The Cold, Brilliant Scholar Is Sweet Only to Me

[Both leads are virgins + sweet romance + campus] A soft, sweet little cupcake × a rich, top-of-the-class student That summer, seventeen-year-old Lin Ningchu loved to sneak peeks at Jiang Yu through the glass window. His white shirt smelled faintly of mint, and whenever the hem of his uniform brushed past her desk, it set her whole teenage heart racing. From the note praising her “cute handwriting” to him leaning over to hold her hand during Olympiad training; from the warmth of his arms when she rushed into them on a night when the power went out to the fireworks that bloomed on the rooftop on the first snowy day: the crush hidden among homework and mint candies eventually grew into a love they shared, amid the cicadas and school bells. On the day their college admission letters arrived from the same university, after the college entrance exams, Jiang Yu hugged her at the station. “I'll tell you the rest of what I wanted to say in high school, little by little, over our four years at university.” And so his breakfast bento waited for her in the morning light beneath the dormitory, her books always had a place at their usual spot in the library, and their shadows walked side by side through the halls of their internship workplace. From school uniforms to graduation gowns, from a secret crush to open devotion, it turned out the best days were simply the ones when Jiang Yu and Ningchu were right there together.