Chapter 7 is as distant as a movie from a past life.

Walking beside Chen Jizhou, even the evening breeze seemed much gentler.

The station is a bustling and lively university town night market, where stalls emit tempting aromas of food.

The students, who have just become adults, live here leisurely. The boys and girls in school uniforms are like two innocent and clear water droplets, blending into the vast and free sea of ​​people.

Jiang Meng, holding her backpack strap, looked around and asked, "Which restaurant do you want to eat at? I heard there's a good Yunnan restaurant here."

He didn't really have any particular idea, so he said, "Anything is fine."

Chen Jizhou was walking ahead when he suddenly heard a voice beside him: "Hey, wait a minute."

As Jiang Meng spoke, she turned around and saw a small shop by the roadside, so she pulled him back.

"ice cream."

As she spoke, her loose grip slipped, and she accidentally grabbed the other person's hand.

Chen Jizhou hadn't realized what she was trying to do yet, but for a split second as they held hands, both of them paused.

Shocked, Jiang Meng turned around abruptly, her palms burning as if scalded by steam, and she immediately tried to let go.

Jiang Meng tried to let go, but he instead tightened his grip on her knuckles.

Without thinking, Chen Jizhou made a reverse grip gesture, as if to continue this contact inexplicably.

Jiang Meng was even more eager, almost flinging her hand away from his.

The subconscious reaction to intimate behavior.

One that I want to hold tight.

One wanted to escape.

Jiang Meng finally withdrew her hand, jogged a few steps to the store entrance, stepped onto the small steps at the entrance, and casually repeated, "I want to eat the ice cream from this store."

Chen Jizhou looked at her reddened ears.

Blushing isn't always due to shyness; it could also be due to panic.

"……Um."

He turned his back at the bottom of the steps and waited in silence.

Chen Jizhou put his hand back into his pocket.

The evening breeze dissipated the lingering warmth in my palm, and also blew away an unspoken secret.

Holding hands is not allowed.

After a while, Jiang Meng leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Oh no, I didn't bring much money. I think their place is a bit expensive."

He was looking at the ground, seemingly lost in thought, and didn't respond.

Jiang Meng thought he hadn't heard her clearly and was about to repeat herself when Chen Jizhou turned his head to look at her, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You came out with me worried about money? You'll have to give back your nickname, Boss Chen."

She looked into his eyes, which held no smile.

At the end of the long street, an orange sun set.

-

A few days later, class monitor Song Zixuan passed a message to Jiang Meng during break: "Li Shuheng said he'll wait for you after school. They have PE class, so look for him when you pass by the playground."

Jiang Meng looked up at him and asked, "Did you say something?"

"It seems like I have something for you."

"Okay." She nodded.

Li Shuheng is in the art class, and their studio is not in this teaching building, so Jiang Meng rarely runs into him.

She went to the playground as Song Zixuan had instructed.

When Jiang Meng arrived, the students had just finished doing sit-ups and were tidying up the area.

She saw Li Shuheng carrying a mat into the gymnasium's equipment room from afar.

Jiang Meng and Li Shuheng weren't very close. They were just classmates before they were divided into different majors and sat at desks in front of and behind each other for a while. They chatted quite a bit. The two things that impressed her most about him were: his father was a teacher at a private junior high school, and he was a photographer.

He frequently posts photos on social media, and his skill level is quite remarkable.

So before she started the book model selection, she remembered that she had a talented person she could borrow. She wanted Li Shuheng to take some photos for her to test the effect. If they looked good, they would be good as her model cards—she had heard that professional models all had these.

As Li Shuheng turned around, Jiang Meng was standing at the door of the equipment room, smiling at him: "Hi!"

Seeing her approach, he took off his backpack, opened it, and took out a photo bag: "My aunt went on a long trip, and the photo studios haven't opened for a month. I found a place to develop your photos this weekend. I thought that even if you don't need them, I'd still give you your photos."

