一场说好的交易

There's a hit youth romance drama lately called "Never-Ending Summer," and the story begins in one especially scorching summer.

First, the female lead: Zhou Wan, the classic top student.

Great grades, a clear head — she seems unstoppable.

But her family isn't well-off, and her grandmother has fallen gravely ill.

The imported medicine, uncovered by insurance, runs 3,000 yuan a month.

For a high schooler still in school, it's a suffocating number.

But Zhou Wan didn't cry or beg anyone for help; she chose to figure it out herself.

To scrape together the medicine money, she secretly sells the study notes she compiles at school.

She organizes every problem and exam point crystal-clear, and classmates clamor for them.

Class by day, notes by night — she barely leaves herself room to breathe.

Quietly, she's turned herself into a little grown-up.

Now the male lead: Lu Xixiao, the polar opposite of Zhou Wan.

He hates studying, comes from money, and wears a couldn't-care-less air all day.

His first appearance is a spectacle at the school-wide morning assembly.

Dodging an inspection, he barrels across campus and kicks over a fire hydrant.

Water bursts out, scattering into a rainbow in the sun, and the whole school is stunned.

The scene is both a mess and gorgeous — just like the boy himself.

The homeroom teacher calls him out from the stage; he just grabs the mic.

In front of the whole school, he apologizes boldly, not the least bit fazed.

In that moment you understand how brazen this guy is at his core.

The fuming teacher confiscates his bike keys and drops a harsh line.

Rank in the national top 1,000 on the college exam, and you'll get the keys back.

Everyone takes it as an idle threat, yet just to reclaim those keys, this boy who never studied actually starts grinding through practice problems.

After some trouble, he tracks down Zhou Wan, who sells study notes at school.

First he seizes on her secret side business, uses it to threaten her, and forces her to hand the notes over.

Zhou Wan has no choice but to comply.

Unexpectedly, Lu Xixiao really does haul his grades up with those notes.

At this point, their relationship is still just a cold transaction.

But this summer is destined to be anything but simple.

By episode two, things take a turn.

A lie of Zhou Wan's is exposed in public, and she even loses the tutoring job she'd worked so hard to land.

At her most broke and cornered, she spots someone in the crowd.

It's her mother.

The woman who cruelly abandoned her in childhood has reinvented herself, even changing her name — now she's Guo Xiangling.

And right now, she's all smiles, fawning over a boy — none other than the well-off Lu Xixiao.

Only then does Zhou Wan realize her mother had long set her sights on the Lu family cash cow.

In that instant, years of pent-up hatred ignite all at once.

She makes a decision: revenge.

She slips into the teachers' office and digs up everything about the Lu family.

Then, under that big tree, she deliberately stops Lu Xixiao.

She says: I hear you're headed abroad — I can teach you English.

What she asks for is her grandmother's life-saving money; what she hides is her hatred for that mother.

Of course Lu Xixiao refuses at first — why should he take orders from a girl he barely knows?

But the two play a round of a game at the garage, and he loses.

A bet's a bet, so he grudgingly accepts the English tutoring.

From then on, the moment evening study hall ends, they hold lessons by that abandoned swimming pool.

The summer nights are stifling, cicadas endless, as the two grind through problems one by one under a single lamp.

Neglected by his parents since childhood, Lu Xixiao is long used to no one caring about him.

So at first, he simply doesn't believe anyone would truly care.

But Zhou Wan, of all people, watches him, pushes him, and permits no slacking at all.

She even brings a little fan from home, setting it beside him, whirring away.

That small, unremarkable bit of care slowly gives this feckless boy back some self-respect, and he begins to truly apply himself.

The summer grows hotter by the day, their lessons coming one after another.

Zhou Wan came in carrying hatred, scheming for the Lu family's money and for revenge on her mother.

But once she actually sits down, what she sees is a boy no one has ever treated well.

Get a problem wrong, and he instinctively steals a look at her expression.

Praised once, he quickly turns away, feigning indifference.

That hard knot of hatred in Zhou Wan begins, bit by bit, to loosen.

On his side, Lu Xixiao is quietly changing too.

Once listless about everything, he now starts looking forward to study hall ending.

Looking forward to that little lamp lighting up beside the abandoned pool.

He'd never admit it, but it's the most settled stretch of his whole day.

With her there, he feels for the first time that maybe he too is worth caring about.

Neither of them names it, brushing it off simply as "tutoring."

The fan whirs, the problems get worked one by one, and the muggy summer nights pass one after another.

She agreed to teach him English for her grandmother's medicine.

He agreed to learn from her because of one lost game.

At bottom, it was a deal where each got what they needed.

But a deal's a deal — and yet something, at some unnoticed point, has quietly changed.

And that night, he discovers something.

He'd always linger over the goldfish in plastic bags by the roadside, yet could never bring himself to buy one.

He has money of his own, but that soft spot he'd never had the nerve to voice.

And this time, it's Zhou Wan who quietly buys that bag of goldfish and gently sets it before him.

The plastic bag has torn, and water trickles down her schoolbag, drop by drop.

Neither of them speaks, but something is already different.

This is how "Never-Ending Summer" begins.

A girl who'd do anything for her grandmother, and a boy the whole world overlooks.

In one blazing summer, they collide head-on.

One side sincerity, the other calculation — and no one foresees where this summer will take them.

It was supposed to be just a transaction, but within it, something else has quietly grown.

The summer is still long, and their story has only just begun.