Someone once said a secret crush is the cheapest way to love, like keeping a single candle lit in a shuttered room.

Maybe that’s true.

You don’t have to spend each day guessing what she likes, wringing your brain to buy or make something to win a smile; no festival gifts, no date-night tabs, no little rituals that eat your wallet like moths.

No dates, no fights, no holiday surprises, not even a blush of flirtation—just clear air and a closed window.

All you pay is time and attention, poured like tea into an empty cup.

For a boy mid-crush, that time feels weightless. One shared glance is a shooting star; even a stolen look during the walk to and from school is enough—her clear eyes, her small lips, her quiet grace, or just a back half-hidden among books like a crescent moon behind clouds. For him, that’s already a feast.

But everything has a price tag hung by fate. Even a one-sided crush pays in the end, the instant it’s exposed and turns into open love—

All those soft daydreams and far-off hopes march out to duel the hard ground of the real world, banners snapping in the wind.

Win or lose, the crush ends there. The outcome decides if it blossoms like spring plum—or withers in a breath like frost-bitten grass.

Yexiaobai never even counted that cost.

A fair, open fight? He’d never once thought of it. A daily glimpse already set his face aflame and his heart drumming like rain on bamboo. Taking action felt like stepping off a cliff.

Courage doesn’t even matter; in a crush, you live on the lee side of the wind.

Besides, aren’t boys in their crush years all like this?

“How can she be that pretty?”

He whispered it after stepping into the teaching building. At the stairwell landing, the seventeen-year-old stood grinning, the smile sweet as a sugar drop melting on his tongue.

Then the moon spilled silver over the courtyard, and the empty landing stared back at him like a dry well. Yexiaobai jolted. Crap—I stood Mu Xiaowei up!

“Ah…” His scalp tightened. He could already picture Mu Xiaowei waiting, then storming off like summer thunder. Maybe I text her now. Tell her to wait. I’ll sprint over.

He pulled out his phone. Her avatar popped up—a cartoon tiger, all teeth and cuteness. He opened the chat, typed a few words, hesitated, then erased them like footprints in surf.

“Forget it.” He shook his head. “Texting now just asks for a scolding. I’ll apologize properly in the morning.”

He turned toward the school gate, his shadow long as a river in moonlight.

He didn’t know that, days later, he’d pay for this easy choice in blood.

Sometimes that’s how fate moves.

You brush one of ten thousand long threads, just graze it with a fingertip. It quivers by a hair, too fine for any eye.

And then your calm, rippless life buckles like cracked ice.

...

...

“Idiot Yexiaobai! Dummy Yexiaobai! Moron Yexiaobai!”

“He stood me up.”

“And not even one lousy text!”

As the boy who knew her best would expect, Mu Xiaowei stomped down the road home with cheeks puffed like steamed buns, her head a hive of complaints buzzing his name.

But a girl’s thoughts twist like winding water; who can read their currents?

Yexiaobai was right that a message now would stoke her anger. What he didn’t see was this: if he sent nothing, that same fire might roar higher, like wind in a dry pine.

And she wasn’t just mad about the ten minutes downstairs. Not only that.

When he didn’t show, the impatient girl actually went back up once. She saw Yexiaobai at the far end of the corridor. She drew breath to call out—but then she caught that plain-as-day move of his. The loud, carefree girl shut her mouth, went downstairs without a word, and walked out of the campus alone, like a lone kite slipping its string.

Yexiaobai never noticed.

If he had, he would have seen a look he’d never seen on her sun-bright, always-lively face since they were kids: that small, falling-away sadness, like a petal loosening in wind.

And things wouldn’t have gone this far.

“Idiot Yexiaobai!”

The fourth hundred “Idiot Yexiaobai!” burst out so loud even passersby stared. The angry girl froze, then snapped at the night, “Why am I even this mad at that idiot? There’s no reason! That idiot Yexiaobai should be like this trash ball—”

She glared at a crumpled paper ball on the curb and gave it a furious kick.

“Ow!” Tears sprang up. “Who wraps a rock inside a paper ball?”

“Arghhh!” Mu Xiaowei’s mood flared like a shorted wire. “Today is cursed! And the worst curse is running into Yexiaobai!”

She sat on the flowerbed edge, hissing at the pain for a long minute, muttering nonstop. If words could reshape the world, she would have chopped the “culprit” Yexiaobai into mince a thousand times by now, like a chef with a grudge.

She almost called right then to rip into him. Then her eyes snagged on the time glowing on her phone.

“Shoot. It’s that late already. If I don’t hurry, the episode will be over.” She stood. “Fine, I’ll take the shortcut.”

She’d walked this route a thousand times. Up ahead there was a narrow lane that cut through an abandoned elementary school. The path itself was a temporary road, scraped clean back when the site got cleared. The buildings were already flattened, but reconstruction hadn’t begun.

If she took it and crossed the dead schoolyard, she’d skip a whole block and pop out on her street, saving a good chunk of time.

But it was a makeshift lane, littered with loose gravel, and the schoolyard had no lamps. Even by day she avoided it. At night—never. Only when she was with Yexiaobai did she dare pass that way, his presence like a lantern in a dark grove.

The thought flared, and with it her anger.

“Yexiaobai again! Always Yexiaobai! As if I can’t live without him.”

She spun on her heel and stepped into the twisting lane, her shadow swallowed by thorny dark.

...

...

By the time Yexiaobai got home, it was late.

He told himself he’d apologize tomorrow. Even so, a small anxiety gnawed at him, so he ran almost the whole way, feet drumming like hooves, hoping to bump into Mu Xiaowei. Oddly, he never saw the little tiger silhouette that was so hers.

At the crossroads where one way led to Mu Xiaowei’s place and the other to his, he hesitated. Then he turned toward home, doubt trailing him like fog.

“Nothing’s going to happen… right?”

“Little brother, what did you say?”

“Nothing. Also, Sis, can you stop piling food into my bowl? I can’t eat that much for a midnight snack.” Yexiaobai eyed the growing mountain before him and gave the woman across the table a helpless smile.

She was tall, with hair falling to her waist like a black waterfall. Her skin was milk-white under the warm lamp, and her face wore a refined, bookish beauty. She gazed at Yexiaobai with a fondness that glowed like hearth-fire.

Her name was Yexiaokong. From the name alone, you could tell—she was his real sister.

Her model-tier looks said “elegant,” and her job matched: a crisp, capable university lecturer. By rights, her poise and profession should have filled Yexiaobai with nothing but respect.

But as a person, Yexiaokong was excellent; as an “older sister,” she was a disaster class.

This woman, all classical grace from head to toe, opened her mouth and said something that would make anyone do a double take.

“It’s okay. If you can’t finish, I’ll help. Eating my little brother’s leftovers is the greatest happiness under heaven.”

That was Yexiaokong: a deep-dyed brother-con. The moment it touched Yexiaobai, logic evaporated like morning mist. “As long as it’s for my brother, it’s the greatest happiness in this world,” she’d declare righteously, then proceed to do things that left bystanders stunned.

She’d been like that for as long as he could remember.

“Ah, ah.” Yexiaobai covered his face. “You’re saying that again.”