Initially, Xu Zhi didn’t think much of it. When two WeChat messages came through, she instinctively read them first. Later, she tentatively asked a question, and Chen Luzhou said it was just casual talk, unrelated to her. Xu Zhi didn’t pursue the matter further.
About half an hour after posting on Moments, a certain someone’s call arrived as expected.
The golden sun was setting in the west. A few youths were chasing each other wildly in the cornfield, and wild dogs were barking furiously. Xu Zhi walked along a small mountain path where wild grass was undulated. The golden light of the sunset had dyed the wheat ears yellow, creating a scene as vivid and full as a Van Gogh painting in full motion.
The familiar, cool voice came through the phone—
“Who are you calling a scumbag?”
Xu Zhi walked casually towards her grandmother’s house along the bright lines of wheat waves. She held the phone with the speaker on, trying to let the chickens, ducks, and geese leisurely strolling in the fields hear the voice of this scumbag.
Fishing for a reaction? Who couldn’t do that?
Moreover, what made Xu Zhi feel uneasy was that this feeling was different from her interactions with Tan Xu. No matter how Tan Xu treated her, she didn’t care, wasn’t angry, didn’t resist, and had no intention of competing with him. It was pure gratitude, a kind of equal exchange—you help me review, you lose your temper, I endure it.
But Chen Luzhou was different. She wanted to turn the tables; she had to gain the upper hand.
So, facing the fleeting wind in the mountains and fields, looking at the azure sky, her brain turned slowly but surely, and she replied languidly, “Hm? What?”
Chen Luzhou had just finished work. This job was special and semi-charitable. It was a documentary about cancer for a program on Ms. Lian Hui’s channel. They had found several families across the country to record their cancer-fighting journeys. As it happened, the photographer for the Shanghai family had taken a sudden leave, so Lian Hui asked if he was interested, and Chen Luzhou agreed. He had just boarded the high-speed train back. To be honest, he wasn’t in high spirits because the entire filming process had been depressing. The shadow of death hung like a Damocles sword over every member of this family.
The patient was about his age, named Zhang Fengxin, but everyone called him Xiao Jin. He was in his second year of high school, reportedly with excellent grades. He had won first prize in the national mathematics competition but hadn’t had the chance to take the college entrance exam yet. He was a sunny boy with a cheerful personality, with a small canine tooth on each side when he smiled. He said his goal was the architecture department of University A. Chen Luzhou had helplessly tugged at the corners of his mouth at the time, thinking for the first time that he wanted to introduce Xu Zhi to a boy, as they might have common topics to discuss.
Xiao Jin was someone who didn’t like to trouble others. Every time Chen Luzhou waited at the door with his equipment for Xiao Jin to do various checks, Xiao Jin would scratch his ear, very embarrassed, and say, “Sorry, bro, for keeping you waiting.” Chen Luzhou had never met someone who apologized so much, except for Xu Zhi. He was the second. Not wanting to say too many sentimental words to make people sad, he could only look away and say, “It’s okay, I’m paid for this. It’s my job.”
Xiao Jin also liked basketball. They both enjoyed watching games and could talk about matches all day. Chen Luzhou said they could play together when he got better. Xiao Jin agreed with a smile, but everyone knew he had no future. After a moment of silence, Chen Luzhou felt his words might have been inappropriate. As it turned out, the next day, Xiao Jin’s parents suddenly refused to let Chen Luzhou continue filming Xiao Jin. Their attitude was very firm—if Chen Luzhou didn’t leave, they would terminate all filming. Chen Luzhou expressed his understanding, so he called Ms. Lian Hui and wrapped up the work early.
Before leaving, he went to see Xiao Jin. Xiao Jin was lying in bed, struggling to eat one mouthful at a time. At that time, not knowing he was about to leave, Xiao Jin asked when the afternoon filming would take place, saying he wanted to wash his hair as he hadn’t done so for several days.
Chen Luzhou only said he had a high-speed train back to S Province in the afternoon, as there was something urgent at home, so he might have to leave early. Xiao Jin was very disappointed, “Ah, I was hoping to watch the game with you tonight. Never mind, if you have something to do, go ahead. Oh, by the way, aren’t you guys about to fill out your college applications soon?”
Chen Luzhou only grunted in response, without further explanation.
Xiao Jin then said, “Brother Luzhou, can you leave me your phone number? I’d like to visit you in S Province if I get the chance in the future.”
After giving his number, Chen Luzhou handed him the movie and book lists he had spent the previous night compiling. Most were science fiction. Xiao Jin had mentioned earlier that he was too bored in the hospital and wanted to find some movies to watch, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. He couldn’t find many good ones, and even some highly-rated ones didn’t impress him much when he watched them. Chen Luzhou had casually asked what kind of movies he liked, and Xiao Jin said he liked sci-fi, similar to Interstellar, or disaster apocalypse films.
