Two email inboxes sat open on her screen. Which one deserved her attention first?
Christmas holidays were about to begin overseas—leave it any longer and everyone would vanish for two weeks. Once she'd made up her mind, she threw herself straight into the flood of emails. Years of being thrown in the deep end had honed her to a speed that still caught her off guard sometimes; she could handle two threads at once without missing a beat.
"Yuan, water please."
She needed fuel. The wave of mixed Chinese-English correspondence ahead was going to take all she had—even if none of this strictly required her to step in.
Half an hour later, she was leaning against Si Yuan's shoulder with a thermos of warm honey water, showing off her theory.
"They say handwriting reveals character—I'd say emails reveal a person's entire calibre."
"How so?"
"Volume tells you how much someone actually handles. The subject line tells you whether they can summarise. The greeting and tone tell you how they treat people. The body shows their thinking. And the way they write back tells you everything about the state of that relationship."
"Your verdict?"
"Low ability, high arrogance. Honestly, unbelievable."
She had a full lecture still to deliver when her phone rang at the worst possible moment.
Kaiwen. The key point: tomorrow at ten, Yinghua—Ms Daisy had asked for her specifically.
She could have found a way around Kaiwen's enthusiasm, but not Ms Daisy getting on the pone herself. She did, however, manage to decline the offer of a lift. The school was just on the other side of the wall, practically. She kept that to herself.
Yuan watched her hang up with a look that knew too much. "Works out well," he said. "My Ms Nancy's been wanting to talk through my subject choices with someone."
A double ambush. So that was how it was. No wonder she'd lost all appetite for email philosophy. As for tomorrow—whatever happened, happened.
The moment she stepped through the school gates, her so-called attendant, Yu Si Yuan, snatched her phone and vanished in a blur. Nearly an hour passed. Still nothing.
A third wheel might have helped, she realised now. Alone, she was—there was no other word for it—mortified.
After a warm embrace with Ms Daisy, the teacher launched into a fond retelling of Si Chen's greatest hits. Si Yuan's absence was perhaps a blessing—some of their "legendary youth" might have genuinely unsettled him. Within half an hour, Ms Daisy was swept off by former colleagues, and Kaiwen steered Si Chen toward their old haunt beside the library.
His gaze—too direct, too intent—made her fidget. After a few exchanges, he must have sensed it, because he changed course.
"Honestly, I prefer your Chinese name. Si Chen."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because the first time we met, you introduced yourself as 'Si Chen.' Not 'Season.'"
"Fair point, Su Kaiwen." She smiled.
"What a shame you left for abroad in your first year of senior high."
Si Chen nudged a pebble along the flowerbed with her shoe. Not possible, she thought, though she said nothing.
The year Kaiwen left for abroad was the year things at home began to unravel. Her father's illness had worsened. The international school fees became impossible—they'd only scraped through the second half of Year Nine on scholarship relief. As the eldest, she and her mother had sat down together and talked about betting everything on treatment. She was still proud of what they decided, because that was when she'd learned what it actually meant to stand alongside someone through the worst. Kaiwen would never know any of it.
"Why didn't you stay on here for sixth form?" he asked.
Something moved in her chest, but she kept her voice light.
"No one left to help me clean up the mess, was there."
This time she didn't stick her tongue out, or look up with that triumphant grin. She kept her eyes on the pebbles and let the moment pass.
At Yinghua, she could have coasted and still walked away with straight As. Switching to the domestic system, she'd worked herself down to the bone just to scrape into a halfway decent regular high school. The gap between international and local curricula turned out to be a different universe: standing to answer in class, textbooks stacked into walls, test papers you could weigh by the kilo, and something called the gaokao that pressed down on every waking breath. She failed everything from the first test onward—every subject except English. Then in the second term of Year Eleven, her father died. She turned down the relatives' offers and took the weight of the household onto herself.
Was it just an excuse to escape the gaokao? That question had nagged at her for years, a proper chicken-and-egg riddle with no clean answer. She had never regretted it. That chapter had taught her what it meant to bear responsibility.
Like the smooth stone under her shoe—worn round by years of rain and weather.
"Kaiwen," she said quietly. "I grew up."
Yes. She had. She'd had no choice, and she'd known it.
