I'm in Senior Year, and the System Says I'm Going on a Blind Date with My Childhood Sweetheart

Shen Yuan stared at the milk candy before him, clearly seeing the fine grains of rice paper stuck to the second knuckle of Li Zhi’s index finger.

The sight of that shimmering white fingertip made his temples throb.

For a moment, Shen Yuan couldn’t even tell which one was the real milk candy.

Against the background noise of Zhuo Peipei and He Zhiyu gasping, the boy instinctively opened his mouth.

"Hey... what, what are you doing? You, trying to... trying to bribe an official with this? What official could possibly resist—"

The rest of Shen Yuan’s sentence dissolved into the subtle sensation of rice paper touching his lower lip.

The hum of the central air conditioner overhead, and even the chirping of cicadas outside the window, seemed to stop as if someone had hit a pause button.

"This is the transport fee. The transport fee for that one milk candy."

Hearing Li Zhi’s words, Shen Yuan subconsciously put the candy in his mouth.

As the sweetness bloomed between his lips and teeth, Shen Yuan hastily bit down. His teeth tore at the candy with such force that it seemed to let out a faint, mournful cry.

The boy’s knuckles, braced against the edge of the desk, suddenly turned white. The cool air from the conditioner swept across the back of his neck, raising a fine sheen of sweat.

He heard his own ragged swallows mingling with the crisp crackle of the candy shell. The thick, milky aroma seemed to brew into a syrupy honey in his mouth, sealing away the teasing remark he had left unfinished.

But the cloying creaminess slid down his throat and into his chest, striking a searing echo in the chambers of his heart.

The teasing smirk that had been playing on his lips was now frozen in place. Shen Yuan felt his ear tips flushing and burning at a visible rate.

Suddenly, Shen Yuan caught Zhuo Peipei and He Zhiyu staring at him blankly out of the corner of his eye.

As if a switch had been flipped, the boy shot bolt upright, as if electrocuted. He pressed his tongue against the candy, creating an awkward bulge in his cheek, trying to hide his ragged breathing with the motion of chewing.

In the row ahead of them, Zhuo Peipei and He Zhiyu’s health bars were completely empty.

’So satisfying.’

They hadn’t gotten to see Shen Yuan give Li Zhi candy, but they saw Li Zhi feed Shen Yuan candy!!

It was just like they always said—Shen Yuan wasn’t important!!

Getting a sweet moment from Zhizhi was the ultimate treat!!

He Zhiyu now felt like she had to scrap the entire outline she’d come up with for "Defend and Steal".

’After seeing this, how could I possibly stick with my original idea?’

’No, no, I have to scrap it and start over!’

After feeding Shen Yuan, Li Zhi lowered her gaze, staring at the blue and white candy wrapper in her palm.

The blush hidden by her hair on the tips of the beautiful girl’s ears hadn’t yet faded, but she was already calmly plucking another milk candy.

The crisp crinkle of the wrapper startled the frozen air back to life.

Tiny flakes of rice paper fluttered from between her fingers like the first snow, gathering like specks of white frost on the edge of her desk.

Shen Yuan watched, wide-eyed, as the beautiful girl placed the second milk candy in her mouth.

Her shimmering white index finger and thumb held the candy as she brought it to her lips. As her fingertips pressed into her full cupid’s bow, tiny specks of rice paper from the candy’s coating stuck to the seam of her lips.

Li Zhi subconsciously ran the tip of her tongue over the rice paper on her lips, removing the sticky feeling.

Her tongue pushed the milk candy from her left cheek to her right, her glistening cupid’s bow pursing slightly in the cool air.

Li Zhi suddenly turned her head to look at Shen Yuan, only to find him gazing at her with a burning intensity.

The moment their eyes met, the white noise from the air conditioner vent suddenly warped. The stringy sensation of the candy sticking to their molars seemed to become tangible, pulling the arm’s-length distance between them taut with fine electric currents.

"SNAP."

The lead in He Zhiyu’s mechanical pencil suddenly broke, the flying graphite dust scattering in the sunlight.

Zhuo Peipei dug her fingers hard into her own thigh.

"This is killing me, this is killing me..."

He Zhiyu used a textbook to hide the uncontrollable grin spreading across her face.

And beside her, Zhuo Peipei also couldn’t handle the cloyingly sweet scene before her.

In Zhuo Peipei’s eyes, the milk candies in their mouths had achieved some kind of synchronized frequency!

Zhuo Peipei was suddenly reminded of a saying.

—To write of love, you cannot just write "love."

You must write of the shiver in a throat caught by a strand of hair as moonlight flows over black satin; you must write of the eighteenth-floor secret behind the curtains, of a stiletto heel shattering the glazed silence.

—To write of love, you cannot just write "love."

You must write of the sound of silence swelling like a tide in the darkness, of breath searing the side of a neck like a lit fuse; you must write of fingertips hovering in strands of hair, caught in a dilemma, of a heartbeat roaring louder than the eve of an atomic bomb’s detonation.

—To write of love, you cannot just write "love."

You must write of the tremor as rice paper melts between teeth, of a 37-degree sweetness suspended at the edge of a breath; you must write of the snap of a mechanical pencil’s lead, of the synchronized frequency of milk candies between lips and teeth.