For over a month, the study schedule had been tightly packed. Even physical education class, which Sheng Xia used to dislike the most, had now become something she looked forward to.
Senior year had canceled courses like art, music, and ethics—leaving PE as the only non-college-entrance-exam subject. Only during PE class would the massive machine called "senior year" temporarily halt and enter a rest period.
At the affiliated high school, PE classes varied by grade and semester. Rumor had it that freshmen had swimming, waltz, Latin dance, aerobics, and tai chi, while upperclassmen got more intense activities.
This semester, Class Six had basketball—much to the boys' excitement, though most girls showed little interest.
Thursday afternoon's first period was PE. After parking her bike, Sheng Xia headed straight to the sports field.
Under the shade of trees by the field, small groups lounged about. The PE teacher had just arrived, and with a call of "Class begins," students lazily formed lines.
As the new transfer student, Sheng Xia wasn't sure where to stand. Xin Xiaohe ran over and tugged her arm. "Stand to my left," she said, then paused after comparing their heights. "Are you wearing height-increasing insoles?"
"No?"
Nearby girls turned to look.
Sheng Xia wore plain white canvas shoes—no insoles in sight.
"Sheng Xia really is taller than Old Xin? Wouldn't have guessed!"
"Seriously!"
Xiaohe: "Then stand to my right."
And so Sheng Xia got shuffled around.
Boys glancing from behind also seemed surprised.
Amid the chatter, Zhang Shu and Hou Junqi approached from the gymnasium, pushing a cart of basketballs that rattled noisily over the pavement.
Actually, it was just Hou Junqi pushing—Zhang Shu walked alongside dribbling a ball, occasionally crossing it between his legs with casual ease, never breaking stride to show off...
Sunlight danced across his soft bangs, the boy radiant and dazzling.
No wonder people said youth was synonymous with sunshine.
Even after long exposure in the same class, girls still whispered in clusters.
Zhou Xuanxuan, Xiaohe's roommate, remarked, "Hou Junqi looks pretty cool playing basketball, but next to Zhang Shu he might as well be a eunuch."
"Ha!" Xiaohe laughed openly. "True."
Though they often bickered, even Xiaohe had to admit Zhang Shu's looks were undeniable.
Hou Junqi had originally been recruited as a basketball athlete but stopped training after an injury. Once idle, he quickly gained weight, losing his former appearance. Thankfully his height helped—viewed alone, he wasn't exactly fat, just burly.
Had he not stood beside Zhang Shu, he might still count as handsome.
"Sheng Xia," Xiaohe patted her shoulder, "which school has hotter guys—No.2 High or ours?"
Sheng Xia was spacing out, frozen as she stared at the knee pads visible below Zhang Shu's basketball shorts.
"Sheng Xia?"
She snapped back. "Hmm?"
"Which school's boys are hotter—No.2 or ours?"
Sheng Xia pondered.
Generally speaking, No.2 High probably won—most boys there knew how to dress, especially the "streetwise" types who carried themselves with swagger despite their slacker attitudes. In comparison, their school's boys were plainer.
But individually speaking...
Zhou Xuanxuan giggled. "Don't torture her—didn't you see her staring holes through Zhang Shu?"
Sheng Xia: ...
She swore she hadn't.
Yet whether from hypersensitivity or not, she felt Zhang Shu's gaze lingering on her too.Damn, he's wearing knee pads—must be here to show off.
Xin Xiaohe noticed her pale expression and asked, "Xia Xia, is your period over? How are you going to play basketball later?"
Sheng Xia froze.
That saying was true—one lie required a hundred more to cover it up.
"Almost, it's fine," she replied.
Hou Junqi played the role of sports committee member impressively. First, he led everyone in warm-up runs, then some stretching exercises, and even demonstrated moves with the teacher—more professionally than the teacher himself.
Next was free practice. The boys didn't even need to practice, immediately splitting into groups for matches.
The girls lazily tossed the ball back and forth, chatting idly under the scorching sun.
"Start dribbling and playing! What's this lazy tossing? Are you dolphins?" The gym teacher's roar startled the girls into scattering to practice dribbling.
Back at No. 2 High, PE classes were lax—just a couple of laps before free time.
