Chapter 30

"I even got two big red flowers in kindergarten!"

The class burst out laughing in unison. Meng Ou pulled him down into his seat. "Stop making a fool of yourself. Sit down."

Gu Wang hadn't expected to get nearly thirty votes. He hadn't done anything particularly attention-grabbing in class lately, apart from his performance at the National Day gala. His grades hadn't improved much, either, and he didn't usually interact much with the rest of the class.

It was pretty strange.

With the nominations over, they had to put on their uniforms and take an oath in the auditorium. The photographs would go on the school's wall of honors.

Shen Zhao darted out of his classroom and leaned on the windowsill beside Song Zhiyan, his face flushed with excitement. "Song Zhiyan, I got the outstanding progress award! Oh my god, my homeroom teacher even patted my head!"

Song Zhiyan gave him a fake smile. "Me too."

Shen Zhao asked, "Did Li Shuya pat your head?"

Song Zhiyan said, "..."

They were walking toward the auditorium under their umbrellas when Wen Ting ran over. "Wangwang, let me share yours! Yang Yu took my umbrella!"

Gu Wang shared his umbrella with Wen Ting.

When they reached the sports field, Wen Ting suddenly laughed. "Wangwang, you must be pretty curious about why you got so many votes."

In the past, Gu Wang usually got only two votes. One was undoubtedly from Song Zhiyan; who knew which blind fool had cast the other.

Gu Wang nodded honestly and smiled. "I am pretty curious."

"You might not have noticed," Wen Ting said. "I spend a lot of time with our classmates, so I occasionally hear what they think of people in class. Like that day when the academic representative went to hand in the homework, someone from the next class knocked them over and the exercise books scattered everywhere. You helped pick them up. When you go through a door, you hold it for the person behind you. After getting water, you turn on the heater. There are lots of things. You just haven't noticed."

There was something wrong with their classroom's water dispenser. It wouldn't heat automatically; someone had to switch it on manually. Plenty of people in class ran off as soon as they got their water, leaving anyone who wanted hot water waiting beside it for ten minutes while it heated up.

The things Wen Ting had mentioned seemed very small to Gu Wang. They were simply habits of his.

"Keep it up! Try to get more votes than He Qinghuan someday!" She raised a hand, looking very excited.

"You hate him?" Gu Wang asked.

"No," Wen Ting said. "I'm just bored. He's always first. I'm tired of seeing it. I want to see the people behind him fight him. Fight!"

Gu Wang said, "..."

Only the stage lights were on in the auditorium. Gone were the dazzling, colorful lights of National Day night, leaving only a few glaring white lamps. Dark red curtains hung to the floor on either side, and Jinyang High School's school song played through the speakers, creating an inexplicable sense of solemnity.

He Qinghuan was leading the oath. He had only just received the text and was sitting in the middle of the front row below the stage, memorizing it.

They had all read the oath and could still remember a couple of lines, but He Qinghuan had to lead them entirely from memory. Merely finding it familiar to the eye and ear wouldn't be enough.

It was exactly four in the afternoon when Gu Wang and the others arrived. The teacher onstage clapped and told everyone to line up.

"Taller students in the back, shorter students in front. Boys and girls together. Find your own places."

"You, that young lady over there, come to the front!"

Shen Zhao pointed at himself. "Me?"

"Yes, you!" the teacher said.

Shen Zhao exploded. "I'm not a girl! My hair's just grown out and I haven't cut it!"

Song Zhiyan was taller than both Gu Wang and Shen Zhao. He gave Shen Zhao a shove. "Did you hear that, young lady? Get to the front."

Gu Wang should have been in the second row, but the teacher thought he was good-looking and could just about fit in the first. The teacher replaced the entire column behind him with boys slightly taller than Gu Wang, so no faces would be blocked.

Gu Wang looked up and met He Qinghuan's gaze. He Qinghuan stood in the very center to lead the oath.

Noise filled the space around them, but He Qinghuan's eyes were calm, bringing the whole world to stillness with them.

The teacher moved to the side, out of the camera's view, and signaled for silence. The school song started again.

He Qinghuan raised his hand. "I swear..."

