Chapter 1
#He picked up a love letter written to himself.#
Classrooms during the noon break were always noisy.
It was called a “noon break,” but not a single student in the class was actually resting. The moment the Laoban (homeroom teacher) left, the students clustered in groups of twos and threes, eyebrows dancing as they gossiped with animated delight.
The boys talked about Champions League transfers, their newly bought carbon-plate basketball shoes, and the latest AAA video game releases.
The girls talked about the plushies hanging on their bags, photocards, the secret to keeping bangs from getting greasy, and the variety shows they were currently binge-watching.
In short, no one was talking about studying.
However, even though no one was discussing academics, every chatting student had a workbook open in front of them. If the homeroom teacher were to pull a surprise attack and return, they could seamlessly switch back to “study mode” in an instant.
Among these idlers, Yuan Man was undoubtedly the most talkative of them all.
Everyone liked chatting with him. And he loved chatting with everyone else.
It was as if he had been born with an extra mouth and an extra degree of social intuition compared to others; he could hit it off with anyone instantly.
Yuan Man’s grades weren’t the best in the class, but whether they were top students or underachievers, boys or girls, everyone considered him a friend.
He held no official position—he wasn’t the class monitor, nor a subject representative—yet the teachers loved asking him to run errands.
He wasn’t exactly devastatingly handsome, but he had a winning, fresh-faced cleanliness about him. Standing at 178 cm, he had large, double-eyelid eyes and a small dimple on his left cheek when he smiled. Note: his dimple wasn’t natural. In elementary school, while chasing and playing with a classmate, he had tripped and planted his face right onto the corner of a desk!
There was no blood or broken skin, but his cheek swelled up for a week. Once the swelling went down, a dimple had inexplicably appeared on his left cheek.
Yuan Man had sighed in front of the mirror countless times, lamenting how weird it looked to have a dimple on only one side. He constantly contemplated falling again someday to smash a matching dimple onto the right side… unfortunately, from second grade all the way to his second year of high school, he never quite summoned the ruthlessness to do it again.
In summary:
Yuan Man was just that kind of guy—likable, talkative, his head stuffed with whimsical ideas, and a friend to the entire world.
Today, however, Yuan Man wasn’t chatting with everyone.
He folded his school uniform jacket, draped it over his arm, and strolled out of the classroom.
A classmate called out loudly, “Yuanyuan, where are you going?”
“Screw off with your ‘Yuanyuan’!” Yuan Man shot back. “I didn’t sleep well last night and the classroom is too loud. I’m going to find somewhere to catch up on sleep!”
That was easier said than done. Finding a quiet place to sleep at school was no small feat.
After searching high and low, he found the library on the first floor of the multi-purpose building.
The Normal University Attached High School was a prestigious provincial school, so its library was naturally top-tier, boasting a collection richer than even some third-rate universities.
However, Yuan Man didn’t really like reading books outside of his studies. Whether it was popular novels or manga, he found them too wordy. If he had that kind of free time, he’d rather play a couple of football matches with friends or a few rounds of Honor of Kings.
Consequently, this was the first time he had stepped through the library doors in the two years since his enrollment.
Upon entering, the temperature dropped several degrees. Looking around, rows of metal movable bookshelves extended endlessly, each one packed tight with books. Just one glance made Yuan Man dizzy, and he couldn’t help but mutter a stunned, “Damn.”
Surprisingly, there were quite a few students self-studying here at noon. Yuan Man lightened his steps and carefully walked inside.
Not far from the entrance was the circulation desk. Unexpectedly, the person sitting behind it wasn’t a teacher, but a teenager wearing the same school uniform as him.
Must be a volunteer, he thought.
The boy was long and slender. His raven-black hair was a bit long—clearly violating school regulations—and fell messily to obscure his face. Perched on his nose was a pair of glasses, making his features indistinct.
His skin, however, was exceptionally pale.
Yuan Man’s skin was considered quite fair among boys; classmates often joked that he was white as a yuanxiao (glutinous rice ball).
But this stranger was even paler. He looked like the first handful of snow in early winter—fine, white, and demanding of a second glance.
The boy was hunched over the desk studying, surrounded by books. Hearing footsteps entering the library, he didn’t even lift his head, remaining immersed in his reading.
Terrifying.
