A new week brought a new 8:00 AM Modern History class.
Probably because the memories of that day had surfaced, Lin Shuxue hadn’t slept peacefully for several nights, making it nearly impossible for her to get out of bed this morning.
Fortunately, it was a close call but a safe arrival. She still made it on time to save seats for her roommates.
After hesitating for a moment, she still left the seat Jiang Zong usually occupied next to her.
Anyway, with four desks to a row, it was just a matter of convenience.
Jiang Zong arrived fashionably late right before the bell rang. When he entered through the back door of the classroom, He Xicun, who was sitting on the outermost side, greeted him.
“Senior Jiang Zong!”
He paused for a fraction of a second, his gaze sweeping across the empty seat beside Lin Shuxue, before striding forward as if he hadn’t seen a thing.
He walked straight up to the first row, took a seat in the innermost corner, and immediately buried his head down to catch up on sleep without so much as lifting his eyes.
He Xicun froze right where she sat, unable to either advance or retreat.
Although they hadn’t made a massive scene on their end, the amount of attention Jiang Zong naturally drew was never small. Ill-intentioned whispers and discussions broke out in the surrounding area.
He Xicun could vaguely catch snippets like “acting close” and “so awkward.”
Frowning, she covered her mouth with her hand and quietly cursed to the other two:
“Is he out of his mind?”
“If he didn’t want to sit with us, he could have just said so. What is he acting so high and mighty for? It completely wastes the seat our Shuxue saved for him.”
Meng Shuyin rolled her eyes. “Hasn’t he always been like this?”
Lin Shuxue, sitting in the innermost spot, didn’t say a word. She merely lowered her eyes, staring blankly at the WeChat profile picture on her phone screen.
After the two of them had parted on a sour note that day, Lin Shuxue assumed that this joke-like friend request wouldn’t be approved.
Yet when night fell, a new notification popped up on WeChat.
[I’ve accepted your friend request. Now we can start chatting.]
The ID was an extremely cold Jz. The profile picture had a dark, blurry amber tone to it, making it completely impossible to discern what it actually was.
His Moments page was entirely empty, containing absolutely nothing.
Of course, this didn’t rule out the possibility that he had blocked Lin Shuxue from viewing it.
Lin Shuxue opened that profile picture once again at this moment. She consistently felt as though she had seen this blurry patch of color somewhere before.
Her memories spun a full circle in her brain, yet she couldn’t find a matching option.
The Modern History teacher walked in with a sharp clack-clack-clack of her high heels, her authoritative gaze sweeping over the entire class.
The rustling whispers instantly ground to a halt.
Having received no response from Lin Shuxue, He Xicun caught sight of her lowered head out of the corner of her eye. Assuming she was heartbroken, she mistakenly believed Lin Shuxue had been crushed by Jiang Zong’s attitude.
In a fit of rage, she deleted that silhouette photo of the two of them from her album, deciding to shift from a “shipper” to an absolute “anti.”
A conceited bastard like Jiang Zong didn’t deserve it!
Naturally, she couldn’t bring herself to delete the backup copy.
A single session of Modern History quickly slipped away amidst sweet dreams.
When the dismissal bell rang, He Xicun couldn’t resist asking, “Did you and Jiang Zong fall out?”
Lin Shuxue’s eyes dimmed. Just as she was about to answer, Meng Shuyin suddenly cut her off.
“Jiang Zong has a new girlfriend!”
This topic instantly snagged He Xicun’s attention.
“For real? How do you know?”
Meng Shuyin thrust her phone screen toward her to look at.
“A brand new post from the school confession wall! Someone caught a picture of the two of them holding hands at the school gate!”
Lin Shuxue and He Xicun poked their heads forward to get a closer look. Sure enough, the picture displayed a guy and a girl standing exceptionally close at the school entrance, their posture thick with ambiguity.
The male face was undeniably Jiang Zong’s.
“As expected of my male god, even resolution as blurry as this can’t block his handsomeness.”
Two girls passing behind them were likewise scrolling through this post, and Lin Shuxue overheard one of them sighing in admiration.
The stealthy photographer was incredibly skilled. Lin Shuxue couldn’t even fathom where on campus one would have to stand to capture a double portrait from such an angle, causing her to think to herself: The real experts are hidden among the common folk
He Xicun, however, studied the photo for a long time.
“This girl… why do I feel like she looks a little familiar?”
Frowning, her fingers repeatedly zoomed in and out on the screen for several rounds before she spoke with some suspicion.
“Could it be that ‘Lucky’ or whatever from the private booth that night?”
Meng Shuyin laughed at her. “What ‘Lucky’? Her name is Lucy!”
