Not Teacher and Student!

Xu Zhitong thought it over for quite a while.

She was still pretty confident when it came to proposing.

After all, whether you looked at the objective facts or her own stubborn conviction, Lin Yang could only ever marry her.

There was no second possibility.

Still, going from dating to marriage definitely wasn’t simple; it wasn’t like clearing levels and beating bosses in a game.

Xu Zhitong had always thought timing mattered a lot.

They’d dated for so many years and still hadn’t gotten married, so maybe they were just missing the right moment for a proposal.

No problem. Now she was here.

Xu Zhitong was certain her past self, before the amnesia, must have been too dull, too stupid, which was why she’d never proposed.

Sigh. It had been a rushed underground relationship, after all.

Xu Zhitong generously forgave her past self, then thought that if she were the one proposing now, it absolutely had to be romantic enough to move Lin Yang deeply.

Ideally, they’d take a taxi straight from the proposal site to the civil affairs bureau and get married.

That meant she had to make very thorough preparations.

How could she move Lin Yang deeply?

Just then, Lin Yang asked her, “What do you want to eat?”

Xu Zhitong’s thoughts had already moved on to choosing a proposal venue.

They’d confessed to each other and gotten together at school.

If they went back to where it all began and she proposed to Lin Yang there, would it be even more touching?

At the thought, Xu Zhitong wanted to go back and take a look.

She said, “No. 1 High should still be in evening study hall right now. How about we eat somewhere near the school?”

Since waking up in the hospital, she and Lin Yang had either been eating fancy meals or all kinds of expensive dishes.

It had been a long time since she’d had any junk food loaded with calories.

Malatang. Braised chicken rice. Spicy dry pot. Fried skewers...

Xu Zhitong licked her lips.

Lin Yang was a little surprised, but she quickly agreed and told the driver to head over.

By the time they reached Jiangshi No. 1 High, the dinner rush was over. The sun was setting, and the campus was quiet.

Only the lights in the two-story teaching building were still on; it was probably the twelfth graders who had come back early from the holiday to attend evening study hall.

The car stopped by the back gate. The familiar mala xiangguo place from Xu Zhitong’s memory had a new sign now, and the lights were bright.

There was only one table in the shop, occupied by students in uniform playing a mobile game. Every so often they’d blur out things like “Save me, save me!” or “I’m going bot lane, you clear mid for a bit,” their voices low.

Xu Zhitong looked around, left and right, visibly delighted.

In her memory, the last time she’d come here was just over a month ago.

Even though the layout inside had changed quite a bit, she didn’t feel much difference.

Lin Yang found an empty table and wiped down the tabletop and chairs with tissues. Xu Zhitong picked out a huge basin of ingredients, then, after paying, came back with two iced drinks and sat across from Lin Yang.

She gave the soy milk to Lin Yang and drank soda herself.

Neither of them had had mala xiangguo in a long time.

By the time they finished the big bowl, there was still a third left.

Xu Zhitong went to the next table to get some tissues for Lin Yang and wipe her mouth, then said, “It still tastes the same after all.”

Lin Yang said, “Otherwise it wouldn’t have lasted more than ten years.”

Xu Zhitong nodded, then shook her head. “But it feels like it’s not as good as before. A little oily.”

Otherwise, with her appetite, she wouldn’t have left the layer at the bottom untouched.

Lin Yang said, “Maybe that’s because your mental age is still only seventeen.”

But her sense of taste and eating habits had already changed with her physical age.

Even if the memories weren’t there, her tongue still remembered all the food she’d eaten.

Xu Zhitong didn’t quite understand. She automatically took it to mean, “So you think I’m young?”

“...” Lin Yang was helpless. She stood up, smoothing down her skirt, and said, “Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

?

Did she really think she was too young mentally?

Xu Zhitong huffed and hurried after her. She even opened the door for Lin Yang, then insisted on holding her hand.

Only when Lin Yang didn’t let go did she finally stop sulking.

They signed in at the guardroom by the back gate. Lin Yang had the homeroom teacher’s WeChat, so she sent a message and spoke to the on-duty guard. After they entered their information, the two of them were allowed onto campus smoothly.

Jiangshi No. 1 High looked almost exactly the same as it had in her memory.

But the trees and flowers were lusher now; there was an extra teaching building, a small pavilion had been added beside the pond by the science building, the stadium’s plastic track had been redone, and the football field in the center had fresh new turf.

