Once the initial rush of novelty faded, university life settled into its busy, regular routine.
Right now, inside Dormitory 206, Meng Shuyin slammed her document bag down, collapsed onto her bed, and wailed about how exhausted she was.
He Xicun, who had returned right behind her, glanced at the groaning figure on the bed.
“Didn’t you have only one class today?”
Meng Shuyin complained pitifully, “Is it the class that’s exhausting? It’s the endless stream of sudden notifications!”
She sat up straight, holding out her hands to count on her fingers.
“On Monday, they notified us at dinner time to hold an ice-breaker class meeting. On Tuesday, they notified us to go to a grade-wide assembly right at noon. Wednesday was even more ridiculous—they dragged us over just to sign some Safety and Responsibility Commitment Form!”
“Those leaders sit in their offices all day with nothing better to do, completely occupied with cooking up meetings for us to attend!”
Meng Shuyin criticized them righteously, making it obvious that her resentment had been building for a long time.
But just as she wanted to say more, the phone on the head of her bed buzzed twice at an inopportune moment.
Meng Shuyin grabbed it and let out a tragic shriek.
“Why is the Student Union recruitment interview today?!”
It was at this exact moment that Lin Shuxue returned.
“What’s wrong?”
Watching the drama unfold from the side, He Xicun smiled and explained, “It’s nothing. Just a certain teenage girl unable to bear the heavy burdens of life.”
Meng Shuyin glared resentfully at He Xicun and sat up from the bed.
“If I had known, I wouldn’t have signed up for that stupid Public Relations Department! What do I know about public relations anyway?!”
He Xicun was also curious. “Yeah, didn’t you say you were going to be a total slacker until the very end? Why did you suddenly sign up?”
The person who had looked full of deep hatred and misery just a second ago instantly changed her expression. Her eyes blinked like a young girl in love, and she smiled mysteriously.
Unmoved by the romance, He Xicun turned her head to look at Lin Shuxue. “Has she lost her mind?”
Lin Shuxue couldn’t help but curve her eyes into a smile. “She was completely captivated by the Head of the Public Relations Department. The moment she got the registration form, she just had to fill it out. I couldn’t stop her.”
He Xicun showed a disdainful expression that said, ‘As I thought.’
Meng Shuyin was still grinning happily. “I heard that the Department Head will be at the recruitment interview in person. Doesn’t that mean I have a chance to see him today?”
He Xicun patted her head, which was practically bursting with pink bubbles. Opening her laptop, she gave her a look of pity. “Don’t forget to go home after seeing him. The counselor just posted a new message in the class group chat.”
“Fill out a personal information record form and print it out in triplicate.”
As she watched Meng Shuyin’s horrified eyes widen bit by bit, He Xicun kindly added one more sentence.
“To. Be. Collected. Tonight.”
The person who had just sat up from the bed collapsed back down again, her entire face writing out her utter despair with life.
Meanwhile, on the other side.
“Master Jiang, today is the department recruitment. Are you really not going?” Pei Tianyang gathered the scattered data forms on the desk and asked the person on the opposite bed who was typing out data.
Jiang Zong refused without a second thought. “You’re the Department Head. What would I go for?”
Pei Tianyang reminded him in a teasing, playful tone, “But that’s the person you personally snatched back from the Propaganda Department. Are you really not going to take a look?”
Jiang Zong glanced sideways at him, his expression unreadable.
Pei Tianyang knew when to back down. He waved his hands in surrender. “I want to ask my goddess for her WeChat.”
“Brother Jiang, Master Jiang, come with me to give me some courage, okay?”
Jiang Zong arched an eyebrow and sneered, “Pathetic.”
He stood up. His tall silhouette looked even more elegant and refined against the backlight as he casually dropped a line.
“Lead the way.”
The interviews were conducted in groups of five, and Lin Shuxue was assigned to the very first group to lead the charge.
The interview locations for the Public Relations Department and the Arts Department were not on the same floor, so Meng Shuyin could only say goodbye to her with tearful eyes.
Following the guidance of the senior sister who received them, she walked into the interview room. Sitting at the table directly in front of them were a senior brother and a senior sister.
Perhaps she was a bit sensitive, but she felt that when she walked past, that senior sister’s gaze lingered on her for a very long time.
She tilted her head slightly and clearly read the nameplate placed in front of the senior sister: Gu Qingwan.
Lin Shuxue recalled for a few seconds in her mind, but she had never had any intersection with such a name.
The senior brother on the side directed them to hand over the mobile phones they carried with them onto the table, arranging them neatly with the screens facing up.
Lin Shuxue saw Gu Qingwan in front of her suddenly pull out her own phone and start typing away right out in the open.
In the next second, the phones collected on the table lit up their screens in perfect unison.
