She Sits Diagonally in Front of Me

When the sophomore classes were reassigned, Lin Zhiyi did something crazy:

She changed her first choice to Gu Shengsheng’s class.

Gu Shengsheng was the top student in their grade, always alone, like an iceberg that would never melt. Lin Zhiyi, on the other hand, was at the bottom of the class: talkative, cheerful, and surrounded by friends. They came from completely different worlds.

Nobody knew that one winter in their freshman year, Lin Zhiyi had fallen at the stairwell and couldn’t get back up because of the pain. Gu Shengsheng happened to pass by. She stopped to look at her for three seconds, then turned and ran to the school clinic on the other side of the playground.

Five minutes later, she came running back, out of breath, and crouched on the steps to tend to Lin Zhiyi’s injuries.

She didn’t say a word the whole time. When she was done, she stood up and left.

From then on, Lin Zhiyi couldn’t take her eyes off that slender figure.

On the first day of school, Lin Zhiyi sat diagonally behind Gu Shengsheng, staring dreamily at the back of her head.

Then she noticed something: the tips of Gu Shengsheng’s ears had turned just a little red.

One evening during self-study, Lin Zhiyi received a note passed forward from the row ahead. The handwriting was fine and delicate:

“You’ve looked at me seventeen times in class.”

Lin Zhiyi’s heart skipped a beat. She wrote on the back of the note:

“You were counting?!”

Gu Shengsheng didn’t turn around again.

But after that day, Lin Zhiyi noticed that whenever she looked up, she would catch Gu Shengsheng sneaking a glance back at her.

It turned out the iceberg had already been melting, little by little, where she couldn’t see.

Mutual pining / From school to the workplace / She was the one thing on my mind throughout my youth