When Tao Zhi saw Wang Er walking over, she immediately yanked her notebook down.

The little girl’s entire face was tightly covered; only her pair of eyes peeked out from above. Once caught, her eyes showed a panicked expression, and then she instantly ducked down, vanishing from the window in a flash.

Wang Er found it funny. Turning his head, he continued asking Jiang Qihuai, “Where’s your phone?”

Jiang Qihuai reached into the side pocket of his schoolbag, took out his phone, and handed it over.

Wang Er held it, fiddled with it twice. “Not even turned on. Our class monitor really is different—doesn’t play on the phone, chat, or text during class. Keeps up workplace relations through passing little notes instead?”

Li Shuangjiang puffed out his cheeks, holding back laughter.

“You two passing notes front and back, fine. But now one of you’s even standing outside, and you’re still at it? What’s the urgent message, huh? Revolutionary friendship really that strong?” Wang Er went on.

Li Shuangjiang couldn’t hold it anymore and burst out laughing.

“Alright, alright, stop acting like it’s such a tragedy—acting like you’re separated by life and death just because there’s a classroom wall between you.” Wang Er waved his hand. “Go on, go stand outside and keep your comrade company.”

Jiang Qihuai: “……”

Jiang Qihuai casually pulled a book from his desk, then got up and went out.

As soon as he stepped out of the classroom door, he saw Tao Zhi crouching by the wall, hugging a notebook in her arms, her head drooping weakly.

Hearing footsteps, she lifted her head, revealing a slightly guilty smile. “You came? Have you eaten?”

Jiang Qihuai: “……”

Ji Fan was squatting on the other side. He seemed quite pleased that Jiang Qihuai had been dragged out by Tao Zhi and, for once, looked at him cheerfully. “Three out of four—just need one more and we can play mahjong. Where’s old Li? Go drag him out before he keeps studying.”

Trying to please, Tao Zhi scooted over, making some room in her prized “punishment spot” in the hallway for Jiang Qihuai. Tilting her head up to look at him, she eagerly asked, “Did you see the note I passed you?”

Jiang Qihuai lowered his gaze. “I saw it.”

“I only got nineteen questions wrong!” Tao Zhi said in a lowered, excited voice. “I can pass!”

“Getting the basic score in Chinese isn’t hard. There’s still a week left—you can make it.” Jiang Qihuai rolled the book in his hand and lightly tapped it against her head. “Take it and memorize.”

Tao Zhi covered her head in protest, but before she could argue, she grabbed the book and asked, “What is this?”

“The Chinese textbook?” Tao Zhi flipped it open, glancing through a few pages. “There’s so much, how could I possibly memorize all this in a week?”

Jiang Qihuai crouched down beside her, took the book from her hands, and then stretched out his own hand toward her.

The boy’s hand was clean and slender, joints well-defined, palm lines clear. His fingers curved slightly forward—loose and casual.

Tao Zhi didn’t react. “Hm?”

Jiang Qihuai’s fingers bent a little as he hooked them. “Give me the pen.”

Tao Zhi handed him the pen she was holding.

Jiang Qihuai opened the book, turned to the first classical text, let the pen tip glide over the lines, and drew a short line under certain sentences.

He moved fast—barely glancing as his hand kept going without pause. Before long, the entire passage was marked, and he flipped to the next one.

“These sentences are basically all the key points. Dictation questions usually come from this range. If you don’t have time to memorize the whole text, memorize these sentences first,” Jiang Qihuai said as he drew lines. “Don’t just memorize them by heart. Some uncommon characters, you need to know how to write them.”

Tao Zhi looked at him without speaking.

Jiang Qihuai took a moment to glance at her. “What?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking,” Tao Zhi said slowly, “why did I suddenly start memorizing these things?”

Jiang Qihuai lowered his eyes. “Do you want to get fifteen questions wrong next time?”

Tao Zhi was choked speechless.

“If you memorize them all, you might only get ten wrong.” Jiang Qihuai lowered his voice, coaxing her.

Tao Zhi: “……”

She was a little tempted.

