Chapter 550: Shen Yuan’s Official Announcement Copy
The motion was utterly without hesitation, even carrying a sort of reverence, as if presenting a precious treasure.
He lowered his head slightly to gaze at her, the smile on his lips deepening, the starlight in his eyes threatening to spill out.
It was as if he wasn’t being disarmed and surrendering, but willingly offering the entire world to his little queen.
Li Zhi: “…”
The cool touch in her palm brought her back to her senses.
She clutched the phone tightly, but her fingertips subconsciously caressed the edge of the case where he had just touched it.
The beautiful girl’s ears burned as if they were on fire. She shot him a fierce glare, but the look was less ferocious and more a flustered panic, stirred up by his sudden indulgence and intense gaze.
Her rosy lips moved slightly, as if she wanted to say something harsh to get the upper hand, but in the end, she only managed to squeeze out a sentence tinged with a dependence and command she herself didn’t even notice.
“…Smart move!”
She quickly averted her gaze, avoiding his scorching stare. Her voice dropped, laced with a sulky awkwardness.
“…If we’re going to post it, I have to see it first! I’ll pick the pictures myself! Who asked you to take matters into your own hands! You idiot, Selaan!”
Before the words had even faded, the beautiful girl had already clutched her phone and spun around abruptly, like a proud little fawn whose tail had just been stepped on.
Without even a word to He Zhiyu and Zhuo Peipei, who were thoroughly enjoying the show beside her, she marched straight back to her seat!
Her high ponytail swung in a sharp arc as she turned, betraying its owner’s flustered yet forcibly composed state of mind.
As soon as she sat down on the cold seat, Li Zhi eagerly ducked her head, practically curling into a ball as if to block the searing gaze from behind her.
The beautiful girl unlocked her phone, her slightly trembling fingertips tapping open the photo album.
The screen instantly filled with a collection of fresh, heart-warming photos—
Pictures of them teasing each other, gazing into each other’s eyes, awkwardly making heart shapes…
He was in every one, as was she, and in every one was an inescapable sense of intimacy.
The beautiful girl’s fingertip hovered over the screen, hesitating several times over the photo of them gazing at each other while making hand hearts.
The eyes in the photo, filled with affection and shyness, seemed to be looking back at her.
In the end, Li Zhi selected that photo, choosing it as the centerpiece of their official announcement.
‘It’s an official announcement, after all. You have to have a nine-photo grid.’
Perhaps to offset the overly blatant intimacy of the hand-heart photo, she placed a few of their more “proper” photos, taken under He Zhiyu’s direction, in the surrounding grid squares.
Of course, Li Zhi also picked a few of the selfies she and Shen Yuan had taken at the very beginning.
The picture of her pinching Shen Yuan’s cheek was also included, as a sort of counterbalance.
In the top-left corner, she placed a slightly blurry shot of the classroom in the background. You could see the daylight outside the window and, faintly, Ah Jie’s back as he sat there looking like he’d given up on life.
And so, after careful selection and repeated adjustments…
The nine photos were finally arranged on her screen.
It had a core announcement photo, some daily interactions, some goofy fun, and even included friends and their surroundings.
Although the main intention was glaringly obvious, she felt the overall layout was a masterful work of artistic concealment.
Li Zhi opened her chat with Shen Yuan and sent the nine photos to his phone.
Then, Li Zhi turned to Shen Yuan and handed him her phone.
“I’ve picked the photos and arranged the layout. Look closely, you post it exactly like this! Nine pictures! The order, the position! Don’t you dare move a single pixel! Got it?”
Shen Yuan looked down at the phone screen, a grin stretching from ear to ear. The corners of his eyes and brows were filled with a smile he couldn’t hide, tinged with a sense of relieved ease.
“No problem at all!”
After a few quick taps on the screen to download all the photos, Shen Yuan began meticulously arranging his own nine-photo grid, following the layout on Li Zhi’s phone.
“Done!” Shen Yuan completed the “pixel-perfect” replication and handed his phone back to Li Zhi for final approval.
The beautiful girl snatched the phone, gave it a quick scan to confirm everything was correct.
Then, her pretty eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at her smug boyfriend beside her with a scrutinizing gaze.
“What about the caption?” Her voice paused, a hint of probing and emphasis in her tone. “Should they be the same?”
Shen Yuan shook his head, his eyes glittering with a bright light—the stubbornness of someone insisting on their own creative space.
“I have my own idea.”
Li Zhi froze for a moment. The faint light from the phone screen flickered in her pupils.
‘This guy… has his own idea?’
‘What’s he going to write?’
A series of cringe-worthy possibilities flashed through her mind, making her want to bury her face in her hands.
Shen Yuan was usually fine when it came to clowning around and being a smartass, but writing this kind of public… declaration of love?
Li Zhi suddenly had a bad feeling about this.
“Fine, do whatever you want.”
Just then, she opened the “create post” screen for her social media feed. Her fingertip hovered over the blank caption box, the screen’s light illuminating her slightly dazed face.
‘What should I write?’
She thought to herself.
‘If it’s too subtle, that idiot might not get it.’
‘Too explicit… No, no, I cringe just thinking about it.’
‘Maybe… I shouldn’t write anything? Are the pictures enough? But that feels so half-assed.’
‘Or… I could copy something from one of He Zhiyu’s novels?’
A few sickeningly sweet phrases flashed through her mind, and she immediately shot them down.
‘No way, that’s too stupid.’
Her gaze unconsciously drifted back to the photo in her album, the one of the two of them awkwardly making hand hearts.
In the photo, Shen Yuan’s scorching gaze seemed to pierce through the screen and brand her heart all over again.
His smile was so real and radiant, filled with unreserved joy.
‘…Idiot.’
A hint of sweetness and anticipation, one the girl herself hadn’t yet fully recognized, spread silently through her like a ripple from a stone tossed into the lake of her heart.
‘He insisted on writing his own… so what will he write?’
The girl’s initially scrutinizing and slightly disdainful expression slowly faded during her dazed silence, gradually settling into a complex, indescribable tenderness.
Her fingertip lingered above the cold screen, hesitating to fall.
Just as Shen Yuan’s fingertips were dancing across his phone screen, a peach fragrance wafted to his nose.
Shen Yuan subconsciously looked up.
Li Zhi had, at some point, silently moved to his side.
The girl looked down at his phone screen and clearly saw the caption Shen Yuan was editing.
—If you like someone, don’t make her wait until she’s 35.