Returning to school at six o’clock on Sunday afternoon.
The joy and liveliness from leaving had vanished, and the school had once again become a lifeless tomb.
Rows of lights flickered on in the dark, boxy teaching building, pale and deathly, like ghost fire.
Youth was buried here, and here it was reborn.
The homeroom teacher had not yet appeared. Students in the front rows studied quietly.
Those in the back rows frantically copied homework.
Zhou Zhi sat upright, pen in hand, but she was scribbling meaningless symbols on her notebook.
Liang Muye kept turning his head, his face swollen, sizing up the girl sitting in the last row.
Quiet. Serene.
She was out of place amidst the chaos around her, so pale and frail it was heartbreaking.
The hand gripping the pen looked translucent white under the light, with faint blue veins and long, slender fingers.
It was this very hand that, when clenched into a fist, could unleash astonishing force.
At the thought, Liang Muye felt his swollen face ache again, and he could almost taste blood.
He had grown up scrapping in the streets—fighting and getting beaten were second nature to him—but the punch Zhou Zhi had landed on him that day was absolutely vicious.
Both in strength and technique…
This was definitely not her first time throwing a punch.
Everyone had been fooled!
She was no meek, easy-to-push-around good student at all.
Liang Muye’s stare was too blatant. Someone in the back rows let out a jeering laugh: “Liang Muye’s eyes are practically glued to the pretty girl, haha.”
“Give it up, Brother Liang. A good student like her wouldn’t go for someone like you.”
“Wait until your face isn’t swollen first.”
“Hahaha.”
Song Jun, who had never gotten along with Liang Muye, sneered mockingly: “A toad lusting after a swan’s flesh.”
Raucous laughter and teasing erupted from the back rows, filling the entire classroom.
More and more gazes turned toward Zhou Zhi, landing on her face.
They had to admit it.
The girl was truly beautiful, her skin so fine that not even a single pore was visible.
Like a flower raised in a greenhouse, a princess in a castle—she didn’t belong with them.
She effortlessly captured anyone’s gaze.
The class monitor’s voice rang out again and again trying to maintain order, but with little effect.
In a life squeezed dry by academic pressure, any little stir was enough to catch the attention of those with weak resolve.
Wu Ya let out a cold laugh. She turned around and kicked Zhou Zhi’s desk.
“Hey, go get the homework.”
Zhou Zhi frowned but still got up and followed Wu Ya.
She didn’t like noisy environments.
Zhou Zhi walked past without looking sideways. Even Liang Muye, who was frantically trying to explain himself, lowered his voice a few notches.
Aside from the pale “I don’t like her,” he didn’t dare say a single word like “Who does she think she is? I wouldn’t even look at her.”
Money was valuable.
His face couldn’t take another punch.
Fear was like poison, seeping into his heart without warning.
In the office.
The homework notebooks of over sixty students were stacked half a meter high.
When Zhou Zhi picked them up, her hands didn’t even tremble.
Wu Ya, who had been hoping to see her struggle, snorted coldly and grabbed a few books at random before following.
“Let me tell you, Liang Muye and the class monitor are a thing. Don’t you dare pull any tricks to seduce him.” Wu Ya stared at the slender figure ahead of her, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
She had seen it all.
Liang Muye’s eyes were practically stuck on Zhou Zhi.
She didn’t like Zhou Zhi—she made Wu Ya look like a useless piece of mud that couldn’t be propped up.
The warning received no response.
Neither denial, nor smugness. Nothing at all.
Wu Ya stepped forward two paces, blocking Zhou Zhi’s path, and saw only a calm face, devoid of any expression.
When those eyes looked at her, they were like a still well with no ripples—deep and quiet, yet with darkness churning and lurking beneath.
She instinctively averted her gaze and took two steps back.
The silent standoff made Wu Ya restless.
It was at that moment that the sound came from around the corner.
—”Ji Xuanxu, why can’t you like me?!”
Wu Ya and Zhou Zhi both stopped in their tracks.
Around the corner, the school’s bright lights shone like daylight, and the two figures stood there as if exposed under the sun with nowhere to hide.
Gu Wan pushed up her school uniform sleeve, revealing a lifelike winter jasmine tattoo on her wrist. She looked at Ji Xuanxu, her eyes tinged with red: “I got the same tattoo for you.”
“I’m pretty, I’m rich, I can sing, play piano, and dance…”
“Is there anything wrong with me?”
Ji Xuanxu let out a scoff and tossed the love letter back into Gu Wan’s arms: “Sorry, I like girls who can smash rocks on their chests.”
The youth’s voice was slightly cold, with a hint of grit that sketched out a lazy, careless air.
Gu Wan’s face turned deathly pale. She gritted her teeth and blocked Ji Xuanxu’s path.
Such a flippant, cliché rejection—she couldn’t accept it: “Ji Xuanxu! We’ve practically grown up together as childhood friends. Do you have to be so merciless?”
Childhood friends.
Those four words were like sparks that burst and scattered, suddenly searing and burning at the tip of his heart.
The youth who had already been about to leave stopped and turned back, cold and fractured, tinged with malice: “Childhood friends… what the hell is that?”
Wasn’t it just a relationship that others could casually discard and sever?
He loathed those four words, like a naked blade coated with the poison of mockery and self-derision, constantly churning in his heart.
Besides, what kind of childhood friends were he and Gu Wan, anyway?
The conversation came to an abrupt halt, and Wu Ya behind the corner belatedly felt a surge of panic.
She had stumbled upon Gu Wan’s rejected confession!
Everyone believed Gu Wan and Ji Xuanxu were a match made in heaven, and Gu Wan had never denied it.
And the winter jasmine tattoo.
Rumor had it that it was a couple’s tattoo meant as a token of love.
The truth was suddenly laid bare before her eyes.
That…
Wu Ya turned her head, but the long, straight corridor offered no place to hide.
Yet Zhou Zhi beside her acted as if nothing had happened, hugging her homework and continuing forward.
“Wait…”
Wu Ya tried to grab Zhou Zhi.
She didn’t want to be discovered by Gu Wan and bear the brunt of her anger after such humiliation.
In her panic, she knocked over the tall stack of homework notebooks.
“Thud…”
A few muffled sounds, and the notebooks scattered across the floor.
The small commotion was enough to alert the people around the corner to their presence.
Wu Ya’s mind went blank. She stood frozen in place, motionless for a long moment.
It was over.
She had made things worse.
The two emerged from around the corner, and across the short distance, Wu Ya met Gu Wan’s gloomy gaze.
Zhou Zhi crouched down and silently picked up one notebook after another.
Her long, upright lashes trembled, shielding the tangled emotions brewing in her eyes.
The youth’s mocking voice seemed to still echo in her ears.
—”Childhood friends… what the hell is that?”
Resolute, disgusted, dripping with scorn.
Any lingering trace of attachment to the past was shattered effortlessly by those words.
Zhou Zhi mechanically repeated the motion of picking up notebooks, thinking of many things yet nothing at all, until another pair of hands appeared in her line of sight.
Long, slender fingers tensed at the knuckles as they bent, like a string suddenly pulled taut.
On the wrist bone that occasionally turned over, there was a green winter jasmine flower, like a spring day in full bloom, lush and verdant as far as the eye could see.