But he smiled.

She didn’t know what he was smiling about; anyway, Xiang Di just stared blankly.

As if an iceberg struck by the Titanic cracked open a narrow fissure, letting a beam of heavenly light leak through. The curve of his lips was very restrained, yet he couldn’t restrain the faint smile in his eyes.

A particularly old-fashioned line suddenly popped into Xiang Di’s head.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the young master smile so happily.

In the middle of the night, it made one feel dizzy.

Xiang Di’s face flushed slightly. Anyway, there was no one else here right now. Since she liked him so much, just this once—could she be a little narcissistic and think that when he smiled, it was because of her?

【Good heavens, I can’t take it anymore.】

【Why is this boy so good-looking, so handsome when he smiles.】

The dialect tone she’d learned online sounded a bit ridiculous because it wasn’t standard, and she deliberately used a joking tone to cover up the extreme heartbeat of the moment. Paired with her sweet voice, it inexplicably carried a silly kind of cuteness.

Call her infatuated if you want—she accepted it. Anyway, she was completely captivated by him.

【I like him so much, so much, so much, I like him to death.】

His Adam’s apple rolled up and down with some difficulty; the cold, sharp brows and eyes completely surrendered. Along with the flutter of his pitch-black lashes, heat rushed to the corner of Bai Jiangxin’s temple. He raised a hand to cover his cheek, coughing a few times as if choked.

Xiang Di asked, “Are you okay? Did you catch a chill from the wind at night?”

“Maybe.” The nighttime temperature was low, but his earlobes and the back of his neck were burning hot—it did feel a bit like catching a chill. Bai Jiangxin’s voice was a little hoarse. “Go on up.”

Xiang Di nodded. “Okay, then you hurry home too. Don’t catch another cold. Bye-bye.”

Bai Jiangxin hummed, watching Xiang Di turn around, push open the glass security door, and walk inside.

The distance wasn’t far; her inner voice was still within his receiving range for the moment. He heard her sigh, then mutter in her heart again.

【My husband’s body really isn’t that great—catching colds every few days.】

【They say if a man’s constitution isn’t good, then his time in bed will be very short, and the vitality of his sperm won’t be good either.】

【With a nose bridge that straight, it looks like the thing down there should be pretty big too—turns out he’s a sickly pretty boy, nice to look at but useless…】

“……”

Bai Jiangxin’s face darkened, the good mood from just now vanishing without a trace.

A lustful groundhog—never honest for more than three seconds, always circling back to this.

He turned around and left.

【But whatever, it has nothing to do with me. He doesn’t even want to be deskmates, how could he possibly like me? We could never be together. Being able to see him at school every day is already enough.】

【Cheer up. Today he walked you home and even bought you cream puffs. You’re already a super lucky girl—be content.】

Xiang Di tugged on her backpack straps while waiting for the elevator, tilting her head up to watch the numbers, spacing out as she thought.

At night, there weren’t many residents using the elevator. It quickly arrived at the first floor. Xiang Di walked in, turned around, and looked out through the glass door. Sure enough, there was already no figure outside.

Bai Jiangxin had already left. Although she also hoped he would hurry home, the fact that he really just left like that still made Xiang Di feel a little bit disappointed.

That was true—after all, as classmates, it was already very responsible of him to escort her to the building downstairs today. They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend; he had no obligation to watch her walk into the elevator.

The door closed, the elevator began to rise, the distance pulling apart, and those bits of muttering that had echoed by his ears all night were finally completely inaudible.

Bai Jiangxin hadn’t gone far. Moonlight and the shadows of the residential lights fell over him, his expression calm, his brow bones lowered.

Clearly, it would’ve been fine to just not care, like before, but—

This time, he really had run into a natural enemy he couldn’t help but care about.

His Adam’s apple rolled ever so slightly. Bai Jiangxin finally let out a helpless sigh, lowered his head to glance at the cream puff bag in his hand. Even though he restrained himself, his breathing was still a bit disordered. In the cool breeze of the early spring night, it turned into quiet, formless mist, dispersing around him.

─── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ───

The elevator arrived at her floor. Xiang Di quickly opened the door and went inside, not even noticing that someone was sitting in the living room at the moment. She hurried straight to the balcony, opened the window, and looked outside.

Her apartment was on a high floor; it wasn’t easy to see people downstairs, let alone when he should already have left by now.

Xiang Di pouted, when a lazy, irritating voice suddenly came from behind her.

“Losing your mind in the middle of the night? It’s freezing—close the window already.”

Xiang Di responded with an “oh” and closed the window.

She walked back into the living room, glanced at the person sitting on the sofa, and said flatly, “Why are you at home?”

