"Hiss—"
Chen Yuan rolled over, his consciousness slowly returning. His head felt like it was being stabbed with needles, throbbing with sharp pains.
His mouth was so dry it felt like a desert, so he forced himself to get up and, bleary-eyed, went to the desk to pour some water.
Just about everyone who drinks too much regrets it the next day, and Chen Yuan was no exception. He'd gone a little too wild last night.
He GULPED down two big mouthfuls of water and finally started to feel better.
In the morning, soft sunlight streamed through the window. He could hear his roommates' steady, rhythmic snores. Chen Yuan stretched, his gaze sweeping across the room. In an instant, he was dumbfounded.
The dorm room floor was smeared with a yellowish-brown liquid. The small stools he had stacked neatly last night were now toppled over haphazardly... and there was a stone stool on the desk!
From the looks of it... it seemed to be one of the stools from the school's stone pavilion.
The thing was ridiculously heavy—solid stone. He had no idea who had the brute strength to actually haul it into their dorm.
A pungent odor hit him. Chen Yuan frowned and noticed a new addition by the door: a green, half-person-tall trash can! The foul smell was wafting from it.
'Wait, who brings a trash can into the dorm room?'
Chen Yuan painfully tried to recall the previous night. He'd drunk too much. It seemed a couple of the guys had started arguing, insisting on going to the sports field to settle who was better at basketball. He couldn't stop them, so he had to tag along. But once the wind hit them, the few who were still somewhat conscious all passed out.
As for what happened after that... he couldn't remember a thing, no matter how hard he tried.
"You're awake?"
Hearing him roll out of bed, Wei Zhen woke up too. His face was pale, and his hair looked like it had been hit by a cannonball. He sat up halfway and asked Chen Yuan dazedly.
"Yeah... Who took a dump on our floor?"
"It wasn't a dump. That's Yafeng's puke. I tried to mop it up a bit, but the smell made me puke too."
"Pfft-hahaha."
"Don't laugh yet. Wake those other two up. We need to clean this mess." Seeing Chen Yuan laugh, Wei Zhen chuckled a bit himself, scratching his head as he got out of bed.
"Yafeng! Wake up, stop sleeping."
"Huh...? Mmm? What's going on?" Quan Yafeng sat up, looking completely lost. His eyes were only open a crack. Under his blanket, there were two absurdly large, round bulges near his thighs.
"What the hell is in your bed?"
"In my bed...?" Quan Yafeng rubbed his face hard. As he came to his senses, he threw off the blanket. "Holy crap, who stuffed two basketballs in my bed?"
"Who else? You did it yourself. You insisted on hugging the basketballs to sleep, saying you hoped to dream about your 'number one'."
The two of them got out of bed as they talked, taking the water Chen Yuan handed them. They tilted their heads back and chugged it down, obviously parched as well.
"Liu Nan is still asleep. He's the most normal one, right? He was the first to pass out yesterday."
"Normal? Normal my ass!"
Wei Zhen put down his cup, strode over, and climbed onto Liu Nan's bunk, giving him a couple of crisp slaps.
SMACK! SMACK! Liu Nan shot up in his bed, startled.
What was truly dumbfounding was that he wasn't the only one who was startled. Three or four cats shot out from the head and foot of the bed with a WHOOSH.
"Shit!"
"Seniors?"
Quan Yafeng locked eyes with one of them, a calico "Senior." The cat stood defiantly on the pillow, looking down on him.
"This guy insisted on bringing the cat 'Seniors' back to sleep with. He was chasing them all over campus, and he wouldn't listen to anyone."
Wei Zhen got down and opened the door, letting the "Seniors" scatter. "Don't just stand there, everyone! Let's destroy the evidence of our crimes!"
...
In Lanjing at the end of October, the bleak, withered yellow of late autumn was everywhere, and the temperature difference between day and night was significant.
You'd need a thick, fleece-lined jacket at night, but when the sun was blazing in the morning, a single shirt was enough.
Freshmen were quite busy.
After cleaning the dorm in the morning, Chen Yuan left and went about his day, attending all his classes. He didn't have any free time until the afternoon.
His three roommates made plans to go out and hang around.
