The cheering and chatter didn't stop just because the main character had stepped away.
The match had just ended, a few strands of hair on Zhou Shixu's forehead slightly dampened with sweat.
The distance between them was only a single step. All Wen Qing had to do was stand up and take less than one step forward to be right in front of Zhou Shixu.
Most of the audience's eyes followed Zhou Shixu's steps toward the stands.
It seemed everyone was waiting for Wen Qing to stand up and take that step forward.
But she didn't.
She simply raised her hand, holding the water bottle up in front of Zhou Shixu.
Melted droplets of water slid down the sides of the bottle.
Wen Qing's fingertips were all damp.
The moment Zhou Shixu noticed her gesture, he stepped forward.
The last bit of distance was erased.
Wen Qing's hand went from gripping the bottle to clutching the cap.
She even shook the bottle to signal Zhou Shixu to take it quickly.
Before the bottle could even leave her hand, there was strength at her wrist.
Zhou Shixu gripped Wen Qing's wrist, took the bottle away, and pressed a tissue into her hand.
There was a railing in front of the first-row seats.
It happened to block the view of Wen Qing.
From a farther angle, it just looked like Zhou Shixu was taking the bottle from her.
The match was over, and the award ceremony was to be held on the field.
Most of the students in the gymnasium also left from the other side.
Wen Qing lightly clenched her palm, and the dampness in it quickly soaked into the tissue.
"You knew it was ice and kept holding it anyway?" Zhou Shixu lightly touched the cold bottle to Wen Qing's cheek.
The warmth on her face was suddenly given a light chill.
Wen Qing reached out and swatted away the cool bottle: "I wasn't holding it the whole time. I set it aside just now."
Zhou Shixu unscrewed the cap and tilted his head back for a drink.
There were still large chunks of unmelted ice in the bottle, and the shallow water at the bottom sloshed up with his movement.
"When did your basketball skills improve?"
"I played occasionally over the past two years."
Most of the crowd in the gymnasium had dispersed.
Chen Zhi and Zheng Shiyi were bickering over who would treat for bubble tea, with Duan Huaian standing beside them.
The three of them were facing in the direction of Wen Qing and Zhou Shixu.
They seemed to be waiting for Wen Qing to head back to class with them.
Zhou Shixu set the bottle down on an empty seat and said, out of nowhere, "New friends?"
"Mm."
The previous topic wasn't even finished when Zhou Shixu's gaze shifted from the three people in the distance to the volunteer vest Wen Qing was wearing: "Hot?"
"A little."
Although there was air conditioning, the stands were near the wide-open doors, and heat drifted in from outside in wisps.
"If you're hot, why wear so much?"
"Volunteers have to wear the vest. It can't come off." As she answered, Wen Qing raised her hand and waved, signaling Zheng Shiyi and the others to go ahead.
"Silly."
The quiet words carried across the empty gymnasium into Wen Qing's ears.
She abruptly lifted her eyes to look at Zhou Shixu.
"You're the silly one."
Wen Qing answered as she headed toward the gymnasium exit.
Before she could take two steps, someone grabbed the back collar of her vest.
Wen Qing turned with the motion and shot Zhou Shixu a glare.
"Aren't you hot?"
"I told you, it can't come off. It's the symbol of being a volunteer."
Before Wen Qing could finish, her view was blocked.
A red cap brim appeared before her eyes.
There were two types of volunteer attire: a red vest or a red cap.
The caps had naturally been snatched up by crowds, so by the time Wen Qing had arrived at the field, only the vests were left.
"How do you have one of these?"
"Over there." Wen Qing followed Zhou Shixu's gaze to a cabinet in the distance.
Most of the volunteers at the gym had chosen the red vests, so the hats were naturally left over.
Trading the vest for a hat, Wen Qing felt as if her whole body had lightened.
It was just that the hat's design was truly nothing to write home about.
By mid-afternoon, the sunlight was no longer as harsh as before. Wen Qing stood by the gym door, waiting for Zhou Shixu to wash up and change back into his school uniform.
