After speaking, Jiang Du looked up and pressed her lips together.

It was strange. In that instant their eyes met, they seemed to have magically scented a kindred spirit in each other. At least, that's how it was for Wei Qingyue. He sensitively realized something, but didn't ask further, only saying with a faint smile:

“The library is empty at night. Do you have a place to go?”

Jiang Du nodded, “I'm going to my aunt's house.” Her heart was pounding. She didn't know why, but even knowing it was impolite, she couldn't help but ask him, “Why aren't you going home?”

Wei Qingyue looked at her meaningfully for a few seconds. He kept looking until Jiang Du felt her skin crawl. The boy's lips slowly curled, in what could have been a sneer or a wry smile.

“Haven't you already seen it?” He cleverly deflected, returning the awkwardness to Jiang Du. Jiang Du bit her lip, feeling as if she were even more embarrassed than the person involved in that awkward scene she had witnessed.

As they walked out of the library together, dusk was falling. A cool breeze blew on the early autumn evening. Between the tall buildings, a blood-red setting sun was slowly sinking, like a round, orange-red rose.

Everyone had their own places to go, like birds splitting off.

Jiang Du gripped her schoolbag strap tightly. She had to do something. The day was almost over. This unexpected encounter felt like an accidental gift from life. Whenever she got nervous, she had the urge to tie her shoelaces, but she forced herself to resist. Almost trembling slightly, she said to Wei Qingyue:

“Wei Qingyue, can I ask you about a problem? I couldn't solve the last big question on the test paper.”

After saying it, she quickly averted her gaze. She knew the request was sudden and unreasonable. 'Why didn't you ask earlier? You only ask when he's about to leave.'

As expected, Wei Qingyue hesitated for a moment, but still agreed.

The crowd dispersed quickly, with no one lingering. The boy was very casual, tossing his backpack aside and sitting down on the steps. Seeing this, Jiang Du quickly took out her test paper and pen. Her hand was trembling uncontrollably, and the pen rolled far away. Wei Qingyue was the one who picked it up for her.

She thought the ground was quite dirty, but couldn't be bothered with that now and sat down beside him, not too close, not too far. Jiang Du felt that even breathing had become a luxury.

“This is so simple, and you still can't do it?” Wei Qingyue chuckled, taking her pen and placing a book on his knee to support the test paper.

Jiang Du nodded in embarrassment.

He was indeed an impatient person. With flamboyant, cursive strokes, he quickly wrote out the solution steps in her diary, which she was using as scratch paper. He spoke very fast, and when he finished, he asked her, “Got it now?”

'As if I'd understand.' But it didn't matter. His handwriting was now in her diary. He returned the pen, the warmth of his fingers still lingering on it. Jiang Du hated the passage of time, knowing that this warmth would completely disappear from the world in a few seconds. She only had these few seconds.

So, she held it tightly, a futile grip, and told Wei Qingyue that she understood.

“You get such good grades,” Jiang Du said, trying to make conversation. The compliment wasn't very original. Then, she continued, seemingly to herself, as if unintentionally, “You'll definitely get into a school like Tsinghua University or Peking University, right?”

“I'm going abroad.” When speaking of the future, Wei Qingyue's face held an expression Jiang Du couldn't comprehend. The setting sun reddened half of his face, giving him an unfamiliar vibrancy. “I'm not going to university in this country.”

Jiang Du's heart suddenly felt like a plane in a nosedive.

Although she knew that where the prodigy before her studied had little to do with her, the moment he said he was going abroad, Jiang Du really wanted to cry. It was as if once the words were spoken, they would be separated by mountains and rivers, never to meet again in this lifetime.

She didn't know how to respond to Wei Qingyue. After mumbling for a long while, she said, “That's nice.”

“I'm off.” Wei Qingyue dusted off his clothes, shouldered his bag, and said his goodbyes to Jiang Du.

Jiang Du didn't move. She gave a shy smile. “Goodbye.”

“You're not leaving yet?” Wei Qingyue was a little surprised to see her rooted to the spot. He raised an eyebrow at her. The girl was gentle and delicate, her skin a translucent white. The boy suddenly realized that girls could be born so fair; he had always thought all girls had the same face, the same look.

