Jin Zhao returned to the classroom, entering through the back door. Meng Yanxi was already at his seat.

Class hadn’t started yet. Luo Heng had turned around and was talking to him about something. Meng Yanxi leaned lazily against the chair back, his long legs stretched into the aisle, his right hand idly spinning a pen. On the inside of his wrist, that dark red spot—whether a mole or a birthmark, she couldn’t tell—swayed along with the motion.

Jin Zhao’s heartbeat sped up for no reason at all. She tried to calm it with her breathing, but it barely worked. She took two more deep breaths, more for form’s sake than anything else, and walked to Meng Yanxi’s side.

Meng Yanxi noticed someone behind him. He didn’t turn around, only drew his legs back.

Jin Zhao stood there without moving. Luo Heng noticed her, stopped talking, and shot Meng Yanxi a look. Only then did Meng Yanxi turn his head.

Their gazes met. Jin Zhao could clearly feel the blood in her body rush upward. She was afraid her face had turned red, but there was nothing she could do about it.

“I…” Her voice was even lighter than she had expected.

At the same time, the class bell rang. As expected, her voice was drowned out by the ringing.

Jin Zhao felt that he probably hadn’t heard her speak at all. She said nothing more, lowered her head, and walked past him.

The first period was English. The English teacher arrived two minutes late, saying there were students who had come to the office to ask questions and apologizing for the delay.

Jin Zhao absentmindedly flipped open her textbook.

In fact, the entire afternoon, she was absentminded.

Meng Yanxi looked like a cold person, yet there was almost never any quiet around him. One moment it was Luo Heng looking for him, the next it was Lu Jingyue. Or it would be boys who had come to find Luo Heng and casually pulled him into their joking. This made it so Jin Zhao could never find a chance to talk to him.

Si Tian secretly showed her that post on her phone, then gestured for her to look at Ji Haoxuan’s new seat. Ji Haoxuan hadn’t come to class in the afternoon. The empty seat made Si Tian feel so relieved it was like her mammary glands had been unclogged. “Evil people have their own nemeses. Someone like that deserves to be properly dealt with by Meng Yanxi!”

But Jin Zhao always felt uneasy. This matter had nothing to do with Meng Yanxi at all. He had gotten dragged into it for no reason, purely because of the mess she had caused.

At last, she endured until school let out in the afternoon. Afraid someone else would get to him first again, Jin Zhao went straight to Meng Yanxi’s side as soon as class ended. Even so, Luo Heng was still a step ahead of her, grinning as he asked, “Wanna go play some basketball?”

This time, Jin Zhao didn’t have time to be nervous. She hurriedly spoke up, “Can I borrow you for a moment to talk?”

Meng Yanxi was sitting in his chair, yet his presence was frighteningly strong. Those pitch-black peach-blossom eyes lifted indifferently, yet somehow gave the feeling of looking down from above.

“You want to borrow me for a moment to talk?” he repeated.

The classroom after class was especially lively—voices, laughter, people coming and going—washing over Jin Zhao’s face, warm and close.

Her fingertips unconsciously tightened. She nodded lightly. “Mm.”

Meng Yanxi didn’t say yes or no. He straightened up.

It wasn’t until he walked past her that she reacted a beat too late, hurrying after him.

The boy was tall, with long legs, and took big strides. Jin Zhao almost lost him. She spun around in place before finally realizing—Meng Yanxi went upstairs.

Their classroom was on the top floor. Above it was a small attic. In summer, the cramped space was stifling and humid, and no one dared to come up. Now, although it was already late October, the air was still stuffy, every breath carrying a restless heat.

Jin Zhao thought he meant to talk here. She followed to his side, but Meng Yanxi only waited for her briefly, then continued up the stairs and pulled open the rooftop door.

The brightness of the rooftop broke through the dimness of the stairwell. Jin Zhao spoke up to stop him: “The school forbids students from going up to the rooftop.”

The boy held the rooftop door. His lean, powerful body was half in the daylight, half in shadow. The bright half looked as if it were edged in gold; the half hidden in darkness was like an unfathomable undercurrent.

“You also want to be secretly photographed and have it posted?” Meng Yanxi asked in return.

Jin Zhao walked up without hesitation.

The setting sun melted into gold. The clouds on the horizon were dyed crimson, like rouge soaked with the scent of wine. The boy turned the corner, leaned back against the wall, one long leg slightly bent, quietly watching her.

There was no one on the rooftop, so quiet that the sound of the wind brushing past her ears could be heard.

Jin Zhao stood in place for a few seconds, then walked up to him and said softly, “Sorry.”

Meng Yanxi lowered his gaze, his line of sight falling on her from the corner of his eyes. “Why apologize?”

