The school track at No.1 High.
The senior year block was already empty, and the other grades were sprinting toward finals.
Looking around, not a soul in sight.
Jiang Fuyue and Ling Xuan, not yet officially graduated, managed to slip past the gate guard and enter the campus.
The two sat in the stands, shaded by trees, cool breeze drifting by.
Jiang Fuyue: “Looking for me about something?”
Ling Xuan didn’t answer, his gaze fixed in the distance. “Which university are you planning to apply for?”
“Ming University.”
The boy was stunned, confusion flashing in his eyes. Only after a long pause did he recall what “Ming University” was.
“Qiming University?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me?!” Ling Xuan’s first reaction was utter absurdity.
The notorious “chicken coop” university, infamous as the “shame of higher education”? With Jiang Fuyue’s grades, there was no way she’d end up there!
His lips tightened, eyes dimming. “If you don’t want to say, forget it.”
Jiang Fuyue didn’t explain. Believe it or not, up to him.
Ling Xuan: “I… might go abroad.”
“Congratulations.”
But the boy suddenly turned, eyes sharp and complicated, staring straight at her.
Jiang Fuyue: “?”
Seeing her bewilderment, the emotion in his eyes shifted to grief and dejection, only to be overtaken the next second by anger and unwillingness.
Jiang Fuyue was even more puzzled.
All she said was “congratulations.” Why such an overreaction?
“Heh…” Ling Xuan let out a bitter laugh. “You really mean it?”
“Of course. Foreign universities are relatively open. If you want more hands-on opportunities, to develop your abilities, then going abroad is a good choice. Especially in business management, their programs are more advanced…”
Jiang Fuyue objectively laid out the pros of studying abroad—clear logic, orderly reasoning.
But Ling Xuan’s expression only seemed… angrier?
“Jiang Fuyue—do you really want me to go abroad that badly? Not even the slightest reluctance, not even one word to make me stay?”
The girl’s face was blank. “Isn’t going abroad your own decision? What do you mean ‘I want’? As for ‘reluctance’ and ‘keeping you back’—we’re not family, not even close. I have neither the position nor the right to show such emotions.”
“Not family, not close? Good… good…” Ling Xuan’s anger made him nod repeatedly. “They say hearts are made of flesh, but yours is harder than stone!”
“Jiang Fuyue, don’t tell me you don’t see it. I like you! Even if you had said just one sentence today—‘don’t go, staying here is fine’—I would’ve refused going abroad without hesitation, and applied to the same school as you!”
“But what did you say? Heh… you said congratulations. Am I that worthless in your eyes?”
It wasn’t like this before!
She used to quietly follow behind him, taking the same road.
During PE class, she’d skip and pretend to sit in the stands playing with her phone, when in fact she was secretly watching him.
Every time they brushed past each other, she’d give him a longer glance.
With shy eyes, delighted smiles, stolen sweetness.
She once gathered the courage to hand him a love letter, blurting out “I like you”…
Yet now, she treated him colder and more distant than even Zhong Ziang or Yici—polite but detached, cordial but never close. Even though they’d already teamed up in academic competitions, training domestically and even winning prizes abroad.
“Why?” Ling Xuan’s eyes were red, jaw clenched, gaze suppressed.
“Because—I don’t like you.” Her words were decisive and cruel.
But even in such mercilessness, Ling Xuan found her heartbreakingly beautiful.
I fell in love with the way you don’t love me. A riddle with no solution.
Ling Xuan’s lips tugged, voice low and bleak: “Just like you don’t like Zhong Ziang or Yici either?”
Jiang Fuyue’s eyes deepened, finally turning to him. “So, it was you who pushed them into confessing, one after the other?”
“Pushed?” His smile was bitter, tasting of gall. “In your eyes, am I that petty? I only told them—don’t act like drunk fools, find the right place, the right atmosphere, and say what you really feel. That’s what a confession should be.”
“You were testing the waters.”
Sending Zhong Ziang and Yici as cannon fodder to probe her stance.
Applying business tactics to relationships—this Ling Xuan…
Call him clever, yes, even scheming. But such methods were ruthless, extreme.
To him, their ‘liking’ was merely a tool to use. People like that lacked empathy.
In the end, his vision was too narrow.
But—
“You already knew they failed, so you should know my answer. Why say it anyway?”
