Sunlight fell on the pages, the black ink glinting faintly over the correction tape.
Following Xu Jinqi's gaze, Zhou Shixu lowered his eyes to the inside of the notebook.
Mixed in among a collection of famous quotes, this one stood out especially—because it had been corrected over with correction tape twice.
[I hate mediocrity, yet I love the extraordinary.
—Oscar Wilde]
Thick layers of correction tape covered both the words "mediocrity" and "extraordinary."
When the page was lifted toward the sunlight, the words beneath the correction tape were clearly visible.
Xu Jinqi had assumed that once Zhou Shixu learned this news, he would show an expression of pleasant surprise.
But he was uncharacteristically silent.
Xu Jinqi couldn't guess what he was thinking—or perhaps she was afraid he wouldn't believe it.
The loose-leaf binder opened easily, and a thin sheet of paper was drawn from the thick notebook.
It was laid out flat in front of Zhou Shixu.
He knew Wen Qing's handwriting far too well.
The bottom edge of the page had already yellowed.
No matter how you looked at it, it wasn't something recent.
A long stretch of time passed—so long that Xu Jinqi was about to tuck the page back into the notebook.
Only then did Zhou Shixu pick it up.
But his fingertips merely pinched the bottom edge, rubbing it gently.
He didn't even hold it up to the light.
He just stared at that sentence, lost in thought.
Winter had arrived many days ago.
Yet everyone tacitly agreed the season was still lingering in late autumn.
It seemed that all it would take—just one snowfall—to usher in true winter.
Students confined to school could only predict the next day's weather from the school broadcast station.
Snowy days were different from rainy ones.
No soaked trouser cuffs, no messy hair.
Snowflakes began drifting down during the morning break.
They gathered into a small patch along the outside of the corridor.
That patch would only last until the end of break.
Then, along with the snow on the railings, it would be squeezed into snowballs by the students.
A noisy atmosphere filled the corridor.
The dead-silent campus briefly came alive.
The rubber surface at the center of the school's sports field had frozen into a thin layer of ice after the snowfall.
The moment the bell for the long break rang, Wen Qing was dragged off to skate on the field by Zheng Shiyi.
The two held hands, one crouching while the other stood and pulled backward.
When they picked up speed, it really did feel like ice skating.
The snow hadn't fallen heavily yet.
Only a thin layer covered the field.
But it wasn't a blanket of pure white.
Before even coming down the stairs, you could see the snow-covered surface had already been scribbled on extensively.
It seemed everyone was competing to leave a friend's name in the most conspicuous spot.
Even if it would only last a moment before being covered again by the drifting snowflakes.
Among those names left as jokes, it was impossible to tell how many carried genuine affection.
Having learned it would snow today, Zheng Shiyi had repeatedly reminded Wen Qing during evening self-study the night before.
She warned her that she absolutely, absolutely, absolutely had to wear shoes that were only somewhat non-slip.
So that the next day she could drag her out to play on the field.
As it turned out, Wen Qing had understood "somewhat non-slip" as "not non-slip at all."
On the way to school that morning, if Zhou Shixu hadn't been holding onto her.
She probably would have already made intimate contact with the ground.
The third time she nearly slipped and was caught, Wen Qing noticed Zhou Shixu watching her with an expression that seemed to want to say something but held back.
She'd assumed he was worried her IQ was dropping.
But when Wen Qing waved her hand in front of his face three times and got no reaction.
She realized he was lost in thought about something.
Wen Qing couldn't imagine what could be worth thinking so hard about.
He had never cared much about anything.
If there was anything troubling her lately.
It was probably that unsolvable math problem she mentioned last time?
But if even he couldn't solve it,
what could Wen Qing possibly do to help solve it?
When she and Zheng Shiyi made it down to the first floor, a crowd had already gathered on the sports field.
Even the air in front of the first-floor classrooms was on the verge of turning into a snowball fight.
Some people were even sneakily throwing snowballs at the ground outside the dean's office door.
