Her deskmate was an academic deity—ranked first in their grade, the type who chased teachers after class to verify three different solutions to a single problem, someone who saw mathematics and physics as the pinnacle of beauty. By all accounts, he belonged in a parallel universe from a "delinquent girl" like Lin Si Tian. But their homeroom teacher, Mr. Li, was determined to enforce classroom discipline that semester. To prevent cliques from forming and students covering for each other, he launched a "high-low achiever pairing" initiative—exiling Lin Si Tian to the academic execution ground beside Zhou Sheng.
Judging someone in the student world was simpler than in adulthood: either you were smart or good-looking. Zhou Sheng, infuriatingly, was both. His intellectual supremacy was undisputed; rumors even swirled among faculty about him skipping a grade. His looks, however, were Lin Si Tian's unexpected consolation prize for her "sentence." Bookish myopia was inevitable, yet he chose clunky black-framed glasses and perpetually buzzed his hair—reportedly to save shampoo time for extra problem sets. Throughout freshman year, he'd been branded a traitor chained to the teachers' desks, an enemy of the student masses. While others burned through their youth on basketball courts and bubble tea runs, this overachiever drowned in textbooks. Different paths? Lin Si Tian wholeheartedly agreed. They were classroom diagonals: him a lighthouse in the front abyss, her a slacker adrift in the backwaters.
Then came the fateful breakfast milk. One morning, as Lin Si Tian stabbed a straw into her yogurt box, a spray of white liquid hit Zhou Sheng's lenses. He removed those glasses—an extension of his very being, never shed even in PE!—and when she fumbled to help, he merely pressed his lips and said, "It's fine," wiping them himself with tissues. Pre-morning-read sunlight slanted through the window, gilding him in gold. The angled light carved his profile sharper: a straight nose above lips that gleamed, a jawline cut sharp as a ruler's edge. Lin Si Tian stared, dazed, as if binge-watching a campus idol drama.
"Your bangs are long," she blurted.
Zhou Sheng looked up. His fringe now swept past his brows. Sunlight bled through his slightly parted lips, flowing over the slopes of his nose and cupid's bow down to his neck—dazzling. But his eyes were the real masterpiece—classic phoenix eyes, inner corners hooked and outer tips lifted, naturally elongated. Usually imprisoned behind lenses, they lost half their allure, especially that unfathomable gaze that seemed to hold silent depths.
"My usual barber moved," he said, brushing back his hair only for it to stubbornly fall again.
Good riddance! Fireworks exploded in Lin Si Tian's mind. That butcher shop only knew buzz cuts—how could he swear by their "skill"? Had standardized tests fried his aesthetic sense?
"Looks better now," she seized the chance to reform him. "Keep the bangs."
He blinked. "...Oh." The glasses clicked back into place, transforming him into the rigid scholar again. "They block the text."
"Just sweep them aside!"
"Troublesome."
"Isn't getting dressed troublesome? You still do it daily!"
He turned abruptly. "Necessity versus non-necessity. Could you handle me not wearing clothes?"
"Yeah, I could," she fired back.
Zhou Sheng choked on her audacity. "...Empty words," he muttered, snapping his head down to his textbook.
"Wanna test that?" She leaned into his ear, her breath a brand. His pen skidded.
"Teacher's coming," Zhou Sheng spun his pen into a blur. "Finish your milk."
Lin Si Tian slumped back, straw clamped between her teeth, but her apricot eyes snuck glances at his burning earlobes. "You really do look better without glasses."
Zhou Sheng feigned deafness, though those earlobes deepened to crimson.
The skirmish changed nothing. Zhou Sheng remained a note-taking machine in class, a problem-solving automaton during breaks, reigning supreme on the academic throne. Lin Si甜 drifted through lessons and gossiped through breaks, her grades bungee-jumping the passing line. The only revelation: this class monitor wasn't the snitch rumors claimed. Unless Lin Si Tian planted a timed explosive under his seat, he'd ignore her even if she tunneled through their desk. Empowered by his indifference, her boldness grew.
Note-passing became her signature move. Seated innermost by the window, messages usually snaked from the back. Until the day a paper ball arced clear from the neighboring group, landing with a thud on Zhou Sheng's math notes.
