In the photo, the boy’s shirt was pulled up above his chest, pale where it should be pale, flushed where it should be flushed. The zipper of his pants below had long been undone, with nothing left to conceal.
He clearly had just emerged from the peak of pleasure. Though he had already released himself, lingering desire still lingered, leaving his body in a state of disarray yet carrying a different kind of beauty. His usually cool eyes were hazy with lust, stripped of their usual calmness.
Looking at it this way, Yu Zhi could even see a flicker of longing in the boy’s eyes.
But none of that was the main point. The real question was—
“How could photos from the plotline appear in my real-life phone?”
Was this right?
Not just one photo, but several. In the plotline, she had taken a few photos, and here they were—exactly the same number. Since they were taken in quick succession, they were mostly similar, though the boy’s expressions had subtle differences.
How terrifying! How terrifying! This was reality! The book was the book, and reality was reality—she had always believed that. Seeing something from the book appear in reality for the first time truly frightened her.
If someone saw this…
Yu Zhi felt her scalp tingle.
The System remained silent for a long time. Only after Yu Zhi called out again did it finally respond.
“Host, this has been detected as a System bug. It has now been fixed, and the excess images have been cleared for you.”
Yu Zhi checked her photo album again. Sure enough, all those images were gone. She scrolled back and forth for a while, confirming they were truly deleted.
“That’s it? That’s it? Are you even reliable?”
The System remained silent.
“Why did such a bug occur? Will there be other bugs?”
The System remained silent.
“And besides, even the stingiest big companies give rewards for bug fixes, don’t they?”
The System didn’t respond. It was playing dead.
Yu Zhi was at a loss. What could she do? There was no Host Association here for her to file a complaint.
The library’s closing announcement urging everyone to leave had already begun to play. She held back her frustration and finally stood up from her seat. The book in her hand was one she had painstakingly chosen, and Yu Zhi decided to borrow it before leaving.
As soon as she arrived at the self-service machine on this floor, Yu Zhi immediately spotted a familiar figure standing beside it.
The protagonist from the recent plotline. Yu Zhi instinctively wanted to avoid him, but the High Mountain Flower had already seen her.
“Yu Zhi.”
Yu Zhi paused in her steps, forced to look over. The boy continued to ask her.
“Borrowing books?” His voice was as cool and detached as ever, yet tinged with a low, husky undertone.
“Huh? Yeah.” In her flustered state, Yu Zhi didn’t have time to come up with an excuse and simply admitted it.
“I’m almost done.”
Since he said so, Yu Zhi had no choice but to wait there. “No rush.”
Over such a long time, Yu Zhi had learned to accurately distinguish between the plotline and reality, and she could usually face the real person without batting an eye.
But after just experiencing that kind of plotline, and those photos… Yu Zhi glanced at the boy’s clean, refined face, then thought back to those eyes in the photos, brimming with desire.
Even she felt a slight sense of awkwardness at this moment.
Fortunately, she managed to hold it back, her expression calm as she shifted her gaze to the books Zhong Shiyu was borrowing.
They were all quite mysterious.
Zhou Gong’s Dream Interpretation, Dream Interpretation Handbook, Dream…
Yu Zhi didn’t catch too many titles, but most of them were related to this. What was going on with him? Had he suddenly become a master of metaphysics?
“I’m done.” Zhong Shiyu took his borrowed books and stepped back two paces.
Yu Zhi stepped forward. She had borrowed books on ancient architectural history, and the whole process was nearly over when she caught Zhong Shiyu still lingering in her peripheral vision.
The boy remained standing in place, his gaze fixed on her hand resting on the self-service machine.
Yu Zhi kept a straight face, even though her mind was already racing.
No matter how clearly she tried to separate things, she couldn’t help but think about what she had just done with her hands. Wait, Yu Zhi quickly corrected herself—it wasn’t these hands.
The plotline was over now.
What she did in the plotline had nothing to do with her outside of it.
After mentally preparing herself, she turned back to Zhong Shiyu and calmly asked, as if speaking to an ordinary classmate, “Aren’t you leaving?”
