrong thing and hurt her, and she’d said: I’m fine — it seems my fear of death is greater than my grief……
Was it perhaps that she had never been truly, genuinely loved — and so had never truly known what real love looked like?
She could only imagine what love was supposed to look like. And so, in her imagination, that image of love kept being refined and refined, until it approached something ideal.
He Youyuan didn’t know how accurate his speculation was. But looking at the tear-streaked face in front of him, he ached for her all the same. If it were true, then he couldn’t begin to fathom how she had grown into who she was now — within that kind of environment — so courageous, so sharp, so free and full of upward reaching. That was someone who had done something remarkable.
He only looked at her, and his own eyes gradually grew wet. He stood up, cradled her head against his chest, wrapped it in his jacket, and ruffled her hair in a clumsy, tender way, while his other hand quietly lifted to brush the corner of his own eye.
Li Kuiyi wept without a sound, wetting a patch of his white T-shirt.
The rain outside had stopped, but the air and the streets were still damp. The drainpipes on buildings around them rushed and gurgled, and the leaves on the trees had been washed bright and clean, glistening a vivid, rich green in the night.
The two of them walked out of the convenience store and took each other’s hands again.
He Youyuan held her hand, loosening and tightening his grip, loosening and tightening, as though working up to something. After a moment, he said softly: “Do you want to go stay at a hotel with me?”
“What?” Li Kuiyi almost couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.
“Not to sleep in the same room.” He Youyuan’s face went immediately bright red, and he was quick to explain: “Two separate rooms. I just want to ring in your birthday together with you — once it hits midnight, we cut the cake, talk for a while, and then we each go back to our own rooms to sleep. Would that be okay?”
Li Kuiyi’s thoughts were in a tangle, uncertain whether she should agree. She stood with her head down, wrestling with herself for a moment, and in the end shook her head: “No.”
She raised her eyes, and seeing a flicker of disappointment cross He Youyuan’s face, she asked softly: “Are you unhappy about that?”
“I’m not unhappy — if you don’t want to go, then we don’t go. It’s fine with me.” He Youyuan met her eyes, then stumbled over his words: “Actually, I knew what you’d be worried about. The idea wasn’t great of me to suggest.”
He raised three fingers in a solemn pledge: “I genuinely only wanted to celebrate your birthday with you. I wasn’t thinking about anything else — I know where the line is. I wasn’t looking to do anything like that at this point in things……”
He was clearly offering a clarification, yet Li Kuiyi listened to it with burning red ears.
“I understand.” She said in a small voice.
He Youyuan squeezed her fingers: “Don’t be upset with me.”
“I’m not.”
“I’ve already reserved a cake and it’s in the hotel fridge — the hotel’s not far from here. We can go collect the cake together, then once we’ve eaten it, I’ll walk you home. How does that sound?”
“Fine.”
He Youyuan took her hand again, and they walked together in an easy, unhurried sway toward the hotel. After the rain, the night air was fresh and pleasantly cool, pleasant to breathe, and the hands they were holding, and their hearts, swayed slowly in the same easy rhythm. The small puddles they stepped over reflected their shadows back up at them.
“What if I’d said I was unhappy — would you have gone to the hotel with me?” He Youyuan tilted his head toward her.
Li Kuiyi raised her chin, gave a breezy shake of her head: “No.”
He Youyuan smiled, as if he’d expected this: “I knew it.”
He knew she wouldn’t change her principles for him — but he just happened to love that about her, that steadfastness.
At the hotel, Li Kuiyi settled onto a sofa in the lobby to wait while He Youyuan went up to collect the cake. After a little while, he came back down carrying a cake box and a gift box. Inside the cake box was a vanilla ice cream cake.
They didn’t wait until midnight — He Youyuan lit the seventeen birthday candles without delay. The vanilla ice cream cake turned out to be exceptionally good, and the two of them ate two more slices than intended. Without quite noticing it, the clock quietly crossed over into a new day.
“Happy birthday.” He said.
“Thank you.”
“I like you.” He couldn’t stop himself from adding.
Li Kuiyi tilted her head, saying with deliberate precision: “You just finished saying that feelings aren’t pure and flawless.”
Meaning: so what about yours, then?
He Youyuan smiled, leaning back against the sofa, languid but completely sincere: “What kind of love others choose to give is their business. What kind of love I choose to give you — that’s mine.”
Li Kuiyi — this is my idealism.
How long the spark of idealism could last, Li Kuiyi didn’t know — but she felt it didn’t matter anymore. At this moment, she was willing to believe in a young person’s promise.
After all — what was the harm in believing, just this once?
The next day when Li Kuiyi returned to school, He Youyuan had already left. Recalling the brief few hours they’d spent together, she felt as though it had been a dream. A longing rose in her, unbidden — she found herself hoping the university entrance exams would hurry up and arrive.
When early September came, the school held a preliminary diagnostic exam for the Year Twelve cohort. After the exam, the school took pity on the students and granted them one full day off. Li Kuiyi had been in class for the entire summer vacation and felt thoroughly exhausted — all she wanted was to spend one day lying in bed doing nothing. But unexpectedly, Xia Leyi invited her to her farewell party.
Xia Leyi said she had decided to study abroad.
Li Kuiyi didn’t feel she and Xia Leyi were particularly close, but since she’d already been invited, she didn’t want to refuse, so she accepted. She picked out a small gift to bring along.
The venue was a private dining room in a restaurant, and Xia Leyi had invited only students from Class One, so Li Kuiyi knew everyone there — there was no sense of unfamiliarity. Still, when she saw Qi Yu, whom she hadn’t seen for a long while, she was mildly startled. He’d lost a great deal of weight; there was a faint shadow of stubble across his face, and his expression was something caught between mature and world-weary.
Student get-togethers, even farewell ones, tend to be boisterous affairs. At the dinner table, they started playing a game of “Werewolf.” Li Kuiyi didn’t know the game at first, but after hearing the rules explained, she joined in with reasonable competence.
In the very first round, Li Kuiyi drew one of the most important roles — Seer.
The game moderator announced: “Seer, open your eyes.”
To avoid providing any information to outside players, the room fell silent enough to hear a pin drop. Li Kuiyi opened her eyes without any visible change in expression, looking over the classmates sitting with their heads bowed and eyes closed.
In that instant, she thought: it really did feel good to be the one with eyes open.
In the world of Werewolf, each person has their own way of playing — and what she needed to do now was play by her own rules. For instance, right now, she needed to use her ability and reveal someone’s identity.