The Wind Stops with You, but Youth Goes On

In my second year of high school, Shen Sihan, the top student in our grade, handed me a crumpled note and asked me to take it to Class Three for Jiang Yu, the notorious troublemaker who got into fights and turned in blank exams.

I thought it was just an ordinary errand.

That is, until a basketball slammed into the wall right beside my ear. The boy with his school uniform hanging open poked his head out from behind the door and looked at me with eyes so dark they seemed to hold no light. Then he said my name

“Lin Wantang. That's a pretty name.”

From that moment on, I was swept into a whirlwind I had never seen coming.

Jiang Yu said he wanted to make a bet with me about the monthly exams. If he won, I had to buy him milk tea.

I said, “How can someone who got eight points in math possibly win?”

A month later, he had gone from last in the grade to somewhere in the middle. The whole school was in an uproar.

And Shen Sihan, the one who had given me the note, stood not far away, watching it all unfold with an expression I couldn't understand.

What I didn't know was

This bet had never been about grades in the first place.