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Sang Li’s breath hitched. She didn’t dare look at Lu Tinghe’s face; her eyes could only fixate on the white T-shirt he was wearing.
The T-shirt was thin, clinging slightly to reveal the contours of his firm chest muscles. As her gaze slowly drifted downward, she could faintly make out the defined lines of his abdominal V-line.
Lu Tinghe tilted his head slightly, a roguish grin tugging at the corners of his lips. “Sang Li, why do you always avoid looking me in the eyes?”
Sang Li finally lifted her small face, her glistening eyes catching his gaze in an instant.
“I wasn’t avoiding you,” her voice was soft, yet carried a sweet clarity that lingered in the air. “Lu Tinghe, it’s been a while.”
The man who had haunted her dreams night after night was now standing right in front of her. Her heartbeat had long since lost its rhythm.
She, who had to rely on a part-time jobs just to scrape together her university tuition, had been secretly harboring feelings for someone like Lu Tinghe—a man who stood up in the top of a pyramid.
Lu Tinghe was simply too good. There was no way he would like her. She wasn’t worthy of him.
Lu Tinghe’s expression remained calm, yet there was an unreadable emotion flickering deep within his eyes. The air around him seemed charged, emanating a sharp and commanding presence.
“No ‘thank you’?”
Sang Li responded in a gentle voice, “Thank you.”
“Mm, good girl.” A faint smile tugged at his lips as he turned toward the dining table. “Come on.”
…
An hour later, Sang Li returned to her rented apartment in the Fenghuang Residential Neighborhood.
Tan Weiwei was still fast asleep in bed. Sang Li tiptoed into the bathroom, took a quick shower, and changed into clean loungewear.
She folded Lu Tinghe’s pale blue shirt, her eyes inadvertently sweeping across the tag at the collar.
Curious, she picked up her phone and looked up the brand.
The next second, she sucked in a sharp breath.
Thirty… thirty thousand…
The small grocery stores her Father and Mother ran back in Jin City probably couldn’t make that much in half a year.
What others earn from a year’s worth of hard work was merely a casual shirt for Lu Tinghe.
Sang Li steadied her emotions and carefully placed the shirt on the sofa, planning to take it to the dry cleaner later.
She sat down at her desk, opened a drawer, and retrieved a pink envelope from the farthest corner. Inside the envelope was a red string bracelet she had made by hand.
It was a love letter she had written to Lu Tinghe. She had never sent it—after the college entrance exam that year, she tucked it away and never dared to look at it again.
Because every time she saw that letter, it reminded her of how foolish she had once been.
Her mind was instantly pulled back to a day not long after the start of her senior year in high school.
Dijin High School was a prestigious private school in northern Jingdu, filled with students from wealthy and powerful families. Sang Li had never been one of them. She was an ordinary girl from a modest family, accepted through a special admission program thanks to her excellent academic performance in Jin City and a scholarship.
She had boarded at the school dormitory for all three years of high school, always an outsider in the school’s social circles, never having made any real friends.
That morning, at the gates of Dijin High School, a boy riding a bicycle brushed past her, nearly colliding into her.
The boy was strikingly handsome and arrogant, with a hint of alienation between his eyebrows.
There was something reckless yet captivating in his demeanor that completely ensnared Sang Li’s heart.
Oh, he came to school on a bicycle. Maybe, like her, he was one of the Special Admission Students.
“Hey, your bike looks light. Still, you should be careful. Maybe switch to a sturdier one?”
Lu Tinghe: “……”
It wasn’t until much later that Sang Li found out—that lightweight mountain bike was worth more than ten thousand yuan. And every time Lu Tinghe rode to school, a different luxury car would follow behind him for protection.
As for why none of the students seemed to recognize him, it was because Lu Tinghe was the only son of Lu Youlin, the wealthiest man in northern Jingdu, born when Lu Youlin was already in his forties. The Lu family had always protected him fiercely and didn’t allow him to appear in public media until he was around seventeen.
Sang Li had learned that from a television segment later.
She slid the pink envelope back into the drawer and gave a small, self-deprecating laugh.
