Zhao Yang! Why Does Your Face Keep Tilting Toward Me?

When I drew the line between our desks, he deliberately pushed his eraser over it;

When I lost my notes, he gripped the scraps until his knuckles turned white;

On a rainy day, we shared an umbrella. He kept me completely covered, while half his own shoulder got soaked.

Until one rainy night, I ran into him in the equipment room, smiling at my notebook of wrong answers.

Tucked inside was a sketch, drawn in the exact same style as the drafts hidden in his textbook. It showed my profile as I rested my chin in my hand between classes.

It turned out:

When he borrowed my notes, he drew little suns beside the questions I'd gotten wrong. Those were my secret marks for “happy pages”;

He ate the spicy lunch I'd brought, even though he didn't like spicy food. He just wanted to taste “my flavor”;

Even when he deliberately held back during the sports meet, it was so that his bangs would be just messy enough in my photos.

The most unbelievable thing was New Year's Eve. When he sent “Happy New Year,” his finger hovered over the “unsend” button for three whole minutes.

And I stared at the reply screen, my ears burning red, hesitating for ages before finally replying, “You too.”

The way he tilted his head at his desk, his excuses to borrow my eraser, even the apologies he wrote after getting into trouble on purpose, were all signs of a sixteen-year-old boy's feelings that he couldn't hide.

My flushed ears, the profile I secretly drew, and the words I never said, “I'm watching you too,” had already revealed my feelings to the spring breeze and the chirping cicadas.