Yu Lei was knocked to the ground by a single punch, one hand covering his face and the other clutching his stomach, his body hunched and curled up on the ground.

Meng Yanxi was about to strike again when Jin Zhao reacted and hurriedly stopped him. “Meng Yanxi!”

It was dismissal time. The school gate was crowded with people, and the commotion immediately drew the attention of the students. The security guards at the gate also noticed them and shouted sharply, “What are you doing! Fighting is not allowed!”

Two guards ran over from across the way, one stopping in front of Meng Yanxi and the other in front of Yu Lei.

Meng Yanxi’s wrist was being held by Jin Zhao, and he stood where he was without moving. Yu Lei lay on the ground, his face and stomach aching. The guards forcibly pulled him up, and in a fury he cursed loudly, “Bullshit fighting! This is one-sided assault! Assault! I’m calling the police!”

Everything had happened too fast just now, and the passing students hadn’t reacted. Now, hearing the words “assault” and “calling the police,” someone secretly took a phone out of their backpack to get ready to take photos.

The school’s logistics security staff had received special training in controlling public opinion and were extremely sensitive. One guard immediately shouted, “Phones are not allowed at school. Which class are you from? Hand over the phone!”

The two students who had just taken out their phones turned around and ran.

The other guard was already staring at Yu Lei’s yellow-dyed hair and struck first, demanding, “Which class are you from? Who allowed you to dye your hair like this? Ignoring school rules, are you? Come on, come on, follow me to the security office. I’ll have your homeroom teacher come and get you!”

Saying this, without any further ado, he grabbed him and dragged him toward the security office.

Yu Lei had just taken a beating and was nearly yanked to the point of dislocating his arm. The anger in his chest was about to choke him to death, and he screamed hoarsely, “I’m not from your school!”

The other party didn’t listen at all and forcibly dragged him into the affiliated middle school.

Meng Yanxi and Jin Zhao naturally didn’t escape either and were brought back to the security office as well—only slightly more decently, walking on their own.

It was Saturday. Chen Shu had already gotten off work and was called back to the school by a phone call from the security office.

Although the students of Class A were mischievous, they still obeyed the major rules. This was the first time Chen Shu had received such a call, and she even suspected that a student had reported the wrong homeroom teacher. The security personnel asked back, “Isn’t Meng Yanxi your student?”

“Who? Meng Yanxi?!” Chen Shu cried inwardly that this was bad.

The school’s security office was right by the main gate. Once the door closed, it cut off the curious gazes outside. Chen Shu pushed the door open and heard a rough, hoarse voice shout, “I’m calling the police!”

Meng Yanxi was leaning against a desk to one side. He tipped his chin and pointed out the direction for the yellow-haired boy opposite him. “The phone’s over there.”

Chen Shu’s head started to ache.

A fight at the school gate and still wanting to drag it to the police station—what kind of grudge did this have against her?

She gave a light cough, trying to draw everyone’s attention and take the opportunity to ease the tense atmosphere, but no one noticed her.

The left half of the yellow-haired boy’s face was flushed and swollen high, squeezing his already unclear eyes even smaller. Pointing at Meng Yanxi, he cursed, “Just you wait!” and rushed over to grab the desk phone.

The guard immediately went up to pull him back, his tone much gentler. “Sit down first and talk it through properly—”

Jin Zhao had been standing quietly behind Meng Yanxi. She suddenly stepped forward and spoke calmly, neither light nor heavy. “If anyone’s calling the police, it’ll be me.”

Perhaps because Meng Yanxi had been shielding her behind him the whole time, and she hadn’t spoken, even Chen Shu hadn’t noticed her presence. Now that she suddenly spoke, she immediately drew everyone’s gaze.

A sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl, her jet-black, soft hair tied into a ponytail, fair-skinned and sweet-featured, the kind of appearance that looked like she would burst into tears on the spot at the sight of a bad student. At this moment, she stood beside Meng Yanxi, her back straight, looking steadily at the yellow-haired boy opposite her.

“For a whole week, you’ve been blocking me at the school gate and harassing me. If anyone’s calling the police, it should be me.” Jin Zhao spoke clearly, glancing at the monitoring screen beside them. “Look, your motorcycle is still there.”

In the end, because Jin Zhao’s attitude was firm about checking the surveillance and holding Yu Lei accountable for harassing her, as one side rose the other fell, the other party’s arrogance immediately weakened. Rubbing his stomach, he slipped away from the security office in disgrace.

As soon as he stepped out and saw several students’ gazes around him, he bared his teeth and cursed, “What are you looking at! Be careful or I’ll gouge your eyeballs out!”

Saying this, he limped away from the affiliated middle school. Soon after, the noisy roar of a motorcycle engine came through.

