Gu Yichen and Chen Shaoxue from No. 1 Middle School are the two top students at the top of the grade list - his beige draft paper has half a pink highlighter strawberry hidden in the corner (the one she often misses from her pencil case), and "Chen Shaoxue" written lightly in three lines on the seam of the paper; her cream-white wrong-question book has lemon candies sandwiched in each book, and the candy paper is folded into soft stars (his fingertips touched her knuckles in the corridor last week).
The story begins in the chemistry experiment class: Chen Shaoxue stood on tiptoe to reach for the reagents, and rubbed the phenolphthalein bottle with his arms. The red stains smeared faster than his heartbeat, covering the scratch paper on which he wrote his name - the ink words were dyed soft red, like the pale color on the tips of his ears when his fingertips paused. What was once an opponent in the competition has become a partner with the same red stain on his sleeves.
When she was being confessed, he held a question booklet with her strawberry bookmark (which had been stored for three days and the knots were polished) in front of her; when he was working on the competition draft, she put the warm milk on the corner of the table, and the note "Don't stay up too late" was imitating his writing style.
When the cicada chirps and the fragrance of gardenia is wrapped around it, the strawberries next to "Chen Shaoxue" on his draft paper have added stems, and the stars on her candy paper have his pencil marks. The raw edges of the draft paper and the creases of the candy paper represent every step of the student's heartbeat. They are as sweet as lemon candies in late summer, with a crisp and soft fragrance.