Chen Yuan didn't have anything to buy, so with nothing else to do, he came to the library. He had been looking for a book by Professor Kong Wu a few days ago, and after searching for a while today, he finally found it.
He took the book, *A Brief Discussion on the Influence of Modern Mathematical Physics on Mathematics*, opened it to the first page, and lowered his head to read.
Chen Yuan was a physics major at Landa University. He wanted to go into scientific research in the future but hadn't decided on a specific field yet. Still, he knew he couldn't let his college years go to waste.
Over the summer vacation, he had played video games until he was completely sick of them. Chen Yuan might seem as quiet as a maiden, but he actually had a fiercely competitive spirit. Landa University was undoubtedly a bigger stage with more talented people. The speech given by the old Professor Ai Hongzhe during the first class of the semester was still fresh in his mind.
The university had produced many pillars of society, their names etched into the monuments of Huaxia's scientific history.
Chen Yuan wanted to be one of those people.
He wasn't the protagonist of a web novel. He didn't have a system, nor could he use cheats. He could only diligently chew through one book after another, relying on accumulated knowledge to keep improving.
But...
As he flipped through the book, every few minutes, Chen Yuan would habitually lift his eyes, his gaze falling on the phone sitting beside him on the table.
Then, he would lower his eyes and try to focus again.
A six-month relationship was bound to leave behind a few habits.
When he looked at his phone, he'd be struck by the realization that he was already single, that the adorable Yaoyao from his memories was now a thing of the past.
The DING-DONG DING-DONG of frequent messages, which once seemed like they would never stop, had now truly fallen silent.
Chen Yuan didn't feel the kind of suffocating heartbreak that made it hard to breathe, but his mood would gradually sink.
...
"Your Yuan is so well-behaved. I wish my kid was like him."
"Not at all. I actually wish he were a little more energetic. Little boys should be a bit mischievous."
...
"What's with your grades lately? You can't even make it into the top ten in your class!"
"I'm sorry, Mom..."
"You don't have to say sorry to me. You were the one who said you'd get first place. A man who can't keep his own promise has only himself to be sorry to."
...
"Yuan, you're in high school now. There are some things your dad isn't going to hide from you anymore."
"Really?"
"Dad, I'm home!"
...
"Chen, will we ever meet in real life? Are you willing to marry me? I'll give you a whole litter of babies."
"I just turned eighteen. I'm not even old enough to get married."
"I don't care. Swear you'll only love me for your whole life."
...
「In the library」 Chen Yuan's thoughts drifted aimlessly as he recalled his life before he turned eighteen.
From a toddler who could barely walk steadily to a university student.
There were many confusing and painful moments while growing up.
This was one of them.
It might sound childish, but Chen Yuan had always been a firm believer in love. He hoped that someone would appear, someone who would love all his good qualities and accept all his flaws.
Someone he could sing off-key in front of without a care in the world, without worrying about saving face.
He would treat this girl well—not like a simp, or some cartoon character blindly devoted to his crush, but just being together, simply. From getting to know each other and falling in love to walking down the aisle.
But in this society, true, pure love was so hard to find... He had thought Yaoyao was that person. She had appeared in his life so suddenly.
Like a bright ray of light.
But as it turned out, she just had to be Jiangg Ning. His teacher.
And Professor Jiangg Ning, a role model for her students and admired by so many, had taught Chen Yuan his first lesson: abandonment...
He spent two hours in a daze, his thoughts a tangled mess.
Only when his stomach started RUMBLING with hunger did Chen Yuan leave the library.
That evening, he was alone in the dorm. Quan Yafeng and the other two must have been having a blast, as they still hadn't returned.
After dinner, Chen Yuan lay on his bed and even dozed off for a while.
When he woke up, the dorm was incredibly quiet. Outside the window, it was already pitch black. Distant lights flickered in his blurry vision. The wind blew, making the leaves of the ash trees RUSTLE, and the hazy night settled by his desk.
He hadn't turned on the lights. Chen Yuan got out of bed, propped his chin in his hands, and just sat there for a while.
A sense of loneliness seeped out from the cracks in the walls like a rising tide.