Gu Qing saw that scene, too.
The first glance: he liked what he saw.
The second glance: he liked it a lot.
The third glance: he wanted her.
So when the girl walked over, he deliberately stepped forward to block her path.
As the student council president, he had only come over to casually observe the situation from the side. There was no need for him to personally stop someone and record them for returning late.
But he did stop her, simply because he wanted to know her name.
Jiang You knew nothing of this. She had simply attributed the encounter to the male lead doing his duty and recording her for being late.
Her three little lackeys saw her back to her dorm before leaving.
After washing up in the dorm, Jiang You noticed her roommate still hadn’t returned.
She was in the middle of drying her hair with a towel when the door opened. A girl wearing a faded, off-white shirt and jeans walked in, a backpack slung over her shoulder and a weary expression on her face.
Jiang You instinctively glanced up. The girl at the door stopped in her tracks and looked at her, her eyes trembling slightly.
The pink-haired girl, fresh from a shower, was still giving off steam. Her delicate, beautiful face was flushed, and her pink pupils shimmered with a moist light. She wore only a plush, calf-length nightgown, so beautiful she seemed to belong to another dimension.
*So beautiful.*
That was Qiao Wan’s first thought upon seeing Jiang You.
She stared blankly, unable to snap out of her daze.
Jiang You glanced at the girl’s faded clothes, then at the school uniform with the gray rose brooch hanging beside her bed, and knew at once that her roommate was a scholarship student.
"You must be Qiao Wan," Jiang You said, lowering the towel. Her gaze once again became arrogant.
Qiao Wan snapped back to reality and nodded timidly.
She, too, understood that her roommate must be from a rich and powerful family.
With a cold and proud expression, Jiang You said, "Come in. I have something to tell you."
A beat later, Qiao Wan closed the door and walked inside.
"I prefer to live alone," Jiang You stated bluntly.
Hearing this, Qiao Wan assumed Jiang You was about to kick her out, and her face paled slightly.
*These rich, powerful young mistresses are always so domineering.*
"I’ll give you one million a month. Go rent a place off-campus, and don’t come back," Jiang You commanded.
Qiao Wan was stunned.
"Do you understand?" Jiang You repeated in a cold voice.
Qiao Wan clutched the fabric of her clothes. Her father had fallen at a construction site and been impaled by a steel bar. He needed money for surgery as soon as possible.
The reason she was back so late tonight was because she had just been dealing with family matters.
*This young mistress really has no concept of money. Renting a place off-campus wouldn’t cost one million a month.*
But Qiao Wan desperately needed the money right now. She didn’t say anything, merely nodding. "Okay."
Jiang You actually knew that renting a place didn’t cost that much.
However, her monthly allowance was in the tens of millions, so one million was nothing to her.
This was a life she couldn’t even have imagined in her previous one.
Her roommate had come back so late with such a weary face, as if all her sharp edges had been worn down by life.
Jiang You didn’t mind helping her out a bit, especially since she really did want her to move out.
Besides, the male leads were going to drive her to bankruptcy later anyway. If she didn’t spend the money now, what was the point of saving it?
At this thought, Jiang You felt a fierce determination to spend her entire monthly allowance of tens of millions. After she went bankrupt, she would have nothing!
Thinking about it, she still had thirty million left over from last month that she hadn’t spent.
*Spend money! Spend money! I have to spend money!*
"It’s a bit late tonight. Can I move out tomorrow?" Qiao Wan asked softly.
"Hmph. By tomorrow, I don’t want to see a single one of your things in this dorm," Jiang You said, her voice dripping with arrogance.
"Okay." For some reason, Qiao Wan asked another question. "My name is Qiao Wan. What’s yours?"
Jiang You paused in the middle of blow-drying her hair, then resumed as if nothing had happened, saying scornfully, "I don’t make friends with paupers."
But Qiao Wan didn’t get angry at all. She just nodded. "Okay."
After finishing her hair, Jiang You got into bed.
She thought the name Qiao Wan sounded a bit familiar, but she couldn’t recall where she had heard it before.
She didn’t dwell on it, instead sending a message to the tutor she had found online.
Jiang You: Teacher Zhou, something came up tonight. Let’s cancel our tutoring session.
*With her roommate here, it wasn’t a good time for her to study.*
Teacher Zhou: Okay.
Jiang You didn’t reply, her thoughts turning to Zhou Yu with a flicker of worry.
*He should be okay, right?*
Just then, a message came in from Yang Qi.
Yang Qi: Sister You, I’ve already taken that pretty boy to the hospital.
Seeing the message, Jiang You was tempted to ask how Zhou Yu was doing.
Her finger hovered over the terminal screen, but she stopped herself. In the end, she didn’t ask.
*I can’t break character. A male lead will be fine.*
The next day.
During her major-specific class, Jiang You caught sight of Zhou Yu walking past the classroom out of the corner of her eye. She knew then that he must be fine.
The worry that had been weighing on her finally lifted.
The professor at the front of the room was lecturing earnestly.
Jiang You wanted to listen, but the System wouldn’t let her.
So, she could only go back to studying the art of human makeup.
Her boyfriend, Shen Lan, was nowhere to be seen today either.
It seemed like he could get away with not attending class at all.
Anyway, according to the plot, she was a girlfriend in name only. Although Shen Lan had agreed to the relationship, he never sought her out. The only exceptions were the few times he needed to put on a show of being a passionate playboy in front of his parents or friends, and he would call on her, the villainess, to play her part.
Shen Lan arrived in the classroom halfway through the lecture.
He had actually already completed all his university courses and only needed to show up for exams—another one of his privileges.
He was supposed to be handling affairs at the Imperial Government Institute today as usual, but he found himself thinking about the girlfriend he hadn’t seen in a day, and so he had come to class.
His mood had been exceptionally foul due to state affairs involving disputes between several countries. Those old coots were constantly droning on about "the old system," and it was utterly vexing.
But now, seeing that head of pink hair, his mood suddenly improved.
Shen Lan couldn’t resist reaching out and gently lifting a strand of her pink hair that had fallen onto his desk. The sweet scent of peaches washed over him.
He thought he might be getting addicted to this scent.
Or rather, he was getting addicted to *her*.
He... he thought he might actually want to be with her for real.
Not like before, when it was all just a deliberate act to build his persona.
Jiang You was busy with her makeup when she felt a tug on her hair. Before she could react, a hand reached out from behind her and gave her earlobe a gentle squeeze. A crumpled piece of paper was tossed onto her desk, and Shen Lan’s voice, low but laced with amusement, came from behind her. "Girlfriend, read the note."
Jiang You: ...
*When did Shen Lan get here?*
She had assumed he was skipping class again today.
She had no idea why he’d shown up. With the professor watching from the front, she couldn’t exactly have an open conversation with him.
Then again, Shen Lan was whispering secretly, too.
Jiang You stared at the crumpled paper on her desk, silent for a moment. It felt a little childish.
Still, she picked up the paper and unfolded it. The handwriting on it was bold and clean, the strokes powerful. It was very handsome script, forming a single sentence:
"Girlfriend, want to sneak off into the woods after school?"