If you already knew you’d fail, why try at all?
Surely someone as smart as him understood.
Yet here he was, doing what he shouldn’t.
Ling Xuan gave a self-deprecating laugh. “You give me too much credit. I’m not as rational and calculating as you think.”
When Zhong Ziang and Yici were rejected, part of him was secretly glad, yet another part was anxious.
If he confessed, would she accept him? Or reject him as decisively as the others?
It was fifty-fifty.
And for that fifty percent chance, even knowing the odds were bad, he still confessed—still said the four words: I like you.
Yes, he schemed Zhong Ziang and Yici. He was manipulative, shameless, unethical!
But he couldn’t help himself.
To do what you know you shouldn’t—that is youth’s love: reckless, fearless, choosing to act even if doomed to lose.
Ling Xuan: “I’m not noble. But I’m not as despicable as you think either.”
Jiang Fuyue stayed silent.
Then he laughed faintly, muttering: “But whether I’m noble or vile… you don’t seem to care at all.”
Because—she didn’t like him.
Ling Xuan blinked, tilted his head toward the sky.
Mist welled in his eyes, but pride forced it back, refusing to let it form tears.
He already knew this would be the result. What was there to despair over?
At least he tried.
But miracles don’t choose everyone.
“I still don’t get it. Clearly, you used to… why did you change later?”
“No one stays the same forever. Just think of that Jiang Fuyue who confessed as already gone.”
“What do you mean gone?!”
“She’s no longer who she was. I am who I am now.”
“So, you admit you once confessed?”
Jiang Fuyue smiled faintly. “Does it still matter?”
He laughed miserably. “…If I had agreed back then, then now—”
“You wouldn’t have agreed.”
The original her had been withdrawn, gloomy, humble like dust. How could the proud campus prince stoop so low?
Feelings aren’t about right or wrong. If you don’t like, you don’t like. Just as Ling Xuan didn’t like the old Jiang Fuyue, now she didn’t like him.
His only mistake was kicking her while she was down.
Knowing she was isolated because of him, yet choosing to ignore it, even publicly humiliating her—slashing her fragile self-esteem deeper.
“…Sorry, I didn’t know—” That later, he would fall for her.
Jiang Fuyue shook her head, gaze cold. “I don’t accept.”
She had no right to accept on behalf of the past.
“You don’t have to love. But please, don’t hurt.”
With that, Jiang Fuyue rose and left.
Ling Xuan sat in the stands, watching her silhouette grow smaller, his once-straight back collapsing.
He buried his head in his arms, his trembling frame giving him away.
The mist in his eyes finally collapsed into tears, silently dropping onto the concrete.
Steam carried them away in an instant, like his unattainable love—vanishing as soon as it appeared.
Turns out, just like Zhong Ziang and Yici, he’d never had the qualification to enter from the start.
The school bell rang, dusk flames streaking the horizon.
Ling Xuan’s pale face lifted, his body staggering away.
He knew he would never get another chance.
From now on, she was the moon in the sky. He, dust on the ground.
Later, the cleaning lady found a bouquet of roses on the stands.
Lush, crimson, still fragrant.
Inside, a delicate card with faint jasmine scent:
【Thank you for accepting me. From now on, never apart, together for life — Xuan】
The cleaning lady sighed: “Kids these days, their love talk is something else. Not even graduated, already promising forever.”
She stripped off the flashy wrapping, tied the roses together, and took them home for the living room vase.
…
Zhong Ziang locked himself up for three days, Aunt Liu indulging him with food, granting his every request.
Meanwhile, Xie Yunzao kept calling him back to Beijing. “The exams are done, your uncle’s gone to F continent, what are you still doing in Linhuai?”
Zhong Ziang, panda-eyed, hair like a chicken nest, lay slumped in bed, utterly wrecked.
“I want to! I’m staying in Linhuai!”
“Son, listen—”
“I don’t want to listen.”
“You’re alone there, who’s taking care of you?”
“Aunt Liu.”
A pause, then: “She cooks better than you. Washes clothes cleaner than the maids at home.”
Xie Yunzao choked on the other end.
Finally compromised. “How long will you stay? You can’t never come back, right?”
“Talk about it later.”
Right now, he just wanted to rot.
Ah—
Being dumped was h*ll!
Suddenly, he grabbed his phone and searched for Yici’s contact.