Jiang Meng said before even looking at the photo, "Thank you so much. I'll pay you how much it costs."

"No need, it's just a little money." He paused for a moment, then said, "You can treat me to a meal instead."

That might be a joke.

But Li Shuheng had the face of a traditional scholar, and his thin glasses made him appear refined and serious. Even when he smiled, it was only a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth.

The boy possessed a cool and delicate artistic temperament. It wasn't that he was physically weak, but rather that she often felt there were piles of clouds flowing through his eyes, and the underlying color of the sky wasn't a clear blue, but a melancholy gray before the rain.

He studied fine arts, but deep down he had no artistic talent whatsoever.

Even if the words were meant to be joking, they couldn't create a relaxed and joyful atmosphere.

Jiang Meng: "I'll give you the money instead."

Li Shuheng smiled. His voice was gentle and soft: "Did I put you in a difficult position?"

He said, "Just kidding, it's really worthless. If you insist on giving me money, you might as well give it back to me, it's too hurtful."

Jiang Meng nodded and said, "Okay, thank you."

"polite."

No sooner had he finished speaking than the old door to the equipment room, which had just been blown shut by the wind, was suddenly pushed open with a "bang".

Chen Jizhou plays ball on the playground every day after school. Today, someone had taken an extra ball, and he came to return it.

The sudden burst of sunlight bathed the two people inside.

They looked up at the same time.

Chen Jizhou was also taken aback.

He had been chatting with his companions who had come with him outside, a slight smile on his face, but now he stopped at the door.

Immediately afterwards, in an almost escapist manner, he subconsciously closed the door again.

Jiang Meng's body darkened.

A few seconds later, the door was pushed open again.

The two looked up in confusion again.

Someone finally remembered that he had come to return the ball.

The boy outside realized something: "What's wrong? Who's in there?"

Chen Jizhou didn't enter the goal; he tossed the ball into the hoop from a distance, just barely grazing Li Shuheng's back at shoulder height, but without touching him.

As he closed the door again, he replied, "Nobody's here."

From Jiang Meng's perspective, the angle at which the ball flew was quite thrilling: "...It scared me to death."

Li Shuheng stood frozen in place.

He lowered his head and thought to himself, "Actually, it's not dangerous."

For a skilled player, the only path the ball can take is firmly in their grasp. Whether it's a near miss or a narrow escape, it's all within their prediction.

Are you alright?

Jiang Meng breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Li Shuheng gently shake his head. Then she glanced out the window and said, "You're so rude. I'll scold him for you in a bit."

The moment Chen Jizhou closed the door, Li Shuheng's gaze shifted to the side, only to see the soccer net on the back of the door panel swaying.

Jiang Meng was flipping through the photos with great interest.

He knew she wouldn't scold him; her words were exclusive, a kind of protective attitude.

In the now-dark equipment room, Li Shuheng slung his backpack over his shoulder. Jiang Meng was still admiring the photos. He quietly looked at Jiang Meng's face for about half a minute before speaking, "Let's talk outside."

Jiang Meng and Li Shuheng chatted for a while.

Jiang Meng has a versatile personality; whether she's active or quiet depends on the people she's with. When she's with a gentle and refined guy like Li Shuheng, she'll be very polite and socially friendly, without any ulterior motives, protecting the unspoken boundaries that such people naturally have.

Jiang Meng felt that she and Li Shuheng had similarities.

As children of teachers, we carry some expectations.

Parents constantly guide and correct their children, strictly controlling boundaries and measuring their lives with a ruler. To ensure their children's paths are on the right track, they must not make the slightest mistake in order to achieve the respectable career and brilliant future expected of a scholarly family.

Ultimately, regardless of one's true personality, one must at least possess a presentable appearance and articulate speech.

A shared feeling began when Li Shuheng mentioned his parents.

He was trained at home to be docile; if he crossed his chopsticks, he would be immediately kicked off the table and made to stand with his nose against the wall—if he couldn't learn the rules, he shouldn't eat.

