Ji Wenyu frantically rummaged through his backpack for his headphones.
[Little Fish: Alright]
Calling it a voice chat was actually just that he and X were both sitting in a library filled with people, unable to speak out loud. If they wanted to communicate anything, they still had to rely on typing.
Yet, strangely enough, just listening to the faint sound of breathing coming from the other end of the headphones, the young man’s restless heart suddenly calmed down, finally allowing him to read and absorb the texts and formulas in his notes.
With X’s supervision, he was unexpectedly efficient all evening. When the library closed, Ji Wenyu packed up his things and followed the crowd out of the building.
In the early winter of Beijing, the coldness pierced straight into his nasal passages as soon as he stepped outside. The young man, who had forgotten to zip up his coat, couldn’t help sneezing.
“The temperature drop these past few days…” X’s voice sounded in the headphones.
The other person had been right there on the other side of the headphones all along, as if accompanying right by his side.
Ji Wenyu sniffled and chimed in, “Yeah, exactly, time to switch to a down jacket.”
Even a cashmere coat was starting to fall a bit short in Beijing at the end of October.
Winter had truly arrived.
“Yeah, there are quite a few people catching colds lately,” X replied.
He didn’t continue, but Ji Wenyu suddenly had a strange intuition.
He didn’t know why, but it felt like X was hesitating to speak, as if wanting to tell him to be careful and dress warmly to avoid getting sick. Yet, for some reason, the other person swallowed the words back down.
The young man wasn’t sure if he was really sensing the other person’s emotions or just being full of wishful thinking.
But he felt like he should probably reply with something.
“Then God X better be careful too, lest you catch it.” Ji Wenyu curled the corners of his lips and decided to voice this care first.
Would it sound a bit ambiguous? Perhaps a little bit. But X was a benefactor who had helped him so much anyway, just expressing a bit of care shouldn’t be a problem, right?
“You too.” X paused for a second before replying.
Once on his bike, it wasn’t very convenient to keep talking. The cold wind blew fiercely against his face, and all the way to the dormitory building, the young man’s originally fair cheeks were flushed with a slight red from the chill. Fortunately, he brought gloves when he went out, otherwise he might have frozen his fingers off. Ji Wenyu stuffed the thick knitted gloves into his schoolbag, locked his bike, and went upstairs.
If he joined a voice chat right back in the dorm, Huang Bin and Pan Lejia would definitely corner him at the door and interrogate him. The young man walked into the dorm building and stopped by the elevator on the first floor.
“I’ve reached the dorm.” He said to X on the other end of the headphones.
He felt a little reluctant to hang up.
“Yeah, then goodnight.” This was the second time X said goodnight to him.
Many years ago during the non-mainstream middle-school era, the word goodnight used to carry ambiguous interpretations. But so many years had passed; it wasn’t impossible that X either didn’t know or hadn’t thought in that direction.
Ji Wenyu touched his nose, halting his wild imagination.
The last time X said goodnight to him, his mind was in a chaotic mess, and he seemed to have forgotten to respond properly. This time, he couldn’t miss the chance to say goodnight back.
“Goodnight.” The young man said carefully.
Regardless of whether X had any other meaning when saying goodnight, at least what he was expressing meant liking. He liked X, and this point seemed to be growing increasingly clear, even though he didn’t know how X felt about him.
The heating hadn’t been turned on yet, and the hallway wasn’t much warmer than the outdoors.
Yet, after saying that goodnight, Ji Wenyu felt as though his entire body was involuntarily heating up, especially his heart burning fiercely.
It was clearly a winter night, but he felt as if he were in the clear morning of summer. Harboring a liking for someone made him feel happy and satisfied, making even midterms week seem not so hard to endure.
“You’re back.” He pushed the door open and walked into the dorm, rarely seeing Pan Lejia not glued to his computer playing games. “You’re the first one today, Lao Huang and Lao Xu aren’t back yet.”
“Rare.” Xu Yuanzhe usually cut it close to library closing time when returning to the dorm, rarely staying out overnight; wondered if he went on a date.
“Did you print Lao Xu’s notes?” Pan Lejia asked. “How is it, useful?”
“Printed it, didn’t print yours.” Ji Wenyu threw his schoolbag onto his chair and grabbed his toiletries to head out.
“Callous man,” Pan Lejia shouted behind his back. “Go to the library tomorrow and save a seat for me too.”
“Are you starting to cram at the last minute?” Ji Wenyu stopped, turned back, and raised an eyebrow.
Pan Lejia: “You think I want to fail? Lao Huang has already started pulling all-nighters, the situation is dire.”
