Lin Zhexia couldn’t remember if she had moved closer to him.

Her lowered hands, looking somewhat awkward, seemed to have accidentally brushed against Chi Yao’s hand in the confusion.

Her final impression of the photo-taking was Chi Yao leaning slightly closer to her, then his hand rising behind her under the photographer’s guidance.

After the “click,” the moment was frozen in time.

The shop owner used an instant camera and took two photos of them.

Since Lin Zhexia’s posture was rather stiff and she hardly changed positions, both photos turned out almost identical, with only subtle differences.

In the photos, the night was illuminated by countless lights, with many blurry figures passing in the background. In the center of the frame stood a girl in a white coat holding cotton candy, staring blankly at the camera. Beside her was someone much taller, looking downward, slightly tilting his head to glance at her from an angle. His jawline and neck contours were exceptionally defined, his pose relaxed and natural.

The subtle difference between the two photos was in what Chi Yao did with his hand behind her head—he made two similar gestures.

He had made a “peace” sign.

Because he held it above her head, it looked like a single rabbit ear.

In the other photo, his fingers were slightly curved, making the “peace” sign bend downward, as if the rabbit ear was drooping.

After receiving the photos, Lin Zhexia quickly pulled Chi Yao away from the stall.

Once she calmed down, she thought maybe she was overthinking things and it might just be an ordinary gesture, so she asked, “What were you doing with your hand?”

Chi Yao replied, “Isn’t it obvious?”

“?”

“Rabbit ears.”

“…”

So they were rabbit ears.

Lin Zhexia moved past this topic and asked, “Do you want one of the photos?”

Chi Yao’s voice was cool: “Does the human prop not even get paid for his services?”

Lin Zhexia asked, “So do you choose first or should I?”

Chi Yao said, “Whatever.”

Lin Zhexia didn’t hesitate: “I’ll choose first, then.”

She carefully compared the two photos. Chi Yao looked good in both, while she appeared awkward in both, making it difficult to decide.

Finally, she shuffled the photos and picked one with her eyes closed.

She drew the one with the drooping rabbit ear, where the young man’s slightly curved fingers made the whole pose seem somewhat cute.

“…” She couldn’t help saying, “Why are you so photogenic?”

Chi Yao took the other photo from her hand and said, “Because I’m good-looking.”

…

So shameless.

Also impossible to refute.

After exploring most of the market, everyone decided to head back early since walking at night wasn’t convenient.

“It’s ten o’clock,” Chen Lin said, “Any later and my mom will scold me.”

Tang Shuxuan added, “Me too, my mom just called me.”

Xu Ting offered, “I’ll see you two home then. The three of us can share a taxi.”

While talking, Tang Shuxuan stood next to Lin Zhexia, waiting for the car.

She noticed Lin Zhexia was still looking at the instant photo and realized she was still concerned about what had happened earlier. She whispered in her ear, “It’s fine, don’t take it to heart. Why are you so nervous today? It was just taking a photo together. With your relationship with Chi Yao, no one would think anything of it.”

“What kind of relationship do you and Chi Yao have? You two grew up together like brothers—even if you went out tomorrow showing that photo and claiming it was a couple photo of you and Chi Yao, no one would believe it. Relax.”

Lin Zhexia remained silent.

Her fingers holding the photo tightened slightly.

Tang Shuxuan looked toward the road and said, “The car’s here, we’re leaving now. Bye-bye.”

Lin Zhexia put the photo down and waved at her: “See you tomorrow.”

Perhaps because of the photo incident.

On the way back, Lin Zhexia and Chi Yao didn’t talk much.

“I’m a bit tired from all the fun.”

When they reached the entrance of their apartment building, Lin Zhexia put the photo in her pocket and pointed at the door: “I’ll go up first.”

After thinking for a moment, she added, “I’ll keep this photo safe.”

As Chi Yao waved goodbye, he shook the photo in his hand and said, “No need for safekeeping, just put it up.” He thought casually, “Hang it on your desk.”

Lin Zhexia: “?”

Chi Yao: “So you can admire my face every time you look up.”

Lin Zhexia: “…I suggest you don’t push your luck.”

When she got home, Wei Ping was still working overtime, so she told Lin He about what happened at the market.

Lin He cracked sunflower seeds while asking, “Did you finish that cotton candy?”

Lin Zhexia: “Little He, I told you so much, and all you care about is the cotton candy?”

She continued, “Yes, I finished it. It was sickeningly sweet.”

After describing all the delicious food at the market, Lin Zhexia clutched the photo in her pocket and, for some reason, suddenly blurted out: “Mom.”

Lin He watched TV, not pausing her seed-cracking: “What is it?”

Lin Zhexia: “Something else happened at the market today.”

Lin He continued watching while listening.

