Xu Yuanzhe was acting strange.
Hoping back to the dorm on one leg, Ji Wenyu found the room completely empty.
Huang Bin had likely gone off to attend his packed schedule of classes for the day, and Pan Lejia’s whereabouts were unknown.
Sitting down on the swivel chair under his bed, Ji Wenyu pulled out his phone and messaged Pan Lejia.
【Little Fish: Kiddo, coming back at noon? Buy your dad some lunch.】
Pan Lejia’s reply came almost instantly.
【peterpan: At the internet cafe.】
【peterpan: Not coming back for lunch, but midnight snacks are fine.】
Great, no hope there.
Having barely managed to drag himself back to the dorm, Ji Wenyu couldn’t be bothered to make the trip to the cafeteria. He simply climbed up onto his bed, deciding to combine lunch and dinner into one meal to save himself two trips out.
He had no classes in the morning, and the afternoon session was a political theory lecture that didn’t take attendance, which, roughly speaking, meant he had no classes at all. With only him in the room and the curtains drawn tightly shut to block out the light, Ji Wenyu hit the pillow and slept straight through until evening.
He drifted off in the quiet and woke up in the exact same stillness.
The boy turned on the small clip-on lamp by his head and unlocked his phone screen before his eyes were even fully open.
There was a pile of unread messages. Aside from group chats, most of them were asking if he wanted to go to the sports field to play ball.
Play ball? Right now, just walking to the cafeteria was a struggle for him. Ji Wenyu tried moving his ankle slightly, only to wince in pain a second later.
He declined the invitations one by one and began flipping through the group notifications.
Over in the Student Union group, the newly elected junior vice-president was calling for a newcomer gathering and invited him, a retired senior official, to attend.
【Little Fish: Going, absolutely going. You guys pick the place, my treat.】
The chat group for their summer field research trip was also organizing a dinner, mentioning that a new pig-trotter hotpot place had just opened near the school gate and was supposedly great, asking if everyone was busy with the start of the semester.
【Little Fish: Any time before midterms works.】
【Little Fish: I tried that place just last week, packed with people.】
The long-silent Data Mining course group chat also suddenly popped up with plenty of messages discussing the upcoming presentation. Ji Wenyu glanced at the calendar and let out a soft click of his tongue. No wonder everyone remembered this group today; he had almost forgotten that tomorrow was Wednesday, and the second period in the morning was Data Mining, where they had to present on stage.
Data Mining was a compulsory professional course for their Artificial Intelligence department, and he happened to be in the same section as Xu Yuanzhe. It was a five-person group formed freely, and Ji Wenyu had naturally latched onto his high-achieving roommate’s coattails while pulling in a few other classmates from their usual basketball circle.
The group leader had been chosen by a roll of the dice in the chat. Both Ji Wenyu and Xu Yuanzhe successfully dodged it, and the chore fell to Ma Ziming from the next dorm over. Generally speaking, the style of the group leader largely dictated the pacing of the assignment. As a fellow procrastinator who lived on the basketball court alongside Ji Wenyu and relied on the midterm and final cram weeks to survive, Ma Ziming lived up to expectations by delaying the group presentation until the very day before it was due.
The first message in the chat was from Ma Ziming, outlining a rough division of tasks: one person to preprocess the data provided by the professor, one to write the code and run the model, one to write the model analysis, one to make the PowerPoint, and the last person to handle the presentation on stage tomorrow. The moment he dropped the division in the chat, Xu Yuanzhe immediately threw the cleaned data along with the code right into the group. He had completed his task while claiming it, leaving the remaining three to pick from whatever was left. Because Ji Wenyu had slept through the afternoon and checked the messages last, the only thing left for him was tomorrow’s stage presentation.
Doing a presentation wasn’t something a socially anxious person loved, but Ji Wenyu didn’t mind. However, to present on stage, he also had to figure out the details of the preceding steps completed by the other four members, meaning his workload wouldn’t end up being much less than just the presentation itself.
When he opened the group chat, the other three members excluding Xu Yuanzhe were discussing where to pull an all-nighter tonight. After all, for a major assignment requiring joint effort, working together made things much more efficient, especially for whoever was coding and analyzing models, since mismatched trains of thought could easily lead to disjointed final results.
Ji Wenyu naturally had no objections to pulling an all-nighter outside. Having slept all afternoon, he was bursting with energy and just wanted to find somewhere to eat.
【Mr. Yang: How about Old Ma’s BBQ at the North Gate?】
Yang Hongshuo, a member of the group, suggested.
Old Ma’s BBQ at the North Gate of Zijing University had always been everyone’s favorite sanctuary for all-nighters. Open 24 hours, their skewers tasted legendary, and with a bit of their house-brewed rice wine while studying and eating, the night would fly by without a hint of sleepiness.