I can’t believe someone likes reading this much.
Yuan Man certainly liked chatting with people, but he wasn’t bored enough to try and strike up a conversation with a strange bookworm.
He bypassed the service desk and headed into the depths of the library.
He didn’t know that after he walked away, the bookworm boy behind the desk actually lifted his head and gazed at his retreating back.
Only when Yuan Man disappeared into the deep rows of bookshelves did the boy silently withdraw his gaze.
…
Yuan Man found a spot bathed in sunlight. He folded his jacket over and over until it formed a pillow to his liking, then comfortably planted his face into it.
It was great being young; he fell asleep the moment his head hit the desk.
Unfortunately, the library’s air conditioning was too powerful. He woke up freezing after only twenty minutes. He sat up, stretched, and zoned out for a while. The students around him were either reading or doing homework; no one else had the thick skin to just sleep there like him.
Feeling a bit embarrassed, he got up to stretch his limbs and glanced at the bookshelves, hoping to find something interesting, like a mystery novel or a wuxia (martial arts) novel. He looked around but couldn’t find any.
Thick-skinned as ever, he asked a stranger at the same table, “Psst, psst. Hey, classmate, do you know which shelf the Jin Yong books are on?”
The student replied, “Go ask Xu Jingyou. He knows every book in the library.”
Yuan Man: “Xu Jingyou?”
“That guy.” The student jutted his chin toward the circulation desk. “Xu Jingyou from Class 3, Grade 1.”
So, the stranger xuedi (junior) behind the desk was named Xu Jingyou.
A pretty good-sounding name, he thought. “Ten thousand kinds of frosty sky competing for freedom.”
Yuan Man strolled back to the service desk. Xu Jingyou was still buried in his book, motionless as a statue.
Yuan Man reached out and knocked on the desk, asking with a grin, “Xuedi, Xuedi? Excuse me.”
It took several seconds for the boy to slowly lift his head from the sea of words. Their eyes met.
Separated by a low service counter, one was inside, one outside; one sitting, one standing.
The midday sun poured generously through the floor-to-ceiling windows beside them, heating up hearts and faces alike.
This xuedi has really nice eyes, Yuan Man thought.
Single eyelids, with the corners tilting slightly upward. Even the glasses couldn’t hide the sharpness of those phoenix eyes.
His pupils were light-colored, different from Yuan Man’s dark, bead-like eyes. When he looked at people, his gaze swept over them coolly from the corner of his eye, exuding an air of keeping everyone a thousand miles away.
“Don’t make loud noises in the library.” The xuedi’s eyes were indifferent, and so was his tone.
Yuan Man hit a wall but didn’t get annoyed. Who told him to be born with a weakness for good looks? He just liked talking to good-looking people.
“I thought your hearing was bad since you didn’t answer the first time I called you.”
“Do you need something?”
“Oh, yeah, I do,” Yuan Man said. “I’m looking for Jin Yong’s novels. Do you know which shelf they’re on?”
Xu Jingyou: “Section C, popular fiction area. Cabinets C3 to C4 are all wuxia novels.”
Concise and comprehensive.
Yuan Man rolled his eyes playfully and asked again, “I suddenly don’t want to read wuxia anymore. Do you have any essay collections?”
Xu Jingyou: “What kind of essays? Autobiographies of famous authors, or descriptive narratives?”
“Famous authors’ autobiographies. Something like I and the Temple of Earth.”
Xu Jingyou: “Walk forward, Section D on your right, Cabinet D1.”
“Eh, actually, I want to read essays by foreign authors now.”
“Still Section D, look on the very last row of shelves.”
Yuan Man kept asking questions as if he were looking for trouble, going from sci-fi novels to English exercise books, from Shakespeare to National Geographic. This xuedi named Xu Jingyou actually knew everything.
Most importantly, faced with Yuan Man’s endless stream of inquiries, Xu Jingyou didn’t even knit his brows once. He remained exceptionally calm from start to finish.
Heh.
Interesting.
Yuan Man hadn’t dealt with this type of person before—like an iceberg, acting all cool.
Yuan Man finally wandered off to find a book, looking from Section C to Section D, from the first shelf to the last. He picked up anything that looked interesting and flipped through it, but no book could hold his attention for more than three pages.
