Pu Yu held the silver player, its casing still cool to the touch. Her heart seemed to skip a beat, then thudded hard against her chest.
If it wasn't Sui Sui, who else could it be?
The answer was practically staring her in the face, yet she hardly dared believe it.
The bell rang again.
The math teacher entered the classroom carrying a stack of test papers.
Pu Yu hurried back to her seat, her gaze instinctively falling on the empty place beside her.
Yuan Su's chair was empty, and his schoolbag was gone. Only a few somewhat haphazardly stacked textbooks remained at the corner of his desk.
He hadn't come to class that day.
Throughout the day's lessons, Pu Yu found it hard to concentrate.
The teacher explained complicated function problems at the blackboard, chalk dust drifting down.
Every time the classroom door opened, she instinctively looked up.
But it was never him.
When classes ended, Xu Suiran pattered over and asked curiously, "Yu, have you figured out who gave you the portable player?"
Pu Yu shook her head, then nodded.
In the end, she only said softly, "I'm not sure."
Xu Suiran's eyes flickered, her gossip radar springing back into action. "I've been thinking about it all day. Could it be your deskmate? He was there when we went to buy one, and he even helped us expose that crooked shopkeeper."
The more Xu Suiran talked, the more plausible it seemed. Her voice brimmed with barely contained excitement. "Could it really be him? Oh my god... a fairy princess doing good deeds in secret-no, a fairy prince?"
"Don't make things up." Pu Yu's lashes fluttered as she instinctively explained, "He might have put it in the wrong place. I'll give it back to him later."
Xu Suiran raised an eyebrow, glanced at Yuan Su's slightly untidy desk, then at Pu Yu's neatly arranged, densely packed one.
"How could he get those mixed up?"
Pu Yu had no answer.
Even when the last evening study session ended, the seat beside her remained empty.
At last, the dismissal bell rang.
Night fell early in late autumn, and thick clouds hid the moon.
After parting with Sui Sui at the grain and cooking oil shop, Pu Yu didn't go straight home. Instead, with her schoolbag on her back, she turned into the old street.
The repair shop's roller shutter was still up, dim yellow light spilling from inside.
As Pu Yu approached, she heard the clear clink of metal coming from within.
She took a deep breath and gently knocked on the doorframe.
Yuan Su sat amid a jumble of parts, the blue sparks from his soldering illuminating the stern line of his jaw.
Hearing the sound at the entrance, he spoke without looking up, his voice cold and distant.
"No more jobs today. Come early tomorrow."
"It's me."
The girl's soft, gentle voice sounded out of place in the air thick with the smell of machine oil.
Yuan Su's hand abruptly stilled around the soldering iron.
In the dim light, Pu Yu stood at the entrance in her clean school uniform, clutching the silver portable player to her chest and gazing steadily at him.
He lowered his head, pretending to keep fiddling with the parts in his hands. His tone carried a trace of impatience. "Not even for you."
"I'm not here to have anything fixed."
Pu Yu took a step forward and gently set the player on the workbench, its surface covered in scratches and scorch marks.
"Is this yours?"
"No." Yuan Su's answer was crisp and immediate.
Pu Yu paused, not expecting such a blunt denial. "But apart from you... I can't think of anyone else."
Yuan Su's Adam's apple bobbed. "No idea what you're talking about," he said casually.
"I went to the audio shop by the school gates and asked the owner. He knows his stuff."
Pu Yu glanced at the player and said earnestly, "He said that although this is an old model from a few years ago, the belts inside the mechanism have all been replaced with the best ones, and someone recalibrated the tape head."
"He also said the workmanship was clearly an expert's. The sound quality is better than plenty of new models on the market now. It definitely wasn't some secondhand player someone bought at random."
She paused there, looking at him with clear eyes.
"And... that day in town, apart from Sui Sui, you were the only person who knew I wanted to buy one. Sui Sui said it wasn't her, so it could only have been you."
Her airtight reasoning left Yuan Su at a loss for words.
He raked a hand through his hair in irritation, his dark eyes fixed on her with a hint of helplessness at being found out. "Couldn't she have lied to you?"
"Sui Sui even swore she'd fail her exams if she was lying." Pu Yu shook her head, a trace of stubbornness in her eyes. "You're the one lying to me."
They stared at each other in the cramped room.
Even the air seemed to grow thick. The only sound was the tick-tock of the clock on the wall.
Yuan Su suddenly regretted not closing up earlier that day.
She had caught him squarely, with nowhere to hide.
He turned away, picked up a screwdriver from the workbench, and said flatly:
"Throw it out if you don't like it."
He said it so casually that Pu Yu froze.
"It's not that I don't like it," she hurried to explain. "I just wanted to know whether you gave it to me. And if you did, why?"
Yuan Su went slightly still before turning back to look at her.
The light shone from behind him, making the boy's sharply defined features look even clearer amid the light and shadow, and even more distant.
"It's mine. So what?"
"It was junk I bought by weight at the scrap yard. Fixed it, tested it, and the sound was awful. Couldn't be bothered to sell it. You happened to want one, so I just tossed it onto your desk."
Junk?
Pu Yu looked at the clean, solidly weighted player.
The audio shop owner had clearly said it took a great deal of work to tune an old machine to this standard.
Pu Yu stopped arguing with his transparent excuses, a bittersweet ache stirring in her heart.
"Thank you, Yuan Su."
Yuan Su turned his face away. "Don't mention it."
Pu Yu picked up the player again and cradled it like a treasure, then added, "But I asked the shop owner. A refurbished player like this, with the labor included, isn't cheap. I can't just take something so valuable from you for nothing."
She bit her lip, her gaze sincere. "How about... I save up and pay you back? Or help you with something? I could clean up or sort the parts."
Yuan Su turned to the earnest girl and asked, "Do you know how much all of this costs?"
Pu Yu considered it, tentatively making an eight with her fingers. Then, thinking that might be too little, she immediately drew her hand back and stammered, "A hundred... a hundred and fifty?"
Back in town, that crooked shopkeeper's opening price had been a hundred and fifty.
So she named the same price.
Yuan Su laughed.
It was the first time Pu Yu had ever seen him laugh like that.
It wasn't mocking or cold, but an open, easy smile full of youthful warmth. His usually tense brow and eyes relaxed, and his hard features suddenly became animated and handsome.
That smile was like a shaft of light sweeping away the gloom that always hung over him.
"A hundred and fifty?"
Then he took a step toward her.
Instinctively, Pu Yu clutched the player and stepped half a pace back.
"If I really charged you..."
Yuan Su drew closer, his tall frame casting a shadow over her. There was a weight to his presence, but it didn't frighten her.
"A hundred and fifty wouldn't cover it. Neither would fifteen hundred."
He stopped one last step away, lowered his head slightly, and said in a low, husky voice:
"Even selling you wouldn't cover my labor."
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