【Little Fish: No problem】
Group leader Ma Ziming and the other member Zhang Sheng both replied with OK emojis.
With the location settled, everyone set off on their own.
The boys’ dorm was closest to the North Gate, so theoretically, Ji Wenyu should have been the first to arrive.
Yet with his left foot still swollen and mobility compromised, just packing his things, changing clothes, and heading down to the lobby took a full half-hour.
Even though autumn had officially begun, Beijing’s weather still felt like summer, and past seven o’clock, the sky was only just beginning to darken.
As Ji Wenyu slowly limped toward the school’s North Gate, he happened to spot Xu Yuanzhe riding a bike past the lane toward the entrance.
The boy waved enthusiastically: “Hey! What a coincidence!”
Hearing himself called, Xu Yuanzhe seemed to notice him on the sidewalk for the first time. He gave Ji Wenyu a rather perfunctory nod before preparing to brush past the boy.
“Are you riding your bike out?” Old Ma’s BBQ was directly across from the North Gate, and Ji Wenyu asked with some confusion.
Xu Yuanzhe squeezed his brake: “Yeah, going out for a bit.”
Something felt off.
Ji Wenyu: “You’re not going to Old Ma’s?”
Xu Yuanzhe answered with brutal honesty: “I’m heading to a nearby internet cafe.”
Ji Wenyu froze, blurting out: “Are you going to find Lao Pan?”
Xu Yuanzhe didn’t catch what he said and looked at him in confusion: “Huh?”
“Nothing, nothing.” The boy waved his hand in defeat.
Xu Yuanzhe wasn’t going. An inexplicable sense of loss washed over Ji Wenyu. Whatever, the guy had already posted the data preprocessing results in the group, which naturally meant he didn’t want to be bothered anymore. Still, a group presentation was a collaborative assignment that counted toward their final grade. As the top GPA powerhouse of their grade, Xu Yuanzhe never let a single point slip away, so Ji Wenyu was genuinely surprised that he wasn’t joining them for an all-nighter to oversee the modeling process.
With the guy pedaling away into the distance, Ji Wenyu belatedly felt that something didn’t add up. Pan Lejia went to the internet cafe to game online with bad company. Their dorm’s Wi-Fi was buttery smooth, so why would an exemplary student like Xu Yuanzhe go to an internet cafe? Who was he going to see?
Distracted, Ji Wenyu pushed past his ankle pain and stepped through the doors of the barbecue restaurant.
Ma Ziming had already arrived, sitting on a booth sofa inside and waving at him.
“Xu Yuanzhe didn’t come with you?”
That was the first question Ji Wenyu was asked upon sitting down.
“He had things to do and isn’t coming.”
A plate of mutton skewers had already been served. The boy tossed his backpack aside and picked up a skewer to munch on.
“Oh,” Ma Ziming nodded.
He had wanted to hitch a ride on coattails, only for the VIP player to ditch them and run. Tonight, Ji Wenyu was clearly not the only one feeling let down.
With no one to backstop them, everyone had to rely on their own efforts. Since the semester had just started, the content for the group presentation wasn’t difficult. Munching and discussing at the same time, the group quickly decided on the model to use for solving the problem.
With the model settled and the code mostly written out, all that remained was the model explanation, the speech draft, and the PowerPoint slides. Time had just passed midnight, and the night was still young.
Since there was still time, nobody was in a hurry. Ma Ziming called the waiter to add a round of late-night snack orders, followed by a pot of rice wine.
He tapped open his phone, scrolled twice, and leaned mysteriously close to Ji Wenyu.
“What?” The boy pulled back defensively in a tactical retreat. It wasn’t their first day knowing each other; Ji Wenyu knew that look on Ma Ziming’s face meant trouble.
“How come you didn’t go play ball today?” Ma Ziming laid down some groundwork first.
Ji Wenyu: “Oh, had stuff to do today, didn’t go.”
Twisting his ankle on flat ground in the classroom was far too embarrassing, and Ji Wenyu had no desire to let others know.
“A sophomore girl from my College English class said she saw the two of us playing ball on the sports field last week and asked me for your contact info. Look, here’s her photo, take a look, gonna give it or not?” Ma Ziming slid his phone over.
Without even looking, Ji Wenyu pushed the phone right back.
“Destiny will bring us together if it’s meant to be.”
“Bro, at least take a look, this one’s genuinely pretty.” Ma Ziming pushed the phone back over.
Ji Wenyu shoved the phone back again, casually stuffing a chicken wing into the guy’s hand: “Not interested. Eat.”