That feeling of watching the number of wrong answers and red marks on her test paper gradually decrease—she hadn’t felt that in a long time.

“Fine,” Tao Zhi propped her chin on her hand and muttered gloomily, “then hurry up and mark them. I’m really slow at memorizing.”

Jiang Qihuai spent half a class period marking all the key sentences in his own Chinese textbook for her.

When the bell rang, Ji Fan was dragged away by the ear by Wang Er. Since Tao Zhi and Jiang Qihuai’s “crime” wasn’t that severe—and Jiang Qihuai hadn’t even turned on his phone—Wang Er only confiscated Tao Zhi’s phone.

When they returned to the classroom, Tao Zhi looked at Jiang Qihuai’s phone lying safely on his desk and said discontentedly, “Why did Wang Er only confiscate mine?”

Fu Xiling turned her head and whispered, “Maybe because his grades are good?”

Tao Zhi was furious.

Her long days at school, once accompanied by Song Jiang, were now spent only with her phone—her companion through class after class. Now even that had been taken away; she had lost her only friend.

Watching Jiang Qihuai casually toss his phone back into his schoolbag, Tao Zhi said bitterly, “So having good grades gives you privileges?”

Fu Xiling nodded. “Of course, good grades mean privileges. If you could score first in the whole grade, you could march straight into Mr. Wang’s office, slap your report card on his desk, and order him—” Fu Xiling cleared her throat and said with mock pride, “—‘Give me back my phone!’”

Her voice was a little loud, and Jiang Qihuai, sitting behind them, lifted his eyes slightly.

Fu Xiling blushed at once, clapped a hand over her mouth, and shrank into her seat.

Tao Zhi also felt wronged. Clearly, both she and Jiang Qihuai had broken the rule—though she was the active culprit and he the passive victim.

That was the logic of it, yet Tao Zhi still couldn’t calm down. If Wang Er had confiscated his phone too, fine—but it had to be just hers.

Tao Zhi turned around, propped her chin on her hand, and commanded, “Go give your phone to Wang Er—let him confiscate yours too.”

“……”

Jiang Qihuai looked at her with an expression that said, Are you dreaming?

“Then go find Wang Er and get my phone back,” Tao Zhi said willfully.

Jiang Qihuai lowered his head again, drawing lines under vocabulary words in his English list. “Go get it yourself.”

Tao Zhi pouted miserably, her shoulders drooping. “Your Highness, I don’t have a phone anymore. I just recharged five hundred thousand Happy Beans for mahjong—I can’t play anymore.”

“Perfect then,” Jiang Qihuai said without lifting his head. “Finish memorizing your Chinese this week.”

He finished underlining the last row of words, closed the English book, and handed it to her.

Tao Zhi blinked and took it. “What’s this for?”

“Key vocabulary and basic words.”

Tao Zhi flipped through it for a moment, her expression stiffening. “You don’t actually think I can get through all this in a week, do you?”

“Didn’t expect you to,” Jiang Qihuai put down his pen, leaned back slightly, and flexed his fingers, which had gone a bit sore and numb from holding the pen too long. “Just get through as much as you can.”

Tao Zhi furrowed her brows, then wrinkled her nose, flipping through the pages with exaggerated pickiness, staying silent for a long while.

Just when Jiang Qihuai thought she was about to wrinkle her entire face, Tao Zhi finally looked up. “If I finish reading all these words, can I get first place in the grade?”

Jiang Qihuai raised an eyebrow. “Such lofty ambition?”

Tao Zhi looked at him mournfully and said in a soft voice, “Well, after all, the one who ranks first in the grade doesn’t get their phone confiscated by the teacher.”

“……”

Jiang Qihuai nodded lightly and said, calm as ever, “As long as I’m here, you won’t.”

When he said it, his tone was utterly casual, as if it were only natural and perfectly reasonable.

Tao Zhi couldn’t help rolling her eyes.

There he goes acting all high and mighty again.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

The last class on Friday was homeroom.

Mr. Wang ended up using the same theme that Jiang Zhengxun had chosen earlier, but added a small interactive part at the end. Everyone was given an envelope and told to write down two dreams—one from when they were six years old, and one now, at sixteen.