Ji Wenyu agreed, “Alright, I’ll call you tomorrow. Are you going to Machine Learning tomorrow morning?”
“Going, definitely going.” Pan Lejia stuffed his heavy textbook into his schoolbag. “I’m not as good as Lao Xu at taking notes, but when it comes to catching key points, I’ve got a system. After all, it’s a matter of life and death.”
It seemed like a tacit understanding had formed. Over the next few days, as soon as Ji Wenyu arrived at the library, he subconsciously messaged X.
X replied almost instantly every time, and then the two of them would voice chat to supervise each other’s studying.
How could this not count as checking in?
He originally thought that voice-chatting with someone would distract his energy, but the young man was just as efficient over the next few days as he had been on the first night, remaining full of energy even on weekend mornings without needing coffee to keep him alive.
The professional class notes were all reviewed, the winter camp materials were prepared, and the first draft was sent to Chen Wang’s inbox. Without pulling any all-nighters, Ji Wenyu smoothly pulled through the deadly midterms week.
On Friday morning, after finishing the final exam for Machine Learning, Dorm 606’s midterms chapter could be considered temporarily closed. Going out to feast and play games after finishing midterms and finals was a tradition of the dorm for the past three years, as well as a fixed procedure for bonding, and even the top student Xu Yuanzhe hadn’t missed it.
“Nobody has classes this afternoon, right?” Stepping out of the exam room, the four of them walked side by side out of the Zhizhi Building, while Pan Lejia hooked his arm around Ji Wenyu’s shoulder and turned to ask Xu Yuanzhe and Huang Bin behind them.
Ji Wenyu had classes, but they were two slack classes that didn’t require midterms, which rounded out to having none.
All four of them were in a similar situation, and everyone tacitly assumed they had no classes to deal with, with Xu Yuanzhe being no exception.
“Then let’s go, grab a big meal, and head to the internet cafe?” Pan Lejia raised his hand in a forward-charging gesture.
“Let’s go, let’s go, absolutely!”
Huang Bin and Ji Wenyu both chimed in closely, and Xu Yuanzhe had no objections either.
The Zhizhi Building was near the west gate of the school, which happened to be in the exact opposite direction of the dorm building. The four of them headed out from the west gate nearby, walking toward the street facing Capital University across the way.
Usually accustomed to activities in the northeast area of the campus, Ji Wenyu didn’t frequent the west gate area often.
However, because the street opposite the west gate was lined with Capital University, the entrance was packed with a continuous string of restaurants, so there was hardly any need to go searching hard.
For such a celebratory and good day, of course, they had to eat hot pot and pack on some winter fat along the way.
The four of them shared a unified opinion and headed straight for the Beijing copper-pot shabu-shabu restaurant, the second one on the right hand side of the west gate.
The pot base was traditional Beijing clear water, sprinkled with just a few wolfberries, yet sufficiently fresh and sweet. The mutton came in thin, freshly frozen slices, and the sesame flatbreads were freshly baked, salt-and-pepper flavored with crispy crusts.
The soup base in the pot boiled up bubbling little foams, and as a plate of mutton went down, Huang Bin suddenly thought of something.
“Hey, Lao Xu…”
He spoke halfway, trailing off, and exchanged glances in mid-air with Ji Wenyu and Pan Lejia.
Ji Wenyu instantly understood what he meant.
“Xu Yuanzhe, are you seriously just hanging out with the three of us today?” He followed up to finish Huang Bin’s question.
There were four people in Dorm 606, and now one of them had already gotten into a relationship. After finishing such an important exam like midterms, still hanging out with the remaining three single dogs in the dorm felt a bit out of place.
“Yeah, won’t your girlfriend have opinions?” Pan Lejia smoothly tacked on another sentence.
Among the three of them, he asked the most straightforwardly.
Xu Yuanzhe’s matter of getting a girlfriend had always been a guess among the three of them. Xu Yuanzhe hadn’t brought it up proactively, so the three of them hadn’t pursued it with questions either.
Now that Pan Lejia asked it so bluntly, Ji Wenyu couldn’t help clicking his tongue, concentrating intently to observe Xu Yuanzhe’s expression.
Hearing him mention the word girlfriend, a trace of confusion flashed across the top student’s eyes.
Good grief, still playing dumb, not even telling the truth to his brothers sharing the same room.
Ji Wenyu muttered inwardly about Xu Yuanzhe not being open, sucking on the sesame paste on his chopsticks while continuing to stare at the top student to listen to the gossip.
Xu Yuanzhe cleared his throat: “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Ah, you broke up just like that?” Huang Bin was stunned, giving his own mouth a slap. “I won’t ask, I won’t ask, it’s our bad.”