Chen Luzhou hadn’t read many sci-fi novels, but he had seen almost all the movies. So the list he compiled was nearly exhaustive. Xiao Jin was thrilled, asking in shock, “Have you watched all of these?” Chen Luzhou nodded, saying he didn’t have many serious hobbies besides playing basketball and watching movies.
Perhaps because he had never seen Xiao Jin so happy before, when Chen Luzhou was leaving, Xiao Jin’s parents followed him out of the ward and said, “Little Chen, we don’t mean anything by it. You’re very outstanding, it’s just that you’re too close in age to Xiao Jin, and we’re afraid he’ll feel sad. If you can come and visit Xiao Jin in the future, we’d be very welcome. Xiao Jin likes you very much; we’ve never seen him open up to anyone like this before.”
Chen Luzhou agreed, so on the return high-speed train, he suddenly realized he had found an answer—this world is both a dueling city for the brave and an exchange place for sincere hearts.
…
Chen Luzhou had bought a first-class seat because it was a last-minute decision to return, and that was all he could get. He had specifically called Lian Hui to ask, but Lian Hui said even formal employees of the TV station couldn’t claim expenses for first-class seats, let alone a temporary worker without a formal position like him. Even if he were the producer’s son, it wouldn’t work. So after hanging up, he immediately checked and found that Scorpio was in retrograde, not suitable for travel.
The high-speed train had just left Shanghai Hongqiao Station. Chen Luzhou leaned back in his seat, watching the telegraph poles and signal towers lazily passing by outside the train window, and reminded her, “What are you pretending for? You think I didn’t see your Moments post?”
“Huh?” Xu Zhi expressed genuine confusion, “I thought you couldn’t see it, right?” There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
Chen Luzhou, wearing Bluetooth earphones, leaned back casually in his seat. He was scrolling through his chat history with Zhu Yangqi from yesterday. Hearing her tone, he couldn’t help but chuckle with his head lowered, “You did it on purpose, didn’t you? Just because I didn’t reply to your Moments post?”
Probably because he was on the high-speed train, his voice was very soft, deliberately lowered, so it sounded particularly hoarse. Xu Zhi felt a unique tenderness in it.
Xu Zhi had just stepped into the doorway of her home. Two little yellow dogs in the yard started barking frantically as soon as they saw her, making a terrible noise. “I’m just testing if someone’s eyes are blind or not,” she said.
“I’ve noticed you’re not blind. You remembered those two seconds word for word,” Chen Luzhou said. Hearing the heart-wrenching dog barking, he pulled Zhu Yangqi out of his blacklist, then lowered his head and couldn’t help but tease casually, “Have you entered a dog kennel to steal bones?”
Xu Zhi sighed. She was holding an unlit cigarette that her grandmother had brought back from a wedding banquet in the morning. Not wanting to waste it, she decided to smoke it, so she was rummaging through the cabinets for a lighter. She went along with his words, “Can’t help it, I’m starving.”
Chen Luzhou didn’t bother with her nonsense, just chuckled and said, “So you saw it that day and pretended you didn’t?”
“Didn’t you say it had nothing to do with me?” She closed the drawer.
He grunted in agreement, hearing her opening and closing drawers on the other end. “What are you looking for?”
Xu Zhi said, “A lighter.”
“Smoking?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Chen Luzhou frowned slightly, locked his phone, and looked at the scenery outside the window. “Are you addicted?”
“No,” Xu Zhi found a moldy box of matches and tried to light one. “I’ve only smoked a few times. Grandma brought these back from a wedding banquet. If I don’t smoke them, they’ll probably go to waste.”
“Bring them out and give them to Zhu Yangqi,” Chen Luzhou sighed and said. “You won’t get addicted from one or two times, but I’m afraid you might this time. Don’t smoke.”
“Alright.”
He grunted in agreement. After all, it was on a high-speed train, and it wasn’t very convenient to talk. After a moment of silence, he finally asked, “Shall we hang up then?”
Xu Zhi said okay and put the cigarette on the table. She could almost guess what he was going to do in the next hour and a half. “Are you going to watch a movie now?”
“What else, sit and stare into space?” He chuckled, “I just remembered something. The last time when I took the high-speed train to the beach with Zhu Yangqi, I fell asleep for a while, and he took three hundred photos of me. He used them to blackmail me, demanding I pay to buy them out, or he’d show them to my future girlfriend. I’m traumatized now.”
Xu Zhi became interested, curious about how bad his sleeping face could be. “Really? Does Zhu Yangqi still have them? If it’s not for a girlfriend, could I get a discount?”
