The rain hammered against the brick surface of the bluestone alley, like countless fine iron nails pounding upon the world.
Lin Zhixia sat slumped in the puddles, her school bag’s side pocket torn open, textbooks and workbooks soaking in the murky water.
Her phone screen was shattered into a spiderweb, still flickering with one last weak glimmer of light.
Her uniform skirt clung to her legs, and the icy rainwater trickled down from her hair ends into her neck, stinging so sharply it made her shiver.
“Tsk, not bad looking, are you?
What’s the matter, walking home alone?”
The lead thug crouched down, using the tip of his shoe to tilt up her chin, his breath reeking of alcohol.
“Leave the phone, forget the bag too.
How about big brother here buys you a meal?”
She bit her lip.
She didn’t cry, nor did she beg for mercy.
She knew it was useless.
This alley was desolate, the streetlights had been broken for over a year—no one would pass by.
She just stared fixedly at those three leering faces, her nails digging into her palms, leaving behind crescent-shaped bloody marks.
“Let her go.”
The voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the curtain of rain like a blade.
All three thugs turned at once.
Gu Chen stood at the mouth of the alley, his school uniform soaked through and clinging to his frame, his hair dripping water, his face cold as ice in the dim light.
He wasn’t holding anything—not even an umbrella.
“Well, well, if it isn’t our grade’s aloof academic god,” one thug sneered.
“Playing the hero?
You think you’ve got what it takes?
Looking for a beating, are you?”
Gu Chen didn’t answer.
He walked in step by step, his leather shoes splashing through puddles, sending up muddy water.
He stopped in front of Lin Zhixia, crouched down, and shrugged off his school jacket—that faded, worn-out jacket with a patch stitched on the left cuff—and gently wrapped it around her.
His movements were so tender, as if he were afraid of breaking something fragile.
“Scram.”
He finally spoke, his voice low, as if ground out from the depths of his throat.
The thugs froze for a moment, then burst into jeering laughter.
“Who do you think you’re fooling?
You dare lay a finger on us?”
Before the words had faded, the first thug’s fist was already flying toward Gu Chen’s face.
Gu Chen didn’t dodge.
The fist smashed into his left cheek.
He merely tilted his head slightly, a single drop of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, trickling down his jaw and into the rain.
He still didn’t speak.
Instead, he reached out, grabbed the thug’s wrist in a vice-like grip, and twisted it sharply—the crisp crack of dislocating bone cut through the rain, chillingly distinct.
The second thug grabbed a brick and swung it at his back.
He let out a muffled grunt, his body swaying, but he didn’t fall.
Instead, he spun around and landed a precise side kick to the thug’s knee.
The third thug lunged from behind, and Gu Chen twisted sharply, taking the elbow strike squarely on his shoulder.
The impact sent him stumbling back two steps, a distinct dull thud sounding from his ribs.
He didn’t fight back.
Not once.
He just used his body, inch by inch, to shield Lin Zhixia behind him.
Like a silent wall, unmoved by wind or rain.
Lin Zhixia looked up.
Rain blurred her vision, but she could still see clearly—the muscles on the side of his face were taut, veins bulging at his temples, blood from his lip mingling with rain as it streamed down.
Yet those eyes—cold as the bottom of a winter lake—held no anger, no fear, not even the faintest ripple of emotion.
She heard her own teeth chattering.
“Damn, this bastard’s really insane,” one thug cursed, rubbing his wrist.
“Let’s go.
No point wasting time on a lunatic.”
The three swore under their breath as they retreated, their figures quickly swallowed by the curtain of rain.
Only the sound of rain remained in the alley, along with the ragged breathing of the two of them.
Lin Zhixia trembled, wanting to speak, but her throat felt as though it had been scraped raw with sandpaper.
She wanted to ask if it hurt, wanted to ask why, wanted to ask… why did you save me?
But Gu Chen had already stood up.
He didn’t spare her a single glance.
He simply tugged gently at that jacket, now stained with mud and blood, making sure it was wrapped tighter around her.
Then he turned and walked away.
“Gu Chen!”
She finally managed to cry out, her voice hoarse.
“You… wait!”
His steps faltered, but he didn’t look back.
“Just… just say something!”
She scrambled to her feet, stumbled, and fell back to her knees in the water.
“Why… why did you save me?
