It was August, and the weather was hot and humid. With noon approaching, the sunlight beat straight down onto the surface of the school field.
Even with her school uniform jacket held over her head, it seemed to do little more than block the sun. It could not keep out the searing heat.
The mobilization assembly was drawing to a close, and the students below the stage were already barely containing their desperate urge to sprint to the cafeteria.
Even with each class’s homeroom teacher urging them forward from the back of the lines, it was impossible to keep everyone quiet. The moment the teachers reached the front, the students at the rear would start whispering and chattering again.
When the director finally finished his long, rambling speech, delivered in his unmistakable accent, the students visibly breathed a sigh of relief.
“Now, for the final item on today’s agenda, let’s welcome the student representative to the stage to speak.”
The moment Zhou Shixu stepped onto the stairs and walked toward the microphone, he gave the students below a perfunctory sweep of his eyes.
Qingcheng No. 1 High School had always enrolled a large number of students, and its campus sprawled across a considerable area. The gates connecting the northern and southern campuses were almost never opened.
This was the first year the school had assigned all the senior-year students to the same campus.
The mobilization assembly was being held on the field, with every student carrying their own stool down. From the stage, the students below looked like an endless, dark sea.
Yet with that single glance, Zhou Shixu immediately found her.
The girl had an open mathematics textbook balanced over her head to shield herself from the sun. The otherwise neat rows of students fell into disarray precisely where she sat.
The classes had only just been reshuffled for senior year, so most of the students barely knew one another. Yet somehow, a whole group had gathered around her, chatting away merrily.
She was pointing toward the classes along the edge of the field, apparently complaining about the school’s seating arrangements. Why should their class be the one left directly under the blazing sun?
Zhou Shixu’s eyes never left the speech in his hands again.
Most students, driven by curiosity, would look up when the so-called student representative took the stage, and more than a few would gaze at him with undisguised admiration.
But Zhou Shixu clearly saw that she did not spare him even a single curious glance.
As time passed, the sun slowly shifted its angle. Wen Qing finally took the book off her head and, during the lull, looked toward the stage.
Unlike the dean of students’ hypnotic reading just moments ago, Zhou Shixu’s voice was level, his diction crisp, his pace clean and decisive.
Even the stirring, impassioned rhetoric about striving for the future took on a cool edge in his voice.
The moment the book landed on her lap, Wen Qing hurriedly looked away.
He really hadn’t changed at all.
Even though Zhou Shixu’s speech was brief and to the point, the students who had been roasting outside all morning had long since lost interest in the proceedings.
At this point, even if the Jade Emperor himself had come to speak, nothing could stop them from desperately wanting to get to the cafeteria.
The faint aroma of food was already drifting over from the dining hall, while complaints rose continuously from all around them.
Wen Qing propped her cheek on one hand and chatted idly with the students beside her. At this point, aside from complaining about the school and grumbling about lunch, the only other possible topic was the person currently speaking onstage.
“Putting everything else aside, that speaker is pretty handsome. He used to be in the North Campus. I spent my first two years in the South Campus, so I barely ever saw him. Oh, right, Wen Qing, which campus were you in?”
“I was in the South Campus too.”
After answering the girl beside her, Wen Qing once again looked toward the stage under the pretense of taking a casual look.
Because the sun had shifted, its light now fell directly across the stage. The boy was already tall to begin with, but the sunlight stretched his figure even farther, making him look almost unnaturally slender. His familiar black half-rim glasses rested low against his high nose bridge. His naturally fair skin stood out even more beneath the sunlight, and his sharply defined features revealed nothing of his emotions.
Beyond his good looks, the first impression he gave was simply one word:
Cold.
Even the sunlight falling over him somehow seemed to carry no warmth, like the bright winter sun that appeared as the snow began to melt after the first snowfall.
One of the girls who had been chatting nearby seemed to realize just how curious everyone was and took the initiative to speak.
“You girls really don’t know? I used to be in the North Campus. Our top student Zhou was practically famous over there. Besides being good-looking and brilliant, his biggest defining feature is…”
The girl deliberately paused, almost taking a breath at the end of her sentence to heighten everyone’s curiosity.
Only after all the girls around her had turned expectantly toward her did she finish:
“He’s extremely difficult to get along with.”
“Why? Is he just bad-tempered?”
The question came almost the instant she finished speaking.
The girl who had started the gossip glanced toward Zhou Shixu, whose speech was nearly over.
“I wouldn’t say his personality is bad. He just doesn’t really make friends. He barely talks. Honestly, a speech like this is probably one of the few times you’ll ever hear him say this many words.”
“Seriously? That’s such an exaggeration. Someone like him—forget being good at school. Just that face alone would be enough for people to want to hang out with him, even if he were cold.”
At the sound of the incredulous voices around her, Wen Qing looked up.
And happened to meet Zhou Shixu’s eyes.
They were too far apart, and the lenses of his glasses caught a faint reflection, making it impossible for Wen Qing to see the emotion in his eyes. She could only tell that he seemed to be looking in her direction.
But the instant their eyes met, Zhou Shixu turned and walked off the stage.
Wen Qing immediately looked away as well.
What do you mean, seriously?
Of course it was true.
Wen Qing did not respond to her classmates. She merely complained silently to herself.
After the remaining school leaders finally finished their interminable speeches, it was inevitably time for the oath.
The school had distributed a sheet of paper to every student beforehand, densely covered in lines of the oath.
Apparently aware that Zhou Shixu’s naturally flat voice would do little to inspire anyone when leading the oath, the school had instead sent a girl up to lead it.
Wen Qing stood up before the people around her and casually glanced toward the spot where the student podium stood.
