After returning to the classroom, Qianye straightened the new textbooks she had received. She glanced out the window. The fourth class was to the right, and suddenly her heart fluttered. A gentle breeze passed by, and a wave of unease swept through her.

Until school ended, Qianye dragged her books with one hand and held her bicycle with the other as she moved through the crowd toward the school gate.

“Hey, Qianye.” Zhao Nanzhuo ran into her at the gate. After spending two years under the same roof, they met again at the gate of the best school in the city. It felt as if fate had turned a page. He smiled at her, as familiar as ever.

And beside him was the boy who had wiped the blackboard for him that morning. “Han Chao, this is my sister, Qianye. Han Chao, he’s my deskmate.”

Han Chao. Han Chao. This was the first time Qianye heard his name. Such a pleasant name. It was made up of two simple characters, but when combined, it carried a strong and reserved energy that struck her young heart.

“What a coincidence, we saw each other this morning,” Han Chao said with a cheerful smile, taking the stack of textbooks from her hands, looking natural and genuine. “They’re heavy, let me carry them for a bit.” Qianye didn’t refuse. The three of them rode together side by side. Qianye was on the far left, Han Chao was in the middle, and Zhao Nanzhuo was on the far right.

Later, she kept recalling their first meeting. The fresh air of the First High School lingered in her thoughts. His features were handsome, with a crew cut, and the plain school uniform he wore somehow made him look confident and spirited. Qianye laughed bitterly to herself, realizing that all those quiet, ordinary days in the past were just to accumulate enough feelings to love him now.

Heaven tortures people by showing them what’s beautiful, then watches as they get obsessed with it, looking down on everything else, and then takes it away, telling them that it was never meant for them.

There were twelve classes in the First High School, and each two classes shared the same teacher. Class 3 and Class 4 were considered sibling classes, so the teacher would often mention students from the other class. Such overhearing made Qianye look forward to school even more. After the first monthly exam results were released, the English teacher, who was also the homeroom teacher, praised Han Chao from Class 4 in front of Qianye’s class. He had scored a total of 642, easily taking the first place in the year group. He was twenty points ahead of the second place. During that period, every time Qianye passed the bulletin board after school, she would look up and see his name prominently displayed at the top. It was so lonely, yet so proud.

Han Chao’s grades were stable, and with his excellence in both math and physics, the teacher had high hopes for him.

Qianye’s heart was once again struck by his excellence. Before high school, most of the boys around her, aside from Zhao Nanzhuo, rarely impressed her. Even the smarter ones were often arrogant and lacked diligence.

Looking at the bulletin board, she silently compared their scores. Not only did he score higher than her in every subject, even Qianye’s strongest subject, Chinese, she only matched his score. So, when the teacher spoke about Han Chao with admiration in front of her class, Qianye felt a surge of joy in her heart, as if loving him had become a source of pride. A voice in her head kept saying, “See, I have good taste, he’s so outstanding!”

Because she secretly loved him, in her heart, her connection to him seemed to surpass anyone else’s. Qianye firmly believed that the Han Chao she knew in her heart was different from how others saw him. No one understood him better than she did. Although this understanding was unspoken, because she had used all her senses to love him, she naturally understood him more deeply and delicately than anyone else.

From that point on, Qianye worked even harder in her studies. Deep down, she wanted to compete with him. She didn’t have Lin Manwei’s exquisite beauty, nor was she lively and outgoing, but the one thing that made her feel a little different from others was her grades. She devoted all her time to studying, secretly hoping that one day, the teacher would praise her just like they praised him.

She hoped that the teacher would say in his class, “In Class 3, there’s a girl named Qianye…” and that he would hear her name and would look at her. When her name passed through his ears, would he feel something different?