Dale first saw Shen Xiang in the hallway of an elite school.
The boy leaned against a window, a delicate hearing aid in his left ear, his head bowed over a German collection of poetry. Sunlight edged him in gold, making him look gentle yet distant.
Dale looked away and went back to chewing on her grilled sausage.
She came from a top-tier wealthy family, yet somehow lived like a walking comment feed.
She was genuinely clever, always placing in the top three in her grade. She was also genuinely sharp-tongued, able to leave even the stern dean of students laughing helplessly. At this elite school where everyone was so proper, Dale was the one card nobody could predict.
Only later did she learn that Shen Xiang was the same way.
That gentle boy with the hearing aid turned around and made the seventeenth society girl his family had interviewed cry. He couldn’t hear the world’s noise through his left ear, but he caught every one of Dale’s jokes loud and clear. His gaze shifted from scrutiny to curiosity, and then to...
Dale: “Why do you keep staring at me?”
Shen Xiang smiled. “I’m thinking about how to win you over.”
And what about the people around them? The penny-pinching Lin Zhaozhao (female) had to find someone to split the buy-one-get-one bubble tea deal with, while the generous young master of the Lu family bought out the entire dessert counter. Hot-tempered Jiang Yao (female) was always getting worked up by her classmates, while easygoing Wen Yan (female) was always there with water and a soothing word.
A group of young people stumble their way through love and rivalry, going from testing each other and pushing and pulling to standing side by side.
Later, someone asks Shen Xiang, “How did Dale get you so completely under her thumb?”
He thinks for a moment, then smiles faintly. “I guess she made my world sound a little livelier.”
