I'm sorry, but your fiancé loves me.

Chi Qiusheng has a secret.

He kept this secret for many years: it was a grand yet silent unrequited love that once existed in his youth.

He first met her in the summer shortly after they were divided into different classes in their second year of high school.

He had a cold that day, but he couldn't take leave from the physical education exam. He dragged his sick body to finish the 1,000-meter race and sat on the grass by the track with a few friends, panting.

The bottled water that everyone in the class received disappeared sometime ago. It was probably left somewhere carelessly before we ran away and someone took it.

His throat was sore and dry, his lips were stuck together, and his head was buzzing.

Just as he was struggling to sit up, supporting himself on his knees, a hand reached out and placed a bottle of water on the grass next to him.

The bottle was full, and the cap was still sealed, reflecting a small patch of light in the sunlight.

He looked up, only to catch a glimpse of a back view.

He wore a blue and white school uniform, his hair was cut very short, revealing a section of the back of his neck, and he walked with his head slightly lowered and his steps were very fast. She didn't recognize him, but casually gave him a bottle of water, perhaps because she saw that he was in too much pain.

He couldn't see her face clearly, but thirsty, he unscrewed the bottle of water and took two gulps. As the icy liquid slid down his throat, he suddenly felt that his throat didn't hurt so much anymore.

He sat on the grass looking in that direction, but she had already walked far away, blending into the crowd by the playground and quickly disappearing from sight.

That night, he lay in bed, his mind replaying that figure.

He couldn't recall saying "thank you" to her; he probably hadn't—she put down the water and turned away, giving him no chance to speak.

Later, he started to notice her.

She always walked with her head down, her bangs were long and hung down to cover most of her face, and her glasses frames were thick, making her already small face look even smaller.

She doesn't like to talk.

During breaks, while other girls would gather in twos and threes to chat, she would usually sit alone in her seat with a book or a test paper spread out in front of her, her pen gripped tightly, writing very quickly.

But her grades were excellent; in every monthly exam, midterm, and final exam, her name was always among the top five in her grade.

She has a very strong imbalance in her subjects; she almost always gets full marks in math and physics, and while her English is slightly weaker, it's still enough to leave most people far behind.

She spoke very softly, and it was hard to hear her from a distance, but you could sense that she would furrow her brow slightly when she was thinking, and her eyes behind her glasses were very bright.

He discovered something contradictory about her.

She always shrinks to the smallest in a crowd, wishing no one could see her, but her achievements prevent her from truly disappearing.

Every time exam results were released, her name was prominently displayed, and everyone knew that the silent, unspoken girl was among the top three in the grade.

He also discovered that she didn't eat much at lunchtime, but after school, she would share the leftover bread with the stray cats near the school.

He began to think she was special.

He couldn't quite put his finger on what made her special—perhaps it was her indifference to the outside world, her quiet kindness, or the incomprehensible solution she wrote for the last big question on her math exam.

He began to get closer to her, intentionally or unintentionally.

After the monthly exam, he changed seats and chose a seat behind her in the same row so that he could see the back of her head when he looked up.

When she writes, her shoulders shrug slightly. When she encounters a difficult problem, she will stop and bite the pen cap. Once she figures it out, she will continue writing.

Sometimes she would go to the teacher's office to ask questions, and he would also choose that time to go, pretending to be handing in the whole class's homework.

When he stood at the office door, he saw her standing next to the math teacher, pointing to a question on the test paper and asking something.

She listened attentively when the math teacher was lecturing, occasionally nodding and then asking a follow-up question based on what the teacher said.

She rarely speaks, so he knows her voice mainly from the office when he hears her asking the teacher questions. Her voice is actually very pleasant and clear.

After that, he added her on QQ. When he sent the verification message, he thought for a long time about what to write, and finally only wrote two words: Hello.

She passed.

Then they fell into a long silence.

He opened her chat window many times, typed a few lines and then deleted them, feeling that nothing he said was quite right—asking her if she had finished her homework would be too stupid.

He asked her why she was unhappy today. What right did he have to ask that?

Asking her what her plans were for the weekend was too abrupt; they hadn't even officially met.

In the end, he only sent one message: "I am Chi Qiusheng."

She replied with a "hello".

Then there is no more.

They would occasionally chat on QQ, mostly about everyday topics, such as how their exams went or whether there was another way to solve the last question on the test.

She would reply to every message, and he noticed that she had a typing habit of adding a period to the end of every sentence.

He felt that he was probably trapped by her habit, and after that, he started to do the same when he sent messages, adding a period to everything he sent.

He began to pay attention to every detail related to her: she liked to use a blue ballpoint pen on her scratch paper, and she would go to the water dispenser at the end of the corridor to get water every afternoon after the second period...

He didn't know if this counted as liking someone.

But he knew that during the most stressful period of his exam preparation, he would check her profile picture on QQ every night after he got home.

If her profile picture is lit up, he feels the night isn't so hard to endure.

If her profile picture is grayed out, he'll wonder if she went to bed early today, or if she did another test in the classroom.

He felt that she liked him too, and every now and then she would put chocolates in his drawer. She didn't want him to find out, but he really wanted to say thank you.

He originally planned to confess to her after the college entrance examination, as he wanted to know her better. Or perhaps, he wasn't sure what he wanted to say, but he had a lot to say.

But he felt that as long as he could see her once, sit across from her and talk to her, he could probably say everything he wanted to say.

But after the college entrance exam, she disappeared.

He first sent her a message on QQ, but she didn't reply.

Two days later, when she sent it again, a red exclamation mark popped up in the chat box—she had deleted him.

He found her number in the class group chat, clicked on it, and found that her profile picture had changed to the default gray figure, and her profile page was blank.

He went to the school and learned from the teacher that she had applied to universities in other provinces.

He asked her classmate, who scratched his head and said that she seemed to have changed her phone number and hadn't contacted anyone in the class.

She evaporated like a drop of water in the summer heat, leaving no trace.

Chi Qiusheng was admitted to the best university in the province. He met many people and experienced many things, but the girl with thick-rimmed glasses and bangs covering most of her face always remained curled up in a corner of his heart.

He would occasionally think of her late at night, remember the bottle of water she placed beside him, and the slight shrug of her shoulders as she wrote...

Sometimes he felt ridiculous—he had barely spoken a few words to her, yet he had kept her in his heart for so many years.

But some things are just hard to explain.

Just like now, she's squatting on the floor of his living room, holding the photo that fell out of the notebook in her hand.

She looked up at him, her eyes first filled with confusion, then shock, and finally an emotion he couldn't quite understand.

He didn't move.

He stood there, looking down at her, watching her squat there—she was completely different from the girl in the blue and white school uniform from high school.

Her hair had grown much longer, falling over her shoulders. She was no longer wearing glasses, and her entire face was fair and beautiful.

But in that instant, as she was flipping through the scrapbook and before she knelt down to pick up the photo, he suddenly saw the woman he used to know.

Those slightly drooping eyelids and uncertain gaze were exactly the same as the posture she had displayed countless times when sitting in the corner of the classroom.

As he stood there, he suddenly felt that these years hadn't been that long.