As the homeroom teacher, Chen Shu stayed behind and asked Jin Zhao about what had happened. Jin Zhao explained briefly. There really wasn’t much to say—before this, she had always blended into the crowd to avoid him. Strictly speaking, today was the first real confrontation, yet after only a couple of exchanged words, Meng Yanxi suddenly appeared and beat him up.

Thinking of Jin Zhao’s family situation, Chen Shu felt it was no surprise she had been targeted by a delinquent. The other party had clearly seen her gentle, soft appearance and assumed her personality was weak and easy to bully, counting on the fact that even if something happened, she wouldn’t dare tell a teacher or her parents. What she hadn’t expected was that she was gentle on the outside but firm within, and would speak up about it in front of everyone, even insisting on calling the police.

Chen Shu didn’t dare take it lightly. She wrote her own phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her, solemnly instructing, “Memorize it. If anything happens, tell the teacher immediately, or call the police right away.”

Jin Zhao accepted it with both hands and said softly, “Thank you, teacher.”

Chen Shu said gently, “Go on back.”

She glanced again at Meng Yanxi. The seventeen-year-old boy stood not far away with his schoolbag hooked in one hand, brows and eyes dark, his presence sharp and intimidating. She had originally intended to keep him behind and lecture him a bit, but fearing that the yellow-haired boy might not have gone far, she waved her hand and let him leave together with Jin Zhao.

After the two of them went out, Chen Shu turned back and spoke with the guards for a while longer.

She was just a teacher, not an administrator, and couldn’t directly tell them what to do. She could only do her best, smiling apologetically as she asked the security staff to keep an eye out in the future for any delinquent youths loitering around the school, and to report it promptly if there were any. As for today’s incident, she asked that it not be spread around—after all, nothing really happened, and talking about it would only turn it into idle gossip. If it spread as a rumor, it could cause harm.

The two guards on duty both had daughters of their own. They said they understood and expressed that they would pay more attention to students’ safety in the future.

Jin Zhao and Meng Yanxi headed toward the bus stop.

After May Day, the temperature had fully risen, staying above thirty degrees these past few days. The early-summer sunset spread the sky in shades of orange-red, and the hot wind pressed warmly against their faces.

Jin Zhao stared at the long shadow at her feet, not speaking.

She didn’t know whether she should say thank you first, or feel embarrassed first—that he had once again seen her weakness.

The bus stop wasn’t far, only about a hundred meters away. But perhaps Meng Yanxi had never taken the bus and didn’t recognize the stop sign, and he walked straight past it without hesitation.

Jin Zhao kept her head down and followed his steps. By the time she realized it, they had already missed it. She could only continue on to the next bus stop. Fortunately, the distance between two stops was only a few hundred meters.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Meng Yanxi finally spoke.

Within a one-kilometer radius of the school were all kinds of restaurants and shops, the mixed scents of food wrapped up in the din of voices.

Jin Zhao knew what he was asking and answered honestly. “At first, I really was a bit flustered. I’d never encountered something like this before, so my instinct was to avoid it. Later, I thought about it, and I felt that the other party didn’t look like such a bad person. He just had some misunderstandings about me, so I thought I could actually just explain things to him directly.”

Meng Yanxi said, “Did you explain it clearly?”

“…No.”

Meng Yanxi looked at her without speaking, but the look in his eyes was unmistakable: I knew it—people like this understand better after being beaten.

Jin Zhao fell silent for a moment, then changed the subject. “Does it hurt?”

The boy raised an eyebrow slightly.

Jin Zhao pointed at his hand. “His face is swollen like that—are your hands okay?”

She had thought Meng Yanxi would say it didn’t hurt. After all, last time his foot had been swollen like that, he had still acted as if nothing was wrong. Unexpectedly, Meng Yanxi lifted his hand and looked at it, then went along with it and said, “A little.”

Jin Zhao immediately grew nervous and leaned in to look.

Meng Yanxi’s hands were very beautiful—long fingers, distinct joints. Because he liked sports, his body fat percentage was low, and veins coiled across the backs of his hands, making them look especially attractive. At this moment, the originally cool-white hands had a patch of red near the knuckles of the palm bones.

Jin Zhao leaned even closer, trying to see whether there was any swelling.

Meng Yanxi lowered his gaze to look at her.

The girl lightly rose onto her toes and leaned toward his chest. The tips of her jet-black hair were dyed warm gold by the setting sun. The early-summer wind carried heat as it blew past, and he caught a faint, elusive scent of gardenia—soft and light.

Jin Zhao’s fingertips wanted to touch, but she stopped herself in time and lifted her eyes to look at him.

Caught off guard, their gazes met. Meng Yanxi felt as if a gardenia flower had lightly bumped into his chest, his breathing slowing by half a beat.

“Let’s go put some medicine on it,” she said, looking at him.

That straightforward, sincere gaze was so close.

“No need.” He shifted his gaze away and at the same time turned his palm over, avoiding her inspection.