“We wanted to take a photo, but we didn’t realize it was a couple’s photo studio,” Lin Zhexia said nervously, carefully observing Lin He’s expression, “So I ended up taking photos with Chi Yao.”

On TV, the main characters were arguing, and Lin He watched with interest.

Her expression didn’t change at all from what Lin Zhexia had just said.

Lin Zhexia repeated: “Chi Yao and I, accidentally, took a couple’s photo.”

Lin He: “I heard you, I’m not deaf.”

“…”

Lin He looked confused: “So what’s the problem? It’s just a photo.”

“Are you two dating?” Lin He asked.

“No,” Lin Zhexia replied glumly.

“Then that’s the end of it,” Lin He said. “If you ask me, that vendor is strange, having conditions for taking photos—aren’t they just driving customers away?”

When Lin Zhexia brought this up, she had a self-destructive attitude.

She was willing to risk suspicion, willing to be scolded by Lin He.

But none of that happened.

Lin He, like everyone else—like Tang Shuxuan and Xu Ting—simply wouldn’t suspect anything between her and Chi Yao.

Lin He didn’t think anything of an ordinary photo together, and urged, “Go take a shower now, get some rest early. By the way, haven’t you finished your homework yet?”

After showering, Lin Zhexia spent a long time trying to solve a math problem without success.

She closed her math workbook, spread the photo on the desk, and solemnly wrote today’s date on the back of the photo with a black pen.

After looking at it for a while, she tucked the photo into the fairy tale book where she kept her wish cards.

After autumn, the first semester of sophomore year was approaching its end.

Their sophomore curriculum was very intensive. In one year, they needed to complete not only the sophomore content but also half of the junior year material, to leave ample time for comprehensive review and mock exams in their senior year.

Lin Zhexia’s grades were decent in her freshman year, but in her sophomore year, she began showing subject imbalance, especially in mathematics. The deeper they went, the less satisfactory her test results became.

Solid geometry, functions—these were all her weak points.

Sometimes, even when Chi Yao had explained problems to her, if the conditions changed slightly, she would make mistakes again.

The final exams lasted three days.

She seemed to have a grudge against final exams. Just like last winter’s exam, she caught a cold before this one, too.

After finishing the math exam, Lin Zhexia knew she was in trouble.

For the last few major problems, she left two blanks.

Chen Lin: “Desk mate, you don’t look so good.”

Lin Zhexia slumped on the desk, feeling dizzy: “I think I failed the exam.”

Chen Lin: “The math problems were very difficult this time. The average score probably won’t be high either. Don’t worry too much. Think about how winter break starts tomorrow—cheer up a bit.”

Lin Zhexia didn’t say anything more.

Near the end of the school day, Chi Yao sent her a message.

Chi: Old Liu needs to see me tonight

Chi: Wait for me a while

Looking at the contact name “Chi,” she replied: Got it.

“By the way,” Chen Lin sneaked over and whispered, “Do you remember the gossip about Chi Yao when he went to the physics competition?”

Because of her cold, Lin Zhexia’s mind was slow to react: “What?”

Chen Lin: “The one about someone confessing to him. Nobody knew who it was then, but recently people are saying it was Shen Shanshan, who’s already transferred to another school.”

Chen Lin, worthy of her reputation in the gossip world, always had first-hand information: “Shen Shanshan confessed to Chi Yao. Didn’t he tell you?”

Lin Zhexia didn’t answer her question. She gathered her energy and asked instead: “How do you know?”

Chen Lin said, “School forum.”

“But I didn’t participate. I’ve stopped posting random comments online for a long time. Just many people were discussing it, so I went to take a look.”

After speaking, Chen Lin went back to her other tasks.

Soon, the bell rang for class dismissal.

Everyone rushed out with their holiday assignments, welcoming the vacation. Before long, only two students on duty remained in the classroom.

Lin Zhexia waited for Chi Yao while opening the school forum.

Chi Yao’s popularity never seemed to decrease.

So she didn’t need to scroll down to find the new discussion thread; she could spot it immediately.

However, due to the nature of the content, the post title didn’t use their full names.

Instead, it used their initial code names: “sss” and “cy.”

11L: [Shen Shanshan, I think people from Class 2 mentioned that she was in the same middle school as Chi Yao.]

12L: [So it’s been years of secret love?]

13L: [That’s kind of shipper material… After all, in the competition team, she was the only girl, and the only one from Class 2.]

14L: [Indeed, they would make a good match. Both have excellent grades.]

…

Lin Zhexia continued reading.

Unexpectedly, among the flood of comments, she saw her name.

52L: [Isn’t Chi Yao very close to Lin Zhexia from Class 7?]

When she saw her name appear alongside Chi Yao’s, Lin Zhexia’s heart skipped a beat.

She scrolled down the screen.

Moving to the next page.

53L: [You’re overthinking. They’re childhood friends.]

