chapter 2-Always a Tie

The campus heartthrob rankings updated every Monday at noon.

No one knew who started them, and no one knew how the votes were counted—but everyone knew the results.

By twelve o’clock sharp, Lin Yu’s phone vibrated nonstop.

He didn’t even need to open the screen.

“Still first place?” someone asked from the back of the classroom.

“Correction,” another voice chimed in. “Still tied for first.”

Lin Yu finally glanced down. Just as expected.

Rank 1: Lin Yu — Shen Yi (Tie)

He sighed, then laughed, resting his chin in his palm. “Guess fate doesn’t want either of us to win.”

A few classmates snickered. Someone joked that the rankings should just be renamed after the two of them.

Lin Yu didn’t mind the attention. Or rather—he was good at acting like he didn’t mind. Smiling came easily to him, as natural as breathing. It was easier to joke along than explain that being constantly watched felt more exhausting than flattering.

Across the aisle, a few rows ahead, Shen Yi sat perfectly still.

His posture was straight, his notes immaculate, his expression unreadable behind thin-framed glasses. He didn’t check his phone. He didn’t react to the murmurs. If not for the faint tightening of his jaw, no one would have guessed he’d heard anything at all.

Lin Yu glanced at him.

How does he do that?

Ignore everything so completely.

They’d been classmates for over a year. Shared lectures, shared rankings, shared rumors. Yet they’d exchanged fewer than ten sentences in total.

They weren’t rivals.

They weren’t friends.

They were simply… always compared.

When the lecture ended, students poured into the hallway. Lin Yu stood, slinging his bag over one shoulder, immediately pulled into conversation by someone asking about lunch plans.

As he laughed and waved, his eyes caught Shen Yi slipping through the crowd alone, moving like a clean cut through noise.

For just a moment, their gazes met.

Shen Yi looked away first.

Lin Yu blinked, then shrugged it off.

Another ordinary day, he thought.

He had no idea that by nightfall, everything he thought he knew about himself—and about Shen Yi—would be completely overturned.

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