Xie Yichen’s words had been pitched just right — loud enough for everyone to hear, yet without any edge of impatience or rudeness.

Something plunged briefly inside Ning Sui’s chest. Her gaze followed his.

The small plate of strawberries in front of her — every one of them gleaming and plump. She felt as though she could taste again that sweetness she’d experienced when she bit into them, along with a hint of something tartly astringent and impossible to name.

The room’s collective gaze swung toward the two of them. Wu Zixiao let out a soft “ah,” his arm frozen midair, uncertain whether to pull back.

Ning Sui licked her lips, raised her eyes slightly, and met Wu Zixiao’s gaze. “Mm, thank you — but we do already have strawberries.” Then she turned naturally toward Zhong Lu. “Do you all want some?”

Zhong Lu fulfilled her role as the perfect wingwoman: “Yes, yes! Thank you, Brother Wu!”

The gathering had started around seven or eight that evening, and before anyone realized it, it was nearly midnight.

The club president was a health-conscious person who knew everyone was busy, so he called it before twelve. People began dispersing and calling cars to head home.

Zhong Lu, being perceptive, didn’t ask Ning Sui whether they should go back together. She said a brief goodbye and left with her stage partner.

The other students in the private room were gradually gathering their things. The karaoke system automatically played background music. Ning Sui sat where she was, and glanced quietly sideways — Xie Yichen was looking at his phone and showed no sign of getting up.

She had just opened her mouth to say something when he looked up first: “I called a car. I’ll take you back.”

Ning Sui made a soft sound of surprise, hesitated, then nodded. Out of instinct she glanced to the other side — Qu Handong and the others were still lounging on the sofa. “Are your roommates coming with us?”

Xie Yichen lifted one eyelid and looked over with lazy indifference. “Don’t worry about them.”

Simultaneously, in the dormitory group chat:

Shi Fu: 【Heading out?】

Liu Chang: 【It’s like ten-plus kilometers, let’s call a car, the three of us.】

Qu Handong: 【@Xie Yichen, Bro, what’s the situation on your end? Do you need company~】

Xie Yichen: 【I call you Bro, and you can’t figure it out?】

Qu Handong: 【zipper mouth.jpg】

Qu Handong: 【Got it. Your humble servant was overstepping 🙇】

Qu Handong: 【I’m still in shock though】

Liu Chang: 【Look how self-aware I am — didn’t even ask】

Qu Handong: 【Getting out of your hair now, back to the Applied Math homework 😁】

Before the car arrived, Ning Sui pulled on the cream-white knit cardigan she’d layered under her down jacket and told Xie Yichen: “I’ll run to the bathroom first.”

Each private room had its own restroom right at the entrance. Ning Sui took her phone and was debating whether to also bring her single-strap crossbody bag when Xie Yichen glanced at her, then raised his chin with a casual air: “Leave your things here — I’ll watch them.”

Ning Sui: “Oh.”

She went to use the restroom. Xie Yichen leaned back against the chair and idled away the time on his phone. Du Junnian had sent some company documents, and he opened them from the beginning, reading through them carefully in order.

After a little while, someone suddenly sat down beside him and called his name softly: “Xie Yichen.”

Xie Yichen glanced over — it was Zhou Mengqi.

Most people had already left by now. She had stayed behind specifically for this.

Xie Yichen quickly locked his screen, set the phone face-down on his thigh, and asked without inflection: “What is it?”

Zhou Mengqi had her hair in double pigtails, and tonight she’d made a special effort to do a party makeup look designed to make her eyes appear larger. She spoke in what she considered her most endearingly soft voice: “I’m also a Qinghua engineering student — some of my classes are cross-listed with the computer science department. I’ve been thinking about transferring into the CS department in my second year, and I was hoping to get some advice about the Yao Class curriculum. Could I possibly add you on WeChat?”

“The curriculum is publicly available,” Xie Yichen said. “If you’re interested in the Yao Class specifically, you can also check the official website.”

