The winter holiday this year had been scheduled relatively early. As soon as the New Year holiday ended, the school organized a city-wide joint examination so that everyone could shake off the cobwebs before the break.

Fang Zhuo had little sense of what the joint examination meant in the grand scheme of things, and the provincial and city rankings did not feel particularly real to her. As far as she could tell, it was just more exam papers — far less tangible than the class ranking. As long as she could maintain a mid-range position or above, she would certainly be able to get into a decent first-tier university. This was a conviction that had been drilled into her over the years by the people around her.

Because the marking was standardized across all schools, the results came back relatively slowly this time.

Fang Zhuo had known the moment she finished writing that her performance had not been great. After listening to the teacher go over the answers, she had a rough sense of where things stood, so she had no great expectations.

The final question in mathematics was one she actually knew how to do; the general approach to solving it was not difficult at all — it was only that the computational steps were excessively complicated.

Quite badly, as it turned out: she had made an extremely careless mistake on her very first derivative, and everything after it cascaded into total error.

Her luck in physics had also been poor. The questions were not difficult, and yet she had looked at one diagram several times before she understood it, and in analyzing the motion she had missed one condition.

She could not quite describe the state she had been in during this examination — perhaps something like pouring water into concentrated sulfuric acid: floating on the surface, then suddenly crackling and exploding in all directions.

Yan Lie analyzed it for her and said that this was still nerves — they had affected her reaction speed. But it was not a major problem; with reinforcement, it could be overcome.

By comparison, the chances of a disaster in Chinese and English were considerably smaller. For the first time, Fang Zhuo felt a sense of gratitude toward those two subjects.

When the English results were finally announced, Fang Zhuo had scored in the nineties for the first time in her life.

The English teacher was deeply moved. She had assumed Fang Zhuo’s scores were like an ox cart that would never budge no matter how hard one pulled — she had not expected such a substantial improvement within a single semester.

And she had specifically analyzed the paper with Fang Zhuo. Fang Zhuo’s progress was solid and grounded: the questions she had guessed at were almost all wrong, but the biggest change was in the expansion of her vocabulary and her application of basic grammar.

At this rate, even without doing anything else, if she simply rewrote the characters in her English essay legibly and improved her guessing luck by just a fraction, her score could climb another five or six points — and might possibly break through the triple-digit mark.

Who could not love a diligent and gifted student?

After systematically analyzing the paper with Fang Zhuo, the English teacher found her spirits still difficult to contain. On impulse, she asked Fang Zhuo to share her experience of success with the class.

The fanfare was such that Fang Zhuo mistakenly thought she had taken the top spot in the entire city.

The students cheered and applauded. Unable to decline the warm invitation, Fang Zhuo stood up.

She held both hands flat at her sides, reflected for a moment, and decided that her improvement did not really involve any particularly high-end techniques. Even with artistic embellishment, there was nothing impressive to say. She labored and produced a single sentence: “Work hard at memorizing vocabulary.”

Her expression as she said it was perfectly earnest, but after racking her brain she genuinely could not come up with anything else. She was left standing there, stiff and bare, with nothing but this seemingly perfunctory remark.

Yan Lie took the lead in applauding, perfectly timed to dispel the awkwardness that had gathered in the silence.

Fang Zhuo let out a relieved breath and added: “Thank you all.”

Yan Lie pointed to himself by way of indication.

Fang Zhuo quickly supplemented: “Oh right — and find a good seatmate.”

The English teacher laughed out loud, and, reminded of something, she took the opportunity to bring it up.

“I know — one of the teachers in the Year Eleven group mentioned it to us. He said that during the New Year holiday, he happened to be on duty, and around eight o’clock in the evening he ran into two students outside, memorizing vocabulary under a streetlamp in the bitter cold. He was greatly moved by the sight. I guessed at once that it was the two of you!”

Neither of them denied it. The English teacher made a few more cheerful remarks, and at exactly that moment the end-of-class bell rang.

That afternoon, the teachers had a group meeting.

The English teacher had copied a film clip from her computer and asked the students to jot down a line from it that made an impression on them, then independently choose a theme related to the film and write a short piece to hand in. Having given these instructions, she hurried off.

Fang Zhuo could not pay attention to whatever film was playing. The moment a soft, unhurried background score started up, the fatigue that had accumulated from chronic sleep deprivation pulled her quickly under.

When she awoke, independent study time was nearly over. She hurriedly took out her notebook and tried to write something down.

The cinematography of the film was exceptionally beautiful, but having missed too much of what had come before, Fang Zhuo could not follow it.

What appeared on screen was a stretch of golden sand, white waves churned up by the sea, and a person running along the shore.

The imagery was serene and lovely. On instinct, Fang Zhuo thought of what Yan Lie had once said about wanting to go see the ocean, and she turned to look at him — and found that he was indeed watching with great attention, his entire face bathed in the blue-tinted glow of the screen’s reflection.

At that moment, the film’s voiceover played. The female lead recited in a voice at once languid and calm:

That day, I dove into the sea with him. Watching the light rippling on the surface of the water, I finally realized — that in my spring, even the sun can bloom into flowers.

Fang Zhuo savored it and felt the line had remarkable artistic depth and a distinctly Eastern quality of romance — entirely in line with her own earlier imaginings about the sun and osmanthus blossoms. She decided to write it down.

But the sentence was too long, and she had not retained it. Having written only two words, she sought Yan Lie’s help and asked him to repeat it and translate it for her.

Yan Lie wrote it out for her one word at a time. When he finished, he asked with an air of meaning: “Do you know what this line is implicitly expressing?”

“Of course I do,” Fang Zhuo said with complete confidence. “I am, in fact, a very romantic person.”

Romantic to the bone — which was why she had dreamed such romantic dreams.

Yan Lie: “……??” How on earth did this oblivious, completely unromantic person dare say something like that?!

Fang Zhuo ignored his expression of disagreement and asked: “What line did you write down?”

Yan Lie casually picked up his notebook and held it out for her to see.

Only three words.

“You complete me.”

Fang Zhuo read it twice, not entirely sure she understood it. “You complete me? Is it referring to the idea that men and women are each only half of a whole?”

“Where’s your sense of romance?” Yan Lie pursed his lips, curled his finger, and gestured for her to lean her ear over.

Fang Zhuo found his manner odd and full of schemes, but she leaned her ear over anyway.

“This sentence means,” Yan Lie said, just ten centimeters from her ear, enunciating each word clearly and deliberately, “you complete my life.”

A clear, pure voice struck her, and for a brief moment Fang Zhuo was dazed. The warm breath that puffed out with the words landed partly on her ear, and she felt her skin ignite like fire.

Fang Zhuo touched her ear with studied nonchalance and put some distance between herself and Yan Lie, drawing out a long “oh.”

The lights were still dim; the air was still cold. Those abnormal palpitations quickly subsided.

After a while, Fang Zhuo asked hesitantly: “Are the themes of what we both wrote down a little off? Is that the kind of mood the rest of them are going for?”

Yan Lie said: “Who cares.”

He did not care whether the sun bloomed in spring or not. Right now, he felt as though his own troubles were like flowers in winter: you thought they had disappeared, and then they would sprout again somewhere unexpected.

Come spring, every mountainside and plain would be covered in them.

The spring of his troubles was set to arrive in full force on the day the final examinations ended.

A holiday of more than a week — Fang Zhuo would not be able to board at school anymore. She would go home with Ye Yuncheng.

And he would no longer be able to make excuses either. He would have to go back to Yan Chengli’s home and be a silent, exemplary student.

It had not even begun, and he already felt that this winter holiday would be too long.