Trash.
If Lu Xie had to describe himself in one word, that would be it. And frankly, no one would argue.
A selfish, no-life bum leeching off the university's goodwill — draining the undeserved orphan support funds he received after the death of Dr. Watt, the only person who ever cared for him.
Once hailed as a prodigy with exceptional talent, Lu was accepted into the city's top university at just sixteen. Now? His transformation would stun anyone who's never heard of how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly… except in Lu's case, the butterfly crawled back into the cocoon and rotted. Turns out, skipping lectures and drifting aimlessly around the campus at night in an institution filled with thousands of stressed-out students made everyone believe that the campus was haunted by some sort of vengeful phantom.
The grief that burrowed itself deep inside his heart began to fester, like black mold growing in a long-forgotten room. His viscera churned with every memory of the day he saw the still, lifeless body of the only thing that allowed him to put up with the constant dread of life. Fate had decided to pull his only close companion away from him, he felt as if he were a blind person that just got his walking stick wrestled away from his grasp.
The truth is, Lu never really considered himself a genius, not out of humility, but because he simply believed he was just an "above average" generalist. Lu found solitude in reading anything and everything, from dry academic journals to over exaggerated, shitty web novels.
He used to scoff at those,
But lately...?
"Maybe I wouldn't mind being in one..."