“Last week, in the bag I gave you, those things to eat… and the love letter. I thought it was the same as before, that it was for you.”

“A love letter?” Meng Yanxi asked back.

Jin Zhao’s face felt hot. She didn’t dare look at him, her gaze falling on the iron railing not far away, mottled with rust.

“Mm. I thought it was for you. I didn’t open it to look. I didn’t know…” she said softly.

Meng Yanxi said, “I didn’t see it.”

Jin Zhao lifted her eyes in a daze. “What?”

Meng Yanxi said, “I said, I didn’t see any love letter.”

“How could that be?” Jin Zhao was surprised. “I clearly put it inside.”

Meng Yanxi didn’t speak, his expression distant and light.

His face was too convincing. Jin Zhao didn’t doubt him at all and immediately began to reflect on where exactly she might have lost the love letter. But she had indeed tucked that envelope into his windbreaker—could it be that she had already started getting forgetful at such a young age?

Jin Zhao wanted to ask again, to ask whether the other things were still there. Meng Yanxi spoke first: “Anything else?”

“No, no… yes, there is.” Jin Zhao incoherently organized her words. “I wanted to say, those things to eat really were given to me by Ji Haoxuan. Because I misunderstood, I passed them on to you…”

“So you want me to return those things to you?” the boy interrupted her.

“No, no.” Jin Zhao hurriedly denied it. “What I mean is, this matter has nothing to do with you. It’s my problem. You actually didn’t need to give Ji Haoxuan’s mother money. I’ll go find her to talk and explain it clearly.”

Because of her guilt, her cheeks burned, and her heart was beating fast as well.

“Jin Zhao.” Meng Yanxi suddenly called her name.

Jin Zhao froze, then lifted her eyes in astonishment to look at him.

This was the first time Meng Yanxi had called her by name. Before this, she had always thought that Meng Yanxi didn’t even remember what her name was, just as he didn’t remember that his previous deskmate was called Wu Fei—and Wu Fei had even been his rumored girlfriend.

She couldn’t say what she was feeling at this moment, only that the little bird sleeping in her chest was about to awaken again, about to start chirping noisily once more.

But the boy was clearly unaware of how great an impact he had on her. He remained expressionless, his gaze even somewhat cold. “Have you ever thought that I did it on purpose?”

“…Huh?” Perhaps the little bird was chirping too loudly—Jin Zhao looked at him in confusion.

“You didn’t really think it was such a coincidence, that I gave her money and just happened to get photographed; that I explained the whole story and just happened to have someone passing by hear it, did you?” There was mockery in the boy’s eyes. The black in his pupils was deeper than thick ink, colder than a deep pool—so detached it made one think of snow ridges atop high mountains, where the snow never melts even in midsummer.

Cold. And distant. This boy, who should have been burning with youthful passion, seemed to have stripped himself away from the world. He looked coldly upon others’ sorrow, joy, and desire.

Jin Zhao didn’t understand why she would see such near world-weary emotion in the eyes of a heaven-favored prodigy surrounded by adoration.

“You did it on purpose?” she murmured. “Why would you do that?”

As if she had asked a very ridiculous question, the corner of the boy’s lips curved. “Guarding needs a reason. Teaching a lesson doesn’t. Not liking what I see is enough.”

Jin Zhao: “…”

What a terrifying worldview.

Meng Yanxi straightened and walked past her.

Jin Zhao was still immersed in the shock brought by his worldview when Meng Yanxi suddenly stopped, turned his head to look at her. “Although I’ve said this once already, and you seem to have taken no notice at all, I still want to remind you again—kindness will not make your situation better.”

Jin Zhao: “Then what should I do?”

The boy stood with one hand in his pocket, looking at the fiery clouds burning across the sky. The blazing, scorching colors turned cold at the bottom of his pitch-black eyes.

Meng Yanxi said, “By any means necessary.”

The effect brought by the post was intense. Although in the end Meng Yanxi kept to his bottom line and did not call the police to accuse Ji Haoxuan’s mother of extortion, public opinion itself is a sharp blade that wounds invisibly.

Ji Haoxuan bore the brunt of it and was greatly affected. In the subsequent monthly exams, his ranking slipped further and further back each time.

He once went to find Jin Zhao. Acting on the belief that Heaven cherishes all life, Jin Zhao explained the whole misunderstanding to him, just as she had explained it to Meng Yanxi—plainly and clearly, from beginning to end.

Ji Haoxuan even persisted in asking her, “Then do you like me?”

Jin Zhao didn’t know why he would still cling to asking such a ridiculous question. When he had caused her to be humiliated by his mother, caused her to be smeared with obscene rumors by classmates, he should have understood that for her there were far more important things than liking someone. What’s more, she truly didn’t like him at all.