54L: [Yeah, people discussed this at the beginning of the school year. These types are the least likely to get together. They’ve known each other for so many years.]

55L: [The saying that childhood friends can’t compete with newcomers isn’t without reason. The same applies the other way around.]

56L: [Forget about getting together—if a childhood friend I’ve known for so many years liked me, I would die of awkwardness.]

…

57L: [But Shen Shanshan isn’t exactly a newcomer, right? Looks like the confession wasn’t successful, and she’s already transferred schools…]

There weren’t many comments about her.

The discussion quickly returned to Shen Shanshan.

Lin Zhexia thought that day in the competition team, Shen Shanshan had sent away not just Xu Ting but others too. Probably some people guessed the situation and accidentally spread it.

By the time she finished reading the post and looked up, the classroom was empty except for her.

Even the students on duty had left.

Looking at the empty classroom, the nasal congestion from her cold suddenly intensified.

Her phone on the desk lit up again.

Chi: I’m coming over

Lin Zhexia didn’t reply.

She remembered that day when changing Chi Yao’s contact name, she could only secretly change it to “Chi.”

Because only she knew what this “Chi” meant.

Even if someone accidentally saw it, they wouldn’t easily figure it out.

When Chi Yao appeared at the doorway of Class 7, tears were welling up in her eyes.

He was about to say “let’s go,” but as he got closer, he saw Lin Zhexia blink, and tears unexpectedly fell from her eyes.

Chi Yao paused, and when he spoke again, his tone was much gentler: “Why are you crying?”

Lin Zhexia spoke with an obvious nasal voice: “I’m not crying. It’s just the cold making me uncomfortable.”

The feeling of liking someone should be sweet.

Lin Zhexia didn’t deny this.

But her sweetness seemed to vanish in an instant.

“My nose hurts,” her whole body trembled very slightly from sobbing, “My eyes hurt too.”

She didn’t want to cry.

But after the first tear fell uncontrollably, the rest were beyond her control.

Her tears seemed unstoppable: “…And I did terribly on the math exam.”

“I left two major problems blank.”

“Two problems, twelve points each, that’s twenty-four points.”

“I might fail.”

The more she spoke, the more visibly she trembled, the corners of her eyes turning red: “Why did I leave two problems blank? I reviewed these problems during my study sessions.”

“Why couldn’t I write them out? Why did I forget during the exam…”

Chi Yao stood in front of her desk, reached over to grab some tissues from someone else’s desk, and bent down close to her.

The distance between them was very short.

He was practically leaning in front of her, wiping her tears.

The tissue was as gentle as his movements.

“Stop crying,” he said, “Which two problems did you leave blank?”

With blurry vision, Lin Zhexia said: “The second-to-last one.”

Chi Yao made an “mm” sound and asked: “What else?”

Lin Zhexia: “And the third-to-last one.”

As her tears were wiped away, Lin Zhexia’s vision gradually cleared.

She could see Chi Yao’s school uniform, his face leaning very close after bending down, his seemingly accentuated eyebrows and eyes, his downcast gaze, and the deep look he gave her.

“I’ll explain them to you when we get back.”

He said, “Then you won’t make the same mistakes next time, okay?”

Lin Zhexia nodded.

At the same time, she realized with absolute clarity.

They had known each other for too long. So long that no one would ever think in that direction.

They were closer than anyone else in the world, yet the furthest from the word “like.”

Seeing that she had stopped crying, Chi Yao handed her the tissues and asked: “Have you packed your things?”

Lin Zhexia shook her head: “Not yet.”

“When you’re done crying, sit over there.”

After she moved to Chen Lin’s seat, Chi Yao began packing her schoolbag, asking as he packed: “Do you need this? What about this? Got everything, anything else?”

Lin Zhexia pointed at the desk drawer: “There’s still a set of math papers.”

The remaining sunset light shone through the classroom windows, falling on both of them.

This scene felt familiar.

Lin Zhexia recalled that when she was very young, there was once a similar moment.

She had been called to the teacher’s office and scolded for chatting with her deskmate during class. When she came out of the office crying, she saw Chi Yao waiting for her in the empty classroom, packing her pencil case while he waited.

The childhood scene gradually overlapped with the current one.

Lin Zhexia suddenly called out to him: “Chi Yao.”

Chi Yao was crouching down, his hand paused while packing her pencil case, his throat moving slightly: “Did you forget something else?”

“No,” Lin Zhexia’s voice was still a bit hoarse from crying, “I just felt like calling your name.”

At seventeen, Lin Zhexia had found someone she liked.

However, this age was too immature to properly handle such feelings.

And more difficult than being seventeen was the fact that the person she fell for was her best friend since childhood.

He was someone she couldn’t risk any mistakes with, couldn’t afford to lose, and absolutely shouldn’t have fallen for.