Standing before him, Gu Wang wore a calm expression. "I swear..."

"I will always love myself before loving others, become a good person before becoming accomplished. I will always remain free of arrogance and impatience, simple and modest. I will always be faithful to learning, faithful to... Oath taker-He Qinghuan."

"I will always love myself before loving others, become a good person before becoming accomplished. I will always remain free of arrogance and impatience, simple and modest. I will always be faithful to learning, faithful to my original aspirations!"

"Oath taker-Gu Wang."

Gu Wang had repeated the oath automatically. Its last line was "faithful to learning, faithful to my original aspirations." He hadn't said it wrong. None of them had.

But He Qinghuan had.

Gu Wang had heard him.

Gu Wang's face was clearly reflected in He Qinghuan's eyes. Amid the lilting music, He Qinghuan's voice had grown extremely soft at the very end. Gu Wang was the closest person to him. Even if he couldn't hear his voice, he could see the shape of his lips.

Everyone else merely thought the music had drowned out He Qinghuan's voice, or that he had spoken too quietly.

But clearly.

What He Qinghuan had said was,

"I will always be faithful to you."

Chapter 36

"May I ask why?" Li Shuya asked softly, looking at Gu Wang, who stood beside her, quieter and better behaved than before.

This was the second time Gu Wang had told her he no longer wanted to sit with He Qinghuan.

The class's current seating arrangements were based on grades and changed after every monthly exam. If Gu Wang rose in the rankings again next time, he would definitely have a different deskmate.

The next monthly exam was only half a month away. Why was he in such a hurry?

Gu Wang stayed silent. He couldn't exactly say, I suspect He Qinghuan wants to toy with me. Would Li Shuya think his unrequited love for He Qinghuan had driven him out of his mind?

In fact, she wouldn't. Li Shuya had never thought that of even the old Gu Wang. She respected and cared for every one of her students.

"Miss, I want to switch," Gu Wang said again.

Li Shuya considered it for a moment, tapping her fountain pen against the desk a few times. "How about this? You switch with... Yang Yu and sit in the first row with the League Branch Secretary. Would that work?"

As long as it wasn't He Qinghuan, it didn't matter who he sat with. Gu Wang nodded, thanked her, and even closed the office door for her when he left.

Only after Gu Wang had disappeared from view did the colleague beside Li Shuya remark with feeling, "That was Gu Wang? I could hardly recognize him."

Li Shuya was amused. "Why couldn't you recognize him?"

Her colleague turned toward her in surprise. "You're his homeroom teacher. Don't you think so? He's changed so much. I saw people on the forum saying it was because of what happened with He Qinghuan. If that's true, I still hope the boy can study hard and get into university. His family seems pretty well-off. If he can keep this up, he'll have a better life than plenty of people."

On this point, Li Shuya agreed with her colleague.

He Qinghuan stayed in the auditorium for a while. When he returned to the classroom, his classmates kept stealing glances at him, different from before.

His seat was in the last row. As he passed the front-row seats beside the lectern, He Qinghuan stopped. He stood beside a boy's seat and lowered his eyes, confusion in them along with a hostility he could barely suppress.

"You changed seats?" He Qinghuan asked softly, sounding as casual as any ordinary classmate.

Gu Wang murmured in acknowledgment. "I didn't want to sit in the back."

"Gu Wang." He Qinghuan called his name. "I told you to behave." He completely ignored everyone around them, and no one dared openly watch the pair.

But they were about to explode with curiosity! What exactly was going on between Gu Wang and He Qinghuan now?

When Gu Wang had first come back to the classroom and switched seats with Yang Yu, most of them had assumed He Qinghuan had asked for it. But looking at things now, that wasn't right. Their class monitor seemed to have known nothing about it-and he looked completely unwilling to accept it.

Their classmates were all there, and Gu Wang had no intention of confirming their ambiguous relationship in public. He lowered his head and pulled a sheet of scratch paper from his desk, covered in messily written formulas. After a pause, he quickly wrote a few words in a blank space and shoved it into He Qinghuan's hand.

Gu Wang hadn't even slowly imitated the original owner's handwriting as he had before. He had no time to think about it. He was completely dazed, unable to consider so many details in such a short time.