On their way from the teaching building to the sports field, Wen Qing and Zheng Shiyi not only had to control their non-slip-resistant soles,
but also dodge the hail of snowballs flying in from all directions.
They finally managed to make it to the sports field.
Sure enough, plenty of people were already pushing each other around and sliding.
With their frictionless soles, the two of them sped along remarkably fast.
They stood out noticeably in the crowd.
Before long, warmth was radiating from both of their bodies.
Wen Qing's cheeks had flushed especially red.
During a break in the action, a snowball came flying and smacked Zheng Shiyi right on the cheek with a "smack."
The unexpected snowball made Wen Qing whip her head around.
In that instant, another snowball grazed past her cheek.
Just barely missing her.
Once she saw who it was, Zheng Shiyi immediately retaliated against Chen Zhi like a lit firecracker.
Wen Qing couldn't tell at all whether the two of them were serious.
Snowballs from both sides whizzed past her cheeks as they hurled them back and forth.
She hurriedly joined Zheng Shiyi's side.
The snow fell harder and harder.
A new round of snowball warfare had already broken out on every open patch of ground in the school.
Needless to say, there were plenty of accidental hits.
Shouts, jeers, threats, and apologies echoed together over the sports field.
The downside of non-slip-resistant shoes, besides being fast, was that you fell just as fast.
After a whole morning of struggling, Zheng Shiyi and Wen Qing had pretty much extracted some life philosophy from it all:
When fate makes you slip, if you just gracefully drop to your knees, you won't hurt your knees.
But you will lose face.
Between dodging, they still had to crouch down and pack snowballs.
The uniform hoods they'd once found unbearably ugly and despised with all their might had now become excellent protection.
The moment Wen Qing bent down to roll a snowball, her hooded head was struck with another "smack."
This was beyond tolerable.
After shaking the snow off her hood, she turned to look.
Xu Jinqi.
Freshman or senior, whoever it was—no more holding back.
She pressed the soft snowball in her hands three times.
Once it felt firm, she threw it forward.
And then—
It got dodged.
She packed another snowball.
And then—
Dodged again.
Since accuracy wasn't working, she'd just close the distance.
Wen Qing packed a snowball in her hands while speeding up her run.
The moment she got close, the snowball in her hands, just as expected, flew straight and true onto Xu Jinqi's face.
Wen Qing made a "yes" gesture, but her feet failed to brake in time.
Her eyes were still admiring Xu Jinqi's miserable state.
Completely unexpected.
Her foot slipped.
And she crashed abruptly into an embrace that carried a chill.
The consequence of being too competitive was this—
Even though Zhou Shixu had been standing not far from Xu Jinqi since early on,
Wen Qing's snowball, locked and aimed at Xu Jinqi, had long since ignored Zhou Shixu standing nearby.
But that wasn't her fault.
Who told Zhou Shixu to just stand there instead of coming over to help sooner?
Her cheek throbbed with pain for a moment. Wen Qing rubbed her face and lifted her eyes to look at the person in front of her.
The snow was falling harder now, speckled flakes landing on the tips of his hair.
Apparently worried his glasses would fog up when he entered the classroom, he had, unusually, taken them off and left them inside.
Without the obstruction of his glasses, whenever he lowered his gaze, snowflakes drifted down along his lashes.
Perhaps it was because the temperature was too low.
So cold that Wen Qing's mind had gone a little fuzzy.
She felt that in the instant Zhou Shixu's hand left her arm, he seemed to give her a gentle, brief embrace before letting go.
Xu Jinqi, who had been in the thick of the snowball fight, saw the two of them collide and immediately vanished from sight.
She didn't even return the snowball that had just hit her in the face.
At this very moment.
Wen Qing sincerely regretted wearing shoes with absolutely no grip.
Even though snowflakes were still drifting down from the sky, there were too many people on the playground, and they had trampled nearly all the remaining snow off the ground.
With no traction, she could barely take a step.