“……”

Zhou Mengqi hadn’t anticipated that even so airtight a pretext would be turned down. This was genuinely difficult.

She’d just asked a classmate of hers in the Qinghua CS department about him — apparently this Xie Yichen was quite well-known. No one in the department hadn’t heard of him, and word was that girls from other programs also pursued him.

Handsome was an understatement — but he was also incredibly aloof. The difficulty level was clearly high.

Zhou Mengqi’s eyes moved around the room thoughtfully. She understood that pushing this hard would only make her seem annoying. She decided it was better to think of another approach, and hadn’t yet formed a new line of thought when she heard Xie Yichen speak: “Would you mind standing up for a moment?”

“Huh?” Zhou Mengqi felt his attitude had softened slightly, and for a second she didn’t follow. She only thought, hearing him speak at such close range — his voice was so low and resonant. Genuinely compelling.

Xie Yichen picked up Ning Sui’s pink single-strap bag and gave her a sideways look, his tone entirely offhand: “You’re sitting on the strap.”

Zhou Mengqi: “……”

—

Xie Yichen hadn’t brought much with him — just his phone. He was walking out of the private room with Ning Sui’s bag and down jacket in hand when he ran directly into her emerging from the restroom.

Ning Sui blinked, then methodically looped her scarf around her neck several times before accepting the jacket he held out for her.

But when she tried to zip it, the zipper got stuck halfway. She wasn’t even in winter proper yet and she was already bundled in so many layers. The scarf had crept up to nearly cover her neatly upturned nose, and when she looked down, her lashes — long and curled — fanned like tiny folded fans.

Xie Yichen looked down, watching her clumsy, laborious efforts to tuck her hair clear of the zipper. Despite himself, the corner of his mouth turned upward.

“Spinning your web again?”

“……” Ning Sui’s hands paused.

“Clumsy as they come — how did you manage a 685?” Xie Yichen tilted his head close with an unhurried ease and pressed her collar’s two top buttons into place.

His breath clearly carried a smile. He stepped around behind her, pulled her down jacket hood out from beneath the scarf, and — with just a flicker of mischief — tugged it up over her head.

The hood was enormous. Ning Sui’s face was almost completely swallowed by it. “……”

This person was actually exploiting his height advantage to bully her.

She stood rigid for a moment, then flipped the fluffy thing back behind her head and, voice muffled, shot him a look: “I didn’t say I wanted the hood up.”

Xie Yichen had both hands in his pockets, and the laughter shook gently through his chest.

The two of them made their way out to the curb and got in the car.

The driver confirmed the addresses — first to Jingda’s northeast gate, then on to Qinghua’s southeast gate.

Just then, his phone rang. It was Fangfang.

Ning Sui instinctively glanced at Xie Yichen. He happened to also be looking at her at that moment. She hesitated, then said in an unhurried, almost coaxing tone: “It’s my mom. Could you maybe not make any sound for a bit?”

There wasn’t enough time for Ning Sui to explain the full picture, but Xie Yichen studied her quietly and said nothing — only gave a single, concise nod.

He seemed to understand her situation quite well.

Ning Sui exhaled, and her nerves finally settled.

The moment she answered, Xia Fanghui went straight to the point: “Back at school yet?”

Ning Sui steadied her voice and said “mm”: “On the way.”

“Took a car?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone with you?”

This time Ning Sui hesitated for just a fraction of a second: “Yes.”

“Little Coconut, don’t lie to me.” Fangfang was sharp. “If there is, say yes; if there isn’t, say no. Be honest — I won’t be upset.”

“……”

That line. Ning Sui had been tricked by it as a child, naively believing her mother would actually let it go, so she’d confessed everything — and the outcome had of course been a far worse scolding than usual.

She felt a twinge of guilt: “There really is.”

“Male or female? How many people?”

