Youth always passes quickly; in the blink of an eye it was already late April. The affiliated high school organized a monthly exam, and once it was over came May Day, with three days off.

For students about to step into their final year of high school, three days of vacation could be called a luxury. On the day the exams ended, the jubilation in the classroom was like firecrackers being lit, as if they couldn’t wait to blow up this classroom that had trapped their youth.

Jin Zhao lowered her head and quietly packed up her things, her mind repeatedly chewing over that last math problem.

She hadn’t solved it.

She could now basically stay steadily within the top 20–25 of the grade, but she couldn’t push any higher. She was clearly working hard, grinding through problem sets, yet it was as if she’d hit a bottleneck, making one inevitably suspect that something like talent truly existed.

“What’s wrong with you?” Her deskmate, Lu Jingyue, saw that she was downcast and asked, “Not happy about the break?”

Jin Zhao turned her head to look at him.

Lu Jingyue was like ironclad proof that talent really did exist.

These past few days the temperature had suddenly risen, climbing straight to twenty-six or twenty-seven degrees. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys were afraid of the heat, and had long since changed into short sleeves. The sunset passed between the teaching buildings, like a handful of broken gold slanting into the window, falling onto the desks the two of them shared side by side. The tips of the boy’s hair at his forehead were also stained with a pale golden light.

A thought stirred in Jin Zhao’s mind, and she blurted out, “That last big math problem… did you solve it?”

Lu Jingyue paused, then smiled. “Does my face really look that much like a math problem?”

Jin Zhao stared at him blankly.

Lu Jingyue said, “Have you noticed that every time you look at me for more than three seconds, the very next thing you say is definitely asking me about a problem?”

Jin Zhao: “?”

Is that so? Why was she completely unaware?

Her face heated up; just as she was about to apologize, Lu Jingyue reached a hand toward her. “Hand it over.”

Jin Zhao: “What?”

“Paper and pen.” Lu Jingyue looked magnanimous.

Jin Zhao hurriedly took them out of her backpack and placed them in front of him with great respect.

At dismissal time, classmates left in twos and threes. Laughter and chatter mingled in the thin floating dust illuminated by the sunset, the broken-gold tones like a warm painting from long ago. As soon as school let out, Luo Heng and Si Tian ran off together in a mysterious hurry. Meng Yanxi sat in his chair with his arms crossed, his gaze falling on the pair of deskmates diagonally ahead.

Seventeen-year-old Lu Jingyue had the lean slenderness unique to boys his age. When he bent slightly, his shoulder blades stood out. One hand pressed down on the paper; with his right hand he simply wrote down a few lines of formulas, then quickly put the pen down. Instead, he propped his elbow and, in a lazy manner, turned his head to look at the girl beside him, his left fingers lightly tapping the formulas on the paper.

Jin Zhao leaned forward, head lowered, listening intently as the boy beside her explained, her gaze fixed on the page. Occasionally she lifted her head to look at him and asked one or two questions.

The boy and girl went back and forth, as if a warmth were flowing between them.

Meng Yanxi looked expressionlessly in their direction. The band of sunset light happened to fall on the ground in front of his desk, cutting the space into light and shadow; he stood in the darkness.

The last math problem was very difficult; Jin Zhao guessed that there couldn’t be many people who had solved it. Lu Jingyue’s grades were always middle of the pack, neither high nor low, yet whenever it came to problems this hard, he could solve them—and even point out the line of thought with ease.

“You’re amazing,” Jin Zhao said, lifting her head to look at him, utterly convinced.

When would she also be able to be this capable? If that day came, she should be able to shed a lot of her fear.

“Let’s go.”

A cool, detached voice came from beside her. Meng Yanxi walked over with his backpack, his gaze sweeping across the draft paper in front of the two of them.

The last big problem.

Was it very difficult?

Meng Yanxi glanced at Lu Jingyue.

Lu Jingyue let out a laugh.

Lu Jingyue wasn’t someone who smiled much; only on very rare occasions would he smile, and most of the time Jin Zhao didn’t understand what he was smiling about. This made her look at him in confusion.

Lu Jingyue stood up. “Let’s go, deskmate. Enjoy the break.”

Jin Zhao nodded. “Bye.”

Meng Yanxi still stood where he was, unmoving, his gaze lowered as he looked at her.

Jin Zhao’s eyelashes fluttered lightly.

Unlike the natural ease she had when speaking with Lu Jingyue, every time before speaking with him, it was as if she needed to psych herself up—she would always make some preparations in her heart.

Meng Yanxi’s Adam’s apple rolled; he spoke first. “My sister asked me to check—are you going to dance over May Day?”

Jin Zhao reacted half a beat late, replying softly, “No, I’m not going for now.”

Meng Yanxi watched her, the pupils of his peach-blossom eyes pitch-black.

After two seconds, his gaze swept once more over the draft paper on the desk, and he asked, “Didn’t understand the problem?”

