The spring breeze nearing April had gradually taken on a touch of warmth, and the sun after the rain looked all the more scorching.
Even though the weather still felt somewhat chilly, there were still sturdy, strapping guys in short sleeves out on the sports field, sweating out the vigor of youth, forming a sharp contrast with the classmates who hadn’t yet shed their winter coats—as though they weren’t living in the same season at all.
If the campus didn’t forbid it, some of the boys with utmost confidence in their physiques might even have peeled off their shirts to show off the abs they’d worked so hard for.
All to concentrate the girls’ attention on themselves.
They strove to display their muscular contours on the field, every shooting form a few degrees more textbook than usual.
Because there really were pretty girls watching them, covering their mouths in shy little smiles, glancing away as if by accident when their eyes met, watching them while murmuring heart-tickling secrets to the best friends at their sides.
“Look at that idiot—dressed like that in weather this cold, thinks he’s so hot, like a total moron.”
“Damn, he missed that shot?
Even I could’ve made it!”
Such was the content of the beauties’ words.
What a pity.
No matter how hard they performed, no matter how much their physiques added to the picture, they couldn’t escape the fact that in most people’s eyes, physique ranks behind the face.
Even if their bodies really were enviably good in the girls’ eyes, if the face didn’t make the cut, then it all became utterly flavorless.
Society’s endless insistence on not judging by appearances couldn’t change what people actually thought—even if they themselves weren’t necessarily good-looking.
Compared to these muscle-flaunting big guys, more eyes were still fixed on Yiwen over at the tennis court.
Even though he stood only one-meter-seventy, even though he had thin arms and thin legs and looked frail as could be, even though his features didn’t look particularly manly.
But he smiled so sweetly!
Like a little angel, as though you could even catch a faint sparkle-and-dandruff special effect—like a paper-thin character stepped straight out of a 2D anime.
Who wouldn’t love a boy like this?
Physique can all be trained up later; a good-looking face is what’s truly good-looking.
And this face paired with this build was just perfect.
“Your form’s off.
For a beginner, it’s best to line the web of your hand up right here… When you swing, follow all the way through.
Stopping your motion the moment you hit the ball makes it very easy to send it off in the wrong direction.”
Yiwen guided Mi Xiaoliu hand-over-hand through the swing for a forehand stroke.
Standing close to him, Mi Xiaoliu could clearly catch the fresh jasmine scent in his hair.
How many girls wished they could take the place of this unremarkable little wallflower and receive Yiwen’s hands-on instruction in person.
Not quite a wallflower, though—at least the C badge on her chest was pretty eye-catching.
“Master, he touched your hand!” Sasha shrieked over and over in Mi Xiaoliu’s head, as though she herself had been violated.
“So, have you developed an interest in tennis?” Yiwen asked.
Mi Xiaoliu didn’t answer, because she didn’t understand where the benchmark for the word “interest” lay.
She’d only, after serving her first ball, quietly taken out another tennis ball and stuffed it into the triangular gap in the middle of the racket.
The ball fit snugly right into the gap.
Mood +1.
“Tennis is actually great for venting your mood,” Yiwen said, scratching his cheek awkwardly.
Swinging the racket didn’t require full strength, but unlike a badminton racket and shuttlecock, both fairly light, the moment a tennis racket met the ball you could feel a solid, genuine impact—an effective way to vent the displeasure in your heart.
It was just that fetching the balls afterward was quite the hassle.
He’d taken up her after-school time trying to drag her into the tennis pit, and seemed to have failed.
After returning the equipment, at day’s end Yiwen walked alongside Mi Xiaoliu on the excuse that it was on his way.
“Little Six, did you refuse the blood donation because you’re afraid of pain, or for some other reason?”
Mi Xiaoliu halted, bent to rummage in the handbag she used for carrying books, and pulled out a hundred-yuan note to hand him.
“…”
Yiwen took the note, realizing she didn’t seem to want to answer the question.
The talking, too, had been all him this whole time; the other party rarely gave any response.
Anyone else would probably have long since had enough.
The whole way, apart from stopping to buy buns from the old granny, he hadn’t seen her make a single other move.
This kind of “aloof” person might be very popular in anime, but in reality would only be someone without friends.
Aside from those with an ulterior motive, no one would keep pressing a warm face to a cold shoulder to get close to them.