Zhou Shixu, probably seeing through her predicament, didn't move far after releasing his hand.
But he didn't come closer either.
Yet somehow, he was always there to catch her the instant she was about to fall.
"What are you doing here?" Wen Qing asked once they left the playground, picking her way along the clean concrete.
Stepping widely from one dry patch to another, then hopping over to yet another spot.
"Came out to take a look."
"Xu Jinqi dragged you out, didn't she?"
"Not exactly."
The two of them shuffled along until they finally made it to the first floor of the teaching building.
Thankfully, the deans were all hiding in their offices to stay warm.
Probably also afraid of getting suddenly pelted by snowballs if they came out.
Otherwise, as usual, the two of them would inevitably have been subjected to a lecture about puppy love.
Zhou Shixu walked Wen Qing to the door of Class Ten.
Before she went in, he spoke:
"Don't come out after school tonight."
Wen Qing looked up at him in confusion, then followed Zhou Shixu's gaze to the corridor floor.
Since it was open-air, the ground was already covered with a layer of slush.
When the temperature plummeted tonight, there was no telling whether it might freeze over.
"It's slippery."
"My balance is great."
As if to prove her point, Wen Qing even walked back and forth a couple of steps.
Zhou Shixu couldn't help thinking of their childhood.
Next to the exercise equipment in their residential complex, there was a small slide and a few swings.
Most of the kids usually gathered there to play.
Back then, a bouncy ball was all the rage—it had pedals fixed on both ends, and you could bounce along by standing on the pedals and pushing off.
Wen's father and mother knew their daughter's tendencies well, so they never bought her one.
But Wen Qing, thanks to her natural status as the ringleader of the kids, easily borrowed one of those toys from the spot where the most children gathered.
An object that even adults struggled to control—let alone kids.
Back then, when Zhou Shixu arrived at the scene, before he even got close, he saw Wen Qing fall flat on the ground with a smack.
Face-first, no less.
Before Zhou Shixu could reach her, Wen Qing had already gotten back up.
With half her cheeks covered in dust, she looked at the other kids and said it was no big deal, then mocked them for being terrible at it.
Her expression now was almost exactly the same.
So when exactly did she start to hate him?
And when did she start, restlessly, writing his name after the word "like"?
After agreeing to Zhou Shixu's request to wait for him in the classroom after school, Wen Qing returned to her seat.
Her desk was already piled into a small mountain with the freshly handed-out test papers.
Chen Zhi was loudly complaining that he was missing one paper.
Zheng Shiyi retorted from the side that even if he had it, he wouldn't do it anyway.
Wen Qing couldn't help laughing.
Missing one was out of the question; actually doing them was equally impossible.
It seemed that being short even a single test paper would be a betrayal of the tuition her family paid.
Before she could finish organizing the papers in her hands, new sheets came floating down from the front.
Unlike the tests just now, these papers carried a crude smell of ink.
No guessing needed—they were the school's self-printed kind.
"This guy is something else."
Following Zheng Shiyi's words, Wen Qing looked at the paper that had just been passed to her.
It was an excellent answer sheet from the mock exam.
Each subject had three answer sheets from different top-performing students.
Information like class, name, and barcode had long been covered before photocopying.
Wen Qing looked at the answer sheet that Zheng Shiyi and Chen Zhi were both marveling over.
The moment she saw the handwriting, she smiled knowingly.
The entire paper had only lost two points on the final new-concept problem, where the reasoning was written too briefly.
An unquestionably excellent example.
Although the owner of the answer sheet was covered up, even without looking at the handwriting, based on the problem-solving approach and process alone—
she could clearly recognize that it belonged to Zhou Shixu.
The recent tutoring sessions hadn't been for nothing.
Wen Qing shifted her gaze away from the final deducted problem.
She flipped the answer sheet to the front.
Her eyes were almost instantly glued to the figure of the solid geometry problem.
In the spot where the coordinate system and auxiliary lines were self-labeled—
there were two uncommon letters.
A W and a Q.