The phone beside her lit up.
Li Wenya blinked at the ceiling for a moment before rolling over to check it. The screen glowed softly in the dark room.
Brother Shenzhen:Don't forget you have tutoring tomorrow morning. Seven sharp.
She stared at the message.
Tutoring. Right. Because apparently the original Wenya had the academic record of someone who studied with her eyes closed. Li Wenya sighed deeply and typed back a simple okay before dropping the phone on her pillow.
She stared back at the ceiling.
Tutoring at seven in the morning. A dangerous male lead is sitting beside her at school. A cold brother who looked at her like she was a puzzle missing half its pieces. And somewhere out there, a story she only half remembered was moving forward without her permission.
Great. Fantastic. Wonderful.
She pulled the blanket over her head and closed her eyes.
I just need to survive. That's all. No hero. No drama. No involvement with the plot whatsoever. Just a quiet, peaceful, luxurious life until I figure out how to change my fate.
She repeated this like a mantra until sleep finally pulled her under.
The next morning arrived with absolutely no mercy.
Li Wenya showed up to the tutoring session with heavy eyes and a brain that was still buffering. The tutor, a thin woman with sharp glasses and a sharper tongue, wasted no time throwing a practice paper in front of her.
Li Wenya looked down at the questions.
Then up at the tutor.
Then back down to the questions.
Okay. This is fine. I was good at this once. I can do this.
Forty minutes later, the tutor was pressing her fingers to her temple with the quiet suffering of someone reconsidering her career choices.
"Li Wenya," she said carefully, "how did you get this answer for question five?"
Li Wenya looked at her paper. "I... calculated?"
"You wrote the word probably in a mathematics problem."
Silence.
"I panicked," Li Wenya said honestly.
The tutor closed her eyes briefly. "We will start from the beginning."
Li Wenya pressed her lips together and nodded with great dignity.
The beginning. Sure. No problem. I only studied this years ago in another life. Starting over is totally fine.
She picked up her pen and reminded herself that millions in the bank account were worth sitting through this humiliation.
At School
By the time Li Wenya arrived at school, the morning tutoring session had successfully drained half her life force. She trudged to her seat, dropped her bag, and sat down with the quiet resignation of someone who had accepted their suffering.
The classroom was noisy. Students chatted, compared homework answers, and threw paper balls across the room when the class monitor wasn't looking. Xu Jia was already at her desk, eating a small bag of chips with complete disregard for school rules.
"You look terrible," Xu Jia observed cheerfully.
"Thank you," Li Wenya replied flatly.
"Tutoring again?"
"Don't ask."
Xu Jia laughed and offered her the chip bag. Li Wenya took one without a word and chewed it with the energy of a person who had already given up on the day.
It was then that she heard the familiar sound of a bag being placed on the desk beside her.
She did not turn her head. She did not acknowledge it. She stared at her textbook with extreme focus, even though it was upside down.
Xi Yanli sat down.
The faint scent of bamboo drifted over, quiet and clean. Li Wenya very carefully turned her textbook right-side up and pretended she had meant to do that all along.
Xu Jia, sitting one row ahead, shot Li Wenya a look that said you are so lucky with enormous enthusiasm. Li Wenya shot back a look that said, "Please mind your own business," with equal intensity.
Neither of them said anything out loud.
Peng Xiao walked in shortly after, dropping a stack of papers on his desk with a loud thwack that silenced the room instantly.
"Results from yesterday's surprise quiz," he announced, picking up the pile. "Most of you did acceptably. Some of you..." he paused, looking at the paper in his hand with a very specific expression, "...wrote the word probably in a mathematics problem."
Several heads turned.
Li Wenya became very interested in her pen.
"Li Wenya," Peng Xiao said, placing her paper face-down on her desk.
She picked it up slowly. Turned it over. Looked at the score circled in red at the top.
9 out of 50.
She set it back down very gently.
Nine. Nine points. Out of fifty.
She folded her hands on the desk and stared straight ahead with the composure of someone whose soul had just quietly left their body and was now floating somewhere near the ceiling fan.
From beside her came no sound, no comment, no reaction whatsoever. Xi Yanli had his own paper and was reviewing it with calm, infuriating focus.
She glanced sideways. Just barely.
His score sat at the top of the page, neat and unashamed.
48 out of 50.
Li Wenya looked away immediately.
Of course.
Of course, he scored 48. Because the universe decided that humiliating her once this morning was not enough.
She picked up her pen and wrote the date at the top of a fresh notebook page with great dignity.
She would study. She would improve. She would not score nine points on a mathematics quiz ever again in her life.
This was her solemn vow.
After Class
When the bell rang for break, Li Wenya stood up to stretch and immediately knocked her pencil case off the desk. It hit the floor with a loud clatter, scattering pens in every direction.
She crouched down to collect them, muttering quietly under her breath.
A pen rolled under the desk beside hers and stopped near a pair of clean white sneakers.
She looked up slowly.
Xi Yanli looked down at her.
There was a pause that lasted approximately one thousand years.
He reached down, picked up the pen, and held it out.
Li Wenya took it carefully, making sure their fingers didn't touch. "...Thank you."
He straightened up without a word and walked out of the classroom.
Li Wenya stayed crouched on the floor for a moment longer than necessary, clutching her recovered pen.
Xu Jia appeared above her like a specter, eyes wide and glittering. "He picked up your pen."
"He was just returning it."
"He picked up your pen, Wenya."
"It was on his side of the floor," Li Wenya said, standing up and dusting off her uniform. "It's called basic courtesy. Nothing more."
Xu Jia looked unconvinced. She looked, in fact, like someone who was already composing a dramatic retelling of events in her head.
Li Wenya tucked the pen back into her case and told herself firmly that it meant absolutely nothing.
The male lead had simply returned a pen.
That was all.
...So why was her heart beating so fast?
She refused to answer that question and went to buy water from the vending machine instead.