Ding Yun had only ever seen Chen Dao as her deskmate, and Bai Qiaoqiao as just another classmate. But that one sentence instantly turned her into public enemy number one.

During the ten-minute break after morning reading, some people even came over to ask if she was the girl Chen Dao had “cheated” with.

Ding Yun wasn’t really worried about being misunderstood. She could just explain it. But starting from first period, she kept feeling a gaze from diagonally behind her. It made her deeply uncomfortable.

Chen Dao had only said half of that sentence. The second half, about homework, had already been on the tip of his tongue. Bai Qiaoqiao cut him off before he could say it.

Bai Qiaoqiao admitted she really had panicked.

Or rather, she hadn’t slept well last night. She’d gotten up especially early this morning, hadn’t even eaten breakfast, and her head felt foggy. Then the moment she got to school, she saw Chen Dao chatting with Ding Yun. Of course she got mad.

Not to mention, when she got closer, she also heard Chen Dao’s outrageous line: “Thanks for letting me copy.”

She admitted she had misunderstood Ding Yun and Chen Dao. But now that things had come to this, she couldn’t bring herself to apologize.

She used to say other people had dirty minds, that they saw filth in everything. But now she had made the same mistake herself.

So she wanted to wait until class ended, then go explain things to Ding Yun. But she was afraid she’d fall asleep, so all she could do was keep staring at her.

But if you said Bai Qiaoqiao wasn’t angry, that would be a flat-out lie!

Her lips trembled, and her complexion looked bad. It was because Chen Dao hadn’t brought her anything to eat this morning, and she had also forgotten to ask her parents for money to buy breakfast.

Because all this time, her food, drinks, and daily spending had been covered by a boy named Chen Dao. Of course, Bai Qiaoqiao never asked for too much. That would damage her goddess image.

So things had always stayed at a balance where Chen Dao treated her three times, and she treated him back once.

It wasn’t that she had feelings for Chen Dao. She just had her own ideas. She was smart. She didn’t want people talking, so in front of everyone, she was always very friendly to him.

If you don’t hand out a little candy, how are you supposed to keep someone chasing after you?

But this morning, Chen Dao had changed.

She really wanted to ask why Chen Dao hadn’t bought food for her, but she couldn’t lower herself to do it.

Because yesterday, she had already said she wouldn’t speak to him anymore.

Thinking of that, she shot a glare at Chen Dao’s back.

Fine then. You got dumped, felt embarrassed, and now you’re acting all cold and aloof?

Trying to play hard to get?

Give me a break.

I’m not some self-centered person like you!

Under Ding Yun’s helplessness and Bai Qiaoqiao’s constant surveillance, Chen Dao could only focus on digesting the lesson.

First period in the morning was English. He wanted to sleep, but he didn’t dare. He couldn’t understand the grammar and key points written on the board right away, so he could only bury his head and copy notes, then find a top student to teach him later.

After all, this time wasn’t quite the same as last time. Before, he had studied hard for Bai Qiaoqiao. Now he had to do it for himself, so he had no choice but to work even harder.

Ding Yun was confused too. Chen Dao had been misunderstood, yet he wasn’t anxious at all. In the past, if he said even one sentence to another girl, he’d go explain it to Bai Qiaoqiao.

Bai Qiaoqiao couldn’t make sense of it either. There wasn’t even a “Three-Eight Line rift version” between their desks anymore. Chen Dao even took the initiative to ask Ding Yun about class material. He clearly didn’t care about what had just happened.

In short, all three of them were harboring their own thoughts as they endured the wait until the bell rang. The English teacher quickly said class was over, and the three of them shot to their feet with a smack.

Fast. Really fast.

It startled the whole class into staring toward the front row.

Ding Yun wanted to hide in the restroom. Bai Qiaoqiao wanted to go explain things to Ding Yun. As for Chen Dao, he was the nimblest of the three. He grabbed the red tracksuit from his desk, smiled and said goodbye to the English teacher, then spun around and dashed out of the classroom.

“Damn, was he holding that in?”

Nobody knew who shouted that, but it made everyone burst out laughing. Especially Li Zhiqiang, Zhou Yu, and Li Fang, who had watched the drama unfold yesterday.

In the class group chat last night, those three had been the loudest.

Li Zhiqiang already liked being the center of attention, so he couldn’t resist adding fuel to the fire. Li Fang was on Bai Qiaoqiao’s side, so of course she wasn’t going to say anything nice about Chen Dao. Zhou Yu was tall, but soft-tempered. He had only stated the facts he knew.

As for Zhao Lexuan, she had been busy doing practice problems last night. Right now, she was staring at the red tracksuit Chen Dao had taken away, looking a little surprised.

...

“This is yours, right? Sorry about that...”

A panting boy suddenly appeared in front of her. Gu Lian lifted her trembling eyes and looked at him, then at the red tracksuit in his hand.

Gu Lian symbolically parted her lips. She was so anxious she wanted to speak, but her throat was dry and no sound came out. In a panic, she looked at the water cup on the corner of her desk, snatched it over, and hurriedly took a sip.

Only then did she feel a little better.

After a long while, she finally squeezed out a single word.

“Y-... yes...”

No one had ever heard her speak to a boy before. Even during cleaning duty, she only wiped windows or desks in the corner. She never interacted, and she never spoke.

So Gu Lian responding to Chen Dao made the surrounding rustle of turning pages stop all at once. Even the teacher and students discussing a problem at the podium paused and looked toward Chen Dao.

Students going between classrooms wasn’t anything strange, so Teacher Liu, the subject teacher, didn’t find that odd. But Gu Lian talking to some unknown boy for the first time? That was new.

She pushed up her glasses and let her gaze fall on the red tracksuit between them.

Hm? Could that be the clothes Gu Lian lost?

That butler had even asked to check the surveillance footage this morning, hadn’t he?

Chen Dao also hadn’t expected Gu Lian to be so icy that she needed a sip of water before speaking.

But looking at her up close, she really was breathtakingly beautiful. At the same time, Chen Dao noticed the colorful notes and sticky memos all over her desk—

He could understand why the people around her all felt uneasy.

A girl this pretty, and a rich young lady on top of that. Her background alone was already enough to put her out of everyone’s reach. Yet she still worked harder than most people.

“I picked it up in front of the main building yesterday. I was going to hand it to a teacher, but it was too late, and the teacher on duty wasn’t there. So I had to take it home and wash it. You don’t mind, right?”

There was no way Chen Dao could just admit he stole it. Helping his ex-girlfriend out couldn’t be called stealing, right? No way. Absolutely not.

So on the way here, he came up with an excuse and tried to bluff his way through.

“Well, I’ve returned the clothes, so I’ll get going now. Sorry for the distur—”

Chen Dao lightly helped tidy her desk a little, making sure the clothes wouldn’t press down on any curled-up book pages or test papers. Then he turned, ready to slip away.

The clothes had been returned, and the apology had been made. Since his wallet didn’t allow for it, he’d skip the gift of apology.

But before Chen Dao could leave, someone lightly tugged at his sleeve.

The familiar scene made him think of that girl Xia Jiuli. A trace of gloom suddenly rose in his mind again.

Because of that, when he turned to look at Gu Lian, there was a little unease and bitterness in his eyes. It scared Gu Lian so much she didn’t dare speak. The panic in her expression kept slipping out, until at last she found a sticky note on the desk and finally returned to that cold, expressionless look.

In extremely neat handwriting, she wrote four words:

You stole it.

A chill instantly ran down Chen Dao’s back.

But she still wasn’t done. She picked up her pen again and slowly wrote a few more large characters:

Wait for me after school, or I’ll report you.