Xu Zhitong looked around as they walked, and only then did she truly feel it: memory and reality didn’t match.

Ah. Time had really stolen eight years from her memory.

They walked onto the school track, just like they had during countless big breaks in evening study hall in the past.

Lin Yang was wearing kitten heels. Walking on the plastic track and the grass, she looked a little unsteady.

Xu Zhitong asked, “Do you want to take your shoes off? Or should I carry you?”

Lin Yang wrinkled her nose. “No.”

She still had a bit of a cleanliness obsession, and a need to save face.

Xu Zhitong: “Heh.”

Looking at the way Lin Yang walked with her toes slightly raised, she couldn’t help laughing. She held out her hand. “Then I’ll hold your hand.”

The two of them strolled slowly around the track.

Neither of them said much.

After they finished one full lap, Lin Yang asked, “Why aren’t you talking?”

Xu Zhitong blinked slowly. “Huh?”

She scratched her cheek awkwardly.

The place was too familiar, and the evening breeze was cool and comfortable.

Without meaning to, Xu Zhitong’s mind drifted off into random thoughts.

...Thinking about the proposal location.

After coming to school and walking around once, Xu Zhitong felt that school might not be very suitable.

The list of places in her head that could serve as backup confession spots was pitifully short. She thought hard for a long time, but still couldn’t come up with three, four, five, or six options.

“Just reminiscing,” Xu Zhitong said, giving up on thinking. She shook Lin Yang’s hand. “Come on, let’s go upstairs and take a look.”

The entire building for the lower grades was dark.

The two of them looked around downstairs for a while, confirmed that no one was there, and then went up the stairs.

Their classroom was on the third floor.

As they climbed the steps, the motion-sensor lights lit up one by one with the crisp sound of Lin Yang’s kitten heels.

It gave the strange illusion that the past and the present were overlapping.

There must have been a thorough cleaning before the holiday. The hallways were neat and tidy, with a faint smell of disinfectant and laundry detergent.

The door was closed.

After checking and seeing there were no newly installed cameras, Xu Zhitong skillfully pried open a crack in the window, silently muttered an apology, slipped her hand inside, and unlocked the door from within.

She opened the door, turned on the lights, and walked into the classroom.

In eleventh grade, they’d been deskmates, sitting in the third row by the window.

Now the desk held a stranger’s books and supplies.

To be exact, the entire classroom had changed a great deal; even the desks were completely different, much better than the wooden school desks they’d had back then.

Lin Yang glanced at the corner and smiled. “You used to lean against that wall and sleep all the time.”

Xu Zhitong said, “No way. That would’ve been way too obvious. I was clearly propping up my face and sleeping behind a pile of books.”

Lin Yang said, “And then the homeroom teacher would knock you on the head and twist your ear from outside the window.”

Xu Zhitong snorted. “Anyway, you’d remind me.”

Lin Yang was helpless, but it was true.

In eleventh and twelfth grade, Xu Zhitong still didn’t really feel the pressure of advancing to the next level. She did whatever she wanted and was often called out by teachers for her “conduct.”

Sometimes Lin Yang would even be pulled aside by the homeroom teacher and told not to indulge Xu Zhitong so much.

Good friends were supposed to inspire each other and improve together. What Lin Yang was doing was hurting her; by the time twelfth grade came around and Xu Zhitong realized how important studying was, she’d turn around and blame Lin Yang.

And later, in twelfth grade, Xu Zhitong really did blame her, though not for that reason.

When the homeroom teacher called Lin Yang to the office again, it turned into a mental-health counseling session, with the teacher saying that separation and closeness between friends were normal, and that she shouldn’t let it affect her state of mind.

Lin Yang said it was fine.

While listening to the teacher ramble on, Lin Yang lowered her eyes and glanced at the month-exam score sheet lying beside the desk, not really hidden.

Xu Zhitong’s grades had improved by leaps and bounds; there was a very pretty red upward arrow next to her name.

Lin Yang thought blandly, good.

During twelfth-grade winter break, Madam Lin... or rather, Madam Lin’s secretary, had already handled her overseas schooling arrangements.

Madam Lin had asked her symbolically whether she wanted to transfer out early. She said no. Madam Lin nodded without much concern and said fine; then the driver would just keep taking her to and from school as usual.

