The glow of the setting sun hadn't yet faded when Wen Qing, as if led by some unseen force, went upstairs.
Using the excuse of wanting to know the answers, she would sneak a glance at him.
Dinner time wasn't over yet, and a scattering of students chatted along the stairway.
Halfway up, Wen Qing stopped by a window in the corridor and looked inside.
Most homeroom teachers assigned seats based on grades.
Zhou Shixu had sat in practically the same spot throughout nearly all of high school, so she could find him almost without searching.
Students who had just finished exams generally fell into three states.
One was the despondent type, half-dead from having bombed the test; one was the regretful type, who had just checked their answers and discovered mistakes; and the third, most common type, was the determined type, vowing to do better next time.
Whichever state they were in, they all had to mope around for a while first.
But when Wen Qing looked at Zhou Shixu through the slightly dusty, blurry window, she found that he was simply doing problems.
It seemed nothing in the world was worth making him pause or look away.
Xu Jinqi, who had just finished dinner, climbed the last step with his hands in his pockets and immediately spotted Wen Qing peering in through the gap by the window.
He walked straight over with a grin and called out at the classroom door: "Zhou Shixu, someone's here to see you!"
His voice was loud enough to make several heads lift.
Wen Qing quickly pulled back her gaze and hurried to the classroom door, glaring at him. "Keep it down, keep it down! You two are deskmates—couldn't you just go in and tell him quietly?"
Xu Jinqi watched Zhou Shixu put down his pen and hurry out.
"Of course~ not. It's not the same thing at all. You two talk—I'm going in first."
Before Wen Qing could glare at him again, Xu Jinqi darted back to his seat.
Zhou Shixu came out so quickly that Wen Qing's gaze had no time to dodge, and their eyes met directly.
She pretended to be calm and, as if it were only natural, held out her hand, palm up, in front of him.
"Lend me your math test."
Scenes from their past, from childhood on, replayed in Zhou Shixu's mind.
The snacks and toys of their early years, the allowance money as they grew older, the gifts every year.
She always took him for granted.
He had been thankful for that taken-for-grantedness for many years.
Until she took it for granted to grow distant.
Took it for granted to withdraw from their relationship.
Took it for granted to look at someone else.
Zhou Shixu looked at Wen Qing's outstretched hand and spoke in a flat tone: "I didn't write anything on it."
"Do you remember the answers, then?"
He stepped aside, leaving a gap. "Come in first."
Having just finished an exam, most students were still in a state of excitement, nearly all of them wandering around chatting.
The classroom was mostly empty.
Zhou Shixu sat by the wall on the side away from the corridor—he on the inside, Xu Jinqi on the outside.
Seeing the two of them come in, Xu Jinqi stood up and moved to the seat of the student in front, letting Wen Qing sit in his spot.
"Sister Wen, what brings you suddenly looking for our little Zhou?"
"Going over math problems, obviously."
Zhou Shixu pulled out the test tucked inside his math notebook.
He had marked his answers on the multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions during the exam; the remaining big questions were almost entirely blank, with only a few faint traces of auxiliary lines.
"Asking him? You'd be better off asking me. My math is no worse than our little Zhou's."
The moment Xu Jinqi finished speaking, he noticed Zhou Shixu raising his eyes to look at him.
Just for an instant—but in that gaze, beyond its usual indifference, there was an undertone of coldness.
Xu Jinqi hastily pretended to shiver and covered his own mouth.
Wen Qing hadn't yet noticed the difference between the two of them. As she watched Zhou Shixu write out answers, she didn't forget to respond to Xu Jinqi: "Since when did he become 'our little Zhou'?"
She was focused on watching Zhou Shixu work through the problem, but there was no confusion in her tone—instead, there was a hint of reproach.
Yet Wen Qing's eyes never moved away from the tip of Zhou Shixu's pen. To Xu Jinqi, it looked more like she was interrogating Zhou Shixu.
