When Ethan pushed the white box toward me, I was staring blankly at my textbook.

"For you."

I opened the packaging.

It was the newest phone. The moment the screen lit, it reflected my face.

He leaned over, his fingertip sliding across the screen. "The number is already saved."

I saw only one lonely name in the contacts.

Ethan Hayes.

The note read, "Your personal guide."

My heart skipped.

I looked up and met his smiling eyes.

"This is too expensive." I pushed the box back. "I can't accept it."

"Wistonia High School is huge. It's easy to get lost." He drew his hand back, his tone casual. "Call me anytime if you need anything."

He gave me no chance to refuse and naturally picked up my bag. "Come on. I'll show you around."

As Ethan held my hand and led me through the main building, students kept looking over.

He seemed completely unaware, only walking and introducing things to me in his warm voice.

He pushed open a glass door, and a grand hall appeared before me, its shelves packed with books.

"This is the library. If you want to study later, you can come here."

As he spoke, he suddenly leaned closer, his tone teasing. "If you're bored, you can ask me to keep you company. Forget Liam. He never comes here."

His clean, handsome face was suddenly so close that my heartbeat stumbled wildly.

I quickly changed the subject. "He doesn't like studying?"

"No." Ethan straightened and returned to a natural distance. "He hates anything arranged for him. Studying, exams, life plans... to him, they're all chains."

He said it lightly, as if stating an insignificant fact.

Yet for some reason, I felt there was something else pressed beneath those words.

We climbed seven flights of stairs and finally pushed open the door to the rooftop.

Wind rushed in hard. The whole campus spread beneath our feet, the field, the buildings, and the distant city skyline all in full view.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Ethan walked to the railing. "When I'm in a bad mood, I come up here for a while."

I stood beside him.

"Liam has a place of his own too." He said suddenly. "Over there."

He lifted a hand and pointed toward the southeast corner of campus.

A field enclosed by chain-link fencing lay there, green netting around home plate and a huge scoreboard beside it.

"The baseball field." He said, "Liam's territory. He's the team captain and has been Riverton's high school league MVP for three years in a row."

I stared at the field.

The shadow I had seen late last night, drenched in sweat with an ice pack on his shoulder, suddenly overlapped with that name.

"If he targets you or makes you uncomfortable, tell me anytime."

Ethan turned to face me. Sunlight fell across the side of his face, his lashes casting a small shadow beneath his eyes. "I'll help you."

His gaze was so focused that I instinctively looked away.

"I should go." I turned around. "I have class this afternoon."

He did not follow.

But I knew he was still watching me.

Afternoon PE.

Only when we gathered did I realize today's lesson was basic baseball training.

The PE teacher handed me a bat. "Chloe, try a swing."

People around me whispered.

I gripped the bat, raised it the way we had been shown, and missed completely.

"Hey, Chloe." A sneer came from the side.

I turned my head. A tall boy stood there with his arms folded, his uniform hanging loose on him. His mouth twisted downward. "Your grip is all wrong. Did the teachers in the slums never teach you?"

Several people around us laughed.

"Stop embarrassing yourself. Stick to your little hobbies."

"Exactly. This isn't a place for you."

I said nothing and adjusted my stance again.

The boy raised his voice, deliberately provoking me. "If you can't do it, don't force it. You're wasting everyone's time!"

"So noisy."

The voice came from the gym entrance.

Everyone fell silent.

Liam was leaning against the doorframe. A baseball glove hung from his shoulder, and his uniform jacket was tossed on casually.

He glanced at the bat in my hands.

"Clumsy."

He said only that, then turned and left.

His footsteps soon disappeared at the end of the hall.

The boy who had spoken earlier turned ashen and did not dare make another sound.

That night.

I opened my bedroom door, ready to go get some water.

As soon as I pushed it open, I saw something by my feet.

A copy of Baseball for Beginners.

Beside it lay a pair of new training gloves. They were black, with anti-slip texture across the palms, and exactly my size.

There was no name.

I flipped through the book. The flyleaf was blank, the pages clean. Only the first page had a light pencil sketch showing how to grip a bat, with three points of force marked beside it.

The handwriting was messy, with sharp, angular strokes.

I could not recognize whose writing it was.

Was it Ethan?