Her soft hair flew under her neck. She was particularly beautiful, a kind of vibrant beauty that made many people’s eyes linger on her at first glance.
Ji Qingyou never denied that Yu Qinjiu’s beauty was eye-catching. From the time she entered puberty, her features gradually blossomed, becoming bright and carefree. Matched with her full, lively expressions and various small, well-considered accessories—like the big bow she used to tie her hair, the perfectly adjusted height of her ponytail, the daisies she sometimes received from her older brother and sister and would tuck behind her ear…
“Boom——”
A loud noise interrupted her thoughts. The volleyball was smashed to the opposite side, landing inside the boundary line. Then came the chaotic, enthusiastic cheers.
Yu Qinjiu raised her arms in victory, high-fived the girls on her team one by one, and looked towards Ji Qingyou. The moment she saw her, the ends of her hair tied back bounced, and the bow used to hold her ponytail seemed about to turn into a lifelike butterfly at that very moment.
Her beautiful eyes curved into crescents. She even raised her chin proudly.
Ji Qingyou pursed her lips slightly. Her eyesight had always been very good. She caught sight of the red, swollen wrist on Yu Qinjiu’s hand. She unscrewed the bottle of mineral water she had placed on the ground.
The boys sitting next to her guarding the volleyball court started to buzz with discussion.
“Is she looking at me, right? Yeah, she just smiled this way…”
“Pfft, she wouldn’t be interested in you. You know what she said when Liu Dong from the class next door gave her a love letter last time?”
“What did she say?”
“She said that someone told her to study hard and not date casually.”
“Not date? Then why does she dress up so nicely for school every day? She doesn’t look like she’s here to study seriously. She clips her hair, wears bows, and changes the style every day. Who is she dressing up for——”
As the words finished, an empty mineral water bottle “thump” hit the bench near them. The boy who had spoken was startled, covering his head and looking around. He met a pair of dark eyes under a baseball cap.
Pretty eyes too. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed this girl before. He was stunned for a moment, watching as the person sitting on the wooden bench lightly closed the book in her hand, walked over slowly, stared at him for a while, then picked up the mineral water bottle that had landed at his feet. She said softly,
“Sorry, I missed.”
He blushed. “Forget it——”
“Thump——”
Before he could finish, Ji Qingyou threw the collected bottle into the trash can next to him. As the bottle landed in the empty bin, she looked at him coldly.
“She dresses for herself.”
The boy looked confused. “Huh? What are you talking about?”
Ji Qingyou stared at him for a moment. “Although it’s hard for someone with your ordinary perspective to understand, I’m still going to point out this fact that might be difficult for you to grasp. A mineral water bottle is packaged beautifully to sell itself. When we girls dress up pretty, it’s not to get into a relationship.”
“She makes herself look prettier so she feels happier when she looks in the mirror. She does it to please herself, not to please anyone other than herself, and definitely not to get into a relationship.”
The boy’s face turned bright red. He couldn’t utter a word.
Boys of seventeen or eighteen seemed to be this immature. Ji Qingyou turned around and sat back down on the wooden bench. As she opened the book again, she suddenly felt that telling Yu Qinjiu not to date in high school had been an absolutely correct decision.
The discussion among the boys quieted down, but the subject shifted from Yu Qinjiu to Ji Qingyou.
“Who’s this? Coming over to lecture me out of nowhere. Damn, scared me. She’s so gloomy…”
“You don’t even know the top student of the grade? You must have just transferred. She’s Yu Qinjiu’s good friend. What’s her name?”
“Oh, right, Ji Qingyou, from Class 434. The robot study machine, class monitor and study committee member. She’s really impressive. By the way, don’t mess with her…”
Ji Qingyou’s gaze was calm. She took an MP4 player out of her pocket, straightened the earphone cord, and put the earpiece in. A light female voice blocked out the noisy discussion.
There was no denying it. When Yu Qinjiu appeared, Ji Qingyou’s life was always lively. Director Qin, whose maternal love had nowhere to go at home, would dote on Yu Qinjiu as if she were the innocent and carefree Ji Qingyou of her childhood. Because even in early childhood, Ji Qingyou had already lost the continuous childlike energy and warmth that Yu Qinjiu had. Her excellent sister, who everyone praised, also treated Yu Qinjiu like a real little sister because she grew up with Yu Qinjiu’s brother as childhood sweethearts. And the surrounding group of young boys in their restless puberty, as long as they chatted with Yu Qinjiu and looked at her beautiful, smiling crescent eyes, would start to have their hearts flutter, like a group of fish circling around bait.
Even Ji Qingyou herself would become emotionally changeable, not the Ji Qingyou everyone else saw.
After finishing a page, she lightly pinched the corner of the page but didn’t turn it. The swaying sunlight filtered through the tree shadows onto her face, making her feel sleepy. She lowered the baseball cap on her head a little, lightly clasped her hands on the book, and closed her eyes lightly.
After a long time. A gust of wind blew. Sycamore seed fluff drifted around.
The baseball cap on her head was gently lifted away. A sweet-smelling wind rolled in, the scent of green pomelo mixed with sea salt. It was the laundry detergent Yu Qinjiu used at home.
One of her earphones was taken out. A few strands of hair that weren’t hers fell onto her shoulder. Someone leaned in close and sat down next to her. The person hummed softly along with the song playing on her MP4. She couldn’t remember the lyrics, but the vague, soft voice of the girl was full of softness, even though not a single note was on pitch.
