The car carried the two boys farther and farther away.
It took a while before Yuan Weining snapped out of it. Then she grabbed Su Yunluo’s arm and shook it excitedly. “Ahh! Luoluo, did you see that? When my idol smiled just now, he was practically glowing!”
Su Yunluo thought about how that “glowing figure” was her opponent’s friend and tried to sound serious for once. “So what if he’s handsome? Good looks are all the same. What really matters is having an interesting soul—”
She didn’t even get to finish before Yuan Weining cut her off, almost pleading. “Oh my god, Luoluo, don’t say that about him! How can that face be called ‘all the same’?”
A girl beside them laughed. “If all guys could be ‘all the same’ like that, I’d fully support mass production!”
“Exactly,” another chimed in. “And how do you know his soul isn’t interesting? It might even be better than his looks!”
“Well…” Chu Han hesitated, then said softly, “I actually think Xie Chen is pretty handsome too.”
That immediately drew a wave of agreement.
“Right, right! I noticed it the first time he came to our class to deliver the challenge letter!”
“But if we’re talking about who’s more striking, it’s still Zhou Xubai, right?”
“Of course it’s Zhou Xubai!” Yuan Weining’s eyes sparkled. “He just stands there and looks like the male lead of a drama!”
One girl analyzed seriously, “I think it’s just different styles. Zhou Xubai is the kind of handsome that hits you instantly. As for Xie Chen… he’s more of the cold, top-student type. You know, restrained and untouchable.”
Another girl laughed. “Yeah, Xie Chen is a bit arrogant—but for a handsome guy, that’s kind of forgivable, right?”
“Exactly. Besides, he’s actually amazing.”
“Agreed!”
Su Yunluo didn’t say anything anymore.
She just stared in the direction the car had disappeared, a faint sense of being left behind settling in her chest.
It felt a little ridiculous.
Just like that—so easily, so happily—everyone had switched sides.
In the world of teenage boys and girls, things really were that simple.
It felt like she was the only one still holding on stubbornly, like a child who had taken the wrong path but refused to turn back.
That black car was heading toward Xie Chen and Zhou Xubai’s hometown—Linhe Town in the western district of Liang City.
Xie Chen greeted the driver in the front seat, then glanced around the car. “So your dad’s car is basically your daily ride now?”
“More or less. It picks me up and drops me off every day anyway,” Zhou Xubai replied. Then he looked at him. “Why did you move back to school? Not staying at your dad’s place anymore?”
“It’s even livelier than school over there,” Xie Chen said. “Once the weekend hits, the house turns into something like a teahouse.”
“Sounds about right.” Zhou Xubai nodded like he understood completely. “When you first move into a new place, there’s always a lot of social stuff to deal with.”
Then his tone shifted. He glanced at Xie Chen with a grin. “By the way, I saw everything just now. Someone’s really determined to make you look bad. So, Top Student Xie—still planning to mess up your performance next time?”
“I’ll just perform normally,” Xie Chen said lightly.
“Oh, now you say that?” Zhou Xubai clicked his tongue. “What happened during the high school entrance exam, then?”
“I told you, that time was just a bad performance.”
“Oh, come on. Still pretending in front of me?”
Zhou Xubai clearly didn’t believe him.
After a moment, he sighed and patted Xie Chen on the shoulder. “Fine. I get it.”
Xie Chen gave him a look that said: thanks for understanding.
Zhou Xubai leaned back in his seat. After a short silence, he suddenly said, “Qi Ning is really something.”
There was real admiration in his voice. “I always believed in his ability, sure—but I honestly didn’t expect him to take first place in the entire city.”
“He has that ability,” Xie Chen replied.
Zhou Xubai glanced at him. “Is that your way of praising yourself indirectly? If you hadn’t been controlling your score, you two would be about the same, right?”
This time, Xie Chen didn’t deny it. “But I truly admire him.”
“Same here.”
Xie Chen looked at him. “Yours isn’t pure admiration.”
Zhou Xubai paused. “What do you mean, not pure?”
“There’s something mixed in.”
“Like what?”
“Jealousy.”
Zhou Xubai immediately looked away, then snapped back and elbowed him in the chest. “Get lost! I’m not jealous of him!”
Xie Chen laughed and blocked the hit. When he caught the faint flush at the tips of Zhou Xubai’s ears, he thought to himself—this guy only shows this kind of embarrassment when it comes to this one thing.
Other than that, Zhou Xubai had always lived like the wind—free, effortless. Proud, but never tense. He had the strength to compete, but not the obsession to win. Growing up, the only thing he was really taught was to be happy. That was why he had friends everywhere, why he moved through life so openly, easily getting along with all kinds of people.
He wasn’t like him.
Xie Chen thought about himself.
The only belief drilled into him since childhood was simple: he had to win.
His mother, Chen Yi, was just an English teacher at the town middle school. But she was the kind of woman who constantly pushed herself to be the best among everyone around her. She had even pushed her husband from being a department head at the town hospital into a position at the Health Bureau. And when it came to her only son, she never stopped reminding him:
“You have to work hard. You have to push yourself. You have to stand out above everyone else.”
“When you meet people, greet them first. Raise your ability, lower your attitude. Be polite, composed, well-mannered…”
“Don’t make messy or useless friends…”
“No matter how good your grades are, people must still see you as steady, humble—not arrogant. Do you understand, Chenchen?”
Back then, young Xie Chen summed it up in one sentence: “Got it. You handle the glory, I’ll handle acting well-behaved.”
Chen Yi had been so annoyed she reached out to poke his forehead. But by then, he had already done exactly what she wanted—quietly going back to improving himself, his eyes lowered again to the book in his hands: The Beauty of Mathematics.
There was one thing, though, that mother and son agreed on completely: to win, and to stand at the very top.
When you’re young, who doesn’t want to be the best?
So Xie Chen had once taken every opponent his mother placed in front of him seriously, treating each one like a mountain to climb—enjoying the feeling of standing above them all.
And most of the time, he had done exactly that.
Thinking of this, a faint, self-mocking smile appeared on his lips.
He turned slightly and looked out at the passing streets outside the car window, thinking of his most recent “opponent.”
Honestly, before the math exam had even ended, he had already crossed her off his list.
During the test, he noticed everything—the slight furrow in her brows, the panic she couldn’t hide when she reached the final physics problem. After each exam, he could roughly judge her level: Chinese was her strength, math her weakness; politics, history, geography, and chemistry were about equal; physics still needed work. The competition she had started—before they even left the exam hall, the outcome was already clear to him.
Even so, his attitude had been simple. A competition was just that—a normal comparison of results. Nothing more.
At least, until that day.
After she finished singing Yue opera and stepped down from the podium.
The classroom had been full of amazement. Everyone was still caught in the echo of her voice. But he was the only one who noticed her—walking down with her head lowered.
Just for a moment.
Like a small animal, quietly hurt, unwilling to let anyone see it, licking its wound in silence.
At that instant, the pen in Xie Chen’s hand paused against the desk.
The same thought that had crossed his mind the day she challenged him surfaced again.
Winning like this… didn’t feel right.