Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Memories should be mottled old photographs, yellowed, moldy, incomplete, where the blurred black-and-white silhouettes could not be seen clearly...

On the cement-colored basketball court, lines inlaid with small white porcelain tiles, volleyball nets with iron-blue brackets-schools with limited budgets were accustomed to turning basketball courts into volleyball courts when needed...

One side of the basketball court was a brick wall crawling with moss, a row of evergreen shrubs squatted far away in pots, and the construction site that had not finished leveling was full of puddles, the yellowish muddy water after the rain like a pool of cornmeal waiting to ferment...

Qin An stood on the basketball court, looking up at a girl on the brick wall...

The girl in the memory was Ye Zhulan, thirteen years old, with a pair of nimble eyes...

She looked at Qin An with a smile, her long eyelashes trembling slowly, her blinking eyelids brimming with smiles, the slightly upturned corners of her eyes already possessing the charm of a little beauty, her delicate nose, ruddy lips, and she was radiating a teasing expression...

"Classmate from Class 69, hello..."

Many years later, Qin An still remembered this sentence very clearly; that crisp sound was like a drop of water falling into a lake, the ripples gradually subsiding, but the water had already become a part of the lake...

At this time, Ye Zhulan was still just a little girl. Watching her stand somewhat unruly and brazenly on the brick wall, looking down at him, Qin An found it hard to imagine the sense of breathtaking beauty he felt upon seeing her photograph after graduating from university...

That was already a strong career woman who owned a professional firm in Shenzhen. When she stepped out of a Messerschmitt sports car that was far too aggressive for a woman, wearing a simple, plain white long dress, aggressive three-inch high heels, and black glasses masking most of her face-her expression couldn't be seen, her near-indifferent poise couldn't be seen-he only remembered that this photo became the cover of many professional financial magazines...

"What are you daydreaming about..." Seeing that Qin An had no reaction, Ye Zhulan felt somewhat dejected and sat down on the brick wall, not caring at all that her new pants and the damp brick wall were not very suitable for contact...

The memory stopped abruptly here. He remembered that if this scene continued, it should be Ye Zhulan walking on the brick wall, and him walking on the basketball court, talking as they walked into the teaching building...

These images were too clear, the colors too heavy, too thick, all pulling at Qin An's heart, making it beat unworthily, without much strength to remind him of his current state...

Memories from nearly twenty years ago should not be like this. Qin An felt that now he was more like being in a dome 3D cinema, so natural, so immersive. The heroine in the movie was Ye Zhulan, and he was the male lead, a teenager wearing a plain dark green military uniform...

"I really didn't expect you to change classes. It looks like Liao Yu really couldn't stand you anymore..." Ye Zhulan's eyes condensed a trace of worry. The boy in front of her was her only male friend worthy of the name, and he now seemed to have suffered a heavy blow...

Qin An raised his head, staring fixedly at Ye Zhulan, an irrepressible excitement spilling out of his eye sockets...

How could he possibly remain calm? He simply didn't want to figure out his situation. He only knew that being able to see Ye Zhulan so clearly and speak with her was the yearning he had dreamed of...

He had been secretly in love with Ye Zhulan. Ever since the first year of junior high, the precocious Qin An had been willing to look at her from the seat diagonally behind her, just looking at her like this. When she turned back and their eyes met, Qin An would feel that heart-palpitating tension, an indescribable happiness...

Until many years later, Qin An still could not forget Ye Zhulan. In his life, nothing related to Ye Zhulan would ever appear again. Even when busyness sometimes caused him not to think of the name Ye Zhulan for a long time, inadvertently, he would dream of her. She was still that teenage girl, and he was still that boy; he chatted with her, did homework with her, quarreled, and scuffled with her...

Such dreams struck without any warning. Some people said that what one thought about during the day, one would dream about at night. Qin An had never deliberately recalled things related to Ye Zhulan, yet she was embedded so deeply in the recesses of his memory that a casual wipe, once the dust passed, would reveal fragments of her images...

Such dreams probably started from Qin An's university days until he fell in love with another girl, got married, and had children. Frequently in the intervals of a peaceful and happy life, Ye Zhulan, who had long since disappeared from his life and seemed to belong to another world, would remind him in his dreams that she was still the woman he could not forget...

Liao Yu, whom Ye Zhulan mentioned, was Qin An's former head teacher of Junior Class 68, a young matron who had just given birth to a child. Her evaluation of Qin An was: "This child, even if you feed him thousand-year ginseng every day, I still can't manage him..."

Qin An had changed classes, transferring to Class 69. At this time, Qin An's father, Qin Huai, was precisely the English teacher of Class 69. Qin Huai was a very proud person in his bones; he never believed that his son was irredeemable. If others couldn't teach him well, that meant they didn't know how to teach. Since that was the case, he would teach him himself...

Qin An's so-called naughtiness was actually just racking his brains every day to make Ye Zhulan happy. From this moment on, Qin An's life placed its center of gravity on Ye Zhulan, and almost everything he did was to attract Ye Zhulan's attention, making her produce that laughter that brought Qin An heart-palpitating happiness...

Under such circumstances, Qin An's grades naturally plummeted, dropping from eighth in the class-slightly higher than Ye Zhulan-to the bottom few...

"Are you all right? Although you changed classes... but our classes are next to each other..." Ye Zhulan's cheeks flushed. Qin An's gaze made her think that Qin An was having some emotional out-of-control because they were no longer in the same class, revealing a certain emotion toward her...

At this age, boys and girls tabooed puppy love the most. Although there were some unusual emotions at the bottom of their hearts, no one would say them out loud. He and she were too young; they didn't dare to speak, didn't dare to think...

"Ye Zhulan..." Qin An slowly spat out this name that had been buried at the bottom of his heart for many years and never spoken of...

"What's wrong?" Ye Zhulan uncomfortably wriggled her body and simply jumped down from the red brick wall...

"I like you..."

Ye Zhulan stood there in a daze, as if struck by a bolt from the blue. She couldn't believe what she had just heard; she knew, she knew these things...

Although she liked playing wildly like a boy, she was after all a girl. She was very clear about what kind of unusual emotion existed between Qin An and her, but she didn't want to expose it. Making academics the priority was the supreme dogma urged by parents and every teacher...

"Bang!"

A earthy-yellow basketball was thrown into the basket, smashed onto the court, and bounced high again...

Qin An smiled, ran over, picked up the basketball, and with that familiar feel, casually tossed it out...

A three-pointer, right through the basket...

"I really like you..." Qin An turned his head back, looking at Ye Zhulan and smiling...