68 Chapter 68
◎Treat me as your suitor◎
The basketball game that Xu Shen had mentioned to her several times finally arrived. Today was the first game, and according to the draw, Class 1 was playing against Class 6.
As soon as the afternoon activity class started, most of the students left the classroom and went downstairs to join in the fun.
Before the game even started, the commotion downstairs was already getting louder and louder. Someone from one of the classes shouted, and suddenly the cheers from the entire playground resounded through the sky.
Shi Ziqian was unusually not doing his homework today. He was looking down at an unknown magazine, but he was obviously distracted. He had been twirling his pen since earlier, with the back of his hand resting on the table. The pen cap would occasionally slide across the table, making a soft "click" sound.
"Aren't you going?" He glanced at Zhan Xinyue, who was slumped over the table, lost in thought, and asked casually.
Zhan Xinyue looked at him suspiciously: "Should I go?"
"Ask me?" Shi Ziqian seemed stumped by the question, and after thinking for a while, he said, "Don't go."
Zhan Xinyue said "Oh," twirled her pen twice, and remained silent. She hadn't planned to go in the first place, but with all the noise outside, she couldn't seem to concentrate on her studies.
“If you’re not planning to go…” Shi Ziqian said, “would you like to see Panpan?”
Zhan Xinyue had been trying to talk to him for the past few days, but Shi Ziqian always seemed resistant, so she hadn't found an opportunity. Now that he had taken the initiative to invite her, she nodded, "Okay."
Shi Ziqian lived in a single apartment in the same building as Wang Zhiyi. When they arrived at the apartment building, there weren't many students; most of the residents were teachers. Shi Ziqian said, "Wait here for a moment, I'll go get Panpan."
The crescent moon nodded.
Shi Ziqian quickly brought Panpan downstairs. It seemed to have been extremely energetic ever since it was discharged from the hospital. It excitedly dragged its wheelchair ahead of Shi Ziqian, and the leash was stretched into a straight line.
Upon seeing Zhan Xinyue from afar, Panpan became even more excited. In just a few steps, she pounced at Zhan's feet, stood up, and licked Zhan's hand.
Zhan Xinyue was delighted to see it and squatted down to pet it. Panpan kept nuzzling into her arms, wagging its tail incessantly. Zhan Xinyue was so nuzzled that she couldn't keep her balance, so Shi Ziqian reached out and grabbed it, pulling it aside. But as soon as he loosened his grip a little, Panpan came back to her.
"There's nothing I can do, it likes you too much," Shi Ziqian said helplessly.
"It's alright." Zhan Xinyue stood up and took the dog leash from his hand. "It seems to be in good spirits. Let's walk it for a while."
Soon, Zhan Xinyue regretted her suggestion.
The single apartment wasn't far from the back playground, so the two naturally headed towards it. But it was during activity period, and there were already quite a few people strolling around the campus, so the back playground was even busier.
As she walked around campus with a dog, a particularly conspicuous one with a wheelchair, accompanied by Shi Ziqian, the number of people turning their heads to look at her was ridiculously high.
At first, she managed to pretend she didn't see him, but after hearing whispers like, "Wow, is that Shi Ziqian? Who's that girl next to him? I've never seen her before. They're raising a dog together at school, are they dating?" for the third time, she gave up and suggested again, "I'm a little tired, how about we sit in the pavilion for a while?"
There's a small pavilion in the garden outside the playground, with layers of artificial hills behind it. Sunlight streams obliquely into the pavilion, casting bright beams. Inside, there's a square stone table surrounded by several low stone chairs, but it's empty now.
Upon arriving at this secluded and quiet place, Zhan Xinyue finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Looking back, there were several steps outside the pavilion, and Panpan was struggling to climb them. It had managed to climb up its upper body, but its lower body, still in its wheelchair, couldn't be pulled up, and it kept scratching with its paws. Shi Ziqian, who had been standing behind it watching, reached out and helped it up, and it finally managed to climb up.
As soon as she arrived, Panpan became happy again, running around the pavilion with great energy.
It was so adorable that Zhan Xinyue couldn't help but squat down, open her arms to welcome it, and then hug it to her chest, stroking its little head. "You're so good."