Zhong Shiyu withdrew his gaze. “I’m leaving.”
Even as he said this, he waited until Yu Zhi had already started walking before following behind her.
The two took the same elevator. It was closing time, and the elevator was quite crowded. After descending one floor, more people got on, and Yu Zhi was pushed two steps inward.
She was almost pressed against Zhong Shiyu.
Yu Zhi didn’t look back, keeping her eyes fixed on the descending floor numbers.
“Yu Zhi.”
The boy’s sudden voice startled her. Yu Zhi turned to look and saw Zhong Shiyu staring at her sleeve.
“Did your button fall off?”
Yu Zhi raised her hand to look, and indeed, the cuff of her trench coat had a cinching design, but the button was now missing.
For some reason, she suddenly remembered how, during the plotline, the boy had struggled and seemed to have grabbed her in this exact spot.
But Yu Zhi quickly dismissed the thought. The book was the book, and reality was reality.
“I guess so? I don’t know when it fell off.”
She didn’t pay it much mind. After all, the button was just decorative.
Having said that, she naturally didn’t notice the deep, ink-like darkness in the boy’s eyes.
The floor wasn’t high, and the elevator soon reached the ground. She followed the crowd out.
Zhong Shiyu was still beside her, not far away, but he didn’t speak again.
Both in and out of the book, Yu Zhi was accustomed to this High Mountain Flower demeanor and didn’t think much of it.
Unexpectedly, their bicycles were parked in the same spot outside the library. Yu Zhi still had her lady’s bike, while Zhong Shiyu rode a mountain bike, a more common sight on campus.
As Yu Zhi bent down to unlock her bike, she heard Zhong Shiyu call her name beside her.
“Yu Zhi.”
Yu Zhi looked up at him.
At that moment, the High Mountain Flower’s face actually showed a hint of embarrassment and a touch of hesitation, as if he wanted to say something but found it difficult. It vaguely overlapped with the Zhong Shiyu from the book.
“Are you free this weekend?” he asked.
“Hmm?”
“I’d like to treat you to a meal to thank you for lending me your pen earlier.”
Yu Zhi was taken aback. “It’s just a pen. You don’t need to worry about it.” She wasn’t that petty, and besides, it had been with her for a while—no, she meant, it was just a small favor.
But Yu Zhi remembered Zhong Shiyu’s clear-cut attitude in the book.
“You can just return it to me in class next time.”
Zhong Shiyu fell silent for a moment. Yu Zhi had already stepped onto her bike’s pedals. “I’ll head off first, then.”
“Mm.”
The bicycle moved away from the spot. Yu Zhi didn’t plan to have too much interaction with Zhong Shiyu. One reason she could immerse herself in the High Mountain Flower book was that she genuinely wasn’t close to this person.
She didn’t dare imagine how awkward it would be if they became familiar first, then stumbled through clumsy interactions—especially since she would be the one forcing it on him.
It would be best not to see him at all, to remain strangers.
Zhong Shiyu stood in place for a long while, until the girl’s figure completely disappeared from view. He lowered his head and relaxed the hand he had been clenching for some time.
In his palm lay a button, perfectly matching the one that had been on the girl’s windbreaker sleeve just moments before.
After returning to her dorm, Yu Zhi collapsed exhaustedly into her chair.
While others had just lived through a day, she felt like she had lived through a day plus… well, something else.
In short, she was exhausted.
The dorm was lively at this hour. Liang Ruyan was doing her skincare routine while chatting on the phone with her boyfriend, Shen Manqing was following along with an exercise video, and Yin Hua was deeply engrossed in a heated gaming session.
Yu Zhi first replied to Chen Yihan’s message.
“I have tutoring work this weekend, really no time.”
The message sent, but a red exclamation mark appeared.
Yu Zhi: “…”
Blocked?
She silently took a deep breath, truly… speechless. This person was genuinely dramatic—she had been learning for half a year and still hadn’t mastered such theatrics.
Well, blocked was blocked.
