Lily

At 7:30 the next morning, the bedside phone rang while I was brushing my teeth. Who could it be? I scrambled over with a mouth full of toothpaste foam.

"Good morning, wake-up call..." a cold, mechanical female voice chirped. I slammed the receiver down.

At eight, I went downstairs for breakfast. The dining hall was packed with students preparing for the exam, accompanied by teachers and parents. Some were flipping through Olympiad classics, school handouts, or high-end university textbooks while they ate. Even though we were rivals, there was a natural sense of kinship in sitting together.

Lingquan was drinking a small carton of yogurt, the plastic straw chewed into a mess. She looked fairly spirited, which put my mind at ease. I had wanted to say so much yesterday, but my brain had short-circuited, leaving me silent. Still... it was better to wait until the exam was over. For the next few hours, my mind would hold nothing but biology.

At the exam hall entrance, the teachers handed out our admission tickets. With an hour left before the start, we waited outside to be let in.

When the moment actually arrived, everyone seemed less nervous. The vice president, who had been studying in the car all day yesterday, was even sitting by a flowerbed, tapping out a rhythm on her fingers.

Lingquan was also sitting by the flowerbed, her slender fingers dismantling a small pink flower. "Oxalis, five sepals, five petals, stamens, pistils..." she muttered, plucking each organ away before tossing the fragments into the air.

I handed her a piece of chocolate—the flavor I knew she liked, having seen the wrappers for this high-concentration dark chocolate in the study room trash bin. She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Oh, thanks."

I broke off a piece for myself and popped it into my mouth. It was bitter, both sour and bitter. But because it was Lingquan’s favorite, I tried my best to like it too.

Then—one last check of the pencil case, the bell rang, we entered, placed our tickets on the corner of our desks, and the thick exam papers were distributed. The two hours for answering passed in the blink of an eye. When I finally finished filling in the bubble sheet and stepped out into the daylight, my mind was a total blank. It was over. It felt like a dream.

Leaving the school, I boarded the bus back. Lingquan sat in that same window seat in the back, and I sat beside her. She pulled a thick stack of printed pages from the bag at her feet. Prose reading comprehension, followed by geometric progression sequences. The corners of the pages bore logos like "Runze Chinese."

"Nanjing schools really are this big," she murmured to herself, marking paragraphs and circling keywords. "My mom says top high schools in Nanjing send thirty or forty students to Tsinghua or Peking University every year."

"Ugh, damn it, how am I supposed to know what the hell the author meant by this scenery description... just go ask the author yourself." She scribbled her answers rapidly on the bumpy bus ride. Ah, right, she had tutoring classes to attend once she got back that afternoon.

After finishing the last passage, she stared out the window with a look of listlessness.

"Lingquan," I said softly. It had been so long since I’d spoken that my voice felt dry.

"Hmm?"

"You don't let me talk about the future, but I'm going to anyway." I noticed my voice trembling slightly. "Lingquan will definitely become a brilliant scientist in the future. You said it yourself—you want to be a scientist. If you say you want to, then you definitely can."

"When did I say that?" She turned away, pressing her forehead against the glass, and replied without emotion.

"I have a great memory. If I say Lingquan said it, then she said it," I insisted stubbornly.

"Then the 'me' who said such stupid things is not the same 'me' as the one sitting here now."

"I don't care! Do you know that while I was writing the Olympiad tutorial, my head was full of thoughts like, 'If it were Lingquan, she'd definitely be able to solve this,' or 'If it were Lingquan, there would be a more elegant way to solve it'? It was the same when I was doing the league problems... Do you know how much I look up to you! If a Lingquan like you says she has 'no future,' then I... No, say whatever you want, but... I just can't imagine a future without Lingquan..."

I had rehearsed words of encouragement and comfort in my mind, but they came out sounding like a petulant tantrum. I wanted nothing more than to crawl under the bus.

"Ugh, honestly..." Lingquan held her forehead, a complex expression in her eyes. It seemed like a mix of happiness, helplessness, and exhaustion.

"Anyway, Lingquan will definitely be a great scientist in the future," I said, looking down.

"Geez, you." Lingquan suddenly reached out to ruffle my hair, then hooked her left arm through mine while her right hand continued working on her geometric progression problems.

Closer, just a little closer. I leaned toward Lingquan, feeling my breath grow warm. The three-hour bus ride was already long, but I wished it would never end.

We reached the school gate and got off.

"So heavy." She hoisted her large black backpack onto her shoulders, and I heard a soft sigh.

After the biology competition, everything returned to the routine. Everything returned—until one day, passing through the study room after class, I saw the structural formulas for carbohydrates and lipids still on the blackboard, and my eyes suddenly welled up. No, forget it. It's over. With unsteady steps, I wept as I wiped those molecules away, bit by bit, until not a trace remained.

On the first night back, I stayed up late to finish the homework I’d fallen behind on, then began preparing for the math competition selection.

My luck during the selection was surprisingly good. I had a breakthrough on the geometry problem in the second round, and I could solve most of the first round. All that remained was to pray that my calculations wouldn't fail me. Fermat preserve me! Euler preserve me!

After I got home from the exam, I crossed another day off the calendar—good, now only the final exams remained for this semester. After finals came the streaming process. Starting with our grade, the new "Gao Kao" system of elective subjects would be implemented. Based on the survey results, the school would offer Physics-Chemistry-Biology, Physics-Chemistry-Geography, Physics-Biology-Geography, and Politics-History-Geography tracks. Lingquan and I both planned to choose Physics-Chemistry-Biology—because we couldn't handle memorizing Politics, History, and Geography. Then, based on rankings, key classes and regular classes would be assigned for each track, calculated through a weighted average of last semester’s finals, this semester’s midterms, and this semester’s finals.