Jin Zhao followed his gaze and quickly said, “No, I understood. Lu Jingyue explains problems really well.”

She didn’t forget to praise the deskmate who often explained problems to her.

Her deskmate had already walked to the back row by now, then stopped to wait. His body was turned back, loosely leaning against a desk, relaxed and patient as he looked in their direction.

Meng Yanxi didn’t speak, nor did he leave. His eyes looked as though he had something to say, but after a few seconds of silence, he said nothing.

Jin Zhao thought for a moment and considerately asked, “You didn’t solve it either?”

Meng Yanxi lifted his eyelids slightly. “How could that be.”

Jin Zhao also felt she’d asked a foolish question. Meng Yanxi had always been the clear-cut first in the grade; how could he possibly not solve the last big problem? She nodded and took the initiative to say to Meng Yanxi, “Bye.”

Meng Yanxi responded with a somewhat cold “Mm,” then lifted his backpack and turned back to leave with Lu Jingyue.

Jin Zhao watched the two outstanding figures walking away, suspecting that her intuition had been wrong.

That look on Meng Yanxi’s face just now—was there something he wanted to say to her?

“You didn’t tell her about the prize?”

After going downstairs, Meng Yanxi immediately took out his phone and contacted Teacher Xiao Feng on WeChat.

He lagged a distance behind Lu Jingyue and used a voice message directly. The Lu Jingyue ahead only heard the words “the prize” and thought Meng Yanxi was talking to him, turning back to ask, “What prize?”

“No one’s talking to you.” Meng Yanxi glanced at him coolly and walked past him.

Teacher Xiao Feng always replied instantly on WeChat. He didn’t use voice, but typed a line of text: I told them already. On the day you transferred the money, I contacted her father.

After that, he diligently attached a screenshot—it was the WeChat conversation between Teacher Xiao Feng and Jin Wenhui. Following Meng Yanxi’s wording, it said that as part of Jinghong Dance’s thirty-year appreciation event, Jin Zhao had been drawn to receive thirty private dance lessons, teacher of her choice, with no time limit.

Meng Yanxi put his phone away, his expression calm and faint.

Lu Jingyue caught up, staring at him thoughtfully. “Did I offend you?”

Meng Yanxi ignored him.

Although Jin Zhao had said she wouldn’t go dance, over the May Day holiday Meng Yanxi still booked three consecutive days of lessons for Meng Zhuxi, going every day. This made Meng Zhuxi a little tired of studying.

Being clever was one thing, but no one was born loving to study—especially dance, which required genuine hardship and real suffering.

On the last day, Meng Zhuxi truly refused to go out. She hugged a corridor pillar and wailed, crying and scolding Meng Yanxi at the same time, saying he was picked up: “You’re not my brother! You were picked up! Go find your real mom and dad!”

Meng Yanxi expressionlessly took out his phone.

Meng Zhuxi had trained hard yesterday; her arms and legs still hurt. She ignored Meng Yanxi patting her, hugging the pillar and crying with snot and tears everywhere. When Meng Yanxi went to pull her, she even climbed up along the solid wooden pillar, hugging it tightly and refusing to let go.

Meng Yanxi hadn’t expected she still had this trick up her sleeve. He looked rather pleasantly surprised. “Your dance training is actually pretty effective. When you grow up, you might become a dancer.”

“I’m just a piece of trash, trash can’t become a dancer, wuwuwu!” The little girl hugged the pillar and cried so hard she even cursed herself.

Meng Yanxi focused on his phone screen. Suddenly he raised his brows. “Someone sent a Carnival.”

As he spoke, he lifted his eyes to look at Meng Zhuxi. “Ten more, and we’ll have enough money to buy you a phone.”

Meng Zhuxi cried even harder. Crying, she climbed down the pillar and hit him. While taking the beating, Meng Yanxi seized the chance to pull her into the car.

This May Day, the one who suffered the most was definitely Meng Zhuxi—more miserable even than Jin Zhao, who went out early and came back late every day.

On the morning school resumed, Jin Zhao ran into Si Tian and Luo Heng at the school gate. The two of them got out of a car in a mysterious manner. Si Tian wasn’t wearing her backpack on her back; she cradled it in her arms like a treasure, while Luo Heng stretched his neck to peer inside.

Jin Zhao greeted them. When Si Tian saw her, she excitedly waved her over. “Zhao Zhao! Come quickly!”

Si Tian was a generous girl. As soon as Jin Zhao reached her, she couldn’t wait to unzip her backpack, opening a slit for Jin Zhao to see.

Jin Zhao first heard a chirp-chirp birdcall—different from common bird sounds, the call was thin, soft, and gentle. She lowered her head and leaned closer to look, and saw that inside Si Tian’s backpack was a tiny birdcage. Inside it was a little bird about the size of a fist, round and plump, especially its belly, its whole body covered in snow-white feathers, with only its beak and claws a tender pink.