“I'll wait for the moon to rise before I go,” Jiang Du answered softly, her heart filled with fine, dense thoughts she couldn't explain.

Wei Qingyue found her way of speaking interesting. 'The moon to rise...' He had never paid attention to any moon. To him, the Mid-Autumn Festival was just a repeat of yesterday and a prelude to tomorrow, with nothing special about it.

The boy's pensive expression lasted only a few seconds. He nodded and quickly disappeared into the sea of people. 'This was just a chance encounter, after all. You can't consider yourselves acquainted after just one chance meeting,' Jiang Du thought randomly as she watched Wei Qingyue's departing figure.

The evening wind rose, cool against her skin. Jiang Du suddenly realized that standing here alone waiting for the moon to rise was very lonely. Her heart felt empty. Even though she would be spending the Mid-Autumn Festival with her grandparents tonight, she believed that when she saw the full moon rise, she would still feel this loneliness—an unprecedented, novel, and completely unfamiliar world, where it seemed she was all by herself.

Once the Mid-Autumn Festival was over, Jiang Du returned to school, and the first thing she did was buy letter paper. There were many small shops at the school gate, where girls loved to gather in groups of three or five to rummage through celebrity posters and stickers, and pick out pretty diaries and letter paper. Wang Jingjing, in addition to this, was also particularly obsessed with taking photo booth stickers. She would drag Jiang Du into a cramped photo booth to choose colorful frame templates, then pout, make a peace sign—whatever was the most contrived pose. Jiang Du couldn't make such expressions and was always complained about by Wang Jingjing for being a block of wood.

The letter paper was too flashy. Jiang Du chose a relatively plain set, while Wang Jingjing had already picked out the photo booth sticker she considered her prettiest, ready to be sent along with a love letter.

“Look, don't I look good in this one? My nose is quite prominent.” Wang Jingjing looked at her photo booth sticker narcissistically. She urged Jiang Du, “We have to hurry up, the National Day holiday is almost here.”

Behind them, Lin Haiyang stuck his head out and said cheekily, “I heard everything, you're writing love letters!”

Jiang Du's face instantly turned red.

Wang Jingjing reached out and punched him, hitting especially hard. Lin Haiyang dodged by tilting his head, laughing nonstop. He looked at Wang Jingjing and said, “Let me tell you, the number of people crushing on Wei Qingyue is probably your number to the nth power. Don't waste your effort.”

“None of your damn business! I'll chase him if I want to!” Wang Jingjing was always brazen when talking to boys, but if she met a handsome one, she would restrain herself a bit, trying her best to act like a lady so as not to scare him off.

“Do you think you can compare to Zhang Xiaoqiang?” Lin Haiyang gossiped like a girl, deliberately lowering his voice and glancing towards the academic representative Zhang Xiaoqiang's seat. “Even Zhang Xiaoqiang couldn't get Wei Qingyue. Her grades are so good, her family is rich, and as for her looks, well, she's not exactly pretty but she's quite distinctive.”

Wang Jingjing stared at Lin Haiyang, stunned. “She's chasing Wei Qingyue too? How do you know?”

“There's nothing at Mei Zhong that I don't know!”

“You're just bragging!”

Jiang Du listened to their bickering in silence, her limbs stiff. But she hid it well, turning away and pretending to have no interest in the gossip, lowering her head to read her book. However, she suddenly had a clear realization: so, she had a dark side too. 'If someone as outstanding as Zhang Xiaoqiang can't win him over, then his standards must be very high. That's good. Everyone is just secretly crushing on him.'

Jiang Du was startled by this furtive thought of hers. She felt she was being sordid, as if she couldn't bear to see others do well.

The first letter went through two drafts, but in the end, it didn't say anything special. Wang Jingjing read it and was a little disappointed. She said, “Jiang Du, what you wrote is so bland. Wei Qingyue will never be able to feel this ardent heart of mine and my volcanic emotions.”