She had long known she should give up, but liking someone was like a moth drawn to a flame. Even knowing it was a fire pit ahead, she would still dive in without hesitation.
For the past three years, she had silently liked Lu Tinghe—wiping away tears while stubbornly holding onto her feelings.
It was exhausting, and her chest ached from it.
Just then, a friend request suddenly popped up on her phone.
The profile picture was a vast blue ocean, and the name read: 【Lu Tinghe】.
Sang Li stared blankly for a few seconds before quickly accepting the request. She immediately tapped into Lu Tinghe’s Moments.
His Moments were completely public, but the posts were all about biomedical science.
She didn’t know why, but just seeing those posts made her heart race faster and faster.
Realizing her emotions were out of control, she quickly put down her phone and buried her face deep in the crook of her arm.
She couldn’t go on like this. She had to look forward.
That bright moon reflected on the water—she shouldn’t try to grasp it. If she did, she’d only fall in and shatter completely.
Suddenly, a small hand gently patted her on the shoulder. Sang Li looked up and saw Tan Weiwei grinning brightly at her.
“Weiwei, you’re awake?”
Tan Weiwei held Sang Li’s face and faced her. “What’s wrong? Did something upset you? Why do you look so pale?”
Sang Li smiled, a pair of soft dimples forming on her cheeks—one shallow, one deep. “I’m not in a bad mood. It’s just the first day of my period, and I’m feeling a little tired.”
Tan Weiwei pulled over a chair and sat next to her. “What a coincidence. It’s my first day too. Can you believe my luck? Aunt Flo showed up right on the day of the cheerleading competition. I thought I was going to split in half doing those splits!”
Tan Weiwei was the captain of the university cheerleading team and the campus belle of their design school. But the way she talked—so careless—didn’t suit the title of “campus belle” at all.
In Tan Weiwei’s own words, Sang Li was the real campus belle, and she was just a green leaf.
“How are you feeling now? Any better? Want me to make you some brown sugar ginger tea?”
Tan Weiwei pinched Sang Li’s cheek. “Look at you—so pretty and sweet. Whoever marries you must’ve saved the entire universe in their past life!”
Sang Li held her hand. “I don’t want to marry anyone. I just want to be with you.”
“Sure! When I get married, you can sleep between me and Chu Yan, how about that?”
“No thanks. I’ll sleep under the bed.”
The two girls chatted happily for a while longer before Tan Weiwei glanced at the time—it was getting late, and she needed to head back to the dorm.
Suddenly, her gaze landed on the light blue shirt draped over the sofa. She dashed over and snatched it up. “Hey! Li Li! This isn’t right! Why do you have a man’s shirt?!”
Sang Li blushed. “A senior lent it to me. I’m going to get it dry-cleaned and return it.”
Tan Weiwei flipped the shirt over and gasped. “Ah! It’s a limited edition from D! This shirt must be at least eighty or ninety thousand yuan! What kind of senior has that kind of money?!”
Sang Li was stunned.
What? Eighty or ninety thousand? She had thought it was just a regular shirt…
She quickly explained, “He’s a graduate student in Biomedical Science. Lu Tinghe. He’s someone Chu Yan knows.”
“What?! Lu Tinghe?!”
“Weiwei, can you not be so dramatic?” Sang Li’s heart started thumping from her yelling. “You know Lu Tinghe?”
Tan Weiwei put the shirt down and said, “Of course! How could I not know Lu Tinghe? He’s a big deal. I heard from Chu Yan that he used to study in the UK for high school. But he didn’t focus on his studies—he was always messing with biology experiments. He even blew up the school lab once. His dad had to bring him back to finish his last year of high school here.”
Sang Li suddenly understood.
So that was why Lu Tinghe had suddenly transferred to Dijin High School.
Thinking back to how she had assumed he was just another Special Admission Student from an ordinary family, Sang Li almost laughed at herself.
Suddenly, Tan Weiwei’s eyes glinted with mischief. She raised her eyebrows at Sang Li, her expression full of teasing intent. “Why did Lu Tinghe lend you, his shirt? Does he like you or something?”