The late-autumn wind swept golden ginkgo leaves onto the windowsill of a third-floor classroom. Lin Zhixia sat by the window, watching Jiang Yubai, the boy who was always wrapped in a black hoodie, slowly make his way from the back row to the seat beside hers. Their story began with a slip of paper drawn to decide who would sit with whom.
She was a cheerful, smiling Sagittarius who pretended to be reserved around strangers. He seemed gloomy and distant, but beneath that exterior was a tender heart and a painfully awkward way with people. He slipped a warm cup of red date tea into her chilled hands; she tugged at his sleeve and rode her pink electric scooter with him through ginkgo-strewn streets to the station. He used a game of "guess my zodiac sign" to find out her birthday and came up with all sorts of ways to get her to solve math problems. When he went back to his hometown, he rummaged through boxes to find a glass dip pen he had treasured for years, just to prepare a birthday surprise for her.
Their concern for each other when heavy snow blocked the roads, his quiet hints beside her exercises between classes, their endless chats on the way home from school... The tenderness hidden in the late-autumn breeze, the flutter of a heart beneath the ginkgo leaves, and the feelings carried by the glass pen he never gave her all gradually brought their hearts closer. This is a story of youth, companionship, and secret love, like warm tea slowly steeping on a winter day, or a bright bouquet by the window that never fades. It captures two young hearts drawing closer in the most innocent and moving days of their youth.