Fangfang hadn’t interrogated her this closely in a long time. Ning Sui’s heartbeat briefly went unsteady. She stared out the window and, steeling herself, said: “Not counting me — two.”

Well. There was the driver. And there was Xie Yichen. That made two, didn’t it?

She paused, then answered vaguely: “……Male, I suppose.”

“What?! Males!?”

Fangfang’s voice predictably went up a notch. Ning Sui quickly added: “They’re the classmates who came with me on the Yunnan trip.”

This was a slight sleight of hand. Because of Hu Ke’er’s repeated guarantees, Fangfang had full confidence in Xu Zhou and Shen Qing’s reliability, and had come to believe all four of them had known each other since high school as a close-knit group of friends. The Yunnan trip had gone smoothly and pleasantly, which had earned them all a substantial boost in her trust.

So Ning Sui kept it deliberately ambiguous, hoping her mother would naturally assume she was riding back with one of those two.

There were two or three seconds of silence on the other end of the line, then a calm voice: “Put one of them on.”

“Huh?” Ning Sui was caught flat-footed.

“What ‘huh.'” Xia Fanghui was suspicious, and quickly: “Are you actually in the car right now? Don’t tell me you’re still at karaoke.”

Her mother was deeply skeptical, and if she stalled any longer, things would only get more convoluted. Ning Sui exhaled, bowed her head, and nudged the arm of the person beside her.

She held the phone out to Xie Yichen, keeping her composure: “That — my mom wants to talk to you.”

Xie Yichen looked at her sideways, his expression unreadable as he raised an eyebrow.

Ning Sui pressed her lips together and quickly muted the call, then asked with complete sincerity: “Could you — pretend to be Shen Qing?”

“……”

Xie Yichen gave her a sideways look. After a brief pause, he took the phone, his voice low and steady: “Hello, Auntie.”

Ning Sui was genuinely anxious inside — she wasn’t sure whether he’d understood exactly what she meant. If he slipped up, Fangfang would absolutely go into a panic.

She was, at her core, a bit of a coward. She pretended to look out the window at the scenery while actually straining to hear every sound from the person beside her, her own heartbeat ringing in her ears as clearly as a pin dropping.

She couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end — only that he gave a low, unhurried response: “Yes — we’re on the way back to campus.”

Then Xia Fanghui spoke again at some length. By all appearances, it was mostly her talking. Xie Yichen spent most of the time listening and replying, his manner unhurried and patient: “Don’t worry, I know.”

The night was still bustling at this hour — foot traffic everywhere, the roads alive with headlights, the towers still lit, a row of neon signs glowing brilliantly in the distance.

In the close confines of the car, Ning Sui leaned her chin on her hand and gazed at the flowing lights outside, listening to his unhurried responses. The indeterminate flutter in her chest never quite stilled.

And as the car moved forward, that warmth seemed to migrate from somewhere inside her and settle in the back of her neck, the curve of her cheeks.

Maybe the scarf was too thick. It was making it a little hard to breathe. Ning Sui eased the window open a sliver. The night air rushed in through the narrow gap, cool and light against her face, and her lashes shivered with it.

Less than five minutes later, Xie Yichen ended the call and returned the phone to her.

Sooner than she’d expected. Ning Sui glanced at him, curious: “What did she say?”

“Just asked us to be safe, and to send her a message when you’re back in the dorm.”

She’d half-expected Fangfang to ask questions, or even demand to keep his contact information.

Ning Sui thought back for a moment, and wondered if her mother’s tone had sounded slightly tired just now. She considered, then sent Fangfang a message: 【Mom, have you been really tired from work lately?】

Xia Fanghui’s side showed the typing indicator for a while, then replied: 【No, I’m helping the little one with Chinese homework 🙂】

Xia Fanghui: 【I’m on the verge of collapse 😭😭😭】

Xia Fanghui: 【I asked him to write an ABCB-pattern idiom and he gave me Rolls-Royce?? Why not just go ahead and write Makka Pakka??】

“……”

—

After the midterm exams, everyone’s nerves could finally relax a little.

