Ye Xi didn’t want to think about Bai Yue anymore. The more he thought about it, the more tangled his heart felt—full of regret. So he focused all his attention on homework, scribbling quickly.
He wrote fast—not because he understood it, but because he was a total academic slacker.
When in doubt, choose C.
If he didn’t know how to solve a problem, he left it blank—not even bothering to write “solution.” His Chinese reading comprehension answers never exceeded one line.
He wrote like a flowing stream, no hesitation, with the serene air of a general who had already won the battle from a thousand miles away.
But while his hand flew across the page, his mind wandered far from it.
Li Rui’s words had definitely struck a nerve.
Especially that one line—“What if Bai Yue sends you a wedding invitation and you’re still stuck in this hopeless crush?”
That line exploded in his ears like a thunderclap, and a vivid image played in his mind.
Bai Yue, dressed in a suit, arm-in-arm with a faceless bride, walking across a lawn full of greenery, accepting everyone’s blessings…
Ye Xi froze in his seat.
He was clearly back in the dorm, with Li Rui slurping his instant noodles beside him.
But his heart still felt stuck in that car from earlier that night.
Even the grating sound of Li Rui eating noodles couldn’t snap him out of it.
He could still faintly smell Bai Yue’s cologne at the tip of his nose.
That very light scent of fir.
So faint now, almost completely gone.
It made him feel like he was imagining it.
Crack.
Ye Xi accidentally poked a hole in his worksheet with his pen, dragging a long, deep line across the page.
He shut his eyes for a moment—but he couldn’t shake the images in his head.
One by one, memories from earlier flashed before him.
Bai Yue’s slender, elegant fingers resting on the dark tabletop—white as jade, every line clearly defined. His nails were neatly trimmed and smooth. When he slid them across a thick page, the pads of his fingers would leave soft indents.
Then there were Bai Yue’s lips—thin, soft, with a clear outline, a natural red. When he smiled, they curved beautifully, softening the otherwise distant air he carried.
Those lips were like a red berry clinging to a pine branch in the snowy wilderness—crystal clear, translucent, warm in appearance, but cold to the touch.
Just like Bai Yue. He wasn’t actually aloof or unfriendly. But only when he smiled did he feel warm—only then did he seem approachable. When his eyes lowered and he stood in the shadows, he looked as distant and icy as the moon in the sky.
These scenes played out before Ye Xi’s eyes like ghost lights in the wilderness, held by some mountain spirit, luring lost scholars deeper into the dark.
Enchanting.
And maddening.
Ye Xi’s fingers slowly clenched.
He couldn’t stop imagining what it would feel like to kiss Bai Yue.
Would those thin lips part slightly, the soft tip of his tongue sliding out to trace his lips?
Would Bai Yue’s lips warm up when they kissed?
Where would he be sitting—on Bai Yue’s lap? Letting those overly long fingers slip under his clothes…
He might even bite down on Bai Yue’s Adam’s apple from the pain.
Or maybe directly bite his fingers.
Ye Xi blinked slowly.
His own Adam’s apple bobbed slightly. Everything before his eyes was a blur, and even the words on his homework book in front of him had become fuzzy.
He felt completely hopeless.
In truth, his feelings toward Bai Yue had never been all that pure.
He had never expected Bai Yue to love him.
Love was too hard.
Even if passion flared up intensely in the moment, once it cooled off, it could turn into mutual disgust.
So he never hoped for it.
But he was addicted, craving Bai Yue’s gentle embrace, wanting to see eyes that held no one else but him.
Bai Yue was his sexual awakening, a recurring figure in his wet dreams.
Ye Xi was a teenager in the throes of puberty—passionate and hormonal. Despite his cold and aloof appearance, his mind was always filled with inappropriate fantasies.
From the moment he first dreamed of Bai Yue, he had been curious: if dreams could be so vivid and intoxicating, then what would it really feel like to be held, kissed, and ravished by Bai Yue?
He truly wanted to experience it.
Just once would be enough.
Just to finally untangle the thorny knot that had grown unchecked throughout his long secret crush, like wild roses climbing everywhere.
Clack.
Ye Xi’s pen dropped onto the desk, rolled a bit, then fell off the edge of the paper, landing on the floor. Its thin plastic casing cracked into a web of fine lines.
