I Love You Where No One Can See

[Complete. Weibo: @Ban Xiaojiuya]

[Please add my next book, I Really Don't Like Math, to your reading list!]

In the eighth year of Wen Zhixu's crush on Xie Yanzhuo, he proposed to her. Everyone knew about the feelings she'd harbored as a girl in her youth. Their former classmates all congratulated Wen Zhixu, celebrating that she had finally gotten what she wanted.

Her secret love had finally seen the light of day. At the class reunion before their engagement, Wen Zhixu and Xie Yanzhuo became the center of everyone's teasing.

After a few rounds of drinks, Wen Zhixu returned from the restroom, only to stop when she heard the conversation inside the private room.

Someone asked Xie Yanzhuo why he had ultimately chosen Wen Zhixu.

Xie Yanzhuo replied carelessly, "Well, if you're getting married, you need someone who loves you. Wen Zhixu fits the bill."

Wen Zhixu stood outside, her face turning pale. A faint chime rang out, and she turned around with a shiver. A few steps away, by the wall, Xu Chen lowered his head to light a cigarette. He looked up with the cigarette between his lips and pointed casually at the people inside. "If I were you, I'd dump him."

At twenty-five, Wen Zhixu got married, but to Xu Chen, someone who had once seemed completely out of her league.

Xu Chen came from a wealthy, scholarly family, but outsiders saw him as a spoiled playboy, arrogant and unruly. Everyone thought he and Wen Zhixu were a bad match, but she simply said, "Why worry so much about whether we're a good match? A marriage without a foundation of love is the one with no baggage."

Wen Zhixu had always thought Xu Chen married her because he felt sorry for her.

Until one day, when she visited the Xu family home, she found a sticky note covered in her name in Xu Chen's middle school graduation album. In the top-right corner of the note was the number "35."

When Wen Zhixu was fifteen, she had received an anonymous note that read: [Wen Zhixu, the distance between us is 35 steps.]

The year Xu Chen married Wen Zhixu was the tenth year he had been in love with her.

Fog rose all around, and I hid my feelings in secret. I loved you where no one could see. Wen Zhixu, whether or not you know it, I know you.

Please add my next book, I Really Don't Like Math, to your reading list!

Ruan Ran got a call from a teacher asking her to come to school and clean up after her troublemaking little brother. She was distraught and had already prepared a whole speech of apologies before she even went in.

As soon as she pushed open the door, she put on a smile and blurted out, "Oh, Teacher, I'm so sorry. Our Ruan... Hmm?"

Behind the desk sat a man in a crisp white shirt, wearing rimless glasses. Those familiar eyes looked at her from behind the lenses, and he had the same refined, elegant air as ever.

Ruan Ran froze on the spot.

Wen Mo glanced at the young boy standing in front of his desk with his head lowered in shame, then looked at Ruan Ran, who was as dumbstruck as a wooden chicken. He smiled. His words seemed casual, but to Ruan Ran they were dripping with mockery.

"So being bad at math runs in the family?"

That one sentence took Ruan Ran back to her high school days. In her second year, an incredibly handsome trainee math teacher had arrived at Jinan No. 8 High School. He was refined and scholarly, with a gentle air, and an excellent teacher. He quickly became famous all over Jinan, and everyone at school liked him, except Ruan Ran.

Because the teacher made her, the person who hated math most, study it!

He made her copy a hundred math formulas, made her the math class representative, called her to the front of the class to solve problems, and kept her after school for tutoring!

The teacher had earnestly told her, "You're sure to fall in love with math."

Ruan Ran was so angry she cried all afternoon.

When they met again years later, Ruan Ran fled as if she'd seen a ghost. In her confusion, she agreed to the blind date her mother had suggested. She hoped meeting the man who was supposedly "pretty handsome" would soothe her wounded heart.

But when she got home and opened the door, the man was sitting upright in a suit, smiling faintly. His refined, scholarly air was unchanged, and the cool gaze behind his rimless glasses was exactly the same.

Ruan Ran's blood pressure shot up. Her lips trembled as she asked Wen Mo, "W-what are you doing here?"

Wen Mo remained perfectly calm. He held a teacup in one hand and glanced at the two mothers behind him, happily chatting away.

"I'm here to..." Wen Mo raised his eyes. A glint flashed in his mischievous, peach-blossom eyes, and he smiled. "Improve your family's genes?"

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This story is also known as The Years I Was Chased by a Ghost: Please, Stop Making Me Study Math!

1. Both leads have only ever been with each other. Seven-year age gap.

2. This is not a teacher-student romance. They were no longer teacher and student when they got together, and the male lead wasn't the girl's younger brother's direct teacher.

3. During their school years, the leads really only competed intellectually in academics. There is no romance during that period.

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