The five applicants looked at each other, not knowing what the other party was trying to do.
“Whose phone is this?”
Gu Qingwan held up the only phone whose screen had not lit up. Her expression was arrogant, and her tone seemed to carry quite a bit of displeasure.
A young girl with a bun hairstyle sitting next to Lin Shuxue raised her hand tremblingly.
“It’s… it’s mine.”
Gu Qingwan frowned. “When the notification was sent out, wasn’t it emphasized that setting group messages to ‘Do Not Disturb’ is strictly prohibited?”
The girl opened her mouth wanting to explain, but she was quickly suppressed by Gu Qingwan’s increasingly harsh words.
“You even put the interview notification group on ‘Do Not Disturb.’ How is the Student Union supposed to contact you if there are temporary notices in the future?”
The more she spoke, the more worked up she became, as if the other party had committed some heinous crime. The young girl’s head dropped lower and lower.
At the end, she didn’t forget to stab her one more time: “Now you know to lower your head? Do you feel wronged? If during official work, your group’s work deviates because your messages were on ‘Do Not Disturb,’ the one you will have to face won’t be just me alone, but the leaders and students of the entire university!”
Gu Qingwan tilted her head up slightly, speaking with plausible but forced arguments.
“I didn’t set it to ‘Do Not Disturb’…” the young girl squeezed a sentence out from between her teeth.
Gu Qingwan didn’t expect her to actually dare to talk back. She held up the empty message page of the girl’s phone screen.
“You didn’t set it to ‘Do Not Disturb’? Then what is this?”
Gathering her courage, the young girl snatched her phone back from Gu Qingwan’s hand, unlocked it, and showed her the red dot on the WeChat icon.
“I just didn’t turn on the lock screen display for WeChat messages… I just didn’t want other people to see my messages.” The girl’s voice was weak, but her tone was firm.
The overbearing expression on Gu Qingwan’s face visibly froze for a moment.
Several other students in the interview room couldn’t help but whisper among themselves.
“How awkward…”
“She wanted to set up a persona of a clear-headed, career-driven alpha female, but her persona completely collapsed…”
Because she was close by, Lin Shuxue caught all of their hushed discussions perfectly.
The other interviewer, the senior brother, cleared his throat twice and spoke up to remind everyone: “Pay attention to discipline.”
Gu Qingwan’s face looked very unsightly, but she remained aggressive: “Not turning on lock screen notifications still doesn’t guarantee you will receive group notices in a timely manner. Considering the special circumstances, you are allowed to stay and continue the interview, however—”
She paused, turned her head to look at the young girl whose shoulders were trembling slightly, and smiled contemptuously: “You must stand for the entire duration of the interview. This is your punishment.”
The senior brother took over the floor at the right time, tapping the table to signal the start of the interview.
Lin Shuxue was third in line. While the first two were being interviewed, her mind frequently wandered, her peripheral vision falling on the young girl forced to stand in the corner.
The girl wasn’t tall, and her playful, cute bun hairstyle made her small frame look even more frail while being forced to stand there.
“Next, Lin Shuxue.”
The first two interviewees had been questioned by the senior brother and senior sister alternately. Theoretically, it should have been this senior brother’s turn to interview Lin Shuxue.
Unexpectedly, Gu Qingwan suddenly spoke up: “Since it’s a female student, I’ll handle the interview. Senior Brother Yang, is that alright?”
The “Senior Brother Yang” she spoke of—the senior brother—nodded and handed the microphone back to her.
“Introduce yourself first.” Gu Qingwan didn’t even raise her head, merely arching her eyebrows to signal her.
Lin Shuxue didn’t care too much about her impolite behavior and introduced herself smoothly.
“Hello, Senior Sister and Senior Brother, I am Lin Shuxue from Journalism Class 2.”
“Pfft”
Gu Qingwan covered her lips with her hand and let out a low laugh, her eyes full of disdain.
“What did you just call us?”
Lin Shuxue cooperated with good temper and repeated: “Senior Sister and Senior Brother.”
Holding a form between her fingers, Gu Qingwan radiated a sense of superiority from head to toe. “Student Lin, you need to know that this is an interview right now.”
“You should address us as Interviewers.”
“Even if you join the Student Union later, we address each other as Senior Brother and Senior Sister (Shige / Shijie). An outdated form of address like Senior Brother and Senior Sister (Xuechang / Xuejie) should have been phased out the exact moment you graduated from high school.”
Among the people who came for the interview, there was someone plain-spoken who murmured softly, “Aren’t people only called Shige and Shijie if they study under the same mentor?”
What responded to him was a harsh, stinging glare from Gu Qingwan.
Lin Shuxue didn’t feel like arguing with her. After changing the form of address according to her demands, she restarted her self-introduction.