Seeing this, Pan Lejia also drew in a sharp breath, turning his head away to pretend to check if the mutton in the pot was cooked yet: “Um, the mutton should be edible now, right? The waiter seemed to say 30 seconds earlier. Let’s stop talking about unhappy things, come on, come on, today is a good day, let’s eat meat, eat meat.”
Everyone’s midterms exams at the table had been carried through by Xu Yuanzhe’s notes, and nobody wanted to upset the big boss.
Ji Wenyu also cooperated by picking up his chopsticks to scoop meat, aggressively loading up a large chopsticks-full for Xu Yuanzhe, who was still sitting in place looking like he wanted to say something more.
Since everyone was single, the post-meal gaming activities could naturally go all night. Anyway, tomorrow was Saturday, so they could lounge like corpses in the dorm for a whole day.
Once a gaming session started, time flew by swiftly.
When it came to the alluring nature of food, the most aromatic thing had to be the instant noodles at the internet cafe. A bowl of sour and spicy beef noodles, a Shuanghui Wangzhongwang sausage, and a marinated egg surpassed any delicacy from land or sea.
The lighting in the internet cafe was dim, with thick blackout curtains drawn over the surrounding windows. After a few rounds of gaming, it became completely impossible to tell the time. During a halftime break, after visiting the restroom and returning, Ji Wenyu was startled by the time displayed on his phone screen, which was already the middle of the night.
He hadn’t checked in on Qinghe today.
He still hadn’t talked to X today.
Checking in on Qinghe was a small matter; not checking in with X was the critical thing.
Wondering if X would look for him?
Both nervous and expectant, he opened Qinghe.
The message interface was empty and desolate, without a single unread message from X.
The young man frowned in puzzlement, refreshing the interface again. Still nothing.
X didn’t message him today, and didn’t participate in the activity check-in either?
Ji Wenyu clicked into that person’s homepage, and after confirming there were no new check-in notes, clicked into the homepage of the Qinghe check-in activity instead.
Right, turns out the check-in activity had ended.
So X hadn’t posted new notes, nor sent him check-in updates.
An indescribable sense of loss enveloped the young man. Ji Wenyu suddenly felt it lost all meaning, no longer wanting to stay at the internet cafe.
Could he interpret it as: without the check-in activity, X wouldn’t think of him at all, nor would he take the initiative to contact him? Were all those connections from a short while ago just his own wishful thinking?
The so-called three major illusions in life were probably phone vibrations, someone knocking on the door, and the person you like also liking you.
Perhaps he had really overthought it all along.
He voice-chatted with X because of liking, wanting to share that person’s breathing and heartbeat. Yet the other person voice-chatting with him was just an indifferent, casual gesture, or perhaps doing so genuinely helped X improve efficiency.
The questions X helped him with might just have been for review. X was naturally helpful by nature, and answering those questions for him wasn’t all that different from answering doubts for others in the notes.
He didn’t even know who X was or what he looked like, knew nothing about what kind of personality the person had or what they liked to do in daily life, yet he had gone ahead and fallen for the other person just like that. Thinking about it now, it was absurd.
It was one thing for him to be absurd, but how could the other party possibly be equally absurd, falling in love with a stranger on the internet like this?
All those previous connections were merely charity bestowed upon him by X as a study partner. A big boss like X naturally had a social circle matching his own, so how could he ever get obsessed with a tiny chat box on a social app?
Utterly crestfallen, wearing his headphones as he sank back down into the gaming chair, he got headshot right at the start of two consecutive matches.
“Old Ji, seven o’clock direction! Hey! Tsk.” Pan Lejia sighed at him through the headset.
“I’m tired, guys, I’m heading back first.” Ji Wenyu tore off his headphones, trying his best to mask the emotion on his face. “Too exhausted these past few days, can’t hold out anymore.”
With his emotions dampened to this extent, the young man’s face was indeed filled with exhaustion. The other three didn’t suspect a thing, and Huang Bin motioned for him to hurry back and rest.
“Then I’ll pull out too.” Just as he stood up, Xu Yuanzhe also unclipped his headphones.
It was expected. Xu Yuanzhe was never someone who stayed up late playing games, and now that Ji Wenyu was heading back first anyway, since it wasn’t a neat group activity for all four in the dorm anymore, him proposing to go back together made complete sense either way.
Thus, the ones remaining at the internet cafe were only Huang Bin and Pan Lejia.
Huang Bin patted Pan Lejia’s shoulder: “It’s fine, Lao Pan. I’ll stay here to keep you company, the two of us will fight it out till dawn.”
“You got it.” Pan Lejia took a gulp of his energy drink and adjusted his headset.