Stars and Tides

|Mutual Secret Crush|Both Each Other's First|School Uniforms to Wedding Dress|

|Funny Without Realizing It, Straight-Shooting Girl x Cool, Handsome Basketball Prodigy|

After Lin Qiao had an allergic reaction, she gained a lifesaver.

He vaulted over a wall to retrieve her medicine and broke his leg in the process. She searched every pocket of her school uniform and found only a lollipop, which she passed through the wire fence.

"You... think some candy might make you feel better?"

There was scientific evidence that sugar could ease pain.

But the team doctor soon carried him away. Like the lollipop she never got to give him, he became etched in her memory, then vanished into the crowd.

When high school started, she wanted an extra half hour of sleep every morning, so she enrolled at No. 7 Middle School right by her home with the top score in the city. She somehow became class monitor after receiving a battered old textbook, and met the iceberg who flat-out refused to line up and head downstairs.

Last seat in the front row, guardian of the back door, school team uniform, cold and handsome...

The difficult-guy buffs were all maxed out.

"Line up."

She had to call twice before the iceberg finally got up, moving at a snail's pace.

His uniform pants rode up, revealing the bandage on his foot.

Well, well, well. How could she make the new class monitor feel guilty for the rest of his life without letting on?

Lin Qiao hurried to make amends. "If it's uncomfortable, don't worry about it."

He didn't say it was uncomfortable.

He even unwrapped a lollipop right in front of her.

What was this guy

trying to pull?

It wasn't until she learned that retrieving that bottle of medicine had kept him from training for months, costing him a spot on the national youth team and nearly ruining his future, that memories came flooding back.

She felt she ought to do something.

But getting close to an iceberg would leave her frozen stiff.

She'd imagined all sorts of possibilities: being rejected, being resented, even being blackmailed.

She never expected that, after all those years apart, she'd greet her lifesaver with a shoulder throw...

"Sorry, muscle memory. Are you okay?"

Ye Zhixiao sat on the ground, looking utterly unbothered.

"I'm hurt. Pay up."

"How much?"

"Let me throw you once."

"???"

That sounded fair enough.

Maybe because he really couldn't beat her, Ye Zhixiao could only let her drag him to the hospital for a checkup.

When they left the examination room, he was holding a brand-new mask.

So he'd come in to have an old injury checked, and the doctor had prescribed him a mask?

"Did you bring your medicine?" Ye Zhixiao asked.

Lin Qiao felt the empty side pocket of her backpack and remembered that she'd left her asthma inhaler in the classroom.

"Top scorer in the city, and this is your memory?"

He teased her as he handed her the mask.

He was actually pretty nice.

Then...

"Let's add each other on WeChat," Lin Qiao said frankly. "It'll be easier to add you to the class group chat."

Beep!

Ye Zhixiao glanced at the WeChat nickname that popped up on the screen and frowned slightly.

"Lin Daiyu Pulls Up Lu Zhishen by the Roots" has requested to add you as a friend.

Lin Qiao smiled.

"Pretty weird, right?"

He accepted her request and said coolly,

"Pretty cool."

Lin Qiao blinked.

This guy

was kind of interesting.

Ye Zhixiao realized Lin Qiao might be interested in him sometime after the first basketball game of the school year.

A red-haired guy from Experimental High mistakenly thought he and his younger sister were a couple, and ambushed him on his way home.

Lin Qiao had just eaten hotpot and was bursting with energy. She marched over and slammed the redhead, who was supposedly the toughest guy at Experimental High, onto the ground, scaring him into crying for his mom.

Afterward, Lin Qiao innocently asked the group the redhead had brought with him,

"Sorry, does anyone here know his mom?"

He added another fact to what he knew about Lin Qiao.

Allergic asthma, top score in the city, and a serious fighter.

Also,

she had a lovely smile.

Even when she wasn't smiling.

But he wasn't some lovesick stalker. He knew what people their age ought to be doing.

And he didn't want the wall around the basketball court to keep her trapped in the past forever.

That day after school, she finally worked up the courage to ask him,

"Is your leg better?"

He didn't turn around. Instead, he asked,

"Which time?"

She clearly didn't understand, so he spelled it out.

"The first one healed a long time ago."

"I meant the one afterward..."

"That had nothing to do with you."

He understood that he wasn't the only one still hurting over the day he went to retrieve her medicine.

But one of them hurting was enough.

Lin Qiao didn't let him off the hook, though.

She kept crashing headlong into his life.

"Is it really necessary?" he asked, pretending to be nonchalant. "Just because I retrieved your medicine?"

"I'd have helped anyone."

That was the harshest thing he'd ever said to her.

"Even if you weren't there, I could've broken my leg playing basketball, in a car accident, or getting abducted by aliens or something."

Neither of us owes the other anything.

"Oh."

Lin Qiao seemed not to have heard a word he said. She simply repeated what she'd said before.

"I like you."

"..."

"Is that not okay?"

Fine. You decide.

[Tips]

[Both Each Other's First]

A warm, healing, sweet romance from school uniforms to a wedding dress.

They secretly crush on each other throughout high school, all shy and fluttery (their hearts are the only things that move) → everything they could want as adults

Theme: A good relationship means growing together