At that moment, Jin Zhao looked into this boy’s eyes. He was so cowardly, yet so purely kind. She suddenly thought of Meng Yanxi’s cold pupils, thought of his words—by any means necessary.

For a moment, she really did feel a bit—Your friend is in a reading drought, hurry and help him—

of an impulse.

Granted, she didn’t like him, but he had harmed her so badly. If Meng Yanxi hadn’t intervened, then the one being attacked by public opinion now would have been her. In this world, attacks of public opinion against girls are always thousands upon thousands of times more frightening, vicious, and filthy than those against boys.

Even now, when she thought of the rumors she had heard that day in the bathroom stall, she would still tremble—and all of it was thanks to him, thanks to his mother. Why couldn’t she take revenge?

All she needed was to nod, to give this boy a little bit of illusory hope, and he would sink completely into this dreadful trap of unrequited longing, unable to extricate himself. Under his rebellious youth, he might even oppose his mother for her sake and do foolish things no one could have predicted.

But in the end, she merely walked past him indifferently, leaving behind a calm sentence: “You’re overthinking it.”

At the corner, she ran straight into Meng Yanxi and Lu Jingyue.

Two boys, both tall with long legs and striking looks, stood side by side before her. It was hard to tell whether they were embarrassed at having stumbled upon an awkward moment, or openly eavesdropping. But from the disappointed look in Meng Yanxi’s eyes, Jin Zhao could tell it was the latter.

She thought that if it were Meng Yanxi, he would definitely nod and say he liked her—he might even kiss Ji Haoxuan once, as long as it meant teaching Ji Haoxuan and his mother a lesson.

But she couldn’t do it.

She didn’t want to teach anyone a lesson. She only wanted to protect herself.

Whether others were kind or evil, clean or filthy—what did that have to do with her? She only wanted herself to be better.

October passed quickly, then November, December, January… Winter break arrived as scheduled.

That rooftop encounter was the last time Jin Zhao and Meng Yanxi spoke that year. After that, they would occasionally run into each other, brushing past one another, leaving only the sound of the wind as the boy passed by in her ears, and her own heartbeat.

Although Meng Yanxi sounded a bit ruthless, his worldview even somewhat frightening, Jin Zhao would never forget that night alley by the bar, where the hot-blooded boy was willing to fight and get hurt to save a strange “bad girl.”

Even if he didn’t like her.

But that was something she could do nothing about. There truly was a world of difference between them, and her meeting him was more like a mistaken intrusion into a celestial realm.

That year’s Spring Festival, the family welcomed a new addition, and many guests came—especially relatives from Lin Yao’s side. The Jin family’s not-so-large house could barely contain so much joy. When Jin Wenhui asked Jin Zhao whether she wanted to go back to the countryside with Grandpa and Grandma for the New Year, Jin Zhao nodded, and Jin Wenhui visibly let out a sigh of relief.

On New Year’s Eve, Jin Zhao returned alone with Grandpa and Grandma to their old home in Jinjue Town. The three of them pasted Spring Festival couplets, set off fireworks, and stayed up to welcome the New Year.

Jinjue Town lay deep in the mountains. Transportation wasn’t very developed—after getting off the high-speed train, one still had to take another two-hour ride to reach it. There was no real pillar industry either. In earlier years, most of the young and middle-aged people went to the cities to work. Only in recent years, with the boom in tourism, had Jinjue Town gradually become more prosperous. The area was blessed with clear mountains and beautiful waters, and there was also the famous Jinjue Temple, known far and wide for its efficacy. Incense burned there year-round. Especially on the first day of the lunar year, long before dawn, a long line would already form outside Jinjue Temple, everyone waiting to offer the first incense.

On the first day of the new year, Jin Zhao didn’t go to line up for the first incense, but she still went to Jinjue Temple with Grandpa and Grandma, piously paying her respects to the deities and offering incense.

There were many people that day, packed shoulder to shoulder. Jin Zhao knelt among the crowd, worshipping the Buddha.

The Meng family’s ritual had concluded. Meng Yanxi, led out from the inner hall by the abbot, saw her at a glance in the crowd.

The sixteen-year-old girl knelt devoutly on a prayer cushion, hands pressed together, eyes closed. Her fair little face was tilted up toward the Buddha. The sun had come out, and the reflection from the Buddha’s golden body cast a ray of light, shining squarely upon her face.

The golden light was bright and clear, as if a layer of Buddha’s radiance had been gilded onto her features, illuminating even the fine, soft fuzz on her face in sharp detail.

Meng Yanxi suddenly stopped.

At the same time, a monk struck the hand bell at the side.

“Dong—”

The sound of the bronze bell was long and powerful, striking straight at the heart.