He couldn’t help it; looking at any book other than a textbook made him dizzy. (Not that looking at textbooks didn’t make him dizzy).
After picking and choosing for a long time, he finally found a book that suited his taste—an illustrated edition of The Little Prince. The last time he read this was in elementary school as a mandatory fifth-grade reading assignment. He had skimmed it whole, only remembering a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant.
Picture books were great. Their greatness lay in having few words.
Yuan Man couldn’t be bothered to go back to his seat. He simply sat on the floor, leaning against the bookshelf, and opened The Little Prince on his knees.
This edition featured art by a famous French painter. The strokes were gentle, the colors bright, and combined with the refined, delicate text, Yuan Man was instantly captivated.
He turned page after page, past the boa swallowing the elephant, past the King, the Lamplighter, and the Geographer. He turned and turned until he reached the chapter about the fox and the rose.
【It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.】
It was only then that Yuan Man discovered this picture book had a “gimmick”!
The rose chapter was exactly in the center spread of the book. When the spine was flattened, a pop-up paper rose would “stand out” from the book, blooming in front of the reader.
Most surprisingly, hidden in the very center of the paper rose’s petals was a small slip of paper.
When the rose bloomed, the small slip fell out.
Calling it a “small slip” wasn’t quite right. It was half a page torn from some exercise notebook, folded over and over and over again into a tiny tofu-square block. Once unfolded, it was densely covered with a teenager’s secret thoughts.
Calling it secret thoughts…
Actually, it was just a name and a sentence.
A name copied over and over again, sixteen times. A sentence repeated sixteen times.
That sentence was—
【Yuan Man, I wish you a Happy 16th Birthday.】
Yuan Man: “…”
Huh?
Yuan Man held the slip of paper, utterly bewildered. Besides him, was there anyone else in their school with the surname Yuan and the given name Man?
…
Yuan Man scrambled up from the floor, shoved the paper into his pocket, grabbed The Little Prince picture book, and rushed toward the circulation desk.
Xu Jingyou was still reading behind the counter.
Hearing Yuan Man’s footsteps, Xu Jingyou looked up from his pile of books, frowning as he warned, “Student, no running in the library.”
“I wasn’t running, I was speed-walking,” Yuan Man denied.
He placed The Little Prince on the table and pushed it in front of Xu Jingyou.
Xu Jingyou stared at the book for a few seconds, then looked up again, pushed up the glasses on the bridge of his nose, and asked in a cold tone, “Do you want to borrow this book? Please show your student ID.”
Yuan Man shook his head. “I’m not borrowing it. I just want to ask, can you check the list of people who borrowed this book?”
Xu Jingyou immediately frowned. “What do you want to do?”
“Nothing, just asking, just asking.” Yuan Man pressed his palms together and bowed to him repeatedly. “You just said borrowing books requires a student ID, so it must be a real-name system, right? I just want to know how many people borrowed this book during this year’s winter break?”
The boy was born with a likable face.
Almond eyes full of smiles, and a dimple on his left cheek.
No one could resist it.
But Xu Jingyou resisted it.
Xu Jingyou turned his head away, maintaining that strictly business-like manner. “I can’t tell you. The borrowing list is private.”
Tch.
Yuan Man thought, What kind of privacy is this?
This Grade 1 xuedi was just a library volunteer, yet he was treating a trivial amount of authority like an imperial decree.
Although he criticized him internally, Yuan Man’s words remained sweet.
“Please, please, Xu Jingyou~~” Yuan Man’s voice dipped and swirled, seeing absolutely nothing wrong with acting spoiled and shameless in front of a junior. “Look, you’re in Class 3 Grade 1, I’m in Class 3 Grade 2. Rounding up, I’m your direct xuezhang (senior)! Just help a xuezhang out. Secretly tell me who borrowed this book, and I absolutely won’t tell anyone else.”
Hearing Yuan Man say his name, Xu Jingyou clearly froze. The eyes behind the lenses flickered for a moment before he spoke, “You know me?”
“I didn’t before, but I can know you starting now.”
As he spoke, Yuan Man’s upper body was already leaning over the counter. With familiar ease, he draped his hand on the other boy’s shoulder, leaning almost half his body weight over.
“Since we know each other, we’re friends! You can help a friend with a trivial little favor, right?”
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