Chapter 2

The first time I met Han Ze was on a similar rainy day.

The school was hosting a school sports meeting, and volunteers received a fifty yuan stipend per day, so I signed up.

Before the three-thousand-meter race, it suddenly started to rain.

I clutched the list and other documents to my chest, rushing to the edge of the field to take shelter under the eaves.

Suddenly, a girl walked over and discreetly slipped something into my pocket.

“Senior sister, your pants… have blood,” she whispered in my ear, then pointed behind her, “A classmate over there asked me to give it to you.”

Following her finger, through the hazy curtain of rain, I met Han Ze’s bright gaze.

The subsequent chats and meetings went smoothly.

Han Ze was different from me; he seemed to have grown up in a happy and affluent family, never having faced any hardships, with a personality both innocent and willful, expressing his feelings straightforwardly and passionately.

When he confessed to me, he prepared a large bouquet of roses, exactly one hundred.

“Xia Min, you’re one in a hundred.”

Han Ze stuffed the roses into my arms, his eyes shining brightly as he looked at me.

“That day on the field, it was raining, and among all those people, I saw you at a glance.”

I held the bouquet, silent for a moment, and softly asked, “Why did you have a sanitary napkin with you?”

He hesitated, then lowered his head somewhat embarrassedly, “Not usually… it was just a coincidence that day.”

At the time, I thought his love was sincere and passionate, capable of smoothing any wrinkles in my heart.

But in reality, another interpretation of innocence and willfulness is immaturity and selfishness.

In the third month of being together, because my part-time job temporarily changed shifts and I couldn’t make it to our date, Han Ze took the movie tickets he had bought and went to see the film with another girl, even posting it on Moments.

After my night shift, it was already six in the morning. I dragged my weary body to stand under his dormitory building, watching the golden light of the sunrise slowly spread across the sky.

When the sky was fully bright, I finally saw Han Ze.

“It was my fault for canceling last minute yesterday,” I murmured, my voice a bit hoarse, “But you shouldn’t have taken another girl to the movie. It makes me unhappy.”

He smirked, pulling me into a tight embrace, then said, “There was no other girl; I just grabbed a passerby for the photo.”

“I brought you breakfast, go back and rest.”

Later, such incidents became more frequent.

Whenever Han Ze and I had a disagreement, he would deliberately find someone to annoy me, forcing me to be the first to apologize, and then he’d come to act cute, and the matter would pass.

Ultimately, I had always received so little that when I grasped even a sliver of love, I couldn’t bear to let go.

I always hoped that one day he would grow up, become sensible, and the love I nurtured would yield returns.

But in the end, it was just my wishful thinking.