The Stars Are Still Twinkling

Independent and clear-headed, yet softhearted * Reserved and timid, prone to silence

A first-love story about a girl and a boy | Only when something is completely broken can it truly be made whole

In the summer of 2019, Chen Xingxi was traveling alone when a schoolmate passing by came to her rescue.

The boy was cheerful, talkative, and outgoing. They chatted happily all the way.

After starting university, they arranged to meet. Her roommate asked if she was rushing off to see her crush, and Chen Xingxi simply smiled and denied it.

But when they met, she saw the person she least expected standing behind the boy.

His looks were so striking that, just by standing there, he drew every gaze around him.

The boy enthusiastically introduced him: "This is my roommate, Zhou Chuyue. Why don't you come say hello?"

Their eyes met, and Chen Xingxi didn't look away.

Of course she knew him.

He was her "ex-boyfriend."

-

In 2017, three rumors at No. 1 High School spread like episodes of a TV drama.

The first: The transfer student Zhou Chuyue was so handsome that students from the neighboring school came to gawk at him.

The second: Chen Xingxi, who was so aloof she seemed above worldly concerns, was also pursuing Zhou Chuyue.

The third: Chen Xingxi and Zhou Chuyue were together. Someone took a photo of them on a date outside school in their uniforms, and after it was sent to the principal's mailbox, their parents tore them apart.

Only the people involved knew what had really happened.

They had never dated or kissed, but their falling-out looked just like a breakup.

Zhou Chuyue vaguely remembered the way Chen Xingxi had said those words. She had been so resolute.

"Zhou Chuyue, I don't have to keep orbiting around you, you know."

After that, they never spoke another word.

They had never even dated, yet everyone treated them like exes meeting again.

-

Zhou Chuyue had thought he would never see Chen Xingxi again. Then, by chance, he spotted half her face in a photo belonging to his university roommate. His roommate laughed and said she was a girl he'd met in Southern Xinjiang, and what a coincidence that they went to the same university.

So neither of them had applied to the school they had once agreed on.

After all their twists and turns, they had met again in the same place.

After learning Chen Xingxi went to the same university as him, Zhou Chuyue deliberately tried to get close to her, only to receive plenty of cold looks.

Unexpectedly, they chose the same elective by coincidence. Chen Xingxi glared at him, full of resentment. A little later, she realized it had all been a coincidence and proactively apologized to him on WeChat.

He replied with a smile in his eyes: [It's fine. I know from past experience.]

Meaning, it was only natural for her to misunderstand him.

She had no idea he was acting pitiful just because he was glad she was still willing to talk to him.

He had never asked for much.

-

Later, on the Eye Bridge, beneath a moon shining at four thousand lumens, he kissed her.

He answered the words they had exchanged when they parted:

"All this time, I've been the one who couldn't stop orbiting around you."

"Would you mind if I kept bothering you?"

-

Only she knew what he was allergic to, what he could eat and what he couldn't.

Only he knew she was always saying the opposite of what she meant, like when she told other people she didn't like him.

Their first meeting when she was six, the meeting she thought was their first when she was sixteen, and their reunion at eighteen.

Fate took them around and around; destiny led them along winding paths.

You have to learn to be brave, or what you want will slip away.

| Original title: Cowardly

| Outline written on 5/11/2023. A story kept hidden away for a rainy day

---The entire main text has been written in advance---

Theme: Learn to be brave.