Ever since his calls to Xu Tangcheng began to frequently not get through, Yi Zhe started wondering if the way he was being too tense and naggy. Afraid of disturbing Xu Tangcheng's daily studies and work, he stopped calling and only sent occasional text messages reminding him to eat. Sometimes, Xu Tangcheng replied very quickly; sometimes, a long time would pass before he replied, saying that he had already eaten much earlier and that he had been making a report to his teacher so he didn't look at his phone.

Yi Zhe did not pay much heed to the delay in the replies all this while. His understanding of the situation was shallow and simple, nothing more than this: a while ago, Xu Tangcheng had rested for a few days which was forcing him to work harder now so that he could finish what he needed to finish before the winter vacation. The most Yi Zhe could think of was to send him a message: Is there anything I can help you with?

It was only on that day, when they went to the supermarket together again, that he finally knew. That this was actually avoidance.

Even though it was already the twentieth of the last month of the traditional calendar, the temperature suddenly went up a few degrees for some unknown reason. It was quite warm and there was also no wind. Yi Zhe thought that this weather was very suitable for taking a walk outside, especially since Xu Tangcheng's body was rather weak and he had also been sitting in a lab for consecutive days, almost a week now. It really wasn't good for his health. After planning it out, Yi Zhe went over to the lab to wait for Xu Tangcheng when it was nearly time for lunch.

He stood at the door, bending his body to look inside. He saw Xu Tangcheng sitting at the row nearest the wall, earphones in his ears, looking seriously at his computer screen. A guy next to him nudged him and Xu Tangcheng immediately pulled his earphones out. The guy pointed at his own screen and said something. Xu Tangcheng leaned over and took his mouse.

"Friend, who are you looking for?" A girl who had just come back from getting a mug of hot water saw him and asked kindly.

Yi Zhe said Xu Tangcheng's name and the girl nodded. "I'll help you call him," she said considerately.

His gaze followed the girl's back and he saw Xu Tangcheng look at him. Before Yi Zhe could smile at him, Xu Tangcheng was already standing up and tidying the things at his spot.

"What's the matter?"

The corridor was very quiet. Xu Tangcheng's voice sounded very near. Yi Zhe shuffled his feet and brought out the excuse he had prepared.

"I want to go to the supermarket to buy some things. Do you want to come with me?"

Xu Tangcheng looked at him. He slowly wound up the earphone cord in his hands.

Yi Zhe's eyes followed the winding of the cord. When the neat circle looped around Xu Tangcheng's fingers and was held in that hand, he finally realised that this scene was very familiar.

The corners of his lips curved up. He was unaware of it himself but Xu Tangcheng saw it clearly.

"I… The lab…"

Xu Tangcheng's first reaction was to turn him down. But when he opened his mouth, he realised that he just could not give voice to a lie to deceive him. He gripped the earphones in his hand and met Yi Zhe's hopeful gaze. In the end, he said, "Let's go. I don't have anything on anyway."

When he thought back on it later, that first compromise was probably what was called being soft-hearted. And being soft-hearted was more like an ending written right at the beginning.

At that time, he could not bring himself to deceive him; in the end, he also could not deceive himself.

When they reached the supermarket, as before, he pushed the shopping cart, he walked by the side.

Coming here was originally just an excuse for Yi Zhe to go out with Xu Tangcheng. Yi Zhe didn't actually have anything that he really needed. The two of them made a round of the place and all they threw into the shopping cart was a few packets of snacks and a tube of toothpaste.

Yi Zhe looked at Xu Tangcheng and asked, "Do you need to get anything?"

"Nope." Xu Tangcheng shook his head. "I'll be going home in a couple of days. I don't need to get anything."

They paid and left. At the area right by the exit was a Dao Xiang Cun pastry shop. Yi Zhe noticed that Xu Tangcheng was taking a few extra glances at it so he asked if he wanted to get anything from there. But Xu Tangcheng again shook his head and said no.