At the same time, a wide variety of extracurricular and cultural activities were getting underway in full force.

Liang Xinyue was part of the school’s arts and culture department, and helped oversee the staging and aesthetics for this year’s Campus Top Ten Singer competition. Through her connections, she quietly smuggled the rest of the dormitory into the audience for the preliminary rounds — and came back afterward to air her private thoughts: “Some of those guys are way too confident in themselves. What was that supposed to be? Not a single note was on pitch.”

That said, it couldn’t be a blanket condemnation — there were quite a few students with genuinely impressive vocal ability.

Yu Qin said wistfully: “That’s what it means to have a gift, I guess. I love singing too, but I was born completely tone-deaf.”

Liang Xinyue: “Same!”

She’d happened to overhear Ning Sui running through a musical theater piece in the dorm once, and had been completely stunned. How did her high notes come so effortlessly? And her voice was so clean and bright — genuinely beautiful.

Liang Xinyue said: “Suisui, why didn’t you sign up for the campus singing competition? I’d bet you’d make it to the finals at minimum!”

Ning Sui looked up from the book she was reading at her desk and curved her lips faintly: “Things have been busy. Musical theater rehearsals take up a lot of time.”

Bi Jiaxi leaned over to look and found Ning Sui was doing math problems again — advanced calculus from Demidovich, no less. She grabbed her by the shoulders and let out a cry: “Oh! Oh! Woman — it’s studying that’s stealing your time! You’re the most intense person I know!”

Ning Sui laughed and dodged sideways. The others all shook their heads and lamented their own laziness and mediocrity.

She studied for a while longer, then felt her phone buzz. She’d been added into a new group chat — by Zhang Yuge. The other members were Hu Ke’er and Lin Shuyu.

Zhang Yuge got right to it: 【December 9th is A’Chen’s birthday. He’s been so busy he doesn’t want a party, but I think we should do something with a bit of ceremony — so I wanted everyone to brainstorm!】

Jin Ge: 【Let’s go! Brainstorm away!】

Lin Shuyu replied almost immediately: 【Oh, don’t be so formal about it, Brother Fish~】

Jin Ge: 【🙂】

Kuge Lin: 【Let bro think of some options.】

Kuge Lin: 【1. Escape room or murder mystery game; 2. Dinner out; 3. Karaoke; 4. Group study session.】

Paopao Ke: 【Kuge, are you seriously suggesting group study??】

Paopao Ke: 【Please tell me you’re just messing around.】

Zhang Yuge, in a rare moment of alignment with her, was thoroughly disdainful: 【He is — ignore him.】

Hu Ke’er posted a ridiculous meme of Lin Shuyu jumping in a red bodysuit.

Kuge Lin: 【Furious!! How do you have that!!】

Kuge Lin: 【Zhang Yuge I’m going to turn you into octopus takoyaki!! 🙂】

The thread was in danger of going off the rails. Zhang Yuge didn’t engage: 【Anyway — Xie Yichen has been preparing for a programming competition lately, and the regional final just happens to fall on his birthday. I’m guessing he’ll have no time during the day, so maybe we do a dinner in the evening? Everyone can also prepare a gift.】

Kuge Lin: 【Sure, I’ll book a venue!】

Jin Ge: 【And should we invite his roommates too? Old Lin and I had a meal with them before — we all know each other.】

Hu Ke’er had no objection: 【Fine by me.】

Jin Ge: 【@Suisuisui, what do you think~】

After a brief pause, Ning Sui replied: 【Sure, no problem from my end.】

Jin Ge: 【👌】

Jin Ge: 【Then I’ll take care of the cake!】

Ning Sui had heard Xie Yichen mention the competition before — it was called the ACM/ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest. Qinghua usually sent students from the Yao Class to compete. Xie Yichen was apparently teaming up with Qu Handong and a second-year upperclassman from their department.

