A quarter hour had slipped by since the bell for evening study, like sand draining through an hourglass.

The road home, a ribbon of dim glow across the pavement.

Outside the school gate, a threshold breathing out city heat.

Late night, Nightfall draping its shawl over leaves and lamps.

They walked with a delicate choreography, like two kites keeping distance in a mild wind.

The short-haired girl led, the flick of her ends like sparrow tails skimming air.

A few innocent passers drifted between them like blown leaves.

About ten meters back, Yexiaobai kept his eyes on her, his steps a shadow in lockstep.

He neither rushed up like a gust nor sulked and let her slip off like mist.

He held a gentle posture and distance, like warm lamplight kept at arm’s length.

So gentle that her whole heart tingled first, action coming second, like frost before dawn.

A heartbeat should go thump-thump, right?

Yet she felt it like a sugar cube under tiny ant bites—grain by grain falling, a sting with sweet aftertaste.

That sound was like a leaf loosening overhead and landing soft on earth.

Suddenly, like a hush under wind, she stopped beneath a huge plane tree.

Yexiaobai halted too and lifted his gaze; shade thinned to reveal the park entrance like a doorway in a grove.

He knew this corner—the plane tree by the street, the stone bench beneath it polished slick by countless hands, like river stones by a ford.

He guessed she knew it too; as kids they’d played here, and it was their secret base whenever they ran from home like stray cats.

“Hey.”

She didn’t turn; she angled her chin to the vast crown, a parasol spread over them.

Under Nightfall’s lamps, green leaves deepened to ink, shadows spilled and swallowed the light like poured paint, veiling her face from him.

Her voice wasn’t loud, a thread beside traffic weaving like shuttles on a loom; still, Yexiaobai caught it clear, like a bell heard underwater.

“What’s up?” he asked, calm before movement.

As if she’d known he’d hear from the first syllable, her answer came at once, a spark leaping to tinder.

“Hey, Yexiaobai, tell me—why don’t you ever get mad?”

He blinked, and the pause felt like a pebble skipping a pond. “Who told you I never get mad? Even a clay Buddha’s got a spark or two.”

“No. That’s not it.” She lowered her head, then shook it; her hair tips swayed like reeds, her heart wavering with them, unsure whether to say the words.

“Then what?” He sighed, the sound a cooling breeze. “Man, a girl’s heart is hard to read, like clouds shifting.”

“Why—won’t you come closer when you talk?” Her question turned as quick as a bird, odd and sudden.

“Because you’re covered head to toe in a ‘Keep Out’ vibe,” he said, like brambles around a path.

“But—we’re not strangers.” She tilted her face just enough and bit her lip, like holding back rain.

“That’s why I can read you perfectly,” he teased, a map unfolding between them.

“No. We’re friends, so when I snap at you, again and again, for no reason, you never—” Her voice rose, trembling like a wire in wind.

“Don’t say that.” Yexiaobai didn’t raise his volume, but his tone firmed like stone set. “That’s not anger. Did I really offend you? Are you truly angry at me?”

“No… not really…” she murmured, her words small, like a finch tucked in a bush.

“Then nothing happened between us,” he went on, the smile warming slow like tea. “Even if I don’t know what’s up—maybe you’re sleepy, or stuck consolidating a study point—that’s nothing. You’re not really mad at me, right? Or is your period—”

“Sh—shut up!” Her cheeks flared red, heat rising like a struck match, and nearby pedestrians turned their heads like sunflowers.

“That’s more like it,” Yexiaobai said, not angered, only amused, light running along his words. “That’s the Mu Xiaowei I know.”

“Hmph.” She startled, then lifted her chin a touch, a crescent of pride. A smile tugged her mouth; she wrinkled her nose at him, tilted up her face, and groused, “I haven’t changed.”

“Yeah.” He chuckled and reached out, palm ruffling her hair like a soft breeze. “Even if you did, you’d still be that silly Xiaowei.”

“Silly—no, you’re the silly Yexiaobai!” She snapped a kick toward him like a darting swallow; he slipped aside, fluid as water around a stone.