At this point, Yi Zhe felt that it was rather odd. In the past, they had come to the supermarket together too and Xu Tangcheng had liked to buy snacks like plum candy and biscuits. But today, he hadn't bought anything. Even if he was going home, Yi Zhe didn't think he needed to do this. He mulled over it for a while, then leaned slightly towards Xu Tangcheng and asked, "Are you not feeling well again?"

Xu Tangcheng was startled. "No, I'm fine."

Yi Zhe studied him doubtfully before nodding with some reluctance. Xu Tangcheng wanted to explain further, then recalled something and continued to maintain his silence.

In the time it took for this short exchange, they passed Dao Xiang Cun. Yi Zhe paused, took a step back, and peeked through the glass window. "I've never had Dao Xiang Cun before. Is it good?"

"Not bad. I think the green tea pastry is pretty good. I don't have much of an opinion on the rest."

"Let's buy some then."

All the pastries were displayed behind the window. There were many grids arranged in layers rising from the ground.

Yi Zhe bent down, his eyes making a sweep of the display. He found the green tea pastry Xu Tangcheng mentioned. But when he turned back, wanting to confirm if that was the right one, he saw that Xu Tangcheng was staring fixedly at him from behind.

"What's the matter?"

He straightened up unconsciously, but couldn't move his gaze away from those eyes. On the other side of the window, the boss was asking him which pastry he wanted but for some reason, he was suddenly losing his head. By the time he came back to himself, Xu Tangcheng was already telling the boss in a soft voice that they wanted five pieces of green tea pastries.

When he looked at Xu Tangcheng again, that complicated gaze from just now seemed to have been a hallucination.

According to Yi Zhe's original plan, it would be noon after shopping at the supermarket, just the right time for him to say to Xu Tangcheng that they might as well grab lunch. He had already picked out a shop specialising in shrimp dumplings and wontons earlier on. According to the girls in his class, the taste was very fresh.

In the past, it had always been Xu Tangcheng bringing him around to all sorts of tasty places to eat. This was the first time he discovered a place, then brought him there.

They found a table near a corner and ordered a portion of shrimp dumplings, a portion of wontons, two side dishes and a portion of salted egg yolk custard buns. After the server left, Yi Zhe opened the bag containing the green tea pastries. He fished one out and passed it to Xu Tangcheng.

Xu Tangcheng shook his head lightly, looking at him. "No thanks."

"Why not?" Yi Zhe did not put it down. "I think your appetite still isn't very good."

Xu Tangcheng naturally knew that the issue wasn't with his appetite but when he explained to Yi Zhe, he avoided the main point and said that he actually only liked to eat the pastry shell. The filling was too sweet, he didn't like it.

"Then, just eat the shell." Opposite him, Yi Zhe smiled. "It's just nice. You can bite off the edges first, I'll eat the rest."

Actually, there wasn't much point to those words. Xu Tangcheng recalled that it seemed to have started some time after Yi Zhe came to university—when they ate together, the food that Xu Tangcheng couldn't eat or couldn't finish eating, Yi Zhe would always pull them over to himself and eat them. Just like that day when he sent Yi Zhe to the train station and they had breakfast—Yi Zhe had eaten very slowly because he was waiting for Xu Tangcheng to finish eating. He had even made a joke, saying that there was indeed a reason for the difference in their heights.

In the past, he had not thought much of it. Now that he was thinking about it, it really did seem rather intimate.

Yi Zhe wasn't concealing himself flawlessly. Xu Tangcheng could only blame himself for gradually getting used to this kind of rhythm between them, without the least bit of awareness of why Yi Zhe would act this way.

In the end, he still shook his head, turning down the person who had been waiting for his response the whole time.

"No need. You go ahead and eat."

This was the first time they were eating outside ever since Xu Tangcheng fell sick. Yi Zhe guessed that it might be because they have not gone out to eat together for too long, that was why the mood throughout the meal was rather strange.

The whole time, he was busy pondering what on earth was wrong but still failed to come up with anything. It was only when they were nearly done eating and he asked Xu Tangcheng when he was going home, yet Xu Tangcheng seemed to not hear him and only kept staring at his bowl without giving him any kind of response at all, that Yi Zhe finally understood—the awkwardness during this meal was because Xu Tangcheng was speaking very little.