Jiang Du knew that for Wang Jingjing, it was mostly for fun. She was always like that, loud and boisterous, always talking about her latest crush. On campus, she could fall in love at first sight with just a person's back. However, her enthusiasm usually lasted only three minutes. She didn't feel embarrassed by rejection and would still be her cheerful, laughing self.

“It's not good for the first time. The way you described it, I think it's too exaggerated.” Jiang Du analyzed it for her quite seriously. She was also aware that Wang Jingjing was just talking for the sake of it and wasn't actually that invested. After all, when Wang Jingjing came back from the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, her enthusiasm had clearly almost vanished. If Jiang Du hadn't brought it up again, Wang Jingjing would have quickly forgotten about her plan to chase Wei Qingyue.

She had her own little selfish motives in this.

But she didn't dare to think too much about it. It was less of a love letter and more like she was talking to herself. Teacher Xiao Xu had already informed everyone that the first monthly exam would be held after the National Day holiday. Presumably, everyone would be studying hard for the exam during the entire break. Although they might complain, “I only played around and didn't review much,” you could never believe such words.

Lin Haiyang reminded Wang Jingjing to be prepared for the letter to disappear without a trace. There were rumors that whenever Wei Qingyue received a love letter, he would throw it in the trash without even looking at it. The trash can was full of shattered maiden hearts.

It doesn't matter. That was Jiang Du's first reaction. She had already prepared herself for the worst.

However, since Lin Haiyang knew, Wang Jingjing asked him to deliver the letter. As soon as he returned, she excitedly grabbed the boy's sleeve and asked, “How was it? How was it?”

“No reaction at all. Didn't say a single word.”

“Did you see him throw it in the trash?”

“No, he went into the classroom. But I don't know if he threw it away later!”

Jiang Du carefully listened to their conversation, her heart rising and falling, but her face remained calm. She quietly wiped her desk with a castor bean leaf until it was shiny.

The school liked to plant Chinese roses—pink, yellow, and white ones. Only the bright red ones were like tufts of brilliant fire, reflected in her eyes, like a certain dazzling person who was always radiant.

Before the holiday, Xiao Xu was emphasizing the matter of the monthly exam after school started. After he finished, he let everyone study on their own. Somehow, someone started a conversation, saying that even without taking the test, everyone knew first place would go to either Wei Qingyue or Zhang Xiaoqiang. The two of them had graduated from the best junior high and entered with the best high school entrance exam scores.

Zhang Xiaoqiang was clearly used to this kind of discussion. She shook her head modestly. “Mei Zhong is full of hidden talents. It's not a sure thing.”

Her junior high school was good, so many of its students got into Mei Zhong. As a result, there were always old classmates in the class. They were familiar with each other and spoke casually.

It was strange. Jiang Du hadn't paid much attention to Zhang Xiaoqiang before, but ever since hearing those few words from Lin Haiyang, she inexplicably couldn't help but look at Zhang Xiaoqiang's clothes, observe her expression and tone when she spoke, and notice how she always actively participated in class activities, cheerful, enthusiastic, and generous.

All of this gave Jiang Du an indescribable sense of inferiority.

“Sigh, even if Wei Qingyue gets first, it doesn't matter. He's going abroad. To put it bluntly, he won't be taking up a competitive spot,” a boy said pointedly. Zhang Xiaoqiang smiled, as if in agreement.

Jiang Du heard it loud and clear.

'So, other people knew he was going abroad too.' She had thought no one knew. She had even guarded it as a secret, determined not to casually tell anyone, even though Wei Qingyue hadn't asked her to.

Another wave of unspeakable disappointment washed over her.

Everyone else could chat and laugh freely while discussing Wei Qingyue, but she couldn't. She thought that chance encounter had given her something unique, like the warmth of his hand, or his plan to go abroad. But that wasn't the case. Everything about him could always be openly mentioned at Mei Zhong.

On the last day before the holiday, she didn't receive a reply from Wei Qingyue. Of course, she wouldn't. But the dusk that day was magnificent, the world vast and distant. Jiang Du stood alone on the corridor outside the classroom, staring blankly at the sunset glow for a long time before going home.