Once written, the papers were to be sealed in the envelope, not to be opened again, to serve as a letter to their future selves.

When Tao Zhi was little, her dream had been to marry a chicken butcher. For some reason, half the class knew about it now—Tao Zhi reasonably suspected that Jiang Zhengxun had drunkenly let it slip.

While they were writing, Li Shuangjiang turned around and grinned at her. “Boss, you still want to marry a chicken butcher?”

Tao Zhi looked at him blankly. “You’re pretty bold, huh? Daring to mock your boss?”

“The lowly one has offended you,” Li Shuangjiang said respectfully, bowing his head and turning back around.

Tao Zhi tapped the end of her pen against her chin with a soft click, click, her head resting on her hand, her mind drifting.

Without her phone, she’d been listless all afternoon, her energy gone.

She was the kind of person who lived in the moment—so long as she was happy now, that was enough. She had no plans for the future, no particular interests or passions, and no dream career.

If she had to name one, it was the thought that had just come to her that afternoon: to become first in the grade and get her phone back.

Tao Zhi lowered her eyes. Beneath her sheet of writing paper were two books, with black gel pen markings underlining the key points.

She sat dazed for a while until Mr. Wang’s voice rose from the podium, snapping her back to herself. The pen tip tapped against the paper, and she absentmindedly wrote a line.

Then she folded the two sheets, slipped them into the envelope, sealed it, and casually tucked it between the pages of the English book underneath.

When almost everyone in the class had finished writing, Wang Zhezi glanced at the time and dismissed them ten minutes early.

Tao Zhi was still thinking about her phone. The moment Wang Zhezi gave the word, she stuffed her books into her bag at lightning speed, yanked the zipper shut, and dashed out of the classroom.

The math office was by the staircase on the second floor. Tao Zhi stood at the doorway with her backpack on, clutching the doorframe as she peeked inside.

Only a few teachers were there. No one sat at Wang Er’s desk, but his things were still on it—it looked like he was still in class and hadn’t left yet.

Tao Zhi waited by the door for a while, mentally rehearsing what she was going to say later, how to play the pitiful act to get her phone back.

She leaned against the wall, shaking her head and muttering to herself in thought, when a shadow suddenly fell over her. A voice came from above her head.

“Who are you waiting for?”

Tao Zhi looked up.

Jiang Qihuai stood before her, his head slightly lowered as he looked at her.

The dim yellow light of the corridor was completely blocked by his figure. The boy stood against the light; his features were hidden in shadow, long lashes tracing deep arcs at the corners of his eyes. His light-colored pupils looked almost black under the glow.

Tao Zhi was once again distracted by his beauty for two seconds before she finally said, “Waiting for Wang Er. I want to get my phone back.”

Jiang Qihuai nodded. “Finished memorizing your English yet?”

At that moment, Tao Zhi’s mind was entirely occupied with how to act pitiful in front of Wang Er later. She had no mood to think about English. Watching the other end of the corridor, waiting for Wang Er to return, she answered absentmindedly, “No, no, how could I finish all that in one afternoon?”

Jiang Qihuai slipped one hand into the pocket of his school uniform jacket. Between his long fingers, he pinched a silver-white phone. He pulled it out and waved it lightly in front of her.

Tao Zhi’s gaze froze for a moment.

Her phone.

The one she had just bought at the start of the semester—the newest model.

The one that contained her five hundred Happy Beans.

Tao Zhi lifted her eyes, staring blankly at him. “When did you get that?”

“This afternoon,” Jiang Qihuai said.

Tao Zhi took two steps forward and reached out to grab it.

But Jiang Qihuai, with his long arms, simply raised it higher. The phone shot upward like it was on a drop tower, brushing past the girl’s soft fingertips but staying just out of reach.

He was tall, and with his arm lifted, the phone dangled high above her head—close enough to see, impossible to touch.

Tao Zhi turned her head and glared at him in irritation.

Jiang Qihuai lazily twirled the phone between his fingers, his tone unhurried. “When you finish memorizing the book, you’ll get it back.”