Lemon flavor

As winter sets in and the weather grows colder, I curl up into a ball. Getting out of bed early this morning was a struggle; my eyes were still half-closed as I brushed my teeth and splashed ice water on my face. Only then did I fully wake up. "Hiss—it's so cold!"

With a piece of bread in her mouth, her hands holding her shoes and her schoolbag, she hurried towards the school. She was shivering from the cold, but she tried to stop herself from shivering. Her body wasn't cold anymore, but her teeth started chattering. Fu Yanjin, who had run over, hugged Jiang Yanmu tightly, exhaling cold air, "I'm freezing! Let me hug you to warm you up."

“But I feel even colder,” she said, hugging Fu Yanjin back.

"Warmth will dispel the cold."

Jiang Yanmu let go of Fu Yanjin. "Okay, I haven't eaten yet. I'll let you hug me after I finish eating."

"Okay~" After saying that, he sat down next to her and stared intently at the bread in Jiang Yanmu's hand. Jiang Yanmu, feeling the gaze, turned to Fu Yanjin, who was drooling with desire, and said, "I want some."

"Um"

He took other breads out of his bag and placed them on the table, letting Fu Yanjin choose. "Aren't you full?" he asked, still eating bread and his hands never stopping.

She carefully selected a bag of bread, tearing it open as she spoke, "I'm full, I just wanted to eat yours." Looking at what she had just said, he couldn't help but smile and tap his forehead, "You~" Meanwhile, Ye Ziyi sat quietly at the slanted table, working on his problems.

Turning my head, I noticed a girl sitting next to him, asking him a question. Although I knew they were exchanging ideas and discussing studies, a pang of sadness shot through me as I clutched my bread bag. Watching their harmonious atmosphere, I felt a mixture of envy and jealousy.

"This question is the same as the one above, just follow the instructions." The girl wasn't really focused on the question and gave a perfunctory answer. She wanted to say something more, but Ye Ziyi cut her off before she could finish. "Ye, um..."

"That's all, right? If there's nothing else, you can go back now, you have to go to class."

"...Okay." The girl was speechless at Ye Ziyi's words, gritted her teeth and left after saying that.

The two watched them from a distance. Fu Yanjin nudged Jiang Yanmu with her elbow and said, "To be honest, it's good that Ye Ziyi is straight. This just made him slink away." Hearing Fu Yanjin's words, it was hard to tell whether to feel relieved or unlucky…

The ringing of the bell interrupted Jiang Yanmu's thoughts.

An Jin walked into the classroom while talking about dictating vocabulary. "We're going to do a dictation test."

The students in the classroom, upon hearing An Jin mention dictating vocabulary words, all groaned, "Ah—!"

"I didn't give you fifteen minutes to memorize, let's begin," she said, clapping her hands. Hearing "fifteen minutes," everyone frantically tried to memorize. Jiang Yanmu used the time to review what she had memorized before. "Alright, put the books down and start the dictation. Bad ending, lucky, Christmas… Stop writing! Put the previous one on top of the next one, pass them up, and the first one to bring it to the podium."

A bunch of people around me were sighing, lamenting that they hadn't written much of it down. "Oh no, I'll have to copy it so many times again—"

"Quickly copy a few words for me!" Some people who basically don't know the words will just copy a few from the notebooks of people who do know them to get by with the teacher.

Jiang Yanmu opened the book and flipped through it casually. "Class will begin now," An Jin said. "Where did we leave off last time...?" "Some people lost points because of reading comprehension. Today we'll discuss that."

"Folding problems in the Pythagorean theorem are very important, so listen carefully! Now, look at this problem. Fold rectangle ABCD along line AE..."

"Let BF be X..." She hadn't figured out the math problem from the afternoon, so she wrote it out again at home. Math was like a hole for Jiang Yanmu; it took her a long time to digest it.

Jiang Yanmu was stumped again and messaged Ye Ziyi. "Are you there?" Jiang Yanmu deleted the message several times. "Are you busy? I have a question for you."

[Ye, I...] In the end, Ye Ziyi saw that Jiang Yanmu had been typing for a long time without sending it, so he sent it first. [Is there something you need?]

Jiang Yanmu received a message and was so startled that she exited WeChat. After a while, she came back in and saw the message from Ye Ziyi. 【I... have a question I can't answer, the Pythagorean theorem folding problem we discussed this afternoon.】 After typing for a while, Jiang Yanmu sent it in one go, immediately turned off her phone, and tossed it aside.

As soon as the message notification rang, Jiang Yanmu immediately got up and picked up her phone, only to see that he had sent a long voice message. Completely absorbed by the message, she forgot she had come to hear his problem-solving approach.

His voice was so beautiful, I don't know what words to use to describe it, I just thought it was "very beautiful." He sent another message, still a voice message: "Do you understand?"

[Ah] She didn't even realize she had sent a voice message; by the time she realized it, it was too late. [If you don't understand, let me explain in more detail.] This time, Jiang Yanmu really took Ye Ziyi's voice message seriously and truly understood it.

I understand! Thank you, Ye.

After finishing the conversation, Jiang Yanmu opened the other voice messages again, listening to them until she was satisfied before putting them down. Because of the voice messages, Jiang Yanmu slept exceptionally well that night.

As the end of the semester approached, snow began to fall outside the window—a rare snowfall. This was only the second time Jiang Yanmu had seen snow, and she excitedly pressed her face against the window. Carefully opening the window, she reached out and caught the snowflakes, watching them slowly melt in her hand.

Ye Ziyi followed the sound and looked over. He happened to see Jiang Yanmu catching the snow and smiling. Perhaps at that moment, Ye Ziyi was moved, or perhaps he wasn't, and it was just a coincidence that he saw her.

Jiang Yanmu turned her head and saw Ye Ziyi. She nodded and smiled at him, and he responded in kind.

With the exam approaching, Jiang Yanmu didn't feel as nervous as usual, perhaps because Ye Ziyi was there, which made her feel at ease.

After finishing her last class, Jiang Yanmu put down her pen, stretched, and stole a glance at him. Unfortunately, the proctor noticed and reminded her, "Don't whisper!" Instantly, Jiang Yanmu's face turned bright red, and she buried her face in the desk, muttering to herself, "Oh my god! How embarrassing!"

The blunder caused Jiang Yanmu to try her best to cover her face and slip away, even running off before Fu Yanjin could finish speaking after school. "I... what's going on? The house burned down, why the rush?" Fu Yanjin shook her head and continued tidying up, just about to leave, when she was stopped by the brat.

Who is this?

Fu Yanjin rolled her eyes at the other person without any politeness. "Excuse me," she said, seeing no reaction, and decided to ignore her. She simply walked past. Shen Kuo was surprised that Fu Yanjin hadn't bumped into him. "You... what's wrong?" The other person was already far away and hadn't heard what Shen Kuo said.

"Alright," Shen Kuo said, shrugging his shoulders and casually slinging his bag over his shoulder before leaving.