Ma Ziming shook his head and bit into the chicken wing, while Yang Hongshuo couldn’t help leaning over to take a peek, letting out a soft whistle immediately after.
“Actually pretty. Some starve to death while others drown. Hey, Ji Wenyu, do you secretly have a girlfriend you’re hiding from us? From freshman year until now, with so many girls chasing after you, how come you’re completely indifferent to all of them?”
Eyes fixed straight ahead, Ji Wenyu gnawed on his spicy chicken feet: “To each their own.”
He liked someone, a point he had always been clear about. Even though he suspected Xu Yuanzhe was straight and that they’d likely never end up together in this lifetime, Ji Wenyu didn’t have any intentions of dragging someone else down as a result.
“Man, you and Xu Yuanzhe are really—” Ma Ziming spat out a chicken wing bone.
Hearing the name Xu Yuanzhe, Ji Wenyu felt as though someone had pressed a switch on him, his entire body abruptly stiffening.
Why on earth did this guy suddenly bring up Xu Yuanzhe? Could it be that his crush on Xu Yuanzhe had been discovered? Impossible, absolutely impossible. As long as he had his wits about him, he’d never slip up by even half a word. Even when drunk, his liquor tolerance was great, and he always just fell straight to sleep without ever pulling drunken antics.
Ma Ziming continued: “Someone tried to ask me for the contact info of Xu Yuanzhe from Artificial Intelligence Class 2301 before, and Xu Yuanzhe turned me down the exact same way. Not interested. Three words: cold and ruthless.”
Ji Wenyu’s body relaxed, and he let out a quiet sigh of relief.
After the late-night snack, Ma Ziming started writing the model analysis, Yang Hongshuo drafted the speech and made the PowerPoint, while Ji Wenyu and Zhang Sheng occasionally tossed out ideas, chatted idly, or dozed off curled up in the booth’s sofa. The sky outside gradually grew bright, and the PowerPoint and speech were finally completed.
The four of them curled up to catch some more sleep, had breakfast at the barbecue joint, and once the time was right, left directly to head toward the Data Mining classroom.
Just as they walked into the North Gate, the bike Xu Yuanzhe rode brushed past the group.
The guy had ridden in from outside the school gates, heading toward the Smart Building direction just like them.
At this hour, Xu Yuanzhe was coming back from outside?
Ji Wenyu squinted and noticed that the clothes Xu Yuanzhe was wearing appeared to be identical to the ones from last night. Xu Yuanzhe had spent the night outside, just like him!
He remembered Xu Yuanzhe telling him he was going to an internet cafe. Had the guy spent the night at an internet cafe? Or was he lying to him?
“Yo, isn’t that Xu Yuanzhe?”
Ma Ziming and the others had also spotted Xu Yuanzhe’s retreating figure.
“The boss has been out since morning, pretty busy guy.”
They drew lots to decide the presentation order, and Ma Ziming had terrible luck, pulling a 1 right off the bat.
However, Ji Wenyu didn’t get stage fright for this kind of thing; what number they drew didn’t make much difference to him. Familiar with the drill, the boy walked up onto the stage, pulled up the PowerPoint, and confidently delivered the group’s problem-solving approach off the cuff.
With the first presentation out of the way, they could mess around on their phones for the remaining hour or so of class.
Having stayed up all night without realizing it before going on stage, Ji Wenyu felt a wave of fatigue creep up on him afterward. Resting his chin on one hand, he kept nodding off to sleep a moment later. Just as he was about to give up the struggle and simply slump down to sleep for a bit, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Xu Yuanzhe sitting diagonally ahead, who didn’t seem to be paying attention to the lecture either.
A core professional course, and the top-ranked academic master was actually playing on his phone!
That wasn’t right. Extremely not right.
The boy frowned, and the next second, he actually saw Xu Yuanzhe smiling at his screen.
Ji Wenyu had never seen such a gentle smile on Xu Yuanzhe’s face, and he couldn’t help freezing for a moment, the drowsiness instantly dissipating by more than half.
Among the people in their dorm, everyone always jokingly called Xu Yuanzhe the aloof academic god. The guy spoke very little in the dorm, rarely initiated conversations with anyone, and whether heading to class or the library, he always went alone, looking like he didn’t care much for idle chatter. Even when playing ball with a group, Xu Yuanzhe didn’t say much, and during outdoor group dinners, he mostly sat off to the side, silently listening to the other three chatter away.
Though seated diagonally behind Xu Yuanzhe, Ji Wenyu felt as though he could see the smiling gleam in the guy’s eyes when he chuckled. His heart felt as though it had been suddenly squeezed by someone, and an absurd thought abruptly surfaced in his mind.
Could Xu Yuanzhe be in a relationship?