Jiang Meng felt that she was a little bad at following the rules, even though she acted obediently.

If she is an undercurrent, then Li Shuheng is a freshwater lake that has already been smoothed out.

He was as excellent as a machine.

"Chen Jizhou seems to be very popular with girls?"

Someone was playing ball, attracting a lot of attention. A group of female students, reluctant to leave even after school, surrounded the playground. When Li Shuheng spoke, he turned his head in that direction, his gaze falling on the boy's flamboyant aura along with that of many others.

Jiang Meng was used to it and didn't bother to look in that direction: "Yeah, it's probably a matter of constitution."

"constitution?"

Jiang Meng thought for a moment and said, "Let's take celebrities as an example. Some celebrities are very handsome, have excellent professional skills, and great stage presence, but they just can't become popular. But some celebrities look like weirdos, with round faces that look like they've been slapped on a washboard. They just go through the motions on stage all day, but their popularity is still at the top. Isn't that infuriating?"

Jiang Meng grew increasingly angry as she spoke, her arms crossed and her furrowed brows suggesting she was thinking of her own tragic and powerful self-image and the rival of the strange race.

Li Shuheng summarized: "It's just fate."

He then steered the conversation back to Chen Jizhou: "He's destined to be entangled in romantic affairs."

Jiang Meng thought his word summed it up perfectly, and smiled: "Cultivated."

The sky was ablaze with fiery clouds, bathed in warm orange light. Jiang Meng smiled radiantly, meeting Li Shuheng's calmer eyes, her expression slowly softening. In the gentle evening light, after a few seconds of eye contact, they both felt they should say something, and so they spoke almost simultaneously—

"Why did you become friends with him?" he asked.

"Do you have some kind of conflict with him?" she asked.

The conversation unexpectedly turned to a third person.

Before anyone could answer, someone they knew came up behind Jiang Meng and patted her on the shoulder: "Jiang Meng, your dad is getting more and more handsome."

She looked up.

Jiang Su stood on one side of the green belt outside the gate, amidst the slanting bamboo shadows.

Jiang Meng said goodbye to Li Shuheng and ran quickly over to him under her father's watchful eye: "Why are you picking me up today?"

"Is it surprising that I'm here to pick you up?" Jiang Su said with a faint smile. "Looks like it's been a long time since you've been here."

He took the schoolbag from Jiang Meng and held it in his hand, saying, "Why is it so heavy again?"

Jiang Meng smiled and said, "We've already entered the preparation period for our senior year of high school."

Jiang Su always arrives right on time. There are no parking spaces at the entrance, so he has to park his car far away. But most of the time, he just waits in his car.

Rarely did Jiang Meng have such an opportunity to walk behind her father, in his shadow, as if she were being protected.

"Is that male classmate from our class?" Jiang Su asked her.

“No, I didn’t date anyone. He’s a photographer,” Jiang Meng quickly shook her head to clarify. “He took a lot of photos of us and even developed a few for me.”

Jiang Su slowed his pace, waiting for Jiang Meng to walk to his side: "Let me see."

Jiang Meng handed over the photo.

He looked at one of the photos for a while, a natural smile appearing in his eyes: "This one is beautiful. The smile is exactly the same as when you were a child."

Jiang Meng glanced at the photo, then stared intently at her father's face. She smiled quickly, but soon a mix of emotions welled up within her smile: joy, sorrow, and nostalgia.

She said, "You still remember me when I was little?"

“There’s a photo that looks a lot like it,” he recalled. “Go back and see if it’s still there.”

In the quiet car, Jiang Meng noticed that her father seemed to be in a good mood today, as he didn't press her about Li Shuheng anymore, and it seemed he didn't intend to suspect anything further.

She recalled the question Li Shuheng had just overlooked:

Why did you become friends with him?

If he hadn't asked, and she hadn't recalled, she would have almost forgotten that her experience of being friends with Chen Jizhou was also related to her father.