Then she reacted with surprise: “It’s this blurry and it’s only a profile view, yet you can still recognize her?”
He Xicun hesitated. “I think it looks like her. Her high heels that night seemed to belong to this exact brand.”
Hearing this, Lin Shuxue glanced at the female lead’s shoes in the picture and slowly nodded.
“It should be her.”
Deeply astounded, Meng Shuyin gave them both a massive thumbs-up.
“Awesome!”
He Xicun: “So the two of you…”
Though she spoke without a proper beginning or end, Lin Shuxue understood her perfectly.
A trace of emptiness stirred deep in her heart, and she shook her head.
“No, we weren’t close to begin with.”
On her way back to the dormitory, Lin Shuxue received a notification for the student union’s second-round interview tonight.
Just as she had anticipated, Meng Shuyin had failed to pass the first round. She looked at Lin Shuxue with eyes full of anticipation, hoping she would successfully pass so she could help trace down the handsome guy she had fallen in love with at first sight.
During the interval spent waiting in the holding room, Lin Shuxue crossed paths with the small girl with the hair bun who had been forced to stand as punishment by Gu Qingwan that day.
The small girl possessed a lively and outgoing personality in private. Recognizing her, she greeted her warmly and introduced herself.
Lin Shuxue learned her name: Ji Yan.
As luck would have it, this second round used a random drawing to group candidates, putting her and Ji Yan into the exact same group again.
Their group was slated as the fifth interview slot.
Someone ahead of them finished their interview and walked out with a crestfallen expression, prompting a familiar acquaintance to rush over and ask.
“How was it?”
The girl who was questioned felt a lingering fear, waving her hand. “Don’t even bring it up. The moment you walk in, five seniors are sitting there staring straight at you. The sense of pressure mounts instantly.”
“I didn’t even need them to apply pressure; I was going to crush myself with stress anyway.”
The other person offered a few words of comfort before probing into the details.
In order to streamline the process, the student union of Huaan University had merged the stress interview and the group interview into one, which explained why the evaluators were present in such full force for this second round.
“Who exactly is in there?”
Someone nearby asked out of curiosity.
The girl happened to possess a decent temper, actually counting them down one by one for them: “Minister Pei, Senior Brother Yang from the first round…”
“Oh, and that specific one.”
“Jiang Zong?”
Lin Shuxue overheard them mentioning this name.
A moment later, she received an affirmative response from the girl.
Paying close attention to the commotion, Ji Yan leaned in close to Lin Shuxue’s side to whisper in her ear, thoroughly pleasantly surprised: “They said Senior Jiang Zong is going to be there today!”
Lin Shuxue’s ear felt a bit ticklish. She sensed that Ji Yan might have some sort of imprinting complex.
Probably because the two of them had been targeted together by Gu Qingwan that day, she had automatically grouped them into the same camp, which was why she acted so familiar with someone she had just met.
Lin Shuxue didn’t let it show on her face, merely nodding.
After giving it some thought, she felt her response might seem a bit unfriendly, so she wracked her brain to tack on a sentence.
“Do you want to see him that badly?”
“Yeah! He… he helped us out that day, and I haven’t even had the chance to thank him properly.”
The girl who had been bouncing around just a moment ago suddenly grew bashful, a crimson blush tinting both cheeks.
Lin Shuxue understood completely.
Yet another one who had quietly developed feelings for Jiang Zong.
She had never doubted Jiang Zong’s charm. Whether it was the Jiang Zong in her memories or the Jiang Zong she saw today, he possessed plenty of reasons that drove numerous girls to pursue him.
In her impressions, he seemed to rarely fly into a rage, his loose, careless peach blossom eyes always wearing a hazy, lingering smile.
The only two exceptions had both been directed at her.
Lin Shuxue couldn’t help but furrow her brows.
Where exactly had she offended him?
Inside the evaluation room.
As soon as one group of interviewed students departed, Pei Tianyang seized the opportunity during the break to drag Jiang Zong aside.
“Hey, Brother Jiang, for the upcoming group interview, how about you take charge of interviewing Little Sister Lin?”
Little Sister Lin. Calling her by such an intimate name. They had only known each other for a few days.
For no apparent reason, Jiang Zong let out a cold sneer in his heart.
Tilting his head slightly, he threw his jaw up, his tone entirely devoid of emotion. “She’s your goddess, why are you asking me?”
“Ah!” Pei Tianyang patiently and earnestly explained to him, “I stepped forward once regarding the matter of Little Sister Lin being bullied by that idiot before. If I’m still the one interviewing her, it’ll easily spark gossip, which wouldn’t be great for her reputation if it spreads.”
“But I don’t feel reassured leaving her to anyone else, so I can only entrust her to you, Brother Jiang!”
