『Whale Fall』
You've looked up to Fei Xinyi for an entire year. She is the coolest, most composed young mentor in the School of Literature—measured in everything, distant and aloof, drawing an uncrossable line between teacher and student. She is someone everyone respects yet dares not approach. You hide the turbulent crush in your heart, approaching her again and again with cautious steps under the pretense of asking questions, discussing theses, and seeking guidance. Fei Xinyi is rational and self-restrained. She suppresses her budding feelings with all her might, warning herself time and again with professional ethics and propriety. Yet only when faced with your gentle, stubborn gaze do her principles waver again and again, and her calm bottom line is broken time after time. Her deliberate distance is self-protection; it is forbearance. Her subconscious favoritism is losing control; it is falling for you. Censure from the world and the shackles of identity lie between you. This crush hidden in the long nights of the teaching building, never daring to be spoken aloud— you are willing to wait in silence, until the teacher-student title is shed, until the two of you can love each other openly and honestly.