So Sheng Xia had barely touched a basketball before. Forget dribbling—she couldn't even bounce the ball properly, painstakingly patting it from one end of the court to the other and back again.
Hunched over her dribbling, she didn't notice her surroundings until she heard, "Sheng Xia!"
As she straightened up holding the ball, a basketball came flying at her from above with a whooshing sound, menacingly fast.
At the same time, a figure in a basketball jersey moved toward her. A firm arm wrapped around her shoulder, pulling her aside before letting go to catch the ball with both hands.
It stopped right before her eyes.
A hair's breadth away.
Her heart pounded violently, adrenaline coursing through her.
Zhang Shu's face appeared from behind the ball. "Hah!" He pretended to hurl it at her, pulling it back at the last second. Sheng Xia instinctively flinched, eyes squeezing shut as he grinned wildly. "Scared you silly?"
Xin Xiaohe, who'd called her earlier, rushed over. "You okay? Don't practice near them—they play too rough."
Only then did Sheng Xia snap out of it.
Their ball had flown toward her, and Zhang Shu had intercepted it.
Now he wore an expression begging for praise.
"Thanks," she murmured, hugging her arms where his brief touch left a lingering warmth.
Zhang Shu smirked. "No problem."
With that, he dribbled back to the court. The boys whooped and hollered in their direction, shouts of "hero saves the beauty" and "Shu's the man" reaching Sheng Xia's ears.
Even Xiao He gushed, "Damn, you should've seen how fast Zhang Shu ran—faster than the ball! Wasn't that cool?"
"I... didn't really see it."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Pfft—"
By class end, Sheng Xia never wanted PE again.
She slumped back into the classroom exhausted, while Zhang Shu remained energetic, as if he had boundless stamina to spare.
Sweat dripped from his forehead as he stood under the fan, chugging soda with his head tilted back. His Adam's apple bobbed like he was swallowing quail eggs whole.
"Got tissues?" he asked after finishing the can.
Sheng Xia pulled a pack from her desk drawer. Without ceremony, he yanked out half the stack, pushing back his bangs to wipe his face.Hou Junqi walked in from outside the classroom and, seeing the scene, said with a grin, "Yo, someone gets a pretty girl to serve them after playing ball? How lucky! Hero rescues the beauty and the treatment's just different, huh?"
Sheng Xia slowly withdrew her hand holding the tissues and tossed them onto his desk, her expression saying—help yourself.
Zhang Shu glanced at her rapidly reddening earlobes, crumpled the sweat-stained tissue into a ball, and threw it at Hou Junqi's head. "Here, the beauty's favor. Catch it. Feeling lucky now?"
Hou Junqi shielded his head with both hands to block the tissue attack. "Damn, was that necessary? Damn!"
...
After the official start of the school year, third-year students couldn't openly attend extra classes anymore. The school organized "self-study" sessions all day Saturday and Sunday morning—voluntary attendance. But everyone knew that skipping meant falling behind, so almost no one missed them.
In reality, this meant they only had half a day off on Sunday afternoons.
By Saturday, most people in the class had swapped their blue-and-white uniforms for casual clothes, restoring the lively atmosphere of the holiday make-up classes.
Many girls wore pretty skirts or shorts, full of energy and charm.
Yet Sheng Xia was still in her blue-and-white uniform, the collar buttoned tightly, the pants loose and billowing.
Xin Xiaohe asked, "Xia Xia, why are you still wearing your uniform?"
Sheng Xia looked down at herself. "Huh? Why wouldn't I wear it?"
Hearing the conversation, Zhang Shu turned his head and tried to recall—what had she worn before getting the uniform?
Strangely, he couldn’t remember. Probably something not much different from the uniform.
"You don’t have to wear it on weekends!" Xin Xiaohe said.
Sheng Xia smiled, her eyes curving. "Oh, I didn’t notice. It’s all the same, really."
She had bought three sets of uniforms—enough to rotate.
Xin Xiaohe said, "I think you’d look great in white dresses, linen or chiffon ones—no, actually, not just dresses. You’d probably look good in anything!"
"I don’t know," Sheng Xia replied.