Jiang Zong’s eyes were pitch-black. He stared at him for a long while, the corners of his brows lifting imperceptibly as he said carelessly.
“So considerate? Are you looking to pursue her?”
Pei Tianyang wore an expression as if he had seen a ghost, stating righteously, “What nonsense are you spouting! My feelings toward Little Sister Lin represent the purest form of aesthetic appreciation in the world!”
“I am a pure visual-enthusiast!”
An unconscious twitch pulled at the corner of Jiang Zong’s mouth. His fingertips rubbed against the paper pages, leaving it unclear whether he believed him or not.
The fifth group entered the room shortly after.
The task assigned to this group was to draft an action plan for a photography exhibition, with a group discussion duration of 20 minutes.
Lin Shuxue wasn’t particularly skilled at this type of interview; her childhood habit hadn’t been fully corrected, leaving her consistently afraid of speaking in settings with too many strangers.
However, group interviews didn’t just evaluate the subsequent individual talk; performance during the group discussion phase would also serve as one of the assessment criteria.
Fortunately, Ji Yan was highly talkative, and there was a capable girl with a high ponytail in the group who voluntarily took on the role of head coordinator, rapidly establishing the theme before dividing up the labor.
That girl noticed Lin Shuxue’s lack of words and very considerately assigned her the task of writing the host’s script, a job that allowed her to showcase her specific strengths without appearing detached from the group.
On the other side, the evaluation panel outlined their respective interview targets. Pei Tianyang winked furiously at Jiang Zong, assigning Lin Shuxue straight into Jiang Zong’s hands.
The 20 minutes wrapped up quickly, and the girl with the high ponytail handed over the compiled rough draft of the plan.
Subsequently, they were led to the waiting room, entering one by one for their individual interviews.
When Lin Shuxue walked inside, a senior happened to be flipping through the submitted materials, unconsciously muttering a line.
“Yijiang First High? Isn’t that the same alma mater as Brother Jiang!”
A person beside him slapped him. “What alma mater? Our Brother Jiang went to the High School Affiliated to Huaan University, have you lost your mind?”
That senior fired back, “Ah, Brother Jiang only transferred to the Affiliated High for his senior year. He spent his freshman and sophomore years studying in Yijiang.”
The person beside him hadn’t been aware of this fact, laughing awkwardly as he diverted the topic: “Then that’s quite a coincidence. Did Brother Jiang know her back then?”
The topic instantly shifted entirely onto Jiang Zong.
Pei Tianyang twitched his eyes and brows at him, repeatedly mouthing the words “my goddess.”
Jiang Zong leaned his torso back, raising both hands as his fingertips pinched the documents. His eyes drifted over to Lin Shuxue, drawing out his words lazily.
“From Yijiang High? No wonder…”
The person beside him laughed: “Looks like you’ve crossed paths before?”
Lin Shuxue, however, sensed that whatever was brewing inside those pitch-black eyes of his was bound to be nothing good.
Sure enough, he set down the documents, making a black gel pen spin a beautiful arc between his fingers. The corners of his mouth tilted upward into an absolute wicked smile.
“No wonder I don’t have a single shred of an impression.”
The classroom plunged into dead silence in an instant.
Lin Shuxue sat on the chair right in the center. Facing the burning gazes of everyone present, her expression remained entirely calm, just as it always had.
Ultimately, it was Pei Tianyang who cleared his throat twice, lightly tapping the desk in front of Jiang Zong twice before putting on a fake smile to smooth things over.
“Brother Jiang transferred to the Affiliated High not long after the senior year started. Going by age, Junior Sister Lin should have just entered high school back then. Unluckily, the timing split right past each other.”
The senior who had initiated the topic was sweating profusely at this point, never expecting his casual mention would drag out so much trouble.
One had to know that although Jiang Zong bore a bad reputation among outsiders, he rarely humiliated someone’s face in public.
Could it be that these two shared a personal grudge? He hadn’t heard of Jiang Zong holding grudges against girls before.
Unable to dwell on it further, he also scrambled to chime in: “True, true, I completely overlooked that point.”
“Mm.” Jiang Zong reined in his movements, straightening his posture slightly as he chuckled. “So for the upcoming interview, I won’t be going easy on her.”
The crowd, entirely unaware of the dark undercurrents swirling between the two, suddenly understood, so that was what he meant.
Even Pei Tianyang was completely fooled, assuming Jiang Zong had intentionally distanced himself from any connection by saying that.
After all, Jiang Zong had also been present at the scene that day.
He even foolishly sighed with admiration in his heart, thinking that his Brother Jiang was truly as meticulous as a hair, completely reliable.