I was nervous about my ranking. I did quite well in last semester’s finals, but usually, I hovered around tenth place in class. I absolutely could not afford to slip up this time.

During a normal evening study hall, after finishing my math homework, I looked up and noticed the student in front of me (I’d finally learned his name: Ye Zihan) had a white workbook on his desk, one hand holding a pen to pretend he was working, while the other was browsing a different book under the desk. For him, this was routine.

"What book is that?" I asked after class, pointing at his desk.

He shoved the book further inside, his body blocking my view.

"Hey." I was even more curious now.

He pushed up his non-existent glasses with his index finger, coughed a few times, flashed a strange smile, and then secretly slid the book to me under the desk. On the cover, two beautiful girls were hugging affectionately. The title was... *CITRUS*...

"Is this... a manga?" I flipped through it. The art was beautiful, but the vertical traditional characters made it hard to read. *Wait, did they just kiss? Ahhhhhh!*

"More precisely, it's a yuri manga." The corners of his mouth turned up wider and wider until he couldn't hold back a rapid-fire, obsessive monologue.

"Beautiful girls are the most wonderful thing in the world, and the pure affection between beautiful girls is even more wonderful! Every day, going to school, listening to lectures, doing homework—it’s all so miserable. The only way to recharge and stay alive is through yuri manga, yuri novels, and watching girls hug and kiss! Beautiful girls are supreme! Yuri is supreme! Now, now, give me back my Yuzu and Mei-chan!"

"Dead otakus are disgusting." My desk mate, Xin Yi, looked at him with a pitying expression that said he was beyond saving.

"Ah... could I borrow this to look at?" I don't know why, but I suddenly wanted to, even though I’d always thought I had no interest in love stories.

"No, no, if the teacher catches it, it’s all over—wait, you mean you want to read it?—I’ll just write down the names, you can find them on some, uh, strange websites." He snatched the book back, tore off a piece of scrap paper, and began writing furiously, only handing it to me when the bell rang.

Did it really take that long to write? I took it with a puzzled look and saw a long list:

*Yuri recommendations! Novels: "Bloom Into You," "Adachi and Shimamura," "Girl’s Harbor"... Anime: "Sakura Trick," "Kisses of the Flowers"... Games: "Flowers," "Kindred Spirits on the Roof"...*

What the hell is all this! What does this guy do in his free time?! He actually wrote so much; he really put in the effort...

But... I was the one who said I wanted to see them. With complicated feelings, I tucked the scrap paper into the notebook I was taking home.

It was Friday, and there was no homework due in a hurry. When I got home, I opened my phone and saw that Ye Zihan had sent me several QQ files and cloud drive links.

Cult indoctrination couldn't be any more thorough than this.

After my parents fell asleep, I snuck my phone under the covers and clicked on the anime link he’d sent, watching until past midnight.

When I saw the female leads kiss, my heart pounded against my ribs in the sweltering heat of the blankets. If I hadn't had to go to study hall the next morning, I probably would have finished all twelve episodes in one sitting.

I tossed my phone aside and lay in bed, but I couldn't sleep; my biological clock was thrown off. I counted numbers—1, 2, 3... My mind still wouldn't settle. Strangely, what kept rolling through my mind wasn't the anime beauties I’d just watched. It was Lingquan, Lingquan, Lingquan.

Lingquan running, Lingquan humming, Lingquan reading, Lingquan doing problems, Lingquan eating chocolate, Lingquan crying, Lingquan laughing.

Lingquan and I kissing.

All sleepiness vanished instantly. I stared wide-eyed at the chandelier on the ceiling. No, that’s not it, I didn't. My heart had been immersed in the flutter of a love story, but now it felt like it was seized by fear, unable to beat.

I finally understood what kind of feelings I’d had for Lingquan all along. I understood why I’d never been interested in love stories, and why I’d walked away whenever classmates gossiped. I had thought I was just late-blooming or slow, but now I realized... the kind of love I craved was...

"Pure affection between beautiful girls is the most wonderful thing in the world! Yuri is supreme!" Ye Zihan’s declaration from class echoed in my ears. Of course you’d say that, I bit my lip, because you’re not...

Ye Zihan’s words twisted and deformed until the phrase "pure affection between beautiful girls" was replaced by a harsher, almost forbidden word: homosexuality.

I remembered a trip with my parents in middle school. They were sitting in the front, chatting while listening to the radio, eventually discussing a bill regarding the legalization of same-sex marriage that had just passed in another country.

"Instead of dating properly, they insist on marrying the same sex. I don't understand what's wrong with these people; they're perverts," my mother said, shaking her head with a look of deep distress.

"Well... it’s a natural occurrence of sorts; these things exist among animals, too. I don't support it, but I don't oppose it," my father replied as he drove.

"...Regardless of what you say, I still think these people aren't normal." My mother’s voice lowered, but her tone remained firm. I sat in the backseat, head down, doing my holiday homework, not daring to make a sound.

No. I’m not. I’m not an "abnormal person," I'm not a "pervert," and I don't want my mother to look at me that way. But did all those expectations, all those longings, and the heart-pounding of our close contacts have to be denied?

I don't know how I finally fell asleep, but dawn came in a hazy blur. "Wake up! You're going to be late!" My mother pulled back the covers. I was still in the daze of morning grogginess—I, I had to get up, go to study hall, and I would see Lingquan again after class. Anticipation, but mingled with a sense of guilt.