The person on the sofa was Xiang Di’s biological older brother. He was a senior this year and had already secured a postgraduate recommendation, and it was to their own university at that. The advisor in charge of guiding his graduation thesis liked him very much and had already decided to take him on as a direct disciple. So while other seniors were still at their wits’ end over their graduation theses, his thesis had already been affirmed by his advisor, leaving him idle every day like an unemployed vagrant.

So to Xiang Di, a high school senior who would be heading into the battlefield of the college entrance exam in three months, her brother’s leisure was simply an eyesore. She didn’t want to see him at all and wished he’d be out fooling around every day.

On top of that, their sibling relationship could hardly be called harmonious or affectionate. They weren’t strangers, but it was a fact that they found each other disagreeable.

“Is this your house alone? I’m not allowed to come back?”

Xiang Sheng was wearing a wrinkled hoodie, propping up his chin with one hand, his tone lazy. He was slouched diagonally on the sofa with one leg crossed over the other. On the coffee table in front of him were piles of orange peels and sunflower seed shells he’d eaten. He waved at her as if shooing a puppy.

“Move. Don’t stand in front of the TV, blocking my view.”

Xiang Di clicked her tongue in disgust, but still stepped aside.

Receiving his sister’s disdainful look, Xiang Sheng returned an equally contemptuous glance.

“What are you staring at, huh? Never seen a handsome guy before? Why aren’t you going back to your room to do homework?”

“……” Xiang Di said, “Only the kind who’s handsome without knowing it deserves to be called a handsome guy. Please be aware of that.”

For example, someone like Bai Jiangxin—once a handsome guy knows he’s good-looking and starts deliberately showing it off, it just becomes greasy.

Xiang Sheng laughed. “Handsome without knowing it—that’s just blind. Let me tell you a cruel truth: as long as a guy is good-looking, there’s none who doesn’t put on airs.”

Xiang Di couldn’t help retorting, “There are ones who don’t, okay?”

“Who?” Xiang Sheng bit into an orange segment and said indistinctly, “The guy you have a crush on?”

Xiang Di widened her eyes. “I don’t have a crush on anyone, okay!”

Xiang Sheng scoffed and stopped paying attention to her.

“……I’m going to do my homework. Turn the TV volume down, and also.” Xiang Di frowned at the mess on the coffee table. “Clean up after you finish eating. When Mom and Dad come back, don’t dump the blame on me again and say I made this mess. I’m not taking the fall for you.”

Xiang Sheng tugged the corner of his mouth irritably. “What’s wrong with your own brother taking the blame for you? Over all these years, haven’t I taken enough falls for you? When you were in middle school reading porn novels, if it weren’t for me—”

“Hey!!!” Xiang Di shouted.

Xiang Sheng was so startled by her roof-shattering scream that he sat straight up from the sofa.

“What are you yelling for, huh? Reincarnated groundhog or what?” Xiang Sheng said, clutching his chest. “You almost scared a heart attack out of me.”

“Get lost!” Xiang Di ground her teeth. “You made such a mess at home—just wait to get dealt with.”

“That might disappoint you.” Xiang Sheng flopped back onto the sofa, raised one eyebrow, and shot her a lazy, smug smile. “Mom and Dad’s unit ran into a leadership inspection. They’re working overtime these next few days and won’t be coming home.”

Xiang Di shot Xiang Sheng a glare, went straight back to her room, and slammed the door shut behind her.

Damn brother. Always bringing up the one thing he shouldn’t. Sooner or later she’d film what he was like at home and post it on his little influencer account, let all those female fans see properly—this “fresh, wholesome college guy” they drooled over online, always doing slow-motion beat-matched outfit-change challenges, what kind of sloppy dog he really was in private.

Thinking this, Xiang Di decisively took out her phone, planning to film right now. The moment the phone recognized its owner and the screen lit up, a flood of WeChat messages poured in.

The school had repeatedly emphasized that bringing phones to school was prohibited, but it still couldn’t stop people who insisted on bringing them. Xiang Di used to bring hers too, but with the college entrance exam approaching, she was afraid she didn’t have that kind of self-control, so she grit her teeth and left her phone at home. Anyway, if she needed to look something up, she could borrow a classmate’s phone.

But just now at the bakery, she’d seen Bai Jiangxin take his phone straight out of his pocket, and thought to herself that sure enough, she was the only honest one.

Most of the WeChat messages were group chats—class group messages, all just emojis, and family group messages. There was a big family chat with the entire clan called “Happy Family,” where every day was just elders sending good morning and good night messages and inspirational chicken soup, or links asking people to help like and vote, or asking people to help cut the price.

Xiang Di’s family also had a small four-person group. The members were her parents, her brother, and her. In the afternoon, her dad had said in the group that he and her mom would be staying at the unit to work overtime these next couple of days, then tagged Xiang Sheng to go home.