In the second half of twelfth grade at No. 1 High, she still attended every monthly exam and every mock exam as usual, and watched Xu Zhitong’s rank creep closer and closer to hers on the leaderboard.

Unstoppable.

Now that she thought about all that again, Lin Yang could still smile.

Standing in front of the bulletin board beside the blackboard, she looked at the paper posted there and said, “You know, in twelfth grade you were very diligent. In the third mock exam, you ranked in the top twenty in the grade.”

“Huh?” Xu Zhitong was surprised. In eleventh and twelfth grade, her scores had always hovered around the hundred- to two-hundred range. “I was that amazing?”

Lin Yang said, “Yes. Very amazing.”

Xu Zhitong imagined it, but she still couldn’t really picture it.

Her moms had never been very strict about her grades.

She herself had also been fairly lazy when it came to studying; it wasn’t that she disliked studying, just that she lacked motivation.

And since she could usually coast with little effort, study casually, and still get mid-to-upper-tier results that satisfied her moms’ expectations, she had almost never had any desire to push higher.

They’d been together since the first semester of twelfth grade. Xu Zhitong should have already known by then that Lin Yang was going abroad, right? From what she’d heard, applying to study overseas had to be done a long time in advance.

Xu Zhitong thought it over and finally decided that maybe she wanted to be worthy of Lin Yang?

After all, her wife was going to study abroad.

Once she left, if people asked what university her long-distance girlfriend was attending and she answered with some third-rate no-name school, that would probably make her look bad in front of her wife.

Xu Zhitong quickly made peace with herself. She asked, “Then I did so well, did you give me a reward?”

Lin Yang paused. “What reward did I give you?”

She meant, why should she be the one giving Xu Zhitong a reward?

But Xu Zhitong automatically took it as a rhetorical question.

She looked around the empty classroom and couldn’t help imagining what kind of reward she might get here.

Teacher...

Student...

Heh.

Xu Zhitong’s face warmed. She took a step back and looked at Lin Yang standing on the platform.

Putting on an act, she said, “Teacher, I still don’t understand this problem. Could you teach me again?”

Lin Yang: “?”

She stared blankly for a moment before understanding what Xu Zhitong was thinking from that unmistakably suggestive look.

Lin Yang’s ears turned red almost instantly.

She stammered, “You...”

Xu Zhitong took two steps forward and met her eyes. She grabbed Lin Yang’s hand and brought it toward the collar of her shirt.

With watery eyes and an obedient little expression, she said, “Teacher, am I a little stupid? It must be hard for you to tutor me after school without even charging tutoring fees, so I’m willing to repay you a little. Teacher, you can do whatever you want to me...”

As her hand kept moving more and more outrageously, and her words grew bolder and bolder, Lin Yang’s face burned red. She backed up a step, and the thin heel of her kitten heel made a crisp, flustered sound on the platform tiles.

She really did look like a teacher in the classroom.

Lin Yang realized that too. Her heart skipped twice, and she said nervously, “Xu Zhitong, don’t do that. At least...”

The classroom was quiet and empty, familiar yet strange.

Under Xu Zhitong’s gaze, Lin Yang’s momentum gradually weakened. In a small voice, she said, “Go home first, okay? This is someone else’s classroom now.”

Xu Zhitong was still playing along. She bit Lin Yang’s hand, unable to hold back, and rested her chin on Lin Yang’s hand.

“Is the teacher taking me home? Ah, does that mean I’m going to the teacher’s house for tutoring? The teacher is so good to me, but... the teacher won’t do something to me, will she?”

With every “teacher,” with all that pretend innocence and obedience, it was impossible to hide the anticipation underneath.

Lin Yang was mortified beyond belief.

She endured it for a moment, then said, “Are you coming back or not?”

“Okay, I’ll go home with the teacher,” Xu Zhitong said sweetly. “I can’t figure things out by studying on my own. When we get to the teacher’s house, you’ll teach me physiology hand in hand, right?”

“..."

Lin Yang bit her lower lip. The hand touching Xu Zhitong’s chin lifted two fingers and pinched Xu Zhitong’s face, pulling her a little closer.

She couldn’t say another half-sentence. Almost completely embarrassed and flustered, Lin Yang brushed her lips against Xu Zhitong’s for an instant, like she was trying to seal Xu Zhitong’s mouth shut that way.

“Don’t say any more,” Lin Yang said, her cheeks flushed red as she spoke quickly. “Go home.”