"You’ve never worn them?" Xin Xiaohe was surprised by Sheng Xia’s blank expression. "I thought I was the only one who never wears skirts."
Sheng Xia simply said, "Because I ride a bike."
"An e-bike is fine, right? You don’t have to pedal. You could wear longer skirts?"
"Well... yeah," Sheng Xia wasn’t good at contradicting others. "Pants are just more convenient."
"When I was little, I loved wearing skirts—especially sparkly ones," Xin Xiaohe said, not sparing herself any embarrassment. "But my legs were so thick and dark. My childhood friend said I looked like a glowing piglet, hahahaha! After that, I could only admire skirts on others."
"That’s not true. You’re slim?" Sheng Xia meant it. Xin Xiaohe wasn’t exactly slender, but she wasn’t overweight either.
Xin Xiaohe sighed. "I only got slim in high school. But by then, I didn’t like wearing them anymore. It just felt weird—too breezy, hahaha."
Sheng Xia nodded, understanding the feeling. "Me too."
Liked them, but no longer used to them.
Zhang Shu, bored out of his mind, found himself propping his chin on his hand, listening to the girls’ conversation.
At this, his eyebrows lifted slightly.
"Me too"?
What did she mean? That she also got slim in high school? Or that she wasn’t used to wearing skirts either?
An image of her in a dress suddenly flashed in his mind—slender white arms, delicate ankles, a waist so narrow—he glanced at his forearm, estimating he could probably encircle it with one hand...
"Ahem." He cleared his throat abruptly, covering his nose with the hand that had been propping his chin, and quickly turned away.When Sheng Xia turned her head at the sound, all she saw was the boy's lowered profile.
He was wearing a plain black T-shirt today, with no design except for a small square rivet at the nape of his neck. Since it was the only one there, her gaze instinctively lingered on it.
His head was bowed, the vertebrae along his neck slightly protruding before disappearing beneath his short hair, like the spine of a little dragon.
That bone structure—just the right amount of wildness and strength.
For some reason, she remembered how he had blocked the ball for her—his palm colliding with the fast-moving basketball, that loud thud that sounded painful, yet he hadn’t reacted at all.
And the way he had moved her aside—as if he could lift her with just one arm…
He coughed softly again, the sound almost inaudible, just the slight movement of his Adam’s apple.
Sheng Xia snapped out of her thoughts and quietly averted her gaze. When she looked down again, she noticed the knee pads on his knees.
Seems like the gift was quite practical. Even if he eventually found out she was the one who sent the legal notes, it should balance out the scales, she thought.
……
On weekends, the first and second-year students didn’t have classes, so the lunch program returned to catering exclusively to the third-years. The crowd was sparse.
Hou Junqi, ever the one to disrupt any awkward silence, was a master at bad timing.
He plopped himself right next to Sheng Xia without hesitation and called out to Zhang Shu, "Over here!"
And so, Sheng Xia found herself sandwiched between two tall guys again, head bowed like an abducted innocent girl.
Hou Junqi wolfed down his food and went back for seconds in no time, while Zhang Shu ate at a normal pace with a normal portion.
Sheng Xia ate little and deliberately finished quickly. After she was done, she said, "I'm finished, I'll go ahead," and left without waiting for a response.
Giving a heads-up was her courtesy; not waiting for a reply was her attitude.
She had quite the temper.
From the "Beauty's Favor" incident until now, Sheng Xia hadn’t spoken to either of them for two days.
During those two afternoons, Zhang Shu had gone to play basketball almost every day, wearing those knee pads. Yet she hadn’t shown any particular reaction.
Huh. For someone as timid as her, she hadn’t been scared off. Guess her conviction was strong enough.
The light of righteousness really was that bright, huh?
"A-Shu, what are you staring at?" Hou Junqi waved a hand in front of Zhang Shu’s face. "So devout?"
"At a Bodhisattva," Zhang Shu said.
"...?"
Zhang Shu: "She just performed a miracle. Didn’t you see?"
Hou Junqi glanced outside the door, utterly confused: "...?"
Zhang Shu: "You lack the karma."
Hou Junqi: "..."
Zhang Shu: "Watch less of those videos. Do some good deeds."
Hou Junqi: "..."
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