The best cure for heartbreak was finding someone equally heartbroken—and proving he was worse off.
But no number found.
“Didn’t we add WeChat…”
Finally discovered—blocked. He released him from the blacklist.
Zhong Ziang: 【Hey, want to drink?】
Reply came fast: 【Yes.】
…
A bar.
The only one open in the daytime on that street.
Zhong Ziang booked a private room, ordered wine in heaps—red, white, beer.
The bartender warned: “Mixing drinks gets you drunk fast.”
Zhong snapped his fingers. “Perfect. That’s exactly what I want.”
Bartender: “?”
He pressed his chest dramatically. “You don’t get it. Broken heart.”
The bartender nodded knowingly. “Want to leave an address? We offer drop-off service when you’re drunk. Cheap—200 a head.”
“Book for two.”
“Alright! Four hundred. No refunds.”
Yici soon arrived.
At first, they drank in silence, no greetings, just bottles clinking.
Half-drunk, Zhong Ziang suddenly blurted:
“How did you get rejected? Spill!”
Yici burped, dark circles matching Zhong’s. “Why don’t you go first?”
So Zhong Ziang described his grand rose field, camera crew, perfect moment… and then—burst into tears mid-story.
Yici: “…”
After wiping snot and tears, Zhong Ziang shoved tissues at him. “Your turn.”
Yici: “…I asked her to play basketball.”
“That’s my thing! Copycat!”
“Bullsh*t—I played with her too! Not yours alone, shameless!”
“…Fine, then what?”
“I said, if I block her shot, she’d have to be my girlfriend.”
“And?”
“…She broke through.”
“D*mn! You useless—what a chance wasted! You’re supposed to be good at basketball!”
Yici stared blankly. “The moment she gave it her all to break through… I already lost.”
“…Sounds worse than me.”
“Yours is worse.”
“No, yours!”
“Yours!”
“Yours is the worst!”
Hours later, both slumped in a pile of bottles, mumbling “miserable” back and forth, like a horror flick under the eerie lighting.
Staff found them like that.
“How miserable do you have to be to drink like this?”
“Supposedly heartbroken.”
“Who’s so cruel to dump two pretty boys? A crime against nature.”
“Now what?”
The bartender: “I’ve got their address.”
At nightfall, staff dropped the two drunks at Zhong Ziang’s place—Yici included.
No one home to receive them, so they dumped them on the sofa and left.
…
Zhong Ziang woke from heat, throat parched, head splitting. Tried to move—something wrapped around him.
Looked down. “WTF—”
Yici had arms and legs clamped on him like a suction cup, chest radiating heat onto his back.
Cursing woke Yici, who leapt up, clutching his chest: “Zhong Ziang! What did you do to me?!”
Zhong Ziang: “?”
“I should ask you! Why are my clothes off? And pants—”
“You—you put them back on first—sh*t! Why am I naked too?!”
In unison: “You did it?!”
Silence.
“…We went drinking, right?”
“Then blacked out.”
“I left the address, paid the fee, they sent us home.”
“I was on the sofa.”
“Me too—got up for water…”
“Bullsh*t! You spilled it on me!”
“I apologized! Even—” mid-sentence froze.
Yici also froze. “F*ck! You stripped me!”
“And you stripped me back!!”
Awkward silence.
“…So we both stripped each other.”
“This time forget it.”
“Never again!”
Both hummed in agreement, scrambling to dress—shouting about belts and buttons.
Chaos.
…
They slept till noon the next day. Hungover, wilted on the sofa like dying cabbages.
“Hey, aren’t we now double miserable?”
Yici: “You’re worse.”
“Why?!”
“Because you paid. Wine, room, delivery. Heartbroken and broke. Who’s worse than you?”
Zhong Ziang: “??”
So the clown was… himself.
…
Time flew. While heartbreak healed, exam results day crept close.
That morning, Jiang Fuyue went about her routine—ran, sweated, shower planned.
But found Jiang Da and Han Yunru seated in the living room. Neither at work?
“Dad? Mom?” Sun rising from the west?
Jiang Da coughed. “Results come out today.”
“Oh. What time?”
He twitched at the corner of his mouth. Should he call her big-hearted?
Han Yunru: “The official site opens at nine.”
It was already half-past.
Jiang Fuyue took out her phone, tapped a few times—
“Found it.”