Five hours, twelve problems — measured in both quality and speed. Not only did it require contestants to have a solid mathematical foundation, but it also tested algorithmic logic and programming ability. Submitting a wrong answer also incurred a time penalty. There were roughly two hundred competing teams from across the country — in every sense of the word, fiercely competitive.

The contest allowed a wide range of programming languages, and after their team discussed it, they’d agreed to use Python — the language they all knew best.

Xie Yichen had been preparing for this for some time, staying up several late nights in a row for it. He had already flown to four different cities for regional rounds — this Beijing round was the final leg, and it happened to be hosted by Qinghua this year.

On the day of the competition, teams from various universities arrived one by one to fill the venue. The space was enormous, with areas already neatly divided and marked out — row after row of computers stretching as far as the eye could see. Qu Handong, taking in the spectacle, was a little tense and kept muttering under his breath: “We’re not going to collapse in the final round, are we.”

Then he quickly added: “Knock on wood, knock on wood — don’t jinx it.”

Xie Yichen and the others sat in the staging area reading, and no one bothered to respond to him. Qu Handong wandered around for a bit, then looked up at Xie Yichen’s expression — and suddenly felt the anxiety drain out of him.

— What was there to worry about? All he had to do was hold tightly to a top-tier player’s coattails.

The organizers had a rule: for every problem solved correctly, a team received a balloon of a distinct color. And if your team was the first in the entire field to solve a given problem, you also received a special balloon reading “First Problem Solved.”

Qu Handong raised a fist with boundless bravado: “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! I want to clear every last test case!”

—

Lin Shuyu had asked Xie Yichen ahead of time whether he had any preferences for the birthday venue, but this person was so busy he hadn’t even had time to reply properly — he just told Lin Shuyu to pick whatever, so Lin Shuyu spent a while scouring the university district and turned up a restaurant with a truly distinctive character.

A certain outdoor Western-style casual restaurant in Haidian.

Think Pizza Hut — pizzas, pasta, and the like — but al fresco, giving it the feel of an open-air roadside stall. Somehow it managed to be both. Each table had its own fire brazier, so even eating outside didn’t feel particularly cold.

Ning Sui and the others arrived punctually at five-thirty. Soon after, Liu Chang and Shi Fu showed up, and the standard round of introductions began.

When it was Ning Sui’s turn, Liu Chang’s appetite for gossip was practically cooking him from the inside. He thought she was genuinely lovely — lips red, teeth bright, peach-blossom eyes clear and vivid — more beautiful, he decided, than any campus beauty queen title could convey. No wonder his bro A’Chen had no eyes for anyone else.

After the karaoke that night, they had tried to pry something out of Xie Yichen, but the sum total of what they’d learned was that Ning Sui and he were both from Huai’an, and that they’d known each other since their second year of high school — beyond that, nothing useful.

Qu Handong and the others had been thoroughly dissatisfied, crowding around him and pestering him with questions — was he chasing her or what?

All he remembered was that the man had declined to confirm or deny it, and told them to stop being so nosy when they had nothing better to do.

Liu Chang and Qu Handong had whispered about it afterward — damn, and that’s just the pursuit stage? Considering how he’d been handing her strawberries and pouring her yogurt, someone who didn’t know better would think they were already dating!

They’d both agreed: learning this had somehow made Xie Yichen feel more like a real person. But Liu Chang got the sense that Zhang Yuge and Lin Shuyu didn’t seem to be in the know, so he’d been cautious and hadn’t brought it up.

Zhang Yuge pulled everyone into a larger group chat. Xie Yichen and Qu Handong sent a message saying they’d be a little while but were on their way.

