“Chi Yao doesn’t have many girls around him, given his personality, there’s only you, though you’re more like a buddy, can’t count as a girl. Anyway, Shen Shanshan is one of the rare girls, at least they’re on the same competition team—hey, Young Lin, why are you suddenly walking so fast? Wait for me.”
Lin Zhexia: “You’re annoying me, affecting my walk.”
She didn’t want to hear Xu Ting talk.
If there was poison at hand, she would unhesitatingly choose to poison him, mute.
She walked to the seaside, found a quiet place to sit down by herself, but her mind was still in chaos.
She thought randomly: Has Shen Shanshan gone to confess?
Will the confession… be successful?
Shen Shanshan had moved last night.
Would she move Chi Yao in the same way when she confessed?
Time passed minute by minute.
Xu Ting searched around before finding her. Just as he sat down beside her, he saw Lin Zhexia suddenly stand up and ask him, “Where’s Chi Yao?”
Xu Ting was stunned, pointing across: “He should be over there with Shen Shanshan… I think.”
The “I think” had barely left his mouth when Lin Zhexia had already run off.
This beach was very long and divided into several areas. Now, during the small holiday period, the seaside was packed with tourists.
The scorching sun shone on the sparkling sea surface, reflecting excessively dazzling light.
Lin Zhexia ran toward the opposite beach through the bustling crowd with difficulty.
She knew she was being impulsive.
She didn’t even know what she was doing.
She knew she shouldn’t disturb Chi Yao and Shen Shanshan no matter what.
But at this moment, even if she was slow to realize, even with no experience, she finally had to admit a most secret thought in her heart, one she had never dared to acknowledge.
There were still many tourists blocking her way.
She anxiously and frantically searched for Chi Yao’s figure in the crowd.
In this instant, the whole world seemed to have been muted.
The sound of the seaside wind, the noise of the crowd, the vendors’ calls—all of these were far away from her.
Only the voice from her heart became increasingly clear:
She didn’t want Chi Yao to be with someone else.
Lin Zhexia passed through the most densely populated area, coming to a secluded corner.
When she found Chi Yao here, Shen Shanshan was no longer by his side.
In the corner of the seaside, only the young man in the black windbreaker remained sitting on the beach. Uncomfortable with crowds, he sat with his legs bent, his back giving off a sense of unfamiliarity. The seawater was picked up by the wind, making a “swoosh” sound on the rocks. In the distance, the just-receded seawater was about to rise again.
Chi Yao heard her footsteps, turned his head slightly, and asked: “What’s wrong with you?”
Lin Zhexia stopped, panting, looking quite disheveled.
Chi Yao still had that familiar tone: “Are your legs completely healed now, running a marathon at the seaside?”
“…”
Lin Zhexia didn’t answer his question, instead asking: “Are you sitting here alone?”
Chi Yao said nonchalantly, “There was someone else just now.”
“Then… where is she?”
“I found it noisy, so I told her to go see the sea somewhere else.”
Lin Zhexia knew Chi Yao wouldn’t tell her about Shen Shanshan’s matter; after all, a girl gathering her courage to confess was not something to be casually discussed with others.
But she immediately realized that Chi Yao had not accepted.
She bent over, standing less than five meters from Chi Yao, her heart beating so violently she could hardly breathe.
She finally discovered the answer to the question she had asked Chen Lin that day.
It wasn’t as Chen Lin had said, not because she had grown up, not because she had realized Chi Yao was a boy.
It was because of liking him.
A liking that had been overlooked during the long years because of excessive familiarity, quietly happening, without self-awareness.
The increased heartbeat when speaking in the auditorium wasn’t due to nervousness, the reddened ears when wearing a scarf wasn’t because the exhaled breath was too hot, and the unusual feeling on the sports meet day wasn’t because the weather was too stuffy.
Lin Zhexia believed there were countless similar moments.
Countless moments she had once overlooked.
She had never understood.
This was what liking someone meant.
The world spun in this moment.
For an instant, it seemed to turn back to the smoke-filled temple from a few days ago, back to beneath that hundred-year-old tree, back to those words casually mentioned by others.
—If you like someone, you will discover it.
Her attraction to Chi Yao didn’t come with great fanfare, but rather like seawater gathering drop by drop over the long years, until the rising tide was about to silently engulf her, only then did she suddenly realize.