The only thing they had in common with an ordinary high schooler was probably just that Yiwen had lain on the desk beside her and slept the whole morning away with her.
Old Gao saw it all, but said nothing.
“If you ever feel like donating blood someday, you can just go straight to a hospital… I mean, you don’t have to donate at our school.” Yiwen watched Mi Xiaoliu’s expression but read nothing from it.
Imitating Conan’s “Ah-le-le?”, he brought it up as if in passing: “Thirty percent of our school’s students are self-healing espers, and half of this batch of transfer students are self-healing types too.
How strange—there shouldn’t be that many self-healing espers, should there?”
But Mi Xiaoliu didn’t seem to take it in.
When he turned his head to look at her, he found her crouched—at some point—in front of a cardboard box, curiously staring at the creature inside.
Inside the box, a black-and-white kitten lay quietly.
The kitten’s coloring was very peculiar: its ears were black, all four paws were black, even the markings around its eyes were two black rings of just the right, matching size, while the rest was basically all white—just like a panda.
It didn’t look dyed, either, and who knew why anyone would abandon a cat with such strange markings; you could use it to film videos and go viral online for a good while.
The box wasn’t damp; it looked like someone had found a sun-dried spot and set it here today.
Seeing someone come near, the kitten wasn’t shy at all.
It lifted its head and mewed at Mi Xiaoliu, its two front paws scratching endlessly at the box.
“Poor thing—it looks only a few months old.” Yiwen crouched down too.
“It’s a girl.”
It was so excited—it wants to come home with me!
“Too bad my family can’t keep a cat.
Do you want to take her in, Little Six?” Yiwen turned to look at Mi Xiaoliu.
“Meat.” Mi Xiaoliu quietly spat out the single word.
“???” said Yiwen.
“Master, it’s best not to eat this one!” Sasha hastily cut in.
Despite saying that, Mi Xiaoliu still carried the cat off, cardboard box and all, and no matter how Yiwen said “you can’t eat kitties” the whole way, she never answered.
It was hard not to worry about just what would become of this kitten.
Yiwen stood at the foot of the building, seeing Mi Xiaoliu off as she carried the kitten upstairs, left disheveled in the wind.
“You can’t eat kitties…”
That “meat” just now was a joke, right??
“Didn’t take you for someone who cares so much about a classmate—don’t tell me you’ve fallen for him?” A teasing voice pulled her thoughts back.
“Just a heads-up: your home’s in the opposite direction.
The moment you walk out the school gate, you’re no longer on the same route as him.”
The one who’d spoken was the blonde girl with glasses who sat in the protagonist’s seat of the class.
“Can’t I have gotten lost?
I only wanted to see whether he’s the killer in the spatial murder case.” Yiwen turned expressionlessly.
“Even someone like me is into good-looking guys.”
“So did you get any leads?”
“No.”
Even though today he hadn’t breathed a single word about that case in front of Mi Xiaoliu.
There’d been no opening to bring it up—he could hardly just ask outright, “Xiaoliu, are you the killer?”
When it came down to it, from start to finish it was nothing more than his own not-very-grounded suspicion.
“Aren’t you curious about me tailing you?”
“Girls tail me every day, you know.” Yiwen replied with a cheeky smile.
“But you’re the only one who’d tail me knowing full well I’m a girl.
Might I ask—do you have some kind of designs on me?”
“It’s not that I couldn’t… You were on camera in yesterday’s news.” The blonde girl held her phone up to Yiwen’s face.
Playing on it was a news segment—the scene of a murder case somewhere.
“Officer, regarding this case…”
“No comment.”
“Officer, the public has a right to know the truth.
Is this case connected to last week’s murder?”
“Go, go, go!”
It aired the police’s foul attitude; the footage of the reporter and cameraman illegally stepping across the cordon had been cut straight out.
“Murder cases keep appearing in the city, yet in the face of public doubt the police maintain a foul attitude.
The broad public has now begun to lose trust in the police…”
Watching this video, Yiwen narrowed his eyes.
Realizing the other party’s mood was off, the blonde girl hurriedly put her phone away and changed the subject.
“Our way home’s the same route—let me walk you.”
Otherwise Yiwen would get lost again.
“No thanks.
I need to go help out at the station.” Yiwen waved her off in refusal.