Shi Ziqian didn't say anything, just stood quietly to the side watching their interaction.
Zhan Xinyue put it back on the ground and rubbed its belly playfully: "You took good care of it. I really didn't expect it to survive."
“Animals always have a survival instinct. I didn’t do anything; it was just that it was very brave.” Shi Ziqian also reached out to touch its head, but Panpan was very resilient and turned its head away, instead gently nibbling at his fingers with its teeth.
"You can't bite it." Shi Ziqian withdrew his hand and gently said, holding up a finger in front of it.
The two were very close, and his voice was low, like a feather gently brushing against one's heart.
Zhan Xinyue silently stood up and sat down on the stone bench.
Unlike the bustling area around the playground, this place was quiet. The small pavilion created a secluded world, where only the two of them were.
She had never seen Shi Ziqian like this before. He knelt before her, his eyes lowered as he teased Panpan. The light from the pavilion fell on him, as if melting away his coldness and gilding his eyelashes with a warm gold.
Perhaps because the scene was so heartwarming and pleasing to the eye, she relaxed a bit, leaned back on the stone table, and quietly watched them play.
Time seemed to suddenly overlap with the past. The first time they met, he was sitting alone in the guardhouse, and she had looked at him in the same way. However, at that time, she didn't dare to look at him so openly. She only remembered the coldness he exuded and that unforgettable eye contact.
It seems she never knew why he was there that day.
So the question naturally came out.
"Shi Ziqian, do you remember that time in our first year of high school when you were sitting alone in the guardhouse? What were you doing there?"
Shi Ziqian pondered for a long time: "Is that so? I don't remember."
"Okay." She sighed regretfully. Time had passed, and the mystery remained unsolved.
Two girls walked by outside the pavilion, glanced over casually, and then exclaimed, "Wow, there's a dog!"
"What kind of dog is that?" One of the girls saw Zhan Xinyue first, and asked excitedly, grabbing another's hand to walk into the pavilion. After taking only two steps, she suddenly saw Shi Ziqian, paused, and immediately became a little more reserved.
Her companion, unaware of what was going on, looked at her in confusion, then followed her gaze into the pavilion and stopped as well.
The two stopped outside the pavilion, their eyes shining as they looked this way. They wanted to get closer but didn't dare, and after a long while, they finally walked away, pulling and tugging at each other.
Zhan Xinyue laughed at their reactions. She guessed that everyone at school was just like she was at first when they met Shi Ziqian—nervous yet unable to contain their curiosity.
Over at the basketball court, one of the teams had scored, and the cheers could be heard intermittently from this side. Listening to the distant commotion, Zhan Xinyue unconsciously blurted out the question that had been nagging at her lately.
"Shi Ziqian, do you believe in love at first sight?"
Shi Ziqian looked up at her.
She sat on a high place, and he knelt halfway in front of her, raising his face slightly to look at her. The clear sunlight reflected in his pupils, making his gaze gentle and seemingly carrying a hint of piety.
Zhan Xinyue paused, quickly looked away, and after a long while, she heard Shi Ziqian's voice: "I don't believe it."
She pursed her lips: "Why?"
"Does 'love at first sight' mean liking someone the first time you meet them, without knowing their personality, temperament, strengths, or weaknesses?" Shi Ziqian frowned slightly. "That sounds hard to understand."
“It is a bit hard to understand,” Zhan Xinyue said. “But perhaps the emergence of emotions is always difficult to deduce rationally.”
“Maybe so,” Shi Ziqian said. “But personally, I think that if you feel like someone the moment you see them, then the object of that liking is their appearance. In this case, the term ‘lust at first sight’ might be more appropriate than ‘love at first sight’.”
Zhan Xinyue's gaze fell again on his overly handsome face, and she smiled with relief: "Yes, I don't believe it either." She lowered her head and thought for a moment, then asked: "Then why would you fall in love with someone?"
"I can't really explain it either." Shi Ziqian stood up and sat down opposite her. "I only know that when I realized it, it seemed like I had liked him for a long time."
Zhan Xinyue thought for a moment and said slowly, "We have indeed been sitting at the same desk for a long time, spending every day together. It's inevitable that we will have some different feelings for each other, but this does not necessarily mean that we like each other. Maybe it's just a habit."
