Shu was nearly left breathless by this sudden "heavy blow."
Moving stiffly and wearing an expression of pain, he turned his head. In the darkness, he barely managed to make out what the "heavy object" was.
It was a leg.
Kiana's leg.
At some point, she had shimmied out of her own covers and right up to the edge of his. She was lying on her side, her face buried in her pillow, breathing evenly.
Only that one leg had crossed the border of the blankets, resting brazenly across him.
Shu: "..."
He stared down at the leg.
Then he stared at Kiana's soundly sleeping face.
Whatever.
It's already come to this.
Shu simply gave up struggling.
Staring at the ceiling, feeling the warmth radiating against his abdomen, his consciousness began to slowly blur.
Exhaustion surged up like the tide.
His eyelids grew heavier and heavier.
Finally, right before he completely drifted off, one last thought flashed through his mind:
Tomorrow... I definitely have to set some ground rules with her...
No moving around randomly in your sleep...
Then the darkness completely swallowed his consciousness, leaving only the sound of two steady breaths in the room.
...
[Have you ever seen a genius?]
[The kind of genius who seems to know things from birth, making you feel inadequate just by looking at them.]
[Shu had seen one.]
[When Shu was six years old, he met her for the first time... or rather...]
[He realized for the first time that she was a genius.]
[Back then, Shu was just starting first grade. The happiest part of his day was coming home after school and seeing that tiny figure sitting by the door waiting for him.]
[She always got home before Shu because she didn't have to go to school yet.]
[She was only three.]
[She hadn't even started kindergarten.]
[Until one day, Shu was sprawled over the desk doing his homework. She carried her little stool over, sat down silently beside him, and quietly watched him write.]
[Shu didn't mind.]
[She did this often. Like a little shadow, wherever Shu went, she went. Whatever Shu did, she watched.]
[And that day... Shu finished his homework, closed his notebook, and went to the bathroom.]
[When he came back, he saw her leaning over his desk, holding a pencil, scribbling away in his workbook.]
[Shu was startled.]
["Xu Xi! That's my homework!"]
[She looked up at him.]
[Her eyes were huge and bright, like two dark grapes, brimming with curiosity.]
["Big brother's homework... is so easy."]
[She said in a milky voice, her speech surprisingly fluent.]
[Then she handed the workbook to Shu. He looked down—]
[She had finished the first-grade homework.]
[Stroke by stroke, neat and tidy.]
[...And completely correct.]
[Shu was stunned.]
[She was three years old that year.]
[Hadn't even started kindergarten.]
[That was the first time Shu realized—]
[She was different.]
[Different from him.]
[Different from everyone else.]
...
[From then on, she became Shu's little shadow.]
[When Shu did his homework, she sat beside him and watched.]
[When he finished, she would take the workbook and do it all over again herself.]
[When Shu read extracurricular books, she would peek her head over and read along.]
[When Shu played games, she had to play too.]
[Everything Shu came into contact with, she wanted to learn.]
[And then—]
[She learned faster than Shu.]
[She did it better than Shu.]
[At first, it was just homework.]
[Then, she secretly learned to play the piano by watching Shu, self-teaching herself to play a piece more fluently than Shu could after practicing for a long time.]
[Then it was extracurricular knowledge. Not only did she read the books Shu read, but she could point out details Shu hadn't noticed.]
[Then it was—]
[Forget it. It was too much, impossible to count.]
[Were you jealous, you ask Shu?]
[No.]
[Not at all.]
[At the time, Shu only felt—]
[My little sister is amazing.]
[She's only a few years old, and she's already so incredible.]
[How awesome is she going to be when she grows up?]
[And she was so cute.]
[Tiny, soft, quiet, with a sweet, milky voice.]
[Call out "Xixi," and she'd look up at you with those sparkling eyes.]
[The feeling was like raising a particularly smart kitten.]
[Would you be jealous of a cat?]
[No.]
[You'd only think—]
[This is great...]
[I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful sister.]
...
[Her life was on fast-forward.]
[Her kindergarten teachers couldn't praise her enough, saying she was unbelievably smart.]
[So she started elementary school early.]
[The elementary school curriculum was too easy for her, so she skipped grades again.]
[Finally, when Shu was in the third grade, she joined his class.]
[In the same class as Shu.]
[She was six years old at the time.]
[Three years younger than Shu, sitting in the same classroom.]
[Her talent seemed to have slowed down.]
[She didn't display the need to continue skipping grades.]
[But she was still outstanding.]
[So outstanding it couldn't be hidden.]
[Every exam, she was first in the grade.]
[Every competition, she won an award.]
[The teachers loved her, the classmates loved her, even people in the next class over knew who she was.]
["That little genius"—]
[That's what everyone called her.]
[And Shu?]
[He was "Xu Xi's big brother."]
[Shu didn't think there was anything wrong with this.]
[Because she was right.]
[She really was his younger sister.]
[They were siblings, what was the problem with that?]
[And she treated Shu exceptionally well.]
[When someone gave her a treat, the first thing she thought of was saving a portion for him.]
[When someone asked her, "How is your brother?", she would say, "My big brother is super amazing, and he loves me super much!"]
[Even though she was better than him at everything... when she said those words, her tone was incredibly proud, as if... that was the only thing in her life worth caring about.]
[Back then, looking at her like that, Shu only had one thought in his mind:]
[I have to be a good big brother.]
[I have to give her the best of everything.]
[He had to hide all his bad habits, not letting his sister learn a single bad thing.]
[He never let himself get caught in the rain again, and he never counted ants by himself again.]
...
[Fourth grade, end of the semester.]
[The school held an awards assembly, and students who had won various competitions went up to receive their prizes.]
[Xu Xi brought back a pile of certificates.]
[Grand Prize in the Essay Competition.]
[Grand Prize in the Math Olympiad.]
[Grand Prize in the English Speech Contest.]
[Gold Award in the Painting Competition.]
[And an "Outstanding Young Pioneer" certificate.]
[Their mother held that stack of certificates, smiling so widely she couldn't close her mouth.]
["Xixi is so amazing, so amazing..."]
[Shu was also smiling on the side, watching his sister being praised as usual, unable to find a single fault.]
[Actually, he had a certificate too—a Silver Award in the Municipal Children's Piano Competition—but that wasn't important.]
[What was important was that his sister had won the Gold Award in that same competition. She really was amazing...]
[Shu looked at his sister with a smile, not fighting for attention, just watching quietly.]
[And Xu Xi, just like Shu, sat quietly in their mother's lap, listening to the string of praises.]
[However... she was still a little different from Shu.]
[In front of their mother, she raised her hand and pointed at Shu.]
["Mom, big brother won an award too."]
["Really? Then big brother is the best too!" Their mother immediately followed Xu Xi's lead and blurted out a compliment.]
[Shu and Xu Xi both crinkled their eyes in smiles, showing very gratified expressions.]
[They were both still young children and valued praise from their elders very much.]
[But their mother seemed to realize what she had said only after it left her mouth, and her attention shifted to Shu.]
[Perhaps it was unintentional...]
[Their mother looked at Shu and blurted out another sentence.]
["Why can't you be more like your sister?"]