"Little Monster, I'm sorry."

Song Ziqi, as if wound up, turned around and sincerely faced Ding Xian's seat, his innocent and naive look making even Kong Shadi feel pity.

Kong Shadi gently pushed Ding Xian's arm on the table, softly pleading, "Xianxian, just forgive him."

Ding Xian looked at Kong Shadi silently.

'All she wants is to coax her boyfriend,' she felt ashamed of herself.

Before she could speak, Young Master Zhou, who was flipping through a book nearby, said without lifting his eyelids, "Remove the first couple words, say it again."

Song Ziqi's eyes widened, wanting to say 'is that really necessary?', he didn't mean any harm.

But that young master looked as if he didn't care about anything else, Song Ziqi smacked his lips and opened his mouth, "Classmate Ding Xian..."

Before he finished, Ding Xian gently interrupted him.

"No, it's not necessary... I forgive you."

Hot sunlight streamed in from outside the window, casting dappled light and shadow, falling on her. Her golden hair glowed, her earlobes were flushed, and her voice was faintly soft.

Song Ziqi glanced at Zhou Siyue, who raised an eyebrow slightly.

Ding Xian raised her voice again, as if afraid no one could hear, "I... I'm doing it for Shadi's sake." After saying this, she quickly lowered her head and pretended to fumbled through books in her desk.

Song Ziqi nodded, "Understood."

Then he deliberately glanced at Zhou Siyue and said, "I'll properly thank my deskmate, but I still need to explain what needs to be explained. Maybe that day at Siyue's house, your mother had some ill will towards you, but in the future, we're all classmates. I don't want to cause any unnecessary misunderstandings. I personally have no prejudice against you."

Then he smiled at Kong Shadi and said kindly, "Come on, deskmate, let's go back."

Song Ziqi was highly nearsighted, wearing glasses, with fair skin and well-defined features, looking very refined.

Kong Shadi blushed at his 'let's go back,' and shyly hugged her notebook as she turned back. Both boys were stunned, turning their heads to look at Ding Xian, who was also red-faced.

Some of the girls' little thoughts at that time seemed utterly baffling to boys. For example, Kong Shadi's current behavior. Song Ziqi's mind only had two words: 'problematic'.

Young Master Zhou behind him was even more confused. He was the one who made Song Ziqi apologize to her, so how did it become Kong Shadi's 'sake'? And why was she blushing when Song Ziqi apologized to her?

When she said she wouldn't break off the engagement, wasn't she quite thick-skinned? How did she become as thin-skinned as paper here?

Emotions in youth are like wine; initially, there's no taste, but the longer it ages, the more fragrant it becomes, and one can always catch a trace of strange clues. The two highly intelligent youths, at that time, could only define the species known as 'girls' as — 'uncommunicative'.

The summer sun blazed, and the school was like a steaming basket. Cicadas outside the window chirped contentedly, and towering trees forced smiles.

It was probably from then on that Ding Xian began to pay attention to Zhou Siyue.

Every class seems to have such a group of people: top students who are always studying, and struggling students who are always fooling around.

But in this class, there were only two types of people: top students who studied hard, and top students who didn't study hard.

Zhou Siyue was the latter.

During breaks, he would always discuss basketball, football, NBA, games, and occasionally military matters with others. In short, he never did problems. Occasionally, someone would ask him a math question, and he would answer them one by one without refusal. His math was exceptionally good; there seemed to be no problem that could stump him. He would glance at some problems and immediately know the answer.

However, he was very lazy. If he could find the original problem he had already done, he would just throw the notebook over. If he couldn't find it, he would write out the steps.

This day at lunch, Kong Shadi, carrying her lunchbox, wanted to share information she'd gotten from Song Ziqi. She put down her chopsticks and tried to build suspense: "I have some information to share, do you want to hear it?"

Ding Xian: "What information? No class tomorrow?"

Kong Shadi exclaimed, "Oh dear, why are you so unscholarly? Listen, it's about your deskmate."

It successfully caught Ding Xian's attention. She looked up from her lunchbox, saw Kong Shadi's mysterious and meaningful face, realized her reaction was a bit exaggerated, so she lightly coughed to cover it up, then lowered her head, poking her chopsticks aimlessly, pretending to ask casually, "What information?"

Kong Shadi deliberately teased her, "First, answer one question for me."

Ding Xian looked up again, "What question?"

Kong Shadi smiled, "Do you like Zhou Siyue?"

A mouthful of rice caught in her throat and wouldn't go down for a long time. Ding Xian coughed violently, her small face turning crimson. Kong Shadi panicked and quickly handed her her water: "No way, you can't handle just hearing a name?"

It took Ding Xian a while to cough out the rice in her mouth. She tilted her head back and gulped down several mouthfuls of water, then glanced to the side: "I don't like him at all. Our current task is to study."

As she said this, her eyes darted sideways, just catching a glimpse of Zhou Siyue and Jiang Chen's group eating together, chatting and laughing, with Song Yijin sitting beside him.

He didn't seem to be a picky eater, eating quickly and in large mouthfuls; this was certainly not a young master's fault.

Halfway through his meal, Zhou Siyue vaguely felt a burning gaze from ahead. He looked up vaguely and casually scanned, and their two gazes collided directly in the air.