After humming a few lines, the person spoke. Her tone was a little dismissive. “Why are you listening to the same old song over and over again? Ji Qingyou, don’t you have any new songs? Like Jay Chou or Mayday.”
“‘Later, I finally understood through tears…’ Listening to this song makes me sad.”
“Why don’t you listen to something happier?”
Ji Qingyou opened her eyes slightly. That familiar, beautiful, slightly blurry profile came into view. She was now wearing the baseball cap she had just taken off her head. The sunlight, mixed with lemony yellow tones, shone on her full cheeks, swaying slightly.
Talking to herself, Yu Qinjiu picked up the mineral water bottle she had just opened from the ground and took a big gulp. Her cheeks puffed out like a shimmering fish.
Ji Qingyou turned her head slightly. She noticed that the boys who had been sitting on the ground nearby were gone. She pursed her lips, pressed a button on her MP4, and switched to the next song.
“Huh?” Yu Qinjiu finished the water and raised an eyebrow. “Mayday is easier to listen to, isn’t it? You should listen to more pop songs.”
Ji Qingyou glanced at her but didn’t say anything. She just handed her the love letter that Li Nanli had just sent her. “Your love letter.”
“Huh?” Yu Qinjiu held out her hand, but didn’t look at the letter. “First, help me with the medicine. My hand hurts like crazy. See?”
She raised her hand, a hint of a pleading tone in her voice.
Ji Qingyou slightly lowered her eyes. She took out the spray and ointment and focused on applying the medicine to Yu Qinjiu’s wrist. “I heard this person is the class heartthrob from the next class. Aren’t you going to look?”
The spray hit her red, swollen wrist. Yu Qinjiu sucked in a sharp breath. “I heard someone was talking bad about you just now?”
Ji Qingyou looked up, took out a cotton swab to apply the ointment, then put a patch on it. “I heard you received a few more love letters from that volleyball game?”
“Wow~” Yu Qinjiu said with exaggerated tone. “Ji Qingyou, how are you so good at applying medicine? Just like that, and my hand doesn’t hurt anymore!”
Ji Qingyou pulled her raised hand back down and said softly, “Don’t move.”
“Okay.” Yu Qinjiu obediently held out her hand, and the conversation finally returned to the main topic. “Tell me, why are these boys of seventeen or eighteen always thinking about falling in love? And they don’t even know me. They see me play one volleyball game and they say they like me so much. In their love letters, it’s like the world has lost its color without me…”
Ji Qingyou lowered her eyes. “Don’t you want to read that love letter?”
“I don’t.” Yu Qinjiu answered bluntly. “It’s just copied lines and poems from the internet. Saying Happy Birthday, Happy Dragon Boat Festival, Happy National Day, Happy Holidays…”
“It’s just insincere.”
“If you really like someone, why would you put a prefix in front of wishing them happiness? What you should be thinking is, no matter the time, no matter the place, I want you to be happy.”
This wasn’t the first time Ji Qingyou had heard Yu Qinjiu say this, but she patiently listened to the end again. After finishing applying the medicine, she threw the cotton swab into the trash can.
Before leaving, she glanced at the love letter that Yu Qinjiu had casually picked up and didn’t know how to handle. She said calmly,
“And the handwriting is really ugly.”
The early summer sky changed faster than a child’s face. One moment it was clear and sunny, the next it was pouring with rain, washing away the steaming summer heat.
As they rushed back to the classroom from the playground, Ji Qingyou was called to the office by the homeroom teacher. The teacher said that since the exams were over, they could relax a bit, and that during the self-study period, the class could watch a movie.
This was a tradition for Class 434 of the second year. If they performed well on the monthly exam, Old Yan, the homeroom teacher, wouldn’t be too strict with them. They would watch a movie, or get out of class ten minutes early for dinner, as a reward.
Ji Qingyou agreed. On her way back to the classroom, she ran into the boy who had been gossiping about Yu Qinjiu earlier. He blocked her path, hesitated for a long time, then stiffly dropped a line.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said you were ‘gloomy’ and scary.”
Ji Qingyou was confused for a few seconds, not quite understanding what was going on. The boy immediately ran into the classroom. A row of boys in the corridor laughed loudly, saying he was a coward, afraid to even talk to a girl.
She gave them a look. They laughed and looked away, turning the conversation to video games and basketball, though their gazes still occasionally drifted towards her.
When Ji Qingyou returned to the classroom, the rain outside was falling harder. The sound of the drizzling rain mixed with the howling wind. The classroom was buzzing with noise. The electric fan on the ceiling was creaking and turning. Some girls, afraid of the cold, asked for the fan to be turned off. Some boys, smelling of sweat and heat, didn’t want it turned off. They started arguing. When Ji Qingyou walked through the classroom door, they both stopped and looked at her.
The most active boy in the class looked at her like a puppy. “Monitor, did Old Yan call you in to tell us to watch a movie during self-study?”
Ji Qingyou hummed in affirmation. The whole class erupted into an uproar, like a pot of boiling porridge. The boys and girls who had just been arguing about the fan were now gathered together deciding on the movie to watch.
She scanned the noisy environment but didn’t find the familiar figure.
She returned to her seat. The slight frown on her brow hadn’t relaxed yet. Li Nanli was opening a small palm-sized mirror, intently examining the pimples on her face that hadn’t gone down. Without even looking up, she already knew who she was looking for.
“Yu Qinjiu was called away by the English teacher to count test papers.”
