My Nemesis, Whose After-School Time I Bought

[Two heroines + mutual firsts + love that grows over time + simmering tension]

I paid her 4,004 yuan to spend her after-school hours with me. No particular reason. I just wanted to see her profile as she did her homework in my living room, the hesitant look on her face when she accepted a pomegranate, and whether she would say one more thing than she had yesterday when she crouched in the entryway to change her shoes: “See you tomorrow.” I thought it was possessiveness. Later, I realized it wasn't. I was just afraid she wouldn't come back.

I agreed to her deal. Every day, I went to her apartment to do homework, read, or sometimes do nothing at all. At first, I thought she just wanted to watch me look reluctant but have no choice but to go along with it. Then strawberry milk, my favorite, appeared in the fridge. A lunchbox made at six in the morning appeared on the coffee table. When the weather turned cold, there was a thermos I didn't have to take home. Then one day, I found myself sewing up the loose thread on her collar. I had no reason. I just didn't want her coat to come apart.

Measured in the two hours after school each day, and threaded together by the three yuan and fifty cents she owed, this is a story of two people drawing closer, very slowly.

So slowly that the ginkgo leaves fell and grew back, so slowly that the two of them turned it over in their minds countless times, yet neither was the first to speak.

So slowly that one day, one of them reached out first. The other took her hand.

And then they no longer had to say, “See you tomorrow.”

Because tomorrow, the day after, and every day to come, they would be together.