That movement let Jin Zhao see the mark on the inside of his wrist. Before, each time she had glimpsed it from afar, she had only seen a dark red mark that looked both like a mole and like a birthmark, and she hadn’t been sure what it was. Now, at close range, she finally saw it clearly—about three to five millimeters in size, dark red, shaped a bit like a butterfly’s wing.

“Is this a birthmark?” she couldn’t help asking out of curiosity.

Meng Yanxi glanced at it. “No, a scar.”

“A scar?” Jin Zhao was surprised.

How could someone even have scars that looked this good?

Meng Yanxi said, “Spider bite.”

“A spider?”

“Mm.”

Meng Yanxi met her eyes and fell silent for two seconds, then suddenly asked, without any lead-in, “You could tell Lu Jingyue is afraid of birds, but you couldn’t tell I’m afraid of spiders?”

Jin Zhao: “?”

Jin Zhao looked at him in confusion.

Meng Yanxi probably found himself unreasonable as well. He withdrew his hand and stepped forward.

Jin Zhao hurried to follow. After thinking for a moment, she tried to explain, “I didn’t see any spiders at school.”

Meng Yanxi said, “Mm, it bit me when I was little.”

“No, what I mean is…”

It was because Si Tian brought a bird that she had the chance to notice Lu Jingyue was afraid of birds. But spiders had never appeared at school, how was she supposed to know he was afraid of spiders?

She was trying to organize her words when Meng Yanxi, who was walking ahead, suddenly stopped.

Jin Zhao followed his line of sight. Across the street, Yu Lei was sitting on his motorcycle, his face bruised and swollen as he looked at them.

There were two more companions beside him, both looking quite a bit older than him, their hair dyed in the same multicolored fashion. Cigarettes burned between their fingers. One of them took a drag and slowly exhaled a smoke ring. Two girls passing by covered their noses and hurried away.

“Wait here.”

The green light turned red, and the ceaseless stream of traffic seemed to be pressed to a pause, stopping neatly behind the crosswalk. Meng Yanxi tilted his head slightly and tossed the words to Jin Zhao, then strode over himself.

The three across from him also got off their motorcycle at the same time.

Meng Yanxi had been born looking down from above. Even facing three alone, there was still a kind of condescension and disdain in his eyes, that look clearly saying: come once, get beaten once.

Naturally, that only made the others dislike him even more.

Both sides were steeped in hostility, just like that night in the dark alley, a melee on the verge of erupting at a single spark.

Meng Yanxi drew his fist back to gather strength. Just as he was about to throw the schoolbag in his hand, a soft, warm hand pressed down on him.

“Meng Yanxi, don’t fight.”

Jin Zhao hurried over, her palm pressing firmly against the bone of his wrist.

At the same time, she looked toward Yu Lei across from them. “I actually had something I wanted to say to you just now.”

Yu Lei’s face was even more bruised and swollen than before, making his eyes look even smaller. He glanced at Meng Yanxi, then asked Jin Zhao, “What do you want to say?”

“You said that you and I are people from the same world.” Afraid that Meng Yanxi would take the opportunity to strike, Jin Zhao kept pressing his wrist, turning her head to look at Yu Lei. “Why do you think that?”

Yu Lei shot back, “Aren’t you?”

Jin Zhao said honestly, “I don’t know what kind of person you are, but I can tell you what kind of person I am.”

“And what kind of person are you?”

Jin Zhao said, “I will never give up on myself, never give up on becoming better. I will keep working to make myself better and stronger, and I will never stop.”

The face opposite stiffened.

Looking at him, Jin Zhao continued, “I won’t cling to fleeting, illusory companionship, comfort, or validation, even if I’m trapped in hardship, utterly alone. Because I know for myself how beautiful I am, how precious I am. Even if no one else can see it, it doesn’t matter—I know it myself.”

“Are you like that?” she asked softly.

With the roar of the motorcycle, Yu Lei and his two streetwise friends ran the red light and sped off in a rush.

Jin Zhao turned her head to look at Meng Yanxi. The sunset reflected a sparkling smile in her eyes.

“See? It’s actually possible to communicate. It’s not that bad, right?”

“Running a red light and that’s still not bad?”

Meng Yanxi glanced indifferently in the direction where those people disappeared and walked off the other way.

“That’s true.” Jin Zhao nodded readily and followed him.

After only a few steps, Meng Yanxi stopped again.

This time, across the street stood Lu Jingyue, holding a basketball in his arms, waving at Meng Yanxi with a face full of brotherly goodwill.

Meng Yanxi’s expression wasn’t any better than before. He couldn’t even be bothered to look at him.

Turning his head to Jin Zhao, Meng Yanxi was quiet for two seconds, then suddenly said, “Lu Jingyue isn’t first in the grade.”

Jin Zhao: “?”