Chapter 1

Chapter 1: White on the Outside, Yellow on the Inside Mid-August, the height of summer. The surface temperature in Jingjia had already reached forty-two degrees Celsius, the air stifling and suffocating. By the time Nan Shu got home, her back was soaked with sweat. She set down her suitcase and made a beeline for the air conditioner in the living room. She'd taken on a role recently—not a major part, but it meant spending hours under the scorching sun every day. So this morning, after wrapping up with the cast photo, she'd booked the earliest ride-share and rushed home as fast as she could. "Hum—" The air conditioner kicked in, sending cool gusts of air her way. The sticky, clammy feeling on Nan Shu's skin melted away along with it. Nothing beats days off work! Nan Shu let out a long sigh of relief, walked over to the sofa, picked up her iPad, and smoothly logged into the artist backend of a certain comic website. As expected, the comment section of her ongoing webcomic, Living with the Arrogant School Heartthrob (Campus 1V1 High)*, was already flooded with impatient readers demanding updates. Underwear Flying Everywhere: [Teacher Pumpkin, are you even coming home to eat...?] Don't Spread It If It's Not Yellow News: [The couple has been in this position for two weeks now. Can they, like, move a little?] Behave and Don't Go In: [New reader here, just asking—has this comic been abandoned? Why hasn't it updated in so long?] Someone even remembered the new site regulations that had just been announced and tagged Nan Shu in the reader group: [@Surnamed Nan Not Melon, the review process has been strict lately. Teacher, you haven't been thrown into the little black room, have you?] Yes, no one could have guessed that Nan Shu, a nobody in the entertainment industry, had a hidden identity—an artist on a certain pink comic website. Back in college, her roommate introduced Nan Shu to this comic site for the first time. After swimming through that ocean of blush-inducing comics for half a year, Nan Shu could no longer find anything that satisfied her particular tastes, so she simply registered an artist account and started producing content for herself. Originally, she'd only meant to entertain herself. But unexpectedly, fate was practically spoon-feeding her. Her first comic achieved considerable success during its serialization, and now she was a somewhat well-known artist on the pink site. The income from playing bit parts on set was decent, sure, but the days of letting her... preferences run wild while earning extra cash on the side were simply too wonderful. She had no grand ambitions, rarely dreamed of overnight fame. She just wanted to save up enough money to own a place of her own in Jingjia. A week ago, she'd received an urgent notice from the crew—her minor supporting role's filming schedule had been moved up, and she needed to report to set immediately. While on set, Nan Shu was basically on standby all day. Sometimes, when her scenes were packed together, she'd shoot from morning till night without even touching her phone, let alone drawing comics. That was why she'd been forced to stop updating right at the most thrilling part of the story. However it was framed, falling behind on updates was her fault. Nan Shu's fingertips hovered over the screen as she typed out a line, sincerely groveling in apology to her readers and fans. Surnamed Nan Not Melon: [Didn't abandon it! Didn't abandon it! Sorry qwq, I just got back from a work trip. I'll update soon, and today I'll send out red envelopes as compensation!] After replying to the comments, Nan Shu didn't dare slack off. She closed the tablet and went to the study to grab her drawing tablet. The line art for the latest chapter had already been mostly finished before she'd joined the crew, so the remaining work wasn't too heavy. Nan Shu opened her music app, picked a playlist with a sultry, moody vibe, and picked up her stylus to start creating. • Time always slips away when you least notice it. By the time she'd uploaded and published the latest chapter, Nan Shu suddenly looked up. Outside the window, the sky was already painted with a sweeping expanse of evening clouds, and the office towers standing in the city center were glowing with lights. She set down her drawing tablet, rubbed her sore neck, and got up to prepare dinner in the kitchen. The heat had killed her appetite, so she tossed together a bowl of konjac noodles and returned to the sofa. The comment section had already gained quite a few new replies. Jianbing Dog: [So good! Our little couple really has maxed-out sexual tension!] Underwear Flying Everywhere: [Ahhhh Teacher Pumpkin's art style is still hitting all my buttons!] ... Nan Shu scrolled through the comments with satisfaction. She was used to being a nobody in the entertainment industry, so by comparison, the emotional validation from her readers and fans was truly fulfilling. Next life, she'd still draw for them. She continued scrolling down the screen, and one comment stood out like a breath of fresh air among all the shameless ones, immediately catching her attention. Pure Love Invincible: [Am I the only one who noticed that Teacher Pumpkin's plotlines are also amazing? Especially the earlier part with the female lead's secret crush—it's so delicate and so real.] The comment had only been posted a few minutes ago, but it had already drawn plenty of agreement. Someone even boldly tagged Nan Shu and asked: [No, seriously, a lot of Teacher Pumpkin's works are about secret crushes coming true. @Surnamed Nan Not Melon, Teacher, tell us! Did you have a secret crush on someone back in school too?!] These familiar IDs had been with Nan Shu since her early comics, and they usually interacted like friends in the comments section. Besides, once you put on a disguise on the internet, no one would know she was Nan Shu. So she simply didn't bother hiding it. Xing Nan Bu Jiao Gua: 【Although I don't want to admit it, it's true TvT】 One stone stirred up a thousand waves—within two or three seconds, six or seven readers popped up under this reply. 【Wow wow wow! Got fresh gossip from the front row!】 【Ears open, Teacher Pumpkin, tell us more!】 