Knowing the Past

[Clear-headed girl in optical engineering x AI prodigy]

[Devoted only to each other + happy ending + reunion after years apart]

Everyone around Yan Yuanzhi knew she liked Zhang Sili.

In their first year of high school, he doused her with a bucket of cold water. She stopped reaching out to him, but kept her feelings hidden away.

When they graduated in their final year, she knew Zhang Sili would turn her down, but she confessed anyway.

“I don’t want to leave high school with regrets,” she said.

“I’m telling you how I feel, not asking you for a relationship.”

He rejected her, and she wished him “all the best in the future.”

He got his wish and went to Beijing, while Yan Yuanzhi stayed in Cangming.

They had no contact throughout their four years at university.

Then, after graduation, she was accepted into a graduate program in Beijing and sent him a message on WeChat:

“Do you still remember me?”

“Is Beijing nice?”

“How are you?”

“What if I told you I came to Beijing to be closer to you? Would you believe me?”

Zhang Sili replied in a stiffly formal tone: “I’m going to MIT as an exchange student next week. Yan Yuanzhi, you should move on.”

She remembered him saying, “Yan Yuanzhi, you’re anything but ordinary.”

A year later, in the back alley behind the Misty Isle bar, Yan Yuanzhi saw a familiar face: Zhang Sili.

Five years had passed, and he had long since shed his boyishness.

They still held on to the pride they had carried back then. She didn’t dare approach him, while he stood there, turning in circles. They kept pulling away and reaching for each other, suspiciously testing the waters.

Only after she left, and they had been apart for several more years, could he bear it no longer. He set aside his pride and said, “Zhaozhao, can I be the one to pursue you this time?”