Just like his crumbling self-control.
No. He couldn’t.
Ye Xi stared at the blank patch of wall in front of him, his face still showing little emotion. Only his snow-white teeth lightly biting his lower lip betrayed a sliver of inner turmoil.
His eyelashes fluttered slightly.
He thought: I really won’t be satisfied unless I sleep with Bai Yue once.
That way, even if one day he fled to the other side of the world and heard from afar that Bai Yue got married, he wouldn’t feel like his entire crush had been wasted.
……
Ye Xi casually finished his last piece of history homework—a few multiple-choice questions, the only subject he was half-decent at.
After he finished, he didn’t go to wash up. He just put down his pen, pressed his knees against the desk, and let the front legs of the chair lift off the ground, rocking back and forth absentmindedly.
The movement looked dangerously unstable. Li Rui kept glancing at him with concern, but seeing Ye Xi so deep in thought, he didn’t dare disturb him and just focused on his own homework.
Ye Xi was staring at a sticker on the desk—silver, of a little Ultraman. Suddenly, he asked Li Rui next to him:
“Do you think, if I confessed to Bai Yue now, there’d be zero chance of success?”
Li Rui was still rolling dice in front of his test paper with utmost sincerity.
He had reluctantly started his homework after eating instant noodles, but he was just as much of an academic disaster as Ye Xi. Faced with a sheet full of incomprehensible multiple-choice questions, he decided to leave it up to fate and turned to divination.
So when Ye Xi suddenly asked this, he didn’t even react—the dice rolled off to one side.
“What?” He looked at Ye Xi in confusion.
Ye Xi repeated his question.
Li Rui’s expression turned complex. He immediately tossed his math homework aside, rubbed his chin, and found it difficult to offer a hopeful answer.
“That’s tough… I mean, I did tell you to go for it, but considering the relationship you two have right now, if you suddenly confessed…” Li Rui struggled to put it delicately. “The chances are about the same as me getting into Y University.”
Y University was where Bai Yue currently studied.
Nationally ranked #1.
With Li Rui’s grades, the only way he’d get in was reincarnation.
Ye Xi already knew that—he was just asking randomly.
He leaned back in his chair, the chair balancing dangerously on just two legs.
His expression didn’t change. The dorm’s white light spilled from above, making his pupils appear as dark as ink, the whites of his eyes clear and clean—he looked like a spirit from deep in the mountains, untouched by the dust of the mortal world.
But the words that came out of his mouth had nothing to do with purity or detachment.
“Then what if I don’t want to date him, just want to get close and sleep with him once—are my chances better?”
Li Rui nearly choked on his own spit and coughed for ages.
Wait—how did this conversation take such a sharp turn?
Sure, he and Ye Xi often joked around in the dorm, but none of it was ever serious.
Ye Xi looked prim and proper, but his bedside shelf was stuffed with smutty romance novels—“Bossy CEO and Cute Secretary,” “Hot Celebrity and Handsome Sugar Daddy”… During these past two years of crushing on Bai Yue, Ye Xi had occasionally grumbled bitterly and made outrageous remarks, like saying he’d one day trap Bai Yue in a dark room and make him cook breakfast for him wearing only an apron.”
But that was all just talk.
No different from him saying he wanted to study hard—wishful thinking, basically.
Yet just now… there was something in his tone that felt disturbingly serious.
Li Rui couldn’t quite tell what Ye Xi meant. But looking at his roommate sitting lazily in his chair under the light, dressed in a plain white shirt and blue jeans, so breathtakingly pretty it was almost demonic…
He muttered, half-joking, half-serious: “Honestly, if it weren’t Bai Yue you were asking about, if it were any other guy in this school, I’d say you could crook your finger and they’d follow you home.”
“But Bai Yue’s different…” Li Rui’s face turned pained. “He’s like a celestial being. All these years at school, he’s had no fewer than eight hundred confessions—slim or curvy, sweet or spicy, every type imaginable—and not once has he been swayed. It’s like he doesn’t even have that wiring. He seems nice, but he’s totally above earthly concerns. I really can’t imagine… him sleeping with someone just for fun.”
Ye Xi paused for a moment, then nodded, emotionlessly commenting, “That’s true.”
Yeah.
