Lin Yanran suddenly looked up, her eyes flashing with a fierce glint like an unsheathed knife: "Yu Jiuyuan, don't try to intimidate me with your president's airs..."
“I’m following the rules.” She interrupted him, her tone as calm as if she were talking about the temperature today. “Uncle Lin asked you to join the student council so that you would learn how to follow the rules, not so that you would become a walking troublemaker.”
She emphasized the words "Uncle Lin".
Sure enough, Lin Yanran's expression changed, her grip on her shoelaces loosened, and she finally bent down to wipe the mud stains on the floor, her movements so rough that it looked like she was struggling against the floor.
Yu Jiuyuan watched his awkward back and suddenly remembered the tone of his father's exasperated voice when he called from the student council office three days ago: "Jiuyuan, please keep an eye on Yanran. If this brat dares to cause trouble again, I'll send him to the army to be disciplined."
At that time, Lin Yanran had just received a warning for breaking her senior's sword in the fencing club and was sitting on the sofa sulking. Hearing this, she almost crushed the water glass in her hand.
“The starry sky over Changbai Mountain is more beautiful than the fencing hall at Saint Sakura Academy,” Yu Jiuyuan suddenly said.
Lin Yanran paused in her wiping of the floor.
“The astronomy club has prepared a high-powered observation instrument that can see Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.” She walked to the window and pointed to the silver-white equipment that had already been set up in the distance. “It’s much rarer than your limited edition fencing.”
The boy's shoulder twitched almost imperceptibly.
Yu Jiuyuan caught a glimpse of him secretly glancing at the observation instrument out of the corner of her eye, his arrogant brows concealing a hint of barely concealed curiosity.
The numbers on the system panel flashed and stopped at 3.
"Come help me check the star map after you're done wiping." She turned and walked out, hearing even more forceful wiping sounds behind her, like some kind of reluctant response.
The observation point was eventually chosen in an open area halfway up the mountain.
When Yu Jiuyuan arrived with hot cocoa and hand warmers, Xie Zhecheng was kneeling in the snow adjusting the focus.
A thin layer of snow clung to the back of his black windbreaker, but it did nothing to affect the precision of his movements.
The members of the astronomy club stood around, barely daring to breathe. Everyone knew that making a sound while Xie Zhecheng was adjusting the equipment was tantamount to splattering ink on his perfect answer sheet.
“41 degrees north latitude, 128 degrees east longitude, 1920 meters above sea level.” Yu Jiuyuan handed him the hot cocoa, lowering her voice, “The coordinates on your star map are no more than 0.5 meters off.”
Xie Zhecheng took the cup, and paused almost imperceptibly when his fingertips touched the warm cup wall.
He didn't look up, his gaze still fixed on the eyepiece of the observation instrument, his voice as cold as if he had just been pulled out of an ice cellar: "Wind speed will affect the stability of the lens."
“So I asked Rong Shenghan to borrow a windproof cover.” Yu Jiuyuan squatted down beside him, watching the observation lens reflect a cold light in the twilight. “Don’t perfectionists all think that unplanned variables equal failure?”
Xie Zhecheng finally turned his head to the side.
His eyelashes were long, drooping after being wet with snow, obscuring the usual aloofness in his eyes. "Error itself is failure."
He said it, but his tone lacked its usual sharpness; it sounded more like he was stating an objective fact.
Yu Jiuyuan suddenly smiled.
She reached out and brushed the snow off his shoulder, her fingertips intentionally or unintentionally brushing against the side of his neck, where the skin was hot, completely at odds with his cold tone.
"So, President Xie, do you think my role as an 'unplanned variable' counts as a failure?"
On the system panel, Xie Zhecheng's favorability rating rippled outwards like the surface of a lake disturbed by the wind. The number 8 flashed repeatedly before finally settling at 9, while the "positive" value in the emotional fluctuations quietly climbed from 52 to 53.
He turned his face away, the tips of his ears glowing a faint pink in the snowy light. When he looked back at the observation instrument, his focusing was a beat slow. "When will the windproof cover arrive?" he abruptly changed the subject.
"Almost there." Yu Jiuyuan stood up and looked at the distant mountain ridgeline, where the sky was already dark, and a few bright stars looked like needles pinned to dark blue velvet.
She knew what kind of obsession was hidden in Xie Zhecheng's perfectionism, just like his insistence on calibrating the astronomy club's telescope every night, his insistence on planning the schedule with time accurate to the second, and even his insistence on pretending to look at star charts every time she "accidentally" passed by the astronomy club's activity room.
This subtle, deliberate flaw is more interesting than his perfect indifference.
After nightfall, the observatory resembles an isolated island.
As expected, Yuan Xu held his moss sample box and stood guard by the observation instrument, occasionally scribbling in his notebook, and occasionally glancing up at the starry sky, the light in his eyes brighter than Orion overhead.
Rong Shenghan found a deck of cards somewhere and was playing blackjack with several student council members in the activity room. Their laughter drifted out through the window, mingling with the sound of the wind and snow outside.
Lin Yanran was dragged along to make up the numbers. At first, she had an arrogant face, but after losing two rounds, she forgot to put on airs. The way she frowned and stared at the cards showed a bit of youthful vitality.
As Yu Jiuyuan carried the hot milk through the activity room, she saw Rong Shenghan smiling as he handed a red ace of hearts to Lin Yanran.
His fingers were long and slender with distinct knuckles, and his card-playing movements carried a nonchalant elegance.
Yu Jiuyuan noticed that the silver ring on his ring finger always reflected light at a specific angle when he shuffled the cards. It was from an independent designer brand that she had mentioned liking at the student council meeting last week.
He was sitting opposite her at the time, taking notes and looking down at the meeting minutes, as if he hadn't heard anything.
On the system panel, Rong Shenghan's favorability rating remained steadily at 45.
This number, like the person, always maintained a safe yet subtle distance, making it impossible for her to guess how much sincerity was hidden beneath that approachable mask.
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