Yu Zhi put on her headphones and started her usual routine of listening to English broadcasts, but then her phone buzzed with a new message notification.
From the very person who had just blocked her—it seemed she had been taken out of the blacklist.
Chen Yihan: Reply.
How could I reply when you blocked me?
Yu Zhi clenched her fists but ultimately copied the unsent message and sent it again.
Yu Zhi had a part-time tutoring job, teaching English to a high school student.
Jiang University’s admission score was very high, and even though Yu Zhi had barely made the cutoff, her credentials were still impressive outside. English was her strong suit. Since freshmen at Jiang University weren’t allowed to take the CET-4 exam, she took on tutoring to avoid losing her language sense and knowledge.
She had taken time off during the National Day holiday to go home, so she couldn’t skip this weekend.
Aunt Ning had asked about this before, so Chen Yihan’s family knew about it—it wasn’t an excuse.
After a while, he replied: When does the tutoring end?
Yu Zhi: Saturday at 9 PM, Sunday at 5:30 PM.
Chen Yihan: I’ll have the driver pick you up after Sunday’s session.
Yu Zhi stared at her phone screen without immediately replying. She had already refused several times, and at this point, refusing again would genuinely hurt the relationship between their families.
After some thought, she agreed.
“Okay.”
Seeing her response, Chen Yihan’s furrowed brow finally relaxed.
He had indeed just taken Yu Zhi out of the blacklist. Having not received a reply all day, he had blocked her out of frustration, but now he realized how childish that had been.
“Brother Han,” Fu Bin was eating a late-night snack and sincerely praised, “your childhood friend’s chili sauce is really delicious. Is it homemade?”
Chen Yihan hummed in agreement.
He had brought most of the sauce Yu Zhi gave him back home, but under his dormmates’ strong insistence, he had kept one jar in the dorm.
“Can you bring me some next time? I’ll pay for it.”
Chen Yihan scoffed lightly, “Even if you had the money, you couldn’t buy it.”
“Wow, look how proud you are,” Fu Bin teased. “By the way, our club is having a dinner gathering on Saturday night. They specifically asked me to invite you. How about it? Want to come?”
“Can’t,” Chen Yihan refused. “I have to go home for dinner.”
“Didn’t you just go back?”
“My mom insisted I bring Yu Zhi home for dinner.”
As he spoke, Chen Yihan had already stood up. Passing by Zhong Shiyu’s desk, he noticed several books placed there—recently borrowed from the library.
“Zhong Shiyu, you read this kind of book?”
After all, Zhong Shiyu’s rational demeanor seemed at odds with such mystical topics.
Chen Yihan picked up one.
“What’s going on? Switching to studying metaphysics?”
Zhong Shiyu hadn’t spoken since earlier, but strangely, he hadn’t done anything else either—just seemed lost in thought. His typically indifferent face showed no extra expression.
“Just browsing.”
“Had a dream?”
“Mhm.”
The boy asked again: “A nightmare?”
This time, Zhong Shiyu paused before answering: “Not exactly.”
Finally, the other stopped questioning. As if remembering something, his expression turned peculiar. Before Zhong Shiyu could enjoy a moment of peace, he spoke again.
“Lend me one to read.”
Without waiting for refusal, the boy took a book and sat aside, studying it intently. When Zhong Shiyu glanced over, he noticed Chen Yihan’s phone carelessly left on the table.
The screen displayed a chat interface. Though he didn’t read the content, he caught sight of a familiar profile picture.
Zhong Shiyu averted his gaze and opened his phone’s photo album—pictures of Yu Zhi’s presentation slides taken during class a few days ago.
In the photos, besides the phone, half of a girl’s finger was visible.
For some reason, the indifference in the boy’s eyes instantly shattered.
Was it a dream?
If it were a dream, how could it be so vivid and real? If it were a dream, how to explain the button?
Not a dream?
That seemed even harder to explain.
He looked back at the photos. In many of Yu Zhi’s presentation slides, Chen Yihan sitting in front was partially captured.
His expression gradually returned to its earlier stillness.
Author’s Note:
None.