A perfect score on the college entrance exam? The Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng has astonis

She lowered her head, looked at the paper, and read the last sentence aloud again.

Then she smiled, a soft but genuine smile, like a flower slowly blooming in the sunlight.

"Chen Mo, can I take a picture of this?" She held up her phone and pointed it at the sticky note.

"Take the picture," Chen Mo said.

Su Wanci took a picture, then stood up, walked to the window, held the note up to the sunlight, and took another picture.

She took more than a dozen photos from different angles, and finally chose the one with the best lighting, cropped it, and added a filter.

She opened Douyin (TikTok), not Chen Mo's account, but hers.

Her account has only a few hundred followers, mostly classmates and friends.

She doesn't usually post much, occasionally a selfie or a funny video, but today she's going to post this photo, and she's already thought of the caption.

She typed each word into the input box:

"Chen Mo is so mean. He wrote 'Ten Years of Life and Death, a Vast and Boundless Separation' and made me cry for a long time. Now he's written 'On the Love of Lotus' to cheer me up."

After she finished typing, she looked at it again and felt that the name "Chen Mo" sounded too unfamiliar.

Deleted it and changed it to "Amo".

I watched it again and thought "Amo" was too cheesy.

Deleted it, then changed it back to "Chen Mo".

After revising it several times, she finally took a deep breath and handed the phone to Chen Mo.

"What do you think, will it work?"

Chen Mo took it, glanced at it, and then returned it to her.

"OK."

"Don't you think... there's something wrong with it?"

"What's the problem?"

Su Wanci opened her mouth, as if to say, "Don't you think this caption sounds like an official announcement?"

But he swallowed the words back down his throat.

She bit her lip and pressed "Publish".

The progress bar on the screen has completed, displaying "Published".

From then on, her Douyin account had one more post—a photo, a few lines of text, and a secret.

She put her phone on the table, looked up, and found Chen Mo looking at her.

That gaze was different from any she had seen before.

Previously, his gaze was calm, resolute, like a deep pool of water.

There's something extra in my gaze today.

She didn't know what it was; all she knew was that when she was being looked at by that gaze, her heart was pounding as if someone had put a hundred rabbits in her chest.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"It's nothing."

Chen Mo turned his head and looked out the window.

Su Wanci stared at his profile for a few seconds, then lowered her head, picked up her phone, and opened Douyin (TikTok).

Someone has already seen that video.

One classmate left a comment: "??? 'On the Love of Lotus'??? Written by Chen Mo???"

Another classmate commented: "Wait, you said 'make me happy,' so 'Ailian said' refers to you???"

Another student commented: "Are you officially announcing your relationship???"

She didn't reply to any of them, but simply turned her phone face down on the table.

"Chen Mo."

"Um."

"Do you even know what I mean by posting this video?"

Chen Mo glanced at her.

"What do you mean?"

Su Wanci bit her lip, her voice as soft as a mosquito's buzz.

"It means—there's no need to explain who the Goddess of the Luo River is, and there's no need to explain who the Lotus is either."

After she finished speaking, she lowered her head, not daring to look him in the eye.

Her ears were so red they looked like they were about to bleed, and the redness spread from the tips of her ears to her cheeks, and from her cheeks to her neck.

Her fingers twisted the hem of her clothes until her knuckles turned white, and the hem of her clothes was all crumpled from her rubbing.

Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like someone was drumming on her chest, each beat hitting her eardrums.

Chen Mo looked at her and remained silent for several seconds. Then he said something in a very soft and flat voice, as if he were talking about something that had already been decided.

"I know."

Su Wanci suddenly raised her head and looked at him. His expression remained the same: calm, resolute, like a deep pool of water.

But in that deep pool, fish were swimming.

"When did you find out?"

She asked.

"A long time ago."

"how long?"

Chen Mo thought for a moment.

"It was probably when you started bringing an extra breakfast and leaving it on my desk every morning."

Su Wanci was stunned for a second.

That happened in her first year of high school. Every morning she would bring two breakfasts from home, one for herself and one for him on his desk.

She thought he didn't know, and that he just thought the food in the cafeteria was bad and took it without thinking.

But he knew, he always knew.

"Then why didn't you say so?" Her voice trembled slightly.

Chen Mo looked at her, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.

"Say what? Say 'Thank you for bringing me breakfast'? I already said that."

That's not what I meant.

Su Wanci's voice trembled even more, "Say something else."

"What else?"

"You're asking a question you already know the answer to!"

Chen Mo finally laughed when he saw her cheeks puffed out in anger.

The smile was light and faint, but it contained a heavy weight—like a long-hidden secret finally being revealed.

It was like a door that had been closed for a long time finally being pushed open, like a seed that had been planted for a long time finally sprouting.

"Su Wanci".

He called her by her full name.

Su Wanci's breath caught in her throat for a moment.

He rarely called her by her full name; he usually used terms like "feed," "you," or "that person."

He only calls her "Su Wanci" when he's really serious.

She had known him for eighteen years, and the number of times he had called her by her full name could be counted on one hand.

"Um."

"When you posted that video, did you ever think that you were using your account to tell the whole world—"

"What did you say?"

"You are the lotus, you are the goddess of the Luo River, you are the person in every poem I write."

Su Wanci's tears fell again. But this time, she cried while smiling.

She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, then rubbed them again, but they weren't clean.

She simply stopped wiping her eyes and just looked at him with red eyes.

"That's me."

She said it softly, but with great determination.

"I am who I am. The lotus you wrote about is me, the goddess of the Luo River you wrote about is me, every poem you wrote, every essay you composed, every line 'graceful as a startled swan, lithe as a swimming dragon,' every line 'rising from the mud unsullied,' is about me. Do you dare say it isn't me?"

Chen Mo looked at her for three seconds.

Then he smiled, a beautiful smile, as beautiful as the springtime of West Lake.

"Yes, it's all because of you."

Su Wanci cried even harder, but the corners of her mouth turned up very high.

She was like a little bird that had been soaked by the rain but was still desperately flapping its wings, both disheveled and beautiful.

"Chen Mo, I want to go to Leifeng Pagoda."

"Now?"

"Yes, I'll go now. I want to see where Bai Suzhen was imprisoned and tell her—you don't need to wait a thousand years, I can't wait that long."

Chen Mo looked at her.

Sunlight streamed in through the window.

It fell on her, on her hair, and into her eyes.

She was glowing in the sunlight.

Like someone who stepped out of a painting.

"Let's go."

He stood up and extended his hand to her.

Su Wanci looked at the hand, hesitated for a second, and then placed her own hand on it.

His palms were warm, warmer than the water of West Lake, warmer than the May sunshine.

She held on tightly, not wanting to let go.