Shi Ziqian stared at her for a long time before speaking, "Zhan Xinyue, I really don't have much experience, but I'm very clear-headed. I don't know how to tell you that I really like you, but that Saturday morning, you were sitting in front of me, head down, eating tofu pudding. Guess what I was thinking at that moment? I was thinking, 'If only I could always have breakfast with you.'"
He quickly continued, "Actually, I don't think I've ever really looked forward to anything growing up, but I don't know when I started to look forward to things. I started looking forward to going to class, to coming to the classroom, because I could see you, and because of that, every weekend was always particularly hard to get through."
“I’ve always felt that being able to sit with you and see you every day is already a great happiness. But now, it suddenly feels like that’s not enough.”
Being classmates with you isn't enough, and seeing you only during the week isn't enough. Zhan Xinyue, I want to see you every day, and I want to be close to you.
"Is this feeling a sign of liking someone?"
Panpan had already run off to the side to smell the duckweed in the pond by the pavilion, leaving only the two of them sitting facing each other.
Zhan Xinyue remained silent for a long time before finally saying, "But Shi Ziqian, the little crush we had when we were young is completely unimportant. There's no way it's possible for us to be together."
Seeing Shi Ziqian lower his eyes, Zhan Xinyue continued, "You will soon realize that this little crush is just a trivial thing in our lives. Once you leave this campus, you will find that there is a wider world outside, you will have more things to pursue, and you will have a wonderful future. This budding crush on campus is not worth mentioning at all. You will soon forget about it, and forget about me completely as well."
"That's not it, I won't forget you." Shi Ziqian looked over again, his voice soft yet remarkably firm. "Liking someone isn't a trivial matter; liking someone is the most important thing."
Zhan Xinyue slowly turned her head, looking into his stubborn eyes, and felt a stab in her heart. She composed herself and softly said, "But Shi Ziqian..."
Shi Ziqian gently interrupted her, saying, "I know what you want to say, there's no need to say it."
"Don't try to persuade me anymore. I've said it before, liking you is my own business." Shi Ziqian continued, "You don't need to worry about me. Just treat me like Xu Shen, one of your suitors."
Suddenly, there was a loud "plop". Panpan may have mistaken the water surface covered by duckweed for grass and stepped into it, falling completely into the water.
The two stopped talking and frantically tried to retrieve Panpan.
Later, Shi Ziqian took Panpan back to scold her, and Zhan Xinyue went to the cafeteria alone to eat before returning to the classroom. Her mood was very complicated. She looked down at the physics problem for a long time but still couldn't understand the long question.
Whether in her past life or this one, she and Shi Ziqian had never truly been together; at most, they had only had a flirtatious relationship. Such feelings were too shallow and couldn't withstand any setbacks. She believed that as long as her attitude was firm enough, Shi Ziqian would give up quickly, especially since she was certain that Shi Ziqian was a very proud person at heart, and how many times could such a person withstand such a blunt rejection?
However, despite saying that, Zhan Xinyue still saw Shi Ziqian's stubborn and persistent gaze several times before her eyes, and a strange bitterness welled up in her heart, which she couldn't quite put her finger on whether it was guilt or something else.
Zhan Xinyue sighed softly. The next monthly exam was just around the corner. Reason told her that she should pull herself together and focus on the worksheet in front of her, but she just couldn't concentrate. Her mind was a jumble of thoughts.
Her pen unconsciously drew a few horizontal lines on the worksheet. Suddenly, she remembered something about Shi Ziqian from her past life. A very, very small, insignificant little thing.
After graduating from high school, Shi Ziqian didn't continue his studies in China. It's said he settled in the United States, and she never saw him again. Only once, at a class reunion, someone saw someone who looked very much like Shi Ziqian outside a private room. Later, when paying the bill, they were told that someone had already paid for them, leading everyone to conclude that it must have been Shi Ziqian himself. However, this remained just speculation, and whether the person was actually him was never confirmed.
Originally, she remembered that this was the only time the two of them could be considered to have crossed paths after graduation, but for some reason, she suddenly remembered something else.
She and Shi Ziqian may have had a brief interaction.
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