Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Aside from Pei Zhiyu, the other person in our class who drew endless attention was the campus goddess, Chu Siwei.
She was the girl with the rainbow hair clip-the “Little Princess” Yan Fei was always talking about.
Chu Siwei came from an illustrious family, and she was brilliant too.
Even rarer was the fact that she was approachable. She was always smiling sweetly, pure and harmless, the dream girl of countless boys.
Yan Fei and I, however, didn’t like her all that much.
Because whenever the three of us were put in the same group for teamwork, she would smile just like that, then look surprised and say,
“You need that long to think about such a simple problem?”
Or she would put on an innocent, sincere expression and say,
“This is way too outdated. My tutor told me that overseas, this kind of approach would be used as a negative example. It’s not elegant or concise at all.”
The two of us could only look at each other in silence.
“Way too outdated,” Yan Fei mimicked in Chu Siwei’s tone one day after that, rolling her eyes.
Then she started ranting about all the things she couldn’t stand about Chu Siwei.
“She’s Little Princess, all right. Clearly not living in the same world as us mere mortals.”
I was just about to agree when Pei Zhiyu, who had been resting with his eyes closed beside us, opened them.
“Is it possible that with her IQ, she genuinely finds the problems you two talk about very simple?”
Pei Zhiyu’s voice was indifferent.
Maybe people’s circumstances really couldn’t be compared.
Because Chu Siwei’s abilities truly were enough to rival Pei Zhiyu’s.
Yan Fei fell silent, so I quickly tried to smooth things over.
“I’m sure that’s it, I’m sure. We should all try to understand one another.”
The moment I said that, Yan Fei looked at me like I was a hopeless coward.
Back then, I thought Pei Zhiyu and Chu Siwei merely appreciated each other as fellow geniuses.
After all, the two of them were always going off together to participate in academic competitions.
But I wasn’t really that hopeless.
Since there was no way I would ever be in his eyes anyway.
For a while, I even decided I wasn’t going to like Pei Zhiyu anymore.
But after evening class one day, in the middle of a torrential downpour, I saw Pei Zhiyu wrap a trembling kitten in his school uniform while he himself was soaked through.
In a corner no one else noticed, he looked down at the kitten in his arms with an unbearably gentle gaze.
Even the evening breeze was not as tender as his eyes.
That moment of softness was something I stumbled upon by accident alone.
It felt like glimpsing the hidden luster of a pearl.
I had seen Pei Zhiyu pour out all his light and heat on the stage at the campus music festival.
For someone like him, I had assumed he would learn something elegant, like violin or piano.
Instead, he played a heavy, deep bass, throwing himself into restless rock with the band.
Dressed all in black, Pei Zhiyu wasn’t even at center stage, yet people still couldn’t look away from him.
The only time I ever saw Pei Zhiyu lose his temper was when a timid, scrawny boy in our class was cornered by a few thugs from another class who came looking for trouble.
Pei Zhiyu, who was usually unruffled by anything, kicked over a stool.
In the suffocating silence that fell over the room, he said in the calmest yet most chilling voice,
“Get out. Now. Or don’t regret what happens next.”
We took the same bus home. He always stood by the rear door, one hand on the grab rail, listening to music through his earphones.
I never dared to pick a fixed spot.
Only when the bus was crowded could I pretend it was natural to stand beside him.
The music leaking from his earphones was always the same band.
As it happened, it was also my favorite: an old-school British rock band.
Lazy, casual, unruly, and captivating.
Yet I never dared to use that as an excuse to strike up a conversation with him. I was too afraid he would see through how deliberate I was being.
Pei Zhiyu was always making my heart race.
He wasn’t wrong. He just didn’t like me.