“Wanna go in and sit?” he asked after their brief scuffle, the offer gentle as dusk.

She looked toward the park he pointed at; amber light filtered through layered leaves, spilling in starry flecks like honey through a sieve.

She knew that under the lamps stood a slide, and beside it a small pavilion; under the pavilion were stone stools like the ones under the plane tree.

She could recite the grooves on those stools the way one recalls lines on a palm.

Ten years ago, when they’d just entered grade school, their homes were far apart, so they chose this spot to meet, the middle like a calm bay.

That tiny slide and small pavilion were their favorite harbors.

When did they start coming here less?

Probably when they grew up; growing up meant the little pavilion no longer fit games like playing house, those paper-boat days washed downstream.

Now it’s only good for remembering, like pressed flowers in a book.

Glad to go, Mu Xiaowei and Yexiaobai followed the familiar path, the feel of it like old music underfoot.

At the center lay a flowerbed; they circled behind it, sidestepped a slightly comical cat statue like a guardian grinning, then took the right-hand, meandering trail.

They lifted hands to brush aside branches like curtains, slipped past thorned blossoms, and the view opened like a sunlit clearing—the pavilion stood ahead.

“Ah.” She blinked, surprise bright as a droplet. “The slide’s gone?”

The pavilion remained, an octagon grown weathered, but lonelier now, like a boat with its mast missing.

Closer, they saw the grass still cradled the slide’s base, rusted red like dried blood, yet the important part had vanished like a bird flown.

“Now you mention it, I remember,” Yexiaobai said, memory rising like fog. “They said the old slide was unsafe. To avoid hurting kids, they tore it down.”

Mu Xiaowei stared, stunned, the thought snagging like a thread. “How would a slide hurt anyone? Slides are fun.”

The pavilion’s center held several stone stools; they wandered in, counting, finding most in their old places, with one nudged by some bored child like a chess piece.

A loop around showed the ‘scars’ they’d left here as children still alive, though faded like ink under sun.

Almost nobody sat here now; with a big waterside park opening nearby, this little one had grown abandoned, a hollow drum of silence.

People rarely passed, fewer lingered, and almost none found this tucked corner, a shadow at the edge of things.

With no one coming, things break fast; the thick dust said so in a dull, gray tongue.

“But these stone stools are pretty clean,” Mu Xiaowei said, peering at a surface smooth as bone, curious as a cat.

Yexiaobai glanced and let the detail drift, then grinned, mischief glinting like a pebble flicked. “Xiaowei. Remember the words we carved under the stools?”

“Of course.” Something struck; her voice quickened like rain. “We agreed never to peek at each other’s. You didn’t peek, did you?”

“How could I? I keep promises,” he said, a sly curve to his mouth like a crescent moon. “But we’re grown now. A little peek wouldn’t hurt, right?”

“No—way—!” she cried, springing like a deer to block him, landing between him and the stools.

She threw her arms wide like wings, squared her small chest like a shield; a blush warmed her cheeks, hidden neatly in the dim light, like coals under ash.

“Grown up—still no!”

Her flare shook him a little, a startled leaf. Curiosity brightened. “What did you write, anyway—was it…”

Her eyes widened, twin pools clouding with a mist of feeling, like dew.

“…a curse at me?”

“Um—” Xiaowei blinked, emotions dovetailing. “Y—you—let’s say it was. Hmph. Anyway. Bottom line. No peeking!”

“That makes me even more curious,” he laughed, eyes glinting like starlight.

“No peeking means no peeking. All right, all right. Nothing else to see here. Let’s go!”

She pushed him gently, step by step, out of the pavilion, along the path, out of the park, their laughter scattering behind them like seeds on wind.

Lost in that warm bubble, the pair of childhood sweethearts didn’t notice the dense shrubs behind the pavilion, a thicket like a closed eye.

Inside the green, something watched without blinking, a line of sight like a cold thread.

It tracked them as they played in the pavilion; it watched as they almost tugged at the stone stools; it followed as they drifted farther away.

It watched her.