He Qinghuan didn't even have time to catch Gu Wang's hand. He held the scratch paper loosely, and when he tilted his head, he could see only half of Gu Wang's expressionless face.

Wen Ting didn't know what the two of them were doing, but the bell had already rung once. She couldn't help reminding him, "Class monitor, class has started."

He Qinghuan looked up at her, his gaze indifferent, yet he smiled. "All right."

Only when he left Gu Wang's side did Gu Wang breathe a sigh of relief.

He hadn't intended to make his position completely clear and draw a line between himself and He Qinghuan so soon. Precisely because he knew a little about He Qinghuan's personality, taking things gradually had clearly been more appropriate. But today...

Gu Wang had panicked.

He hoped he had seen and heard wrong. But he hadn't. It wasn't as though he had no eyes or brain. He Qinghuan had been acting strangely all this time. Gu Wang had been brainwashing himself. He believed He Qinghuan looked down from on high on the original owner as an ant, as trash, and that this would never change.

Distracted, Gu Wang didn't even know whether he was solving the problems correctly. He hoped He Qinghuan's interest in him was only temporary, the kind where someone who had always looked only at him suddenly changed his mind, leaving him feeling toyed with-not some other reason Gu Wang didn't even dare imagine.

Always be faithful to you.

What the hell?

Seeing Gu Wang spacing out, Wen Ting poked him with her pen. "Wangwang, what happened between you and He Qinghuan?"

Gu Wang came back to his senses, turned his head, and smiled. "I couldn't see the board from the back, so I asked to switch seats."

Wen Ting hesitated. But Gu Wang wasn't nearsighted. At last semester's physical, both his eyes had tested at 5.0.

Still, she didn't press him. She could tell that things between Gu Wang and He Qinghuan weren't as simple as they looked to outsiders.

Meanwhile, Yang Yu was still incredibly excited and proud to be sitting with their class monitor and academic god. He had tidied his desk until it was spotless and arranged his stationery and books neatly. When He Qinghuan returned, he beamed. "Class monitor, you're back?"

He Qinghuan nodded and gave only a faint smile, a little distant and cool, no different from usual.

Gu Wang's handwriting was different from before, too. He had heard their classmates mention that Gu Wang had been practicing.

It was beautiful, even those few words he had hastily scrawled just now.

"Know when to stop."

He Qinghuan smiled, coldness spreading through his eyes.

He knew Gu Wang was clever. Before, He Qinghuan had taken pride in Gu Wang's cleverness the way a parent took pride in a child. Now Gu Wang was turning that cleverness on him.

As long as He Qinghuan didn't say anything outright, Gu Wang had no grounds to reject him. But clearly, Gu Wang had been frightened today, so he had changed seats and slipped him a note.

A few words had stabbed him bloody.

For the first time, the very first time, He Qinghuan was willing to think back on what had happened before, those six months and more when Gu Wang had eyes only for him.

He had first seen Gu Wang at the opening ceremony for the second semester of their first year. He was the outstanding student representative, once again leading the whole school in taking the oath.

Gu Wang had been the only one out of uniform and had been sent to the very back. Still, he strained to lift his face toward the podium. He Qinghuan had merely swept a detached glance over him, reciting the oath without missing or mistaking a single word.

The next day, a note had appeared on his desk, the handwriting so ugly it hurt to look at: I will always be faithful to my original aspirations, faithful to you.

Changing the oath?

He Qinghuan had crumpled the note and tossed it straight into the wastebasket.

Gu Wang had also given He Qinghuan candy in person. He Qinghuan had only glanced at it. His tone was gentle, but his words could crush someone. "Gu Wang, don't give me such cheap things."

The boy had hurriedly explained, flustered, "No, my cousin brought these mints from abroad..."

He Qinghuan hadn't listened to the rest. He didn't care whether the candy was actually cheap. He had been referring to Gu Wang. How could he be so stupid?

The school took ID photos, and that afternoon a post mocking Gu Wang appeared on the forum. It said Gu Wang had pestered the photographer for He Qinghuan's ID photo, tossing him a wad of money in exchange for one.

Class