Shen Chi was clearly encountering this side of Xia Miao for the first time. The unfamiliar scene left him at a loss, so he simply stared at her in silence, gradually becoming aware of the increasingly loud thumping of his own heartbeat.
When a girl gets jealous over trivial matters, it only means her boyfriend holds an important place in her heart.
Xia Miao was still stubbornly avoiding his gaze, muttering under her breath, "I just can’t help feeling annoyed. I keep thinking—she’s known you longer than I have. She must know so many things about you that I don’t. How nice for her, getting to invite you home for the holidays too. The girl next door, childhood sweethearts, inseparable since childhood… She’s got every trope stacked in her favor!"
The more she spoke, the angrier she grew—until she heard the soft chuckle escaping the boy beside her. She pinched his arm hard. "And you’re laughing!"
Shen Chi didn’t even flinch. "Sorry," he said simply.
Xia Miao huffed. "Is that all you can say? Just those three words?"
Shen Chi leaned down to meet her eyes, his voice gentle as he explained, "We were neighbors, yes. But ‘childhood sweethearts’ or ‘inseparable’? That was never the case."
Xia Miao eyed him skeptically.
Shen Chi continued, "I’ve never been the warmest person. Aside from studying, I didn’t invest much time in anything else. Sure, I’d see her sometimes on the way to or from school, but we were just ordinary neighbors."
"You never got close?"
Shen Chi shook his head. "No."
"Not even when you hit puberty and started noticing girls? You never felt anything for such a cute neighbor?"
Again, he shook his head. "No."
Xia Miao tilted her head. "Then when did you actually start taking an interest in girls?"
A flicker of amusement crossed Shen Chi’s eyes, his lips curving slightly as he gazed at her, like a lucky stargazer who’d just caught sight of a shooting meteor in the night sky.
"It wasn’t until I entered university, sitting in the auditorium during the freshman orientation, that I realized I could care about someone—when I saw the student representative speaking on stage."
Xia Miao thought for a long moment before her eyes lit up. "You’re talking about me!"
Shen Chi chuckled softly and nodded.
Xia Miao had been their year’s freshman representative. Before she took the stage, many had speculated about who the top-scoring student might be—perhaps a bespectacled bookworm or a dull, model "three-good" student?
But the moment the radiant girl stepped onto the stage, no one could look away.
Her confidence, her eloquence, even her unapologetic arrogance about her own abilities—it all overshadowed the initial impact of her striking beauty.
Under the spotlight, dressed in a white dress, she shone like a pearl, bright as a star. It was no wonder so many wanted to reach for her.
Xia Miao grabbed his hand excitedly. "So it was love at first sight?"
Shen Chi considered it. "Maybe. Maybe not."
From childhood, his only real skill had been studying. If there was one thing he could claim without hesitation as a strength, it was academics.
Yet from the very first day of university, he’d learned that a girl had outranked him.
That night at the orientation, when he first saw Xia Miao, he couldn’t say whether it was competitiveness or simple, shallow attraction that drew him to her—but he found himself watching her all the same.
At every campus competition, every academic ranking announcement, he’d stand among the crowd, watching Miss Xia make her grand entrance, surrounded by admirers like the moon among stars.
Faced with praise, she’d lift her chin and declare without a hint of modesty, "First place is exactly where I belong."
Shen Chi often wondered—how could someone be so unabashedly brilliant?
As if the world were her stage, and every spotlight that fell on her wasn’t luck, but her due.
He could never be like that.
By the time Shen Chi realized just how much attention he paid to Xia Miao—lingering in places she might pass just to catch a fleeting glimpse of her—he was already in too deep to climb out.
Looking back, he’d harbored this unspoken affection for three years. It wasn’t until the fourth that he finally held her hand.
Xia Miao had initially reveled in the fact that Shen Chi had fallen first. But soon, her heart softened. "Why did you wait so long to tell me?"
In those three years, she hadn’t noticed him at all.
She didn’t remember a boy in the audience chasing her gaze during her speech.
She hadn’t sensed the quiet boy watching her every time she checked the rankings.
And she’d certainly never noticed the boy who’d meticulously planned his routes just for those brief, seemingly accidental encounters between classes.
If they hadn’t ended up together, it wouldn’t matter. But now that they were, the thought of all those missed moments left her feeling a pang of regret.
"That’s on me," Shen Chi said, his dark eyes glimmering, his usually cool voice tinged with restraint. "I was a coward. Too afraid to get close. I didn’t have the courage to say ‘I like you’ to you."
He feared rejection. More than that, he feared her looking at him with disgust.
To Shen Chi, Xia Miao was an untouchable star. Someone like him didn’t even deserve to imagine being near her without feeling guilty for defiling her light.
If he’d never confessed, how had they gotten together?
The question struck Xia Miao suddenly, and she realized her memory of that moment was oddly hazy. She wanted to ask him—how exactly had they started dating? But voicing it might make her seem like a terrible girlfriend, forgetting such a thing.
She decided to probe subtly another time.
Xia Miao grinned. "If you were too scared to say it out loud, you could’ve tried other ways! Like a letter—that’s romantic too!"
Shen Chi tilted his head. "A letter?"
"Never mind! We’re together now. No need for letters anymore!" Cheerful again, Xia Miao tugged his hand and led him forward.
Shen Chi seemed lost in thought for a moment before reaching out to smooth the slightly tousled green ribbon in her hair.
Xia Miao glanced up at him.
"It was crooked," he said.
She touched the butterfly-stitched ribbon, then looked around.
The storefronts and signs lining the street, the towering trees and blooming flowers on the ground, even the streetlamps flickering to life—everything was perfectly symmetrical.
She said, "Shen Chi, do you think the city planners here have OCD or something?"
Shen Chi: "Why do you ask?"
"Because everything on both sides of the street seems perfectly symmetrical." Xia Miao lifted her face, her eyes curving into crescents. "Just like you—you love symmetry, don’t you?"
Shen Chi’s expression faltered, his eyes clouded with confusion. "Do I?"