Zhou Shixu was already gone.
The school had given the students entering senior year less than two weeks of summer vacation. Even now, at the start of the new term, most students were still half-lost in the atmosphere of the holidays.
The entire oath-taking ceremony was filled with lazy, trailing voices, yet also carried a faint excitement about the future.
“The two classes against the wall will leave first. Everyone, make sure you take the trash around you with you. Let’s see which class leaves the messiest area!”
The dean of students’ slightly accented voice once again echoed across the field.
Because her class was positioned at the very bottom of the stage, close to the speakers, Wen Qing felt as though her ears had been ringing with noise the entire time.
The class in the very center had been instructed to leave last. By the time Wen Qing picked up her stool, more than half the field had already emptied out.
She had just reached the entrance to the field when she spotted Sang Nianning waiting for her nearby.
Wen Qing often wondered whether the school’s campus division system was deliberately conspiring against her.
After finally managing to attend the same high school as her familiar friends, almost all of them had spent their first two years in the North Campus.
Sang Nianning had.
So had Zhou Shixu.
Fortunately, heaven finally took pity on them, and the school had done something sensible for once, changing the policy when they entered their final year.
Of course, every benefit came with its drawbacks.
For instance, right now, the entrance to the stairs was completely jammed with students carrying stools.
Those coming down couldn’t get through, and those going up couldn’t get past them.
A teacher stood nearby directing traffic.
Wen Qing glanced sideways at Sang Nianning, who had empty hands.
“Where’s your stool?”
“The classmate I got to know in my second year was leading the oath, so she didn’t bring her stool down. I asked her to carry mine upstairs for me when she went back.”
The North Campus’s senior-year teaching building was shaped like a square, with three sides enclosing the center and the fourth serving as the exit.
The dean of students’ office, the homeroom teachers’ offices, and other classrooms used for teaching occupied one side. The other two sides contained the students’ classrooms.
The design had been mocked countless times.
One side was cool in winter and pleasantly warm in summer; the other was cool in winter and unbearably stuffy in summer.
Wen Qing glanced at the empty doorway of the dean of students’ office on the first floor. An idea suddenly occurred to her, and she looked at Sang Nianning.
“Why don’t I just leave my stool outside Old Liu’s office? Then we can go straight to the cafeteria for lunch. Otherwise, we’ll have to squeeze our way upstairs, then squeeze all the way back down again, and we’ll still have to queue at the cafeteria.”
Sang Nianning followed her gaze toward Old Liu’s office.
By sheer coincidence, Director Liu happened to be walking toward it with his lunchbox in hand.
“Forget it. No student would dare take it if you left it there, that’s true. But who knows where Old Liu would move it later. Are you really going to question him about where your stool went?”
Wen Qing actually pictured herself interrogating Old Liu about the whereabouts of her stool.
The sheer absurdity of the scene made her shake her head repeatedly, forcing the thought from her mind.
The crowd blocking the stairs did not seem to be getting any smaller with time.
Meanwhile, the aroma of lunch from the cafeteria seemed to be drifting farther and farther.
The line showed no sign of moving, and wave after wave of complaints rose from the crowd.
Some people had even started shouting from the back, urging those in front to hurry up.
Wen Qing was almost ready to put her stool down and sit on it while she waited.
Before she could let go, however, Sang Nianning pulled her out of the crowd.
When Wen Qing looked at her in confusion, Sang Nianning pointed toward Zhou Shixu, who was returning from the cafeteria.
Wen Qing turned in the direction of her finger.
Between the teaching building and the field ran a covered walkway, and Zhou Shixu was walking along it toward the classrooms after lunch.
Almost the moment Wen Qing turned her head, she saw him standing in the most conspicuous spot, walking toward the building.
The moment she saw him, Wen Qing hurriedly looked away and turned to Sang Nianning.
“What?”
“Zhou Shixu definitely went straight to eat after his speech. Now he’s going back to class. He doesn’t have a stool either, so why don’t you have him carry yours upstairs for you?”
Anyone familiar with both Wen Qing and Zhou Shixu knew that their relationship was not bad.
“Not bad” wasn’t quite enough to describe it.
Aside from Xu Jinqi, who had been Zhou Shixu’s deskmate for two full years of high school, Wen Qing seemed to be the only other person he could actually talk to.
The bond between two people who had known each other since childhood seemed impossible for anyone else to rival.
But Zhou Shixu was cold by nature, while Wen Qing had a lot of friends.
With the demands of high school and the two of them studying at different campuses, their interactions over those two years had been few and far between, aside from their families occasionally seeing each other during holidays.
As if noticing that Wen Qing had drifted into thought, Sang Nianning lightly poked her again.
“Forget it. The line should move soon anyway. And listen, everyone going right now is eating the cafeteria’s first batch of lunch. Eighty percent of it is probably food that’s been sitting around. If we put our stools away and come back down afterward, we’ll get freshly cooked food.”
Wen Qing’s ability to bullshit people was something no one knew where she’d learned. She always seemed to have a whole theory ready.
As she spoke, she deliberately avoided looking toward Zhou Shixu, keeping her eyes lowered to the stool in her hands.
Just as she thought she’d managed to convince Sang Nianning, Wen Qing caught the latter nodding slightly in greeting from the corner of her eye.
She had a feeling.
When she looked up, Zhou Shixu was already standing in front of her.
The instant their eyes met, Wen Qing blinked before looking at him again, quietly concealing the faint trace of guilt in her expression.
Zhou Shixu’s face remained as impassive as ever.
He said nothing.
He simply stood there, looking into Wen Qing’s eyes.
Just as she was about to lose herself in memories of the past, the weight in her hands suddenly disappeared.