Kaiwen's breath caught. His hand tightened suddenly in her hair, then something reined him in. He withdrew slowly, and only then noticed his hand had curled into a fist.
"Let's walk a bit," he said.
Yuan scrolled back through the shots on his camera, turning over his operation from an hour ago.
He had spliced last week's reunion shots with today's follow-up into three photos and sent them over. The caption had to hit just the right note:
Childhood sweethearts, their old school, their old memories—reunited at last.
Then he'd 'accidentally' left her phone in the locker and left it to ring away to its heart's content.
The angle from the second floor was perfect. Winter light came in warm and soft. The subjects were cooperating beautifully, as if they'd rehearsed it. Almost too perfect to look at directly, he forwarded a copy straight to the leading man.
He retrieved one of the phones from the locker and typed:
"Your wall's being dug out. Three feet deep already."
The call came immediately.
"Why weren't you picking up?"
"Left my phone at home. Just brought hers over." without a hint of guilt.
"And yours?"
"Do we really need to have the 'where's your phone' conversation right now?"
"You're not stopping this?"
"I tried. I sent her to A City. You're the one who didn't hold onto her."
Heavy breathing on the other end.
"Keep things under control. Thirty minutes."
"Understood."
A City to T City took over an hour even without traffic. Thirty minutes? Si Yuan shook his head, half admiring, half disbelieving, pocketed the phone, and went to take up his appointed role as third wheel—to wedge himself between the childhood sweethearts and do whatever damage he could.
Plays never go entirely according to plan. The moment the boyhood friend said, "So this is your stepson, then," the script went sideways.
And then—with Si Yuan right there—the man had the nerve to pull the oldest move in the book. "A bit windy today," he murmured, coat already lifted, ready to settle it around her shoulders. He hadn't been wearing it all afternoon. He'd been carrying it. For exactly this moment.
Too slow.
A different coat came down heavily across her shoulders, and she was pulled back into a familiar, iron-sure hold. The voice behind it was low and edged with anger, every word placed with precision.
"Exactly how are you looking after Mum?"
The words were addressed to the third wheel. The eyes were fixed on Kaiwen. The arms held Si Chen—firmly, entirely, no room for argument. The entrance was seamless.
What exactly did I do wrong?—Yuan, internally.
What are you doing here?— Si Chen, startled.
So you finally showed up.—Kaiwen, one brow raised.
My territory. Nobody trespasses.—Yu Hao, brooking no objection.
Territorial claim: successful.
What followed was, against all odds, almost civilised. "Friendly" introductions were exchanged, "Warm" conversation followed. They paid a joint visit to Ms Daisy. They even ended up in the canteen together for lunch.
Everything stayed calm—until the boyhood friend placed a second large prawn on Si Chen's plate.
"Careful, your neck might start itching later. Don't scratch it raw—I haven't got any cream on me."
The smile was impeccable. The concern was almost convincing.
The strike, however, was surgical.
Three points, driven home in a single sentence:
One: she's allergic to seafood. You didn't know that.
Two: I've applied the cream for her before. You didn't know that either.
Three: when I was putting that cream on her, you were probably still nowhere in the picture.
The leading man's chopsticks stilled in mid-air. Something shifted in his face. The air seemed to freeze along with it.
Si Chen dropped her gaze, thoroughly caught out, torn between swallowing the prawn and putting it back.
Head nearly in her plate—mortified by past indiscretions, or simply devastated at the thought of never eating prawns in peace again?
Just as Si Yuan drew breath to cut in and change the subject, the leading man's hand moved, settling against her neck and cheek, his voice low, controlled, and leaving no room for doubt.
"I've spoiled her, I'm afraid. We'll have a look when we get home."
Your move, then.
Three points, returned with interest:
One: small things are already in hand.
Two: family matters are not your business.
Three: the past may have been yours—but today and tomorrow are mine.
Yuan could only concede. The speed. The precision. The sheer efficiency—his own skills had a long way to go.
The finishing blow landed without warning: "My son has been a poor student, his teacher has had to worry on his behalf. We owe him a proper apology in person. Please excuse us."
Not a crack left to get through.
And yet the boyhood friend was no lightweight. He left with easy grace, and managed a parting line that gave nothing away. "This was short notice. We'll make time properly, next time."
Masters at work: still water on the surface, a storm underneath.
This round was over.
The match was not.
To be continued.