He didn’t dare confess, but it wasn’t like there was a shortage of brave souls throwing themselves at Bai Yue.
He himself had walked in on a few of them.
But Bai Yue always rejected them firmly, never giving even a sliver of false hope.
Someone once joked and asked Bai Yue what kind of fairy he was waiting for—so many people had confessed, and not a single one stirred his heart?
Bai Yue had simply nodded and replied, “I’m not interested in any of them.”
Not interested in any of them.
So… who would he be interested in?
Ye Xi stared at the ceiling, realizing even he couldn’t imagine it.
What kind of person would Bai Yue desire?
His disappointment was written all over his face.
Li Rui noticed too.
Even though he had no idea why his dear roommate was suddenly filled with such… feral thoughts, as his loyal wingman, he couldn’t stand seeing him so dejected.
Desperate, he started throwing out wild ideas. “Why don’t you look up one of those dating gurus online? Didn’t someone go viral recently for a ‘crush strategy’ guide? There are a ton of influencers who teach how to win your crush in seven days. Go study a few and do a crash course.”
Li Rui’s gaze drifted from Ye Xi’s pale exposed waist up to his face.
He said, half-teasing, half-serious, “No matter how aloof Bai Yue is, he’s still a man. And men are weak to temptation. Unless he’s a level-10 homophobe, with your face and figure—if you actually learned how to flirt—there’s no way he’d be completely unmoved.”
Honestly, if they weren’t the same “type” both 0’s, Li Rui might’ve fallen for him himself.
Still, even as he said it, he felt the plan was far-fetched.
With Ye Xi’s cold expression, who could he possibly seduce? Though quiet, Ye Xi was great at sports and fighting. If not for his good temper, he could easily become a school tyrant.
Rather than seduction, maybe it’d be easier for Ye Xi to grab a stick, corner Bai Yue, and force a kiss.
Li Rui shook the thought from his head.
“Forget it, forget it. Just pretend I never said anything. I was talking nonsense.”
But Ye Xi didn’t respond—clearly lost in thought—and just nodded vaguely.
Seeing that Ye Xi had no intention of continuing the topic, Li Rui dropped it as well, pulling out a comic book and reading with great interest.
Meanwhile, Ye Xi didn’t speak again. He sat still, staring blankly at a spot on the desk, lost in thought as he pretended to read a novel.
But he didn’t register a single word. His gaze drifted toward the empty spot on the desk, eyes contemplative.
….
Later that night, after washing up and getting into bed, the dorm lights went out and everything went dark.
Ye Xi lay under his blanket, still playing with his phone.
He didn’t know if his phone had somehow read his mind, but though he had opened a video site looking for some sleep-inducing ASMR…
A completely different video popped up.
The title was plastered in big pink letters: “Flirting Secrets — Win Over Your Crush in Just 7 Days!”
The view count was average, and the whole page looked low-effort. At the start, a little cartoon girl in a pink dress spun around on screen.
It screamed scam from every angle.
But the comments were overflowing with praise. Dozens of high-level accounts had come back to leave messages saying it really worked, their crush had asked them out—or they’d even scored a home run. Super effective.
Ye Xi raised an eyebrow. Really?
He stared at the screen a bit longer, then skeptically hit play.
As soon as it started, an overly energetic female voice chirped, “This is the ultimate secret! Winning over your crush is super easy—just use these flirty tricks every day and you’ll get them effortlessly! I’ve used this method to conquer every guy I’ve liked—from college hotties to elite professionals. It’s foolproof, and you can do it too!”
Ye Xi quietly lowered the volume.
As he listened to the bubbly voice rattle off the introduction, he couldn’t help but wonder—
I wonder what Bai Yue is doing right now?
It was raining outside now, and Bai Yue had probably returned to his place.
Ye Xi remembered that Bai Yue’s home had a private media room. Bai Yue had once told him that on rainy days, he liked hiding in there to watch movies.
So right now, was Bai Yue freshly showered, dressed in a soft bathrobe, his chest faintly visible, a few strands of black hair falling across his forehead, partly covering those sharp, cold eyes, lying on the sofa, quietly watching a film?
Just imagining that scene made Ye Xi embarrassingly feel like he was about to get aroused again.
He quickly shifted his thoughts and opened a video on his phone.