You told him to say that, didn't you?
Done for, done for, done for.
At this moment, Xu Jinqi just wanted to escape as quickly as possible. He'd only said one sentence, yet the first half had offended one person and the second half had offended another.
"I was just joking. If little Zhou can't take a joke, fine, but has Wen-jie been infected by him too?"
Wen Qing's gaze shifted from the tip of Zhou Shixu's pen to Xu Jinqi.
She saw him propping up his cheek, laughter glinting in his eyes, as if he were teasing the two of them for fun.
"Yep, not only have I been infected, so has Sang-sang. You'd better watch out for your punishment."
As she spoke, Wen Qing made a throat-slitting gesture.
Although Sang Nianning didn't speak as little as Zhou Shixu, her highest compliment for Xu Jinqi was—noisy.
The time before last, when they met, Sang Nianning said he was as noisy as a quacking duck.
Xu Jinqi insisted that even if he talked a lot, he was an oriole with a beautiful voice.
The two of them argued over this for ages, and in the end it was Wen Qing who stepped in as mediator.
It was the first time in history she'd ever heard Sang Nianning say so much, and also the first time she'd ever seen Xu Jinqi rendered speechless.
"Which problem are you stuck on?"
Zhou Shixu's single sentence pulled Wen Qing's attention back from Xu Jinqi.
"The second-to-last one. I felt like what I wrote was right, and then I looked at my classmates' solutions and theirs seemed right too, but we got different answers."
Wen Qing took the scratch paper beside Zhou Shixu, wrote down her reasoning and process, and handed it to him.
Zhou Shixu glanced at her solution and spoke: "Made a bet with someone?"
"How did you know?"
"Otherwise why would you come ask me."
Even Xu Jinqi could hear a trace of grievance in his voice.
But Wen Qing only froze for a moment before hurriedly changing the subject: "So? My process should be right, right? I even substituted the answer back in to check, and didn't find any problem."
"Was the other person's answer root seven?"
The instant she heard Zhou Shixu's words, Wen Qing already saw the long line she'd have to wait in for over half an hour.
Countless heads, more than the stacked steamers of a baozi shop.
Seeing Wen Qing's face immediately fall, Zhou Shixu spoke again: "What did you bet?"
"Xiaolongbao from the place by the south gate. Looks like tomorrow morning you'll have to come to school by yourself—I'll be off attending a baozi meet-and-greet."
"I want that too! Wen-jie, if you go, bring me back a portion."
"Bring your ass."
Only after speaking did Xu Jinqi catch the second half of Wen Qing's sentence: "Wait, you two usually come to school together? No wonder he's been an hour late lately."
"Both answers are correct."
"Huh?"
Zhou Shixu began laying out the solution steps on his exam paper. Since it had to be copied onto the answer sheet to turn in, the space left on the exam paper itself was small.
Curiosity drove Wen Qing to lean in and look at the solution process wedged in the narrow gap.
Warm breath sprayed against his wrist, and Zhou Shixu's pen tip visibly paused for a moment.
The neat solution steps slowly began to go crooked.
"So the basic method gives two results, but my method originally only gave one?"
"Mm."
Zhou Shixu was still writing out the steps for the last problem, but Wen Qing's mind had already wandered. Resting her cheek on her hand, she turned her gaze toward Xu Jinqi:
"Little Xu, didn't you say earlier that you wanted to eat too?"
Before Xu Jinqi could answer, Zhou Shixu had already handed the test paper, filled with solution steps, over to Wen Qing:
"When you go back, just say root three was right. No answers are being posted today."
Wen Qing's eyes suddenly lit up as she looked at Zhou Shixu.
His seat was also by the window, and the golden glow of the fading light fell on his face, then reflected into Wen Qing's pupils.
Gradually, it became impossible to tell whether the brightness in her eyes came from finding a solution, or was merely the reflection of the sunset.
She reached out to take the paper Zhou Shixu handed her, and their fingertips accidentally brushed lightly against each other.