Xiang Rongqiang: 【You stay home these next few days. @Mr.sandman】

Xiang Rongqiang: 【Your sister’s home alone. Your mom and I aren’t at ease.】

Xiang Sheng: 【She’s already eighteen. She can manage on her own.】

Luo Qinshu: 【Are you going back or not?】

Xiang Sheng: 【No. I already made plans with my roommates to go out of town these next couple of days.】

Luo Qinshu: 【You go back to stay. I’ll have your dad send you five thousand as travel funds.】

Xiang Sheng: 【！！！Thank you, Mother Empress】

Xiang Rongqiang: 【I’m the one sending you the money, and you’re thanking your mom? [picking nose]】

Xiang Sheng: 【Thank you, Father Emperor!】

Xiang Rongqiang: 【Mm. You may withdraw. Take good care of your sister.】

Xiang Sheng: 【Yes, this son obeys the decree.】

If there’s no money, he’s just an old man; if there’s money, he’s Father Emperor—what a moving father–son relationship. Xiang Di rolled her eyes.

She’d rather be home alone. She was already eighteen, didn’t have separation anxiety, and could live just fine without an adult at home. Now that Xiang Sheng was here, she even had to clean up after him.

It wasn’t that she was particularly hardworking or loved doing housework—it was just that her brother was far too sloppy. She really couldn’t stand it and had no choice but to clean up herself. Housework doesn’t belong to men or to women; it belongs only to those who can’t stand looking at the mess.

She collapsed onto the bed, shut the group chats, and suddenly noticed there was still one red dot she hadn’t tapped.

She sat straight up again.

So annoyed by her brother that she’d forgotten Bai Jiangxin had added her as a friend!

She hurried to add him to her contacts. Bai Jiangxin’s profile picture was a very handsome ragdoll cat; she guessed it was probably one he raised himself. This avatar wasn’t unfamiliar to her—before they were friends, she’d already secretly flipped through it several times in group chats.

Back then they weren’t friends yet, so even if she tapped into his profile picture, she couldn’t see anything. Now she could finally observe his Moments as a friend.

Xiang Di clicked in eagerly—yet there was still nothing.

If it were any other boy, Xiang Di would only think, wow, this person is really putting on airs, acting all aloof. But since it was Bai Jiangxin, she felt, mm, as expected of him—very much his style.

After adding him as a friend, Xiang Di didn’t expect Bai Jiangxin to message her first. She sent a cute sticker over, then sent him a red packet as well.

Xiang Di: 【Money for buying milk and bread~】

After waiting a few minutes, Bai Jiangxin replied: 【No need, it wasn’t much money.】

Xiang Di found this strange. Wasn’t he the one who told her to transfer the money to him afterward? Why was he saying there was no need now?

Xiang Di: 【If you don’t want the money, then why did we add each other?】

Several minutes passed without a reply from Bai Jiangxin. Xiang Di thought he might have gone to do something. She sat down at her desk, listened to music while doing practice papers, and waited for his response.

When the song in her earphones was suddenly interrupted by a message notification, Xiang Di immediately unlocked her phone.

Bai Jiangxin: 【If you don’t want to add me, you can delete me now.】

Xiang Di: 【No, no, I really want to add you!】

After sending that, she felt it sounded a bit too unreserved. She wanted to recall it, but recalling it would make things even more obvious, so she added another line: 【Actually, I’ve always wanted to add you. There are some problems I don’t know how to do, and after going home I don’t know who to ask. Can I ask you questions on WeChat when I don’t know how to do them?】

Using studying as a pretext, this should make her seem less eager. Xiang Di applauded her own cleverness in her heart.

Bai Jiangxin: 【You can just ask me directly at school.】

Xiang Di: 【Oh, oh. I was mainly afraid of disturbing you.】

Bai Jiangxin: 【If it’s just questions, it won’t.】

Did that mean asking other things would disturb him? Had she asked him about other things?

Xiang Di thought hard for a while, but no matter how she thought about it, she couldn’t recall having disturbed him in any other way. She felt she’d always been quite polite and measured with him.

Could it be that she’d offended him in some way she hadn’t even noticed?

That must be it—no wonder he said he wanted to change seats!

After hesitating for a few seconds, Xiang Di still decided to probe a little. She didn’t expect Bai Jiangxin to like her, but at the very least, he couldn’t dislike her, right?

Xiang Di: 【Can I ask you something?】

Bai Jiangxin: 【Mm.】

Xiang Di: 【Why did you want to ask the teacher to change seats? Is it my problem?】

Xiang Di: 【If there’s anything about me that made you uncomfortable, you have to tell me. I’ll definitely pay attention in the future.】