The two of them had left late; apart from the supervising teacher and the cleaning lady, there were hardly any students left in the gym.
Faint sounds of a broadcast drifted over from the sports field.
It seemed to be urging the students to hurry up.
The tissue in her palm had already been squeezed into a ball; Wen Qing pinched its crumpled edge with her fingertips.
Ever since they were little, Zhou Shixu had gone to far more tutoring classes than she had.
Most kids who attended tutoring classes were picked up by their parents, who would buy them an ice cream or a grilled sausage afterward as a reward.
But not Zhou Shixu.
CCTV-1 used to air cartoons in the early afternoon slot, and Wen Qing's favorite was The Adventures of the Little Carp.
When the cartoons finished around five in the afternoon, she would climb off the sofa and head to the tutoring class to pick Zhou Shixu up.
They were both very, very small back then—one eating an ice cream, the other carrying a schoolbag that wasn't exactly light.
Walking home very, very slowly.
Sometimes Zhou Shixu would even be carrying a grilled sausage in his hand on the way—one that Wen Qing would eat a little later.
Zhou Xiping and Shi Yuan had always been very busy.
Zhou Shixu had always taken having no one to pick him up for granted.
He almost never envied the kids who had family waiting for them.
You could call it precocious, or maybe he had simply long since—
It was just school, tutoring, packing up, and going back to where he lived.
Until a little shrimp of a girl, shorter than him, declared with absolute certainty that from then on, she would walk him home.
She said everyone else had family to pick them up, so he should have someone too.
It was funny.
And also—
a relief.
Even if, by her own account, he still ranked below that cartoon she had to watch until five thirty.
The sound of the changing room door opening rang out. The school showers had no hair dryers.
Zhou Shixu's hair was still damp, water dripping down.
The school was apparently still as stingy as ever—they hadn't even turned on the hot water for the gym's showers.
The chill of the cold water on Zhou Shixu's body was slowly blown by the sultry breeze onto Wen Qing's cheek.
"Aren't you afraid of catching a cold?"
"I won't."
"How could you not? Hot and cold alternating like that—you'd have to be lucky not to catch one. And when you get a fever tonight, no one will even notice."
The two of them chatted as they walked toward the sports field.
The school was holding its ceremonial awards presentation for the outstanding classes.
The fence around the outer edge of the field had been locked, so the two could only stand on the side nearest the field and watch from there.
Whenever an award for their class was announced, the students would applaud and cheer at the top of their lungs.
As if the result of the competition wasn't the victory—as if this cheering was what symbolized true success.
Finally, it was time for the individual awards of the competition.
The outstanding classes had been awarded new brooms, trash bins, and things like that.
Everyone had assumed the individual prizes would be nothing more than notebooks, pens, and other school supplies.
Until someone carried out AD calcium milk from backstage, and also… cucumbers.
Several bursts of laughter suddenly erupted across the field.
Even from outside the fence, Wen Qing couldn't hold back her laughter.
Just imagining the winners in a moment, walking down carrying an armful of cucumbers—
Everyone was already teasing their friends who had won.
Wen Qing glanced sideways at Zhou Shixu's expressionless face.
She simply couldn't imagine how hilarious it would be to see him walk off the podium carrying a bag of cucumbers.
"These can't be the cucumbers the school cafeteria couldn't sell, right?"
Although Zhou Shixu wasn't very nearsighted, the podium was simply too far away, and only now did he realize why Wen Qing had laughed earlier.
"Prize cucumbers?"
"Looks like there are also a few crates of milk. What, regretting that you didn't run in before the door closed to claim your cucumbers?"
"I guess I do regret it a little."
Wen Qing fiddled with the lock on the small door near them as she spoke:
"Just saying. Who wouldn't want to carry a bag of cucumbers back to class and happily munch through the whole evening study session?"
The small door was usually not locked tight—normally a few tugs would pull it open.
Wen Qing's palms were a bit sweaty, and two tugs didn't open it.
