The landlord has multiple personalities and wants everyone to pay him.

"Huh? Yunyun? Song Yunyun? My, my high school classmate, w-what happened?"

Ye Shu was caught off guard by the sudden, seemingly random question and could only answer honestly.

Zhi Qiu's smile deepened, but her eyes opened slightly, locking onto Ye Shu's gaze with a dangerous undertone beneath the familiar gentleness.

She even moved a little closer, close enough for Ye Shu to smell the pleasant fragrance in her hair, but at this moment, the fragrance only made his scalp tingle.

"Yeah?"

Zhi Qiu spoke softly and gently, then, with her incredibly gentle voice that could make your ears pregnant, she clearly read aloud the opening sentence on the paper:

"Yunyun, some words have been hidden in my heart for a long time, like a seed that has taken root without me even realizing it... I like you, ever since the first time I saw you sitting by the window in the sunlight, lost in thought..."

"ah!!!!!!"

Ye Shu let out a loud bang, snatched the letter from Zhi Qiu's hand, and clutched it tightly. His face flushed red in just a few seconds, the redness spreading all the way to the roots of his neck.

He remembered that this was the love letter he had prepared to confess his feelings to Song Yunyun—his first and only love letter ever!

But before she could send it out, her fake boyfriend intercepted it. His unsent feelings, along with the letter, were casually stuffed into the Chinese textbook he was using at the time, sealing away a secret crush that would never come to fruition.

As for why he didn't throw it away, Ye Shu later told his buddies when he was drunk:

"That's my lost youth! Don't you understand?!"

Now, this "lost youth" has delivered a solid backstab, and a devastating blow at that.

"Sister Zhi Qiu... Sister Zhi Qiu!"

He was speaking incoherently, his voice trembling:

"This, this, this... I just wrote this on a whim when I was in school! Really! That Song Yunyun was a classmate I... um... had a crush on in high school, but she got a boyfriend later, and nothing happened between us! Really!"

Zhi Qiu maintained her bent-over posture, her smile unchanged, even softened, but a dangerous glint almost emanated from her slightly open eyes. She stared at Ye Shu's forehead and nose, beads of sweat forming on his brow, her voice so gentle it could drip water:

"Really? Little Shu?"

She tilted her head, looking genuinely puzzled.

"Why are you sweating so much? Is it hot in the room? Or is there some little secret your sister found out about, making you nervous? Hmm?"

The last "hmm" sound rose slightly at the end, carrying a playful, cat-and-mouse-like quality and... a subtle chill.

Ye Shu froze in his chair, clutching the "evidence" tightly in his hand. He felt Zhi Qiu's gaze was like two dull, insidious knives, slowly and painfully torturing him, layer by layer. Not fatal, but excruciating.

He wanted to run, but his legs felt weak. The pressure from Zhi Qiu this time was stronger than any of the previous "gentle knives"!

"I...I'm not nervous! We're just classmates, nothing really happened."

"Oh……"

Zhi Qiu straightened up, but her gaze remained fixed on him, her smile sweet:

"Really just classmates? Then this letter is truly...heartfelt. I haven't finished reading it yet. Little Shu's writing skills were quite good back then..."

As she spoke, she reached out as if to take the letter that Ye Shu was clutching tightly in her hand:

"Let me show you how it goes next, okay?"

How could Ye Shu possibly show it back to her! He grabbed the letter with both hands and, with all his might, tore it apart with a few clean, tearing sounds, a mixture of anger and grief. The letter, which carried the weight of his lost youth, was reduced in his hands to a pile of shredded paper, so shredded that it was beyond repair, even more shredded than a paper shredder could shred.

After disposing of the body and destroying the evidence, Ye Shu's heart was still pounding, but he forced out a silly smile in an attempt to fool the situation, raised his head, and looked at Zhi Qiu with "innocent" eyes:

"Huh? Sister Zhi Qiu, w-what? What did you say you were looking at? I...I don't understand! Hahaha..."

He chuckled dryly, trying to escape reality by feigning ignorance.

Zhi Qiu looked at the scraps of paper in his hand, and the smile on her face seemed to soften a lot. The dangerous glint in her eyes gradually disappeared and was covered by her usual gentleness again.

She straightened up and gently patted non-existent dust off her hands, as if nothing had happened.

"Look how scared you are! Why were you so impulsive? Why tear it up? It's just a... well, a keepsake of my youth."

She walked to the desk, picked up the Chinese textbook she had just used, and flipped through it absentmindedly:

"Do you regret tearing it now?"

Ye Shu looked down at the handful of shredded paper in her hand, and felt a sharp pain in her heart for a fraction of a second.

It wasn't that I still had any lingering feelings for that "Yunyun," but rather that I felt a lingering fear of the public execution of my childish writing back then, and a complex sense of relief that "evidence of my dark past has been completely destroyed."

Just as he was looking at the scraps of paper in his hand, he suddenly felt a chilly gaze fall on the side of his face.

He looked up and followed the gaze, only to see Zhi Qiu standing to the side, holding an old textbook in her hands. Her gaze seemed to be on the pages, but her eyes were slightly open, her pupils moving under her eyelids, staring intently at the shredded paper in his hand and the changes in his facial expression.

Startled, Ye Shu almost jumped up and rushed to the window, throwing all the scraps of paper in her hand into the trash can. She even pressed it down hard to make sure they wouldn't "come back to life."

"No regrets! It was something that never even happened anyway, what's there to regret! Hahaha, no regrets, not a single one!"

He turned around, clapped his hands, and looked determined as if he wanted to serve his country.

Zhi Qiu's eyes narrowed back into gentle crescent moons; the deathly gaze from before seemed to be just Ye Shu's illusion.

She shoved the textbook she was holding back onto the bookshelf, then casually pulled out another one next to it. This time, she turned the pages much faster, and her eyes scanned the pages more carefully. Clearly, she wasn't looking at the contents; she was looking for something.

Seeing her posture, Ye Shu instantly understood her intention. He felt a little helpless, yet also wanted to laugh:

"Sister Zhi Qiu, there really isn't any left, just this one."

Zhi Qiu didn't even look up, her fingers lightly turning the pages filled with formulas and calculations. Her voice remained gentle and kind, but her words made Ye Shu's heart, which had just settled, jump again:

"Little Shu, don't be nervous. I'm just curious to see what you've been learning at school and whether you've been studying hard."

She paused, picked up a sheet of paper filled with calculations, glanced at it, and added casually yet meaningfully:

"Besides, there's a 'Song Yunyun'...who knows if there will be any 'Zhang Yunyun' or 'Li Yunyun' hidden in some book, waiting to 'surprise' their older sister? Don't you think so, little Shu?"

……

Ye Shu looked at Zhi Qiu's earnest "concern for her studies," the sunlight casting a soft glow on her, making her look so gentle and serene.

But at that moment, he had only one thought in his mind:

Why isn't this kang (heated brick bed) warm yet? He needs warmth! He desperately needs it!