Wen Qing's already racing heart gave a sudden jolt.
Neither of them could tell whose hand had trembled, and the paper fluttered to the floor.
Wen Qing hurriedly bent down to pick it up. The space between the desks was so cramped that she felt Zhou Shixu's hand shielding her forehead.
Before she could get up, the voice of the Class 1 homeroom teacher came through the speaker next to the surveillance camera:
"The bell's about to ring—everyone back to their own seats and start self-study!"
All the surveillance cameras installed in the classrooms by the school came with built-in broadcast systems, which the homeroom teachers could control directly from their phones.
What's more, Zhou Shixu and Xu Jinqi's seats faced the camera dead-on.
Wen Qing could already imagine what would happen to her if she was caught getting up.
She tilted slightly and lifted her head a little, trying to find a clear path to slip out quickly.
The hand Zhou Shixu had been using to shield Wen Qing's forehead slid down to her cheek as she rose slightly.
Since starting high school, the academic pressure had grown, and Wen Qing now ate four meals a day—her once oval, melon-seed face had begun trending toward a rounder shape.
Her soft cheek pressed against a palm calloused from years of holding a pen.
Wen Qing seized her moment, bent over, and slipped out through the back door, the ends of her hair brushing across Zhou Shixu's palm.
Xu Jinqi watched Zhou Shixu, motionless, still holding the strand of hair left in his palm:
"She's already gone. Still thinking about it?"
Watching him tuck the strand of hair into his diary, Xu Jinqi sighed again in exasperation.
The moment she sat back down in her seat, Wen Qing's heart still hadn't fully calmed.
Seeing her return, Zheng Shiyi hurriedly leaned in: "Which genius did you ask? You left looking so confident."
Wen Qing patted her chest, pretending her racing heartbeat was just panting from running downstairs.
She whispered to Zheng Shiyi: "One piece of good news and one piece of bad news."
"The bad one."
"Root seven is correct."
"Then what's the good news?"
"Root three is also correct."
Wen Qing leaned in a little closer to Zheng Shiyi: "The two of us can say root three is right. They're not posting answers tonight anyway. Besides, root three really is correct—we're not lying."
The two of them hit it off immediately.
Zheng Shiyi even promised Chen Zhi that root three was absolutely correct—and if it turned out wrong, she'd cover his breakfast for a week.
With the big exam behind them, plus breakfast secured for the next day, Wen Qing stayed up all night.
Add to that the fact that she'd barely slept the night before while reviewing math.
The next day, she saw everything with double vision.
She kept marveling at how fun her phone could be.
Then, thunderous, shocking news arrived the next day.
The school added running exercises—during morning reading, no less—an 800-meter run.
Wen Qing, already groggy, nearly collapsed face-first onto her desk with a "thud."
"I'm not going, I'm not going. If I don't escape, I'll faint right on the track."
"Fine, then get some good sleep—just don't get caught."
Since it was the first morning run and they hadn't even lined up in formation yet, plus the homeroom teacher couldn't tell the students apart, Zheng Shiyi didn't think much of it. She reminded Wen Qing to be careful and headed off to the field with the other students.
Wen Qing slept so soundly that she didn't even dream.
When she felt someone poking her from the side, she assumed it was Zheng Shiyi calling her for breakfast and mumbled lazily, "I'm not eating yet. Let me sleep a bit longer."
Someone poked her again from behind, and only then did Wen Qing rub her eyes and lift her head.
She nearly tipped her chair over backward.
The homeroom teacher was standing right in front of her, smiling at her—of course, a cold smile.
This wasn't a dream, because Wen Qing pinched herself the moment she saw clearly.
Though it was far too late, she hurriedly pulled out a book and pretended to be studying, as if she hadn't seen the teacher.
But what must come will come, and what you wish to avoid can never be escaped.
"Miss Wen Qing, why didn't you go to the morning run?"