Ding Xian quickly turned away, screwed on her cup lid, placed it aside, and continued to eat with her head down.

Just as she picked up her chopsticks, she felt something was off. 'Why am I hiding? Doesn't that make it seem like I'm guilty? I should just give him a big, open smile, dignified and elegant. Who's afraid of whom?'

So she turned her head again and flashed what she considered a generous and frank smile in Zhou Siyue's direction.

Zhou Siyue paused, then suddenly shrugged and let out a sneer, before resuming his young master's demeanor.

Jiang Chen, opposite him, seemed to ask what he was laughing at.

Zhou Siyue leaned back lazily in his chair, his long legs nowhere to rest under the table. He pointed his chin towards Ding Xian, and Jiang Chen, Song Ziqi, and the others all looked over simultaneously.

Then, in the next second, a burst of collective laughter erupted.

Ding Xian was baffled. Just as she was about to turn her head, she heard Kong Shadi hesitantly say, "Xianxian, you have a vegetable leaf on your front tooth."

"..."

Years later, someone asked on Zhihu: What does it feel like to be utterly disheartened?

Ding Xian replied: On a sunny afternoon, having lunch in the school cafeteria, I encountered my crush and flashed him what I thought was a charming smile. Then my best friend told me, "You have a vegetable leaf on your front tooth."

Memory always adds embellishments.

No matter when she looked back in the years that followed, she always felt that she started liking Zhou Siyue from the moment he said, "'Go coax my deskmate'."

But at that time, she was in a state of extreme contradiction.

Ding Xian turned her head away in shame and anger, only to hear Young Master Zhou's indifferent voice from behind, "Alright, stop laughing." His innate aura made him incredibly persuasive; Jiang Chen and Song Ziqi were both very obedient to him.

At that time, Ding Xian only thought it was because of Uncle Zhou's relationship. Gradually, she finally understood that, including herself, even if he said there were aliens on the moon, they would believe him.

The young Zhou Siyue, when serious, was as cold as ever, but when he was joking around playfully, he seemed to lack proper decorum. Yet, regardless, he exuded a feeling that even if the sky fell, he could carry the burden alone.

Only after they left did Kong Shadi tell Ding Xian, "During class, I heard Song Ziqi say that Zhou Siyue got a perfect score in the middle school entrance exam for mathematics."

This year's middle school entrance exam math paper was on the difficult side, especially the last major problem; very few people could solve it. When Ding Xian first arrived, she had heard people discussing that last major problem, and only four or five people in the entire city had managed to solve it.

This year's average score was lower overall compared to last year, and even on last year's easier paper, perfect scores were rare.

The value of this perfect score was indeed significant.

Kong Shadi added, "He's the national champion in Mental Abacus Calculation."

No wonder he always wrote the answers directly for calculation problems, never using a calculator or doing scratch work on paper.

Ding Xian sighed, "Don't tell me these things anymore in the future."

"Ah? Why?"

"I can't take the hit."

The pressure of him sitting next to me is already immense.

Do you know he never takes notes in class?

Do you know he never listens in class but can still answer teachers' questions fluently?

Do you know how I felt when I spent ages working out a math problem on scratch paper only to get it wrong, and he just dashed out the answer in two strokes?

Never mind, you don't know any of this.

She lowered her head, her eyes unable to hide their dimness. Her small figure looked truly lost. She just felt that no matter how hard she studied and studied, she couldn't compare to someone who spent just a few minutes glancing at a textbook.

Ding Xian wasn't a naturally gifted student; all her grades and scores were earned by herself, book by book, problem by problem.

Back in Yanping Town, she was the teachers' darling because she was hardworking, diligent, and obedient. Most students in the town didn't study seriously, often just finishing middle school to go to a vocational high school or straight out to work.

Only she struggled desperately in this fishpond.

She thought that once she crossed the dragon gate, a pheasant could turn into a phoenix.

However, only after entering the dragon gate did she realize she had merely gone from being the head of the chickens to the tail of the phoenixes.

After lunch, she returned to the classroom.

Zhou Siyue, uncharacteristically, didn't go out to play ball. Instead, he sat in his seat with his feet up, chatting with someone. The golden sunlight streamed in from the window, making his hair look soft and gentle, making one want to reach out and tousle it.

Before long, a female classmate came over with a problem to discuss with him.

Zhou Siyue was the same with everyone when explaining problems: he'd hold a pen and draw circles and lines on paper. Before others could even react, he'd already finished explaining the problem.

The female classmate, blushing, asked, "Could you say that again?" Seeing him frown slightly, she was afraid of annoying him, so she quickly pulled back her paper and added, "It's fine, I'll think about it more when I go back."

Zhou Siyue nodded, "Oh."

Ding Xian leaned on her desk, doing her math homework.

During lunch break, cicadas clung to the trees, chirping tirelessly.

The campus in the afternoon was always especially peaceful; even the scorching sunlight became gentle. Her math homework lay spread on the table for half an hour, not a single word written.

The female classmate returned with the problem again shortly after.

Ding Xian suddenly sat up, closed her notebook, and flashed a brilliant smile at her, saying enthusiastically, "Let's switch. You can sit here."