Jiang Meng's best friends were selected by her parents.

From a young age, she was strictly forbidden from playing with dirty children outside. They were of unknown origin and ran around and made noise all day long, which her parents disliked.

As for her friends who stayed by her side, Xie Zhuo goes without saying; he comes from a wealthy family and is the son of a leading entrepreneur in the industry.

Jiang Meng wasn't quite able to see through Chen Jizhou's advantages.

Teacher Wang's two-story detached house at the school is great in every way, except that it's a bit old, built in the 80s or 90s. During the rainy season, it's prone to water seepage and other problems. Sometimes, when there's too much water, it overflows from the drain in the yard, where a thin layer of moss often forms. Jiang Meng went over to play a few times and saw Teacher Wang squatting there, painstakingly scrubbing the floor, while telling her to find some snacks to eat herself.

His old-fashioned villa was simple and patched up over the past three years.

She didn't know what was so special about Chen Jizhou's maternal grandfather that made her father so respectful of this elder.

That day, Jiang Meng followed her father into the house. As she waited for the door to open, she reached into her pocket and a bead rolled to the ground and slid far away.

Before she could pick up the beads, she picked up a small snack that had fallen at her feet.

Jiang Su's gaze swept to the corner of the wall, then turned to Jiang Meng: "Who did you go out with?"

What good things can marbles be?

They were playing on the ground.

Before she could answer, her father said, "Don't bring all sorts of dirty things into the house."

Jiang Meng was about to go and pick up the marbles when he said something that made her freeze in place, unsure whether she should still take them.

"Zhouzhou gave it to me."

They said his maternal grandfather was the Party Secretary.

Even before she knew how to write this complicated title, young Jiang Meng understood that it was a remarkable person who would make her usually righteous father bend down and pick up a child's marble.

Jiang Su: "It's hard to clean up if you leave it by the door. Find a space to tidy it up yourself and don't leave it lying around."

The marble slowly slid from the man's dry palm into the storage basket in the entryway.

He offered a plausible reason, then readily accepted the unpleasant "dirty stuff."

He was handsome, aloof, and profound, the dream lover of many young girls.

But he is selfish, hypocritical, and cold-hearted.

Everyone says that the father is the pillar of the family, but Jiang Meng felt that her father was more like a net.

It allowed her to breathe, but she couldn't escape.

Little Jiang Meng vaguely realized that her friendship with Chen Jizhou could continue.

Half an hour ago.

The little boy ran to her classroom and found her, pressing his nose and palms against the window. A vivid face appeared between the pretty window decorations of the kindergarten classroom: "Jiang Meng, Jiang Meng, Jiang Meng, come out, come out, come out, Jiang Meng, Jiang Meng, Jiang Meng, come out, come out, come out..."

He chanted scriptures at the door for quite a while.

Jiang Meng had no choice but to go and meet her.

Chen Jizhou had run all the way under the blazing sun, his forehead still dripping with sweat, and he was still out of breath when he stretched out his hand and said, "Here, have a special marble."

Transparent beads, adorned with fiery red accents.

She asked, "What's so special about it?"

He held it up in the sunlight, and Jiang Meng followed his movement to look at it. She then heard him say, "Can you see that when these red parts are connected, they form a shape?"

Jiang Meng couldn't understand, so she just stared at his face, at his bright eyes, and at the halo on his face.

As a child, he was pretty with delicate features, fair skin, and beautiful, well-defined features. His small face made him look like a refined little girl. But once he opened his mouth, he was no longer a little girl; he became a mischievous and irresponsible brat.

As she grew older, the resolution of her childhood decreased, and those images became as distant as a movie from a past life for her now.

But she clearly remembered asking him, "What is this?"

He solemnly told her, "This is the heart."

She learned for the first time what a heart looks like, and accepted it being passed into her hands in a spotless state.

The most transparent state of mind and the most flawless offering should not be tainted by utilitarian motives.

It is Chen Jizhou's heart.