【Curious about what kind of person Teacher Pumpkin's crush is~】 【Ahem, bold guess here—the male leads in Teacher Pumpkin's comics are all the type who are great at playing games, white on the outside and yellow on the inside, and really good at "cooking" (not literally)... Could it be that Teacher Pumpkin's crush is exactly that kind...】 【Agree with the above!】 【Yo yo yo, Teacher Pumpkin eats well~】 【Eats well~】 Oh my god, what "white on the outside and yellow on the inside," what "really good at cooking"... She shouldn't have told them any of this! Nan Shu shyly turned off her phone, two blushes spreading across her face. Although when she usually drew comics, she threw all her modesty out the window, going for maximum thrill, looking extremely experienced. But in reality, at twenty-five, she had been single her whole life, with zero practical experience, and the roles she took on never had too many romantic or ambiguous love scenes. However... Since her crush was brought up, Nan Shu's mind inevitably flashed through some fragments from high school. It was a summer day in early June, not as unbearably hot as today. In the gymnasium, a boy in a school uniform had cold, clear features. The veins on his hand gripping the badminton racket faintly bulged, and with a "smack," the shuttlecock traced a perfect arc through the air. The crowd below erupted in waves of cheers, one louder than the next, and amidst the rising and falling screams, his name could be clearly heard. Xie Zeyan. As the famous school heartthrob of First High, he seemed long accustomed to such adoration. Throughout the entire match, he didn't spare a single glance at the audience. The whistle blew, the match ended, and surrounded by the crowd, Xie Zeyan walked calmly to the side, his slender fingers twisting open the bottle cap. It was at that moment that he casually glanced toward the audience. His eyes met those of a girl sitting in the corner. She knew he wasn't looking at her, but even so, that misaligned glance was enough to make Nan Shu's heart skip a few beats. ... Pulling her thoughts back, Nan Shu looked at the constantly increasing red notification dots on her backend and promptly cut off the topic. Xing Nan Bu Jiao Gua: 【Hmph, you're not allowed to guess wildly! It was all from when I was in school, and I've long stopped liking him. I probably won't ever see him again in this lifetime】 She and Xie Zeyan had only been classmates before the class division in high school, but even during that one year as classmates, they hadn't had much interaction. After all, one was the favored golden boy of the school, and the other was an ordinary student in the class. They simply weren't from the same world, so it was hard for any connection to form. Perhaps in Xie Zeyan's eyes, she was just a nameless female classmate. Thinking of this, Nan Shu felt like a glass of lemon soda had been poured into her heart, bubbles of sourness fizzing up one after another. But most crushes from school days ended up like hers—fading away without resolution. To Nan Shu, Xie Zeyan was just the stirring of youthful feelings in her girlhood. If the readers hadn't suddenly brought up crushes, she rarely thought of him on her own. Deciding not to dwell on it, Nan Shu quickly finished the konjac noodles in her bowl and then dove into the bathroom for a shower. • When she came out, the phone on the table suddenly rang. Nan Shu walked over to check and found it was an alarm she had set, with a note attached: Return the dog from dog-walking. A while ago, she had picked up a little Pomeranian and named it "Ham Sausage." A few days ago, she received notice that she'd be joining the production early, and with no one available to look after the dog on short notice, she had to contact a local dog-walker she'd added before, asking them to take the dog home and care for it for a few days. Today was the day the dog-walker was returning the dog. Nan Shu opened WeChat and tapped into the chat with the dog-walker. Their most recent message was from yesterday. The other person had sent her a video of Ham Sausage, and it was clear the dog was living comfortably at the dog-walker's place. There were still ten minutes until the agreed 8 o'clock return time, so Nan Shu sent a butter bear sticker. Nan Shu: 【Staring.jpg】 The other side quickly caught on: 【On the way】 After Nan Shu replied with 【Stay safe】, she pulled off her hair-drying cap and went to the bathroom to blow-dry her hair. Before long, amidst the roar of the hair dryer, she vaguely heard a "knock knock knock" at the door. At the same time, the phone in her pajama pocket buzzed twice. Dog-walker: 【Arrived】 Nan Shu turned off the hair dryer, deftly pinned up her hair with a shark clip, and tucked a strand of chestnut-brown hair from her forehead behind her ear. "Coming, coming!" she called out, raising her voice. Afraid of making the person wait too long at the door, Nan Shu almost jogged to the entryway. The door had just opened when the speech she'd rehearsed tumbled out, "Hello there, thank you so much for this time..." However, the moment she saw the man's face clearly, Nan Shu's hand on the doorknob dropped abruptly, and the rest of her sentence caught in her throat, coming to a sudden halt. The cold white light of the hallway fell upon the man. He was tall and slender, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Though dressed in nothing more than a simple white shirt and black trousers, his overall bearing radiated an even more refined and noble elegance. Her gaze traveled upward. His facial features were sharply defined, his complexion fair and clean, the corners of his eyes slightly upturned. His three-seven parted hair fell loosely above his brow. What drew the most attention was a small black mole on his long, slender neck—one that exuded an undeniable allure as his Adam's apple moved. He was nearly identical to the image in her memory, yet carried an added maturity and sharp-edged charm. "Snap—" A string in Nan Shu's mind broke at that very moment. Not just because she recognized the extraordinarily handsome man holding a small dog before her. More importantly, he was the object of her secret crush whom she hadn't seen in seven years—Xie Zeyan.