Only when that utterly unexpected sentence shattered her out of her own world did she see the boy's true demeanor for the first time.
It was as though a basin of ice-cold water had been poured over her heart, sending it plummeting straight down.
She suddenly realized this was not the first time she had seen him like this.
She was already familiar with the feeling of having all her tenderness and enthusiasm suddenly evaded and rejected.
On that rainy Bright Moon Street, their shadows had pressed together. She had abruptly blushed and lowered her head, but had still clung to the subject, teasing him with girlish insistence. Yet all she had faced was his back and a hurried, "Come on, let's go."
On that stretch of road after they left the Arena, they had laughed and joked and tussled, but after she suddenly felt inexplicably wronged and asked sulkily, "Can't you go easy on me?" the boy had abruptly stiffened from a lively bird into a block of wood, leaving her almost as though fleeing.
And after they saw off the party from Fenghuai, and when they met at noon, and... on that stretch of road just now.
This was not the first time he had... avoided her.
Before she realized she liked him, he had already been rejecting her.
The discovery left her cold and stiff for a moment, her mind sinking once more into a bewildered, helpless blank.
Now the boy's clumsy excuse lay before her, but she lacked the courage to expose the lie.
"I-it can't be that urgent, can it?" she murmured, somewhat incoherently. "We... could just row for a little while... Half an hour goes by very quickly."
Pei Ye's lifelessly hanging head trembled. "It's pretty urgent."
Silence.
"...Oh." A soft, hoarse sound escaped