In the height of summer, with cicadas shrilling all around, Lin Weiran, the undisputed top student in her grade, meets Jiang Yi, who treats skipping class as part of his daily routine. She is a scholar buried beneath mountains of scratch paper; he is a struggling student who sweats it out on the basketball court. They should have been two parallel lines that never meet, but an unexpected “peer support program” brings them together. In the morning light of the library, she discovers that his draft paper holds a solution more concise than the official answer. On a street corner in a torrential downpour, he wraps his school uniform around her drenched shoulders. The summer breeze carries feelings they never put into words, but graduation season scatters them with college acceptance letters sending them to opposite ends of the country. Five years later, at a financial summit, he in a sharp suit and she in business attire pass each other by. The scent of mint candy mingles with coffee, and it turns out that no matter how many variables stand between them, some equations still have only one solution.