Just as she was about to search her pocket for a tissue, a shadow suddenly fell over her from behind and to the side, and a wave of coolness washed over her back, which had been scorched by the afternoon sun.
Zhou Shixu gave the lock a forceful tug.
The small door swung open.
Almost everyone's attention on the field was on the school's unconventional prizes.
The opening and closing of the remote little door went almost unnoticed.
Before quickly slipping back to class, Wen Qing didn't forget to remind Zhou Shixu to pick a bag with plenty of cucumbers.
Though he found it both exasperating and amusing, he didn't refuse.
And perhaps it really was because the cafeteria cucumbers weren't selling—the cucumbers brought out far outnumbered the milk.
One couldn't guess what the school leadership was thinking; probably they felt it would look bad to give the basketball team just two bags of cucumbers, two per person.
So the champions of the other events each got a bag of cucumbers, while the exclusive two crates of milk went to the basketball team to divide among themselves.
What arrived even before the evening study session was a flood in the classroom—you could see the overflowing water without even reaching the door.
With the water dispenser at its center, puddles spread in every direction.
The whole classroom was filled with the smell of cucumbers.
It was as if countless bags of cucumber-flavored Lay's chips had been opened in every corner.
Wen Qing was bent over her desk, huffing away as she peeled a cucumber.
You'd say the school was generous—its sports meet prize was cucumbers.
You'd say the school wasn't generous—it awarded everyone a super large bag.
The big bag of cucumbers Zheng Shiyi had won now lay sprawled across the space between the two girls' desks.
"Not gonna lie, Wen Xiaoqing, why don't you just bite right into it?"
As she spoke, Zheng Shiyi snapped off a whole segment with a crunch, the crisp sound lingering around their seats.
"With a bag this big, if we eat them your way—unpeeled, straight biting—our mouths will definitely go numb by morning reading tomorrow, and you won't even be able to sing."
"Really? We never peel cucumbers for the cold cucumber salad at home either."
Wen Qing had finished peeling the cucumber in her hand. She took a crunchy bite, and seemingly won over by the taste, squinted with a smile and took two more bites.
The unpeeled cucumber in Zheng Shiyi's hand was already half-eaten. Wen Qing took it from her and started peeling it:
"Of course it's true. That one dish at home only uses one or two cucumbers, and so many people share them—of course it won't cause internal heat."
Taking the peeled cucumber, Zheng Shiyi pointed at Chen Zhi behind them: "That's already his third one eaten raw."
Wen Qing had just handed the peeler to Duan Huaian when Chen Zhi brought over another cucumber and asked Duan Huaian to peel it for him.
He even invoked Wen Qing's earlier claim that eating unpeeled cucumbers would cause internal heat.
"Chen Zhi, did you skip dinner, or have you never seen a cucumber before?"
Seeing that the bag of cucumbers had already lost a layer thanks to Chen Zhi's devouring style of eating, Zheng Shiyi swiftly tied the bag shut.
"Stingy, aren't you? I've only had four, five, six cucumbers."
"Who are you calling stingy? I'll beat it all back out of you."
"Come at me then, if you dare!"
A cucumber was about to smack Chen Zhi right on the forehead when he reached out and snapped it in half. Just as the two were about to stage a full-blown martial arts drama, Wen Qing and Duan Huaian hurried over to break up the fight.
Zheng Shiyi glared at Chen Zhi and said darkly, "Just you wait. Next week's bubble tea is going to bankrupt you."
"Tch. With my skills, if it weren't for that whatever-'Zhou' thing today, I would've won ages ago."
At the mention of this, all three of them turned their gazes toward Wen Qing in unison.
Chen Zhi raised an eyebrow at Zheng Shiyi and gestured toward Wen Qing with his eyes: "The one who really ought to come clean is right here, isn't she?"
Wen Qing, who had been happily munching on her cucumber while waiting to watch the fight as an invisible bystander, was suddenly called out. She slowly shuffled backward until her entire back was nearly pressed against the window.
Before she could join the quarrel, a breathy chuckle—half a laugh, half not—drifted in from right outside the window, right by her ear.