Jin Ge: 【If you pass a Holiland on the way — any chance you could grab some of the molten cheese tarts? 😍】

Jin Ge: 【And a few egg tarts too, bro is starving】

Kuge Lin: 【Right, and something with yogurt and soda if possible】

Xie Yichen replied with leisurely composure: 【Sounds like you two are the ones having the birthday】

Zhang Yuge shamelessly: 【Bro doesn’t care, bro wants it, bro knows you love me most~】

Xie Yichen replied with mock fury: 【Get lost.】

Someone asked in the group how the competition had gone and what rank they’d placed — and then there was silence.

Zhang Yuge announced with complete certainty: “My bro has definitely gone to spend his competition prize money on a little cake for me.”

He then turned to flag down a server: “Hey, let’s get those flowers and music going — thanks!”

Lin Shuyu smacked his forehead: “Let me queue up some crowd-pleasing songs.”

Venue set up, everyone present, orders placed. People settled into lounging with their phones as they waited. Ning Sui sat on a plastic stool, stealing a moment to let her mind drift.

She was, truth be told, in a somewhat low mood.

That afternoon she’d gotten her midterm scores. Most were within expectations — quite high — but the one subject she cared most about, Mathematical Analysis, had gone poorly. Out of a hundred, she’d scored 86. Given Jingda’s grade-point requirements, she wasn’t sure what that would come out to even after the class-wide grade adjustment — probably a B+.

In hindsight it was foreseeable. That had been her final exam, and by then her focus had already started to float away early. She’d gone to the professor’s office to look at her paper and found avoidable errors from carelessness — no wonder she’d kept failing to derive the formula during the test. She sighed quietly, feeling suddenly transported back to the second year of high school, when she’d lose points on problems she was perfectly capable of solving, for all kinds of small reasons.

Fangfang was a relentless perfectionist, and the standard had rubbed off on Ning Sui. She’d been aiming for a 3.9 GPA this semester — a B+ would definitely drag that down.

She let out a quiet sigh. Sorry, Comrade Yu Zhiguo.

She didn’t know when Xie Yichen would arrive. Ning Sui cast her eyes downward in thought, then sent him a message: 【Getting close?】

About two minutes later, Xie Yichen replied: 【Where are you? I don’t see you.】

The place was genuinely hard to find — you had to enter through a tucked-away side door, then walk the length of a corridor before arriving at the restaurant’s outdoor area.

Ning Sui quietly glanced to the side. The four guys were absorbed in a game of Pictionary on their phones. Hu Ke’er was alone, happily scrolling through short videos on Shanying.

No one noticed when Ning Sui got up. She headed toward the inner hall, head lowered, typing a reply to Xie Yichen: 【Let me share my location with you.】

On the map, there had only been one little blinking dot — hers. Quickly, another appeared beside it.

In that instant, Ning Sui felt something she couldn’t quite name.

Two dots blinking, each one knowing it would eventually reach the other.

It had been about two or three weeks since she’d last seen him — though they’d exchanged messages here and there, she still found herself thinking about him without meaning to.

She wanted to know what was happening in his life, and she wanted even more to be part of it. She felt as though — something soft kept sweeping across the inside of her chest, leaving a faint, pleasant itch.

Ning Sui pressed her lips together, and suddenly it occurred to her — what if Xie Yichen had also had a rough competition? What if things hadn’t gone well for him either?

……She wondered if the birthday gift she’d prepared could cheer him up even a little.

She walked from the main entrance out to the roadside, watching the map on her screen, and drifted slightly into distraction. Then she thought she heard someone calling her name.

Ning Sui’s lashes lifted without thinking, and she looked up.

— Xie Yichen stood across the street, one hand holding a great big cluster of cheerful, multicolored balloons. He looked vivid and full of spirit. The evening breeze moved softly around him, stirring past his handsome, deep-set eyes.

When he spotted her, he broke into a light jog and crossed the narrow, quiet road, coming to a stop right in front of her.

The young man leaned slightly forward, smiling, and met her eyes at her level. The light in his gaze burned brighter than the streetlamps lining the road.

“First Problem Solved. These are for you.”