Gu Qingwan held the edges of the form paper with both hands, adopting that familiar tone of voice. “Mm, Student Lin, I noticed that in this registration form of yours, as well as in your self-introduction just now, you didn’t mention having any special talents.”
“Did you forget to mention it?”
Lin Shuxue was puzzled. “I don’t have any particular talents that I excel at.”
Gu Qingwan laughed again. “Then are you certain… you didn’t apply to the wrong department?”
“The types of skills you wrote you are good at on your registration form seem entirely out of place with our Arts Department, don’t they?”
No matter how slow Lin Shuxue might be, she could tell something was wrong by now. Her initial sensitivity hadn’t been mistaken; Gu Qingwan was deliberately targeting her.
She didn’t want to start a conflict, so she kept her patience and explained unhurriedly.
“I remember writing in the specialty column that I am good at process planning, and I have experience planning large-scale, school-level activities in high school.”
“Does this not fit the work of the Arts Department?”
Gu Qingwan refused to let it go. “But you don’t have any artistic talents or skills. How would you know if a performance program is good or bad?”
This was pure sophistry.
Lin Shuxue didn’t respond directly. Instead, she used a meme well-known on the internet: “If I want to evaluate whether a refrigerator is good or bad, do I absolutely have to learn how to refrigerate things myself?”
“Furthermore, I have always believed that as the highest-level student organization in our school, the University Student Union naturally possesses the clearest division of personnel and organizational planning.” She quietly gave Gu Qingwan a flattering compliment.
“If you consistently hold a prejudice against my appreciation abilities just because I don’t have artistic talents, you can entirely arrange for me to do other work. From what I understand, the activities the Arts Department needs to host are not limited solely to entertainment performances.”
She was actually suppressing a fire in her heart too. No one would be happy being targeted for no rhyme or reason. When she spoke, her already somewhat cold voice dropped another three tones.
“What’s more, if one must have artistic talents to enter the Arts Department…”
“When you were screening the recruitment registration forms, why didn’t you screen me out?”
Upon hearing the other party’s logical and clear statement, Gu Qingwan’s face visibly dropped, her expression darkening slightly.
“Are you questioning me right now?”
Lin Shuxue suppressed her impatience. “I am stating the rules from when the recruitment took place.”
Gu Qingwan raised her voice: “But right now, I am the interviewer. I call the shots on the rules of the interview!”
A small side door inside the interview room was suddenly pushed open. Lin Shuxue caught sight of Jiang Zong strolling out with leisurely steps, following a guy who was half a head shorter than him.
The Student Union recruitment interviews required the Department Head to be present. Thinking back to what Senior Sister Guan had said before, Lin Shuxue guessed that he must be the head of the Arts Department on paper.
Pei Tianyang.
Sure enough, the moment that “Senior Brother Yang” heard the movement of the door opening, he turned around immediately. Seeing them come out, he hurried forward to greet them.
“Department Head Pei, you’re here.”
Pei Tianyang didn’t have time to pay attention to him. He walked straight up to Gu Qingwan.
“You call the shots on the interview rules?”
Pei Tianyang’s eyebrows were thick and coarse, naturally carrying a wild, fierce aura. Right now, he was genuinely a bit angry. His eyebrows slanted upward, and the space between his brows was tightly knitted, looking very intimidating at first glance.
At the very least, it struck Gu Qingwan dumb.
“I, I didn’t mean it that way…”
“Well, I am the Department Head. In this department, I call the shots!”
“No matter which Communist Youth League committee teacher arranged for you to come to this recruitment interview, pack up and get out of this interview room right now!”
His voice was full of resonance, and the angry trail of his words echoed inside the empty interview room.
Pei Tianyang and Jiang Zong had actually arrived long ago. However, fearing that entering midway would affect the applicants’ interview states, they had been staying in the booth behind.
Earlier, when Gu Qingwan used forms of address to make things difficult for Lin Shuxue, Pei Tianyang had wanted to rush out and curse her out. He only forced himself to endure it because he was afraid others would maliciously misinterpret Lin Shuxue.
Lin Shuxue didn’t have the spare time to admire Gu Qingwan’s flushed face from being unable to back down. The guy who came out behind had strolled over to her side at some unknown point. He was lazily leaning against the doorframe, watching the farce in front of him with rapt interest.
There was no air conditioning in the back booth, making it small and stuffy. Jiang Zong was sensitive to heat, so the sleeves of his black shirt were rolled up all the way to his upper arms, exposing forearms with clearly defined veins as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Narrowing his eyes halfway, he arched an eyebrow at Lin Shuxue and smiled, speaking in a low volume that only the two of them could hear.
“You’ve got quite the silver tongue, Junior Sister Lin.”
“As expected of a fine prospect that I personally snatched out from under the hands of the Propaganda Department.”