Lin Si Tian gasped. Her fingers swept forward like a mine detector. Just before contact—
"Pay attention." Zhou Sheng's left hand slammed over the note, his right never pausing its scribbles.
Her hand froze mid-crawl, but her gaze snagged on his. Knuckles sharp, blue veins tracing cold skin like frozen rivers under snow.
Her index finger poked tentatively under the edge of his palm.
"Last one," she mouthed, holding up a single digit.
Zhou Sheng lifted his gaze. His lips formed a silent, ironclad: "No."
Her shoulders slumped. The instant he looked back at the blackboard, she struck—jabbing under his palm! Her finger was instantly imprisoned in his grip.
Wasn't he listening?!
Their hidden struggle thumped against the desk. Heads turned—classmates in front, Mr. Li at the podium. The angle shielded the details, but Lin Si Tian was pinned under Mr. Li's judicial glare, forced to endure Zhou Sheng's scorching hold on her finger.
Fever-hot. Strange.
Zhou Sheng seemed equally startled by the noise, but facing the board gave him an alibi of calm.
"Lin Si Tian!" Mr. Li's voice cracked like thunder. "What's the distraction?"
"Listening!" she lied reflexively.
A soft snort escaped Zhou Sheng.
"Stand. Repeat what I just said."
She rose trembling, a leaf in a storm, shooting desperate SOS glances his way.
The romantic trope of a genius saving his damsel didn't play out. He sat, Buddha-like and unmoved.
"Stand till the bell," Mr. Li sentenced.
Humiliation fermented into venom during the forty-minute sentence. Dog! Ice-cold deskmate! Mortal enemies from now on! Silent curses spilled hot tears that drilled tiny dark wells into the wooden desktop.
When Zhou Sheng returned the note after class, he saw her red-rimmed eyes. He hesitated.
"Listen properly next time."
I wasn't wrong, he told himself.
The Cold War began. Daily communication shrank to "Move" and "I need in." Lin Si甜 did curb her antics—no more notes. Zhou Sheng sometimes caught her propping her chin, glaring at exercises before epiphanizing... into wrong answers. His fingers itched to slash through the errors. He stopped himself.
Meddling. She hates you.
"How shall I cut it?" the barber asked, pinching Zhou Sheng's overgrown ends.
The reflection stared back for three seconds. "Trim the bangs. Thin it out."
Murmurs rippled when he entered class Monday. "Zhou Sheng's new cut is sharp!" "He ditched the buzz!" The unkempt thicket, now styled, hinted at idol-drama-hero potential. Adjusting his backpack strap, he found Lin Si Tian straddling his chair backward, furiously copying homework from Li Hailiang behind her.
He stood waiting silently.
Her pen raced, oblivious.
A knuckle rapped the desk behind.
She glanced up, expressionless, and scooted an inch inward.
Zhou Sheng sat just as she complained, "All the essay questions blank? Li Hailiang, pig brain?"
"Princess! Since when do you critique copied homework?" Li Hailiang was her partner-in-crime on the academic failure highway.
"I just forgot! If I did it, would it be blank?"
Zhou Sheng slowly unpacked his morning reader, smirking inwardly: Copying Li Hailiang? When you turn in identical blunders, enjoy the scolding.
Then—acting on impulse—he pulled out the very test paper she needed: last night's, perfectly solved. Textbooks and workbooks already crowded the desk; the test paper now hovered on the border between their territories.
"Quick, get Wang Yue's test!" she hissed, spinning her pen like a shuriken.
Wang Yue? Another liability. Zhou Sheng rubbed his neck, his elbow "accidentally" nudging the paper across the divide.
Back turned, she noticed nothing.
He opened his reference book, gaze lingering on the "reaction enthalpy change" formula.
"Zhou Sheng." She finally turned.
He waited for the plea.
"Your paper's over the line." With a decisive scrape, she shoved it back.
Zhou Sheng turned, startled.
"What? Only you get to hog two-thirds of the desk?" Her brows knitted.
"...Fine." He snatched the paper back into his drawer.
"Wang Yue! The test—now!" She lunged halfway into the aisle.
Zhou Sheng's fountain pen scratched fiercely across his chemistry workbook.
He'd offered restitution. She'd refused it.