I’d never seen this girl before. She was thin, tall, with a pretty face and a sweet smile. She wore a crisp white dress.

  “Dongyu!”


  I ran over, hiding the cake behind me. When I came up to him, I asked him curiously, “Who is she?”


  Dongyu glanced at me, his face inexplicably tense. The girl glanced at me and introduced herself naturally, “You’re Dongyu’s sister, right?”


  “Yes, I am!”


  “How do you do!”


  She smiled and extended her hand to express her goodwill. “I’m Dongyu’s girlfriend. I’m in the same grade as him!”


  I sized her up with some surprise, obviously not believing her one-sided story, so that I didn’t immediately respond to her outstretched hand. Instead, I stared at her blankly, at a loss.

  “Lin Li, this is my sister, Xiachun.”


  Dongyu introduced her to me and said, “Xiachun, this is my girlfriend, Lin Li.”


  “Your… girlfriend?”


  I couldn’t believe it, so much so that my expression looked pathetic.

  Dongyu saw my sorry state and his expression started to show discomfort.

  Lin Li did not feel awkward at all. Instead, she smiled and said, “Am I… not liked by her?”


  Dongyu smiled and replied, “Of course not. She’s just a little shy.”


  Shy…


  Yes, I was afraid of strangers.

  Especially of this girlfriend who appeared out of the blue and caught me off-guard.

  Perhaps sensing that the atmosphere was getting too tense, Dongyu hurriedly said to her, “Let’s go upstairs first!”


  Then, he turned to me and said, “You should hurry upstairs and prepare the hotpot! Mom and Dad aren’t home tonight. You must keep this a secret!”


  He raised a finger to his lips and winked at me. I just stood there, stunned, as he went upstairs.

  I don’t know why I was so stubborn back then, standing there stupidly downstairs for so long.

  Perhaps I was wondering if Dongyu would come back down to look for me, if he realized after some time that I had not gone upstairs?

  He was such a meticulous person, could he tell that I was unhappy?

  He would coax me gently, as he had in the past, and then tell me — this was only a lie?

  I kept standing there like a fool and didn’t go upstairs until Su Qi arrived. He parked his bicycle and found me standing downstairs, motionless. He came over and patted me on the shoulder.

  “Why aren’t you going upstairs?”


  At his reminder, I snapped out of my daze and looked up at the sky. I didn’t realize, it was already dusk.

  I had actually stood there stupidly for two hours.

  He was half-amused, seeing that I was in such a daze with the cake in my hand. He took it from me. It was only then that I realized that my fingers were bleeding from the ribbon of the cake cutting into my flesh.

  “Let’s go upstairs, little fool.”


  Su Qi said, reaching out to take my hand.

  I immediately asked him, “Su Qi, does Dongyu have a girlfriend?”


  Su Qi didn’t look surprised. Instead, he asked matter-of-factly, “Don’t you already know? You even said Dongyu never hid anything from you. Didn’t he tell you about his girlfriend?”


  I shook my head and asked him, “How long have they been dating?”


  “About a month! Every night, they go home from school together.”


  “Oh,” I said, then realized why he’d been coming home so late after school recently.

  He had a girlfriend…


  I couldn’t quite accept this.

  Su Qi led me upstairs by the hand. When we entered the house, Dongyu was in the kitchen, preparing ingredients for the hot pot.