I'm sorry, but your fiancé loves me.

Chi Qiusheng remained the same as before, silently protecting her.

He would regularly go to Yun Muqian's house to clean for her. After a while, Yun Muqian simply gave him her house key.

That morning, Yun Muqian was awakened by the sunlight. The curtains were not drawn tightly, and a narrow beam of light pierced through the gap, landing right on her eyelids.

She frowned, turned over, her consciousness still hovering on the thin membrane between dream and wakefulness, hazy and confused.

There was a faint lemon scent in the air, the smell of her usual floor cleaner.

She heard a rustling sound, like someone moving around not far away. A thought flashed through her mind—she was dreaming again.

Lately, she has been dreaming about high school frequently.

She dreamt of the classroom at the end of the corridor, the sycamore trees outside the window, and Chi Qiusheng sitting diagonally behind her. Sometimes the scenes in her dreams were so vivid that she could even smell the faint scent of laundry detergent on him.

"Don't move..."

She mumbled something indistinctly, as if grasping something in a dream, and reached forward, her fingertips touching a warm piece of fabric. She instinctively grabbed it and pulled it towards herself.

The person who had stopped moving paused for a moment.

Yun Muqian did not wake up.

She was trapped in a dream, her eyelids so heavy she could barely lift them, but the sensations were incredibly real—the texture of the fabric, the temperature of her body beneath it, and that faint, almost imperceptible breath.

She thought the dream was so wonderful that she didn't want to open her eyes.

"Let me tell you," she rubbed her face against the warm spot, her voice muffled and nasal from just waking up, "I dreamt about you again last night."

The person whose clothes were being held did not move.

"Do you know that my heart would race every time I walked past your desk in high school?"

Yun Muqian's voice was muffled by the fabric, as if she were talking in her sleep:

"You sit diagonally behind me, and I see you every time I turn around to hand in my homework. You rarely look up; you just quietly read or do your work. I think you're a really nice person, very quiet, unlike anyone else."

As she spoke, her fingers clenched even tighter, as if afraid that person would leave.

"Then one day during an exam, my pen ran out of ink. You didn't say a word, just put your own pen on the corner of my desk. I was so happy when I got home that day."

"I told my mom that a boy lent me a pen today, and she said, 'He just lent me a pen, why are you so happy?' I said, 'You don't understand.'"

She chuckled softly, "Later, I did many things you have no idea about. I wrote your name on the last page of my textbook, wrote it many times, and then, afraid someone would see it, I covered it all up with correction fluid."

"Every time you walk down the hallway, I pretend to look somewhere else, but after you've passed, I turn around to look at your back. You look especially good in your school uniform, but I think you'd look good in anything."

Her hand groped upwards along the hem of her clothes, as if searching for a more comfortable position.

"I wanted to tell you that back then. I thought about it many times. One time after school, I waited for you at the school gate for two hours. When you came out, there were other people walking with you, so I didn't dare to go over."

Yun Muqian was still sinking deeper into the swamp of dreams. She felt that today's dream was exceptionally real, so real that she could feel the rise and fall of the other person's chest as they breathed, one breath at a time, a little fast.

"Later I left, I changed everything, but every time I wake up in the middle of the night, I still think of you. I looked up information about you; they said you got into a very good university and are doing well now. I just thought, that's good, as long as you're doing well."

She was silent for a moment, then her voice trembled slightly with a sob.

"I had already thought I could stop thinking about you. But—"

Her voice trailed off, "I wish you were my boyfriend."

As soon as she said it, Yun Muqian finally realized something was wrong. It was too real. The temperature of the heating, the subtle sound of fabric rubbing together—she wouldn't be this clear in a dream.

She suddenly opened her eyes.

Her gaze focused for a moment, on the white ceiling and the lampshade above her head. Then she realized what she was resting on, something warm and undulating. She slowly lowered her head and found herself resting on someone's chest.

Her head rested on his chest, her hand still clutching the fabric of his T-shirt, her body almost half-lying on him. The other person sat on the floor, back against the edge of the bed, one leg propped up, the other stretched out, holding a mop in their hand.

The knuckles of that hand were white, as if it had been holding that position for a long time.

Yun Muqian slowly raised her head.

Chi Qiusheng.

He looked down at her, his expression indifferent, almost unchanged from how she remembered him in high school.

His features were handsome, his jawline sharp, and his hair was shorter than before, making him look more composed. His T-shirt was crumpled from her grip, and the chest area was smeared with her saliva.

But he didn't move; Yun Muqian's mind went blank.

Chi Qiusheng.

Chi Qiusheng in high school.

She screamed, jerked backward, and tumbled off the bed, rolling onto the floor with a dull thud. Lying on the floor, her hair disheveled, she stared up at the ceiling, thinking, "Dead, dead, dead, dead."

"You... what are you doing here!" Her voice exploded as she sat up, her face flushed red, from her ears all the way down to her neck.

Chi Qiusheng remained in that position. "I'll help you clean. You're sometimes too busy, and I worry you don't have time to tidy up the house."

Yun Muqian's mind was buzzing. She remembered this incident, and her face turned even redder. Her hair was a mess, and there were traces of her sleeping on her face. Just now, she had revealed all her secret crushes from the three years of high school.

"You're not fully awake," Chi Qiusheng said, his tone calm and even, as if he were the one who had just woken up. "You're talking in your sleep. I didn't hear anything."

"You heard that!" Yun Muqian screamed, then immediately covered her mouth and stared at him with wide eyes.

Chi Qiusheng remained silent for two seconds.

"Yes," he whispered, "I heard you."

Yun Muqian collapsed backward as if her bones had been removed, lying on her floor and covering her face with the blanket. "Don't look at me."

Her voice, muffled and buzzing from under the covers, said, "Don't look at me. Anyone who looks at me like this is doomed."

"It's fine."

Yun Muqian suddenly threw off the covers, revealing her eyes to look at him. He was sitting, with a mop handle resting on his knees, his gaze lowered to meet hers.

"You knew who I was all along?"

"right."

"Then why didn't you—" she choked, "why didn't you expose me?"

Chi Qiusheng thought for a moment and said, "You seem to not want anyone to know."

You heard everything I just said.

"I heard everything."

Yun Muqian took a deep breath, then another, as if mentally preparing herself. "So—" her voice was barely audible, "what did you think after hearing it?"

Chi Qiusheng was quiet for a while, and Yun Muqian's heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was going to jump out of her throat.

She felt that she had never been more nervous in her life than she was now, including the day she interviewed at Qin Qihan's company, and the day she deliberately asked Qin Qihan out to dinner for the first time, none of them could compare to this moment.

"I care about you, and I like you."

As soon as she said those words, Yun Muqian's eyes reddened instantly. She sat on the floor, looking up at him, her hair a mess, her face streaked with tears, looking utterly disheveled.

Chi Qiusheng glanced at her, reached out his hand, and gently brushed the messy strand of hair from her forehead behind her ear.

"Get up first," he said, "the ground is cold."

Yun Muqian didn't move. She reached out and grabbed the hem of his T-shirt.

"Don't go," she said, her voice hoarse. "Don't go, wait for me to catch my breath."

Chi Qiusheng looked down at her fingers clutching his clothes. "I'm not leaving."

She thought that things had come to this point, and her identity could no longer be hidden.

Fortunately, Chi Qiusheng likes her and favors her, and that's enough.