Yi Zhe then guessed many reasons. He guessed that perhaps Xu Tangcheng was not in a good mood, perhaps there was too much unfinished work at the lab, perhaps he had encountered something that required him to exhaust his mind. Despite guessing so many reasons, he never guessed that it could be due to himself. After all, he was already doing all he could to repress that tiny thought in his heart, trying to make it so that when he was with him, all he had was honest concern.

No matter how Yi Zhe tried to find something to talk about that would make Xu Tangcheng happier, it didn't seem to work. Xu Tangcheng would respond to him like he had in the past, would casually chat with him, but Yi Zhe still felt that something was not quite right. In the end, this meal came to an end in a mood that was still a little awkward.

When the two of them walked to the entrance, Xu Tangcheng was the one in front. But out of habit, Yi Zhe reached past him to help him push open the door and their hands bumped into each other at the door handle.

It wasn't a big deal but unexpectedly, Xu Tangcheng immediately withdrew his hand. The speed at which he avoided him and the expression on his face made Yi Zhe freeze on the spot for a moment.

It was obviously an instinctive movement. And Xu Tangcheng had not been like that in the past.

The door was not pushed open. Xu Tangcheng was trapped in the middle.

Avoidance, silence. This chain of not-quite-rights made Yi Zhe suddenly have a very scary guess. But even by the time the two of them returned to campus, both in their own silence, he still had not dared verify his guess. An immense feeling of panic enveloped him, he couldn't even open his mouth again.

"I heard that you're withdrawing from the student council?"

They had just entered the campus gates when Xu Tangcheng suddenly asked him this.

"Yeah." Yi Zhe was still distracted and his answer was overly honest. "I did."

"Why?"

Xu Tangcheng was trying to turn the way they interacted with each other back to how it had been in the past but when the question was out of his mouth, he realised that he had said that single word too stiffly and that even his expression was like an examiner doing a routine questioning. Ultimately, he wasn't so capable that he could calmly put on an act in front of Yi Zhe.

But Yi Zhe was completely not in the right frame of mind to pay attention to these little details. His breathing was unsteady and his answer to the question was broken, illogical.

"I can't get used to them, can't get used to the way they… It's just, it's quite pointless." Yi Zhe realised that he had not said any concrete reason. He pulled himself together and continued to say, "The teacher only wants everyone to nod and bow to them, and there are also some people that I don't…"

He kept the last word in his mouth. Because it was too sensitive and evoked an association that made him so flustered that his limbs felt weak.

There are also some people that I don't like.

The journey back that day seemed like a nightmare. He knew that Xu Tangcheng must have noticed and was just pretending that he didn't know.

During the last few days before vacation, he didn't look for Xu Tangcheng. He didn't even know when Xu Tangcheng was leaving campus or when he was going home. The peak travel season for Spring Festival had already begun earlier and it was impossible to get train tickets home now. Yi Zhe had planned it all out; he would go to the lab a few days later to secretly take a look, and if Xu Tangcheng had left, he would go to the transport hub to line up for the long-distance bus.

But before he could go to secretly take a look, Lu Ming suddenly asked in the student council group chat whether or not there were any juniors still on campus, saying that they should go out and have a meal together before leaving, and that he would foot the bill. There were immediately quite a few people in the group calling him a hypocrite for waiting until almost everyone had left before saying that he would treat them. Yi Zhe took a glance and closed the QQ window, pretending that he had not seen it and not replying. But Lu Ming possessed remarkable abilities and somehow found out that he was still on campus. He very quickly started a private chat with Yi Zhe, telling him that he must join them even though he was withdrawing. In the end, he also brought up something: he had invited Xu Tangcheng too.

Yi Zhe had already refused twice but after Lu Ming brought out "Xu Tangcheng," Yi Zhe stared at the screen in a daze for a long while. In the end, he typed one word.

Okay.

He closed his laptop. He had no choice but to confront a question he had been avoiding the whole time—from that day on, Xu Tangcheng had not contacted him on his own volition.

The green tea pastries he bought that day were still completely untouched. Yi Zhe hadn't eaten them. He did not dare to.