Aren’t you… aren’t you the one who hates me the most?”
He finally stopped.
The rain grew heavier.
With his back to her, his shoulders rose and fell slightly, as if suppressing something.
A few seconds later, he spoke slowly, his voice so low it was almost drowned out by the rain:
“…Don’t tell anyone.”
Then he kept walking.
No turning back.
No explanation.
No comfort.
Lin Zhixia chased after him for two steps, slipped, and crashed hard onto the wet ground.
She watched helplessly as his silhouette—that black uniform—grew fainter in the rain, until finally, it disappeared completely into the mist at the end of the alley.
She sat slumped on the ground, her whole body frozen, yet feeling something in her chest silently cracking open.
That jacket still wrapped around her, carrying his warmth, and a faint scent that belonged to him—soap, rust, and a hint of medicinal ointment.
She looked down and noticed a slip of paper in the inner pocket, softened by the rain.
Trembling, she pulled it out and unfolded it.
The handwriting was neat, as if printed:
Don’t tell anyone.
She clenched the paper tightly, her knuckles turning white.
The rain kept falling.
And yet, she suddenly felt that the world, from this day on, was different.
That night, Lin Zhixia soaked in a hot bath for three hours before she could finally drive the chill from her bones.
She sat at her desk, staring at that rain-wrinkled note, reading it over and over again.
She remembered the start of her first year of high school, when Gu Chen first sat diagonally behind her.
She had ranked first in the grade for math and was called out by the teacher for praise, the whole class applauding.
She turned around, wanting to smile, but met his cold gaze instead—he was looking down at his book, not even bothering to lift an eyelid.
From that day on, she hated him.
She hated his perpetual silence.
She hated that he always kept to himself.
She hated that he wouldn’t even speak to anyone when it was his turn for classroom duty.
She even wrote in her diary: “Someone like Gu Chen is just wasting air by being alive.”
But now…
She touched her still-flushed cheeks, remembering every punch he had taken for her, remembering the blood at the corner of his mouth, remembering those words he said as he turned away—”Don’t tell anyone.”
Why?
Why did he save her?
Why didn’t he dare let her know?
She opened her diary, her pen tip hovering over the page, unmoving for a long time.
Finally, she wrote:
What exactly is he afraid of?
The next morning, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, Lin Zhixia wheeled her bicycle out to go to school.
But she found the chain had been readjusted until it ran perfectly smooth, the brake pads replaced with new ones.
And in the basket, there was a cup of warm milk.
A sticky note was attached to the paper cup, the handwriting neat:
Don’t drink anything cold. Your stomach will hurt.
She stood frozen in place.
She recognized that handwriting.
It was Gu Chen’s.
She snapped her head up and looked all around—there was no one there.
Only the morning breeze rustling through the treetops, whispering softly.
She gripped the milk cup, her fingertips burning.
During class break that day, she pretended to walk casually past Gu Chen’s desk.
He wasn’t there. His seat was empty.
She crouched down, pretending to pick up an eraser, and stealthily opened his textbook—that book titled Psychological Trauma and Self-Isolation lay quietly at the corner of his desk.
On a folded page, a line of pencil annotation pierced her vision like a fine needle:
When she cries, she looks like a paper kite drenched in rain.
She snapped the book shut, her heart pounding like a drum.
After school, she deliberately took the long way, walking from the other end of that rainy alley.
Beneath the old locust tree at the alley’s entrance, Gu Chen stood in the shadows, a piece of paper clutched in his hand, its edges crumpled from being squeezed too tightly.
His gaze was fixed on her retreating figure, unmoving.
She saw him.
He saw her too.
But she didn’t look back.
She hurried away, her steps growing faster and faster, until she broke into a run, the wind filling her ears, drowning out the sound of her heart threatening to leap from her chest.
That night, she opened her diary and added another line beneath the words “What exactly is he afraid of?”:
He was clearly waiting for me to turn around, but he didn’t dare hand over that piece of paper.
What she didn’t know was that at that very moment, Gu Chen was sitting on the steps outside the back door of the classroom, and that piece of paper in his hand was an apology letter he had spent the entire night writing.
At the end of the letter, he had written:
I shouldn’t have hated you.
But in the end, he never dared tear out that page and hand it to her.
He simply folded the paper gently and tucked it into his pocket.
The rain came again.
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