Chen Luzhou lazily rested his head on the seat, his Adam’s apple lightly rolling as he looked sideways at the golden wheat fields outside the train window. He clicked his tongue and said, “Can’t you do the math? Why would a girlfriend need to buy them? When would she not see me sleeping?”
“If you sleep that ugly, it must be rare. Otherwise, Zhu Yangqi wouldn’t have come up with this get-rich-quick scheme,” she said.
“I look drop-dead gorgeous,” Chen Luzhou was genuinely annoyed. “You’ve lost your chance to appreciate it. Hanging up now.”
Chen Luzhou’s photos had once trended on social media, but Xu Zhi probably had never searched for him. The nickname “Immortal Grass” was given to him at that time. Several big agents from talent agencies had asked if he was interested in becoming a celebrity. He had money then, but now he somewhat regretted not keeping their contact information. Who doesn’t have difficult times? Sigh.
**
The interview was on Thursday. After returning from her grandmother’s house, Xu Zhi spent two days memorizing the script. But once she faced Old Xu’s camera, her speech became stumbling. She suddenly realized that people become more self-conscious as they grow up. She wondered how she had been able to say things like “My beauty is unreserved, as you can all see” in front of so many people when running for class committee as a child.
Xu Guangji sat on the sofa, turned off the camera lens, and said to her earnestly: “Nanan, once people have something they care about, they start to care about face. When you were little, you were unstoppable because you didn’t care about anything.”
Xu Zhi stood in front of the TV, not quite agreeing. “That’s not true. I cared about you and Mom when I was little, and my little goldfish too.”
Xu Zhi had kept a little goldfish when she was young, but it died after just a few days. She liked the little fish so much, and it was her first time raising a fish. She didn’t know that goldfish shouldn’t be fed every day, let alone three times a day as she did.
Xu Guangji told her, “That’s because you knew that no matter what you did, your mom and I would always love you and protect you. It was the same with the little goldfish. But some relationships are different. If you don’t do well, the other person might not like you anymore.”
“Dad, why does it sound like you’re hinting at something?”
“If you didn’t have a guilty conscience, why would you think I’m hinting at something?”
Xu Zhi: “…Are you playing tongue twisters now?”
Xu Guangji stopped there, rubbed his legs, and stood up to prepare dinner. He said, “Well, anyway, my daughter is beautiful and has such good grades. I think you just need to stand there, and the camera will naturally focus on you. Just don’t pick your nose, that’s all.”
Xu Zhi was speechless. “…When did I ever—”
“I have photos,” Xu Guangji clipped his glasses on his forehead, got up and walked into the kitchen, turned on the exhaust fan, and said, “When you find a boyfriend in the future, I’ll have to show him first, to see if he can accept you like this. If he can only accept the glamorous you, then we can’t have this person. All relationships eventually tend towards the mundane and everyday life, so this is an important step. Of course, if you’re willing to pay a hefty sum to destroy the photos, I might consider it.”
“…” Xu Zhi didn’t expect karma to come so quickly.
On Thursday afternoon, Xu Zhi arrived early at the entrance of the Radio and Television Station. Only when she got to the scene did she realize that among the thirty high-scoring students being interviewed, twenty-eight came from the same class—Class 1 of Zongshan Experimental Class at No. 1 High School. Only she and another boy were not from this class. One was from Ruijun Middle School, and the other from the Affiliated High School. The Affiliated High School was a provincial key school, while Ruijun didn’t even qualify as a city key school. To achieve such a score was indeed surprising to everyone. So naturally, when everyone arrived at the scene, they formed their group.
The boy from the Affiliated High School was called Yang Yijing, wearing black-framed glasses and looking shy. Xu Zhi had just finished her makeup and sat down in the designated position as instructed by the staff, right next to Yang Yijing. Xu Zhi recognized at a glance that he must be the other lucky one, looking bewildered and envious at the group of geniuses chatting, not daring to join in. Mainly because the group of geniuses had no intention of including them. So the two could only sit awkwardly alone on one side.
Yang Yijing was nervously shaking his leg, and since their chairs were connected, Xu Zhi was shaking along with him. Xu Zhi hated it when boys shook their legs, but she could understand the anxiety in this environment. “Friend, stop shaking. You’re going to shake my hairpin off.”
Yang Yijing hadn’t even noticed himself, and hurriedly apologized to her, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m just… just a bit nervous.” He was even stuttering.
“It’s okay.”
The atmosphere in the makeup room was split into two parts. The two of them sat awkwardly in a small corner, while the rest of the geniuses from Zongshan crowded in another corner of the makeup room, chatting enthusiastically like a class reunion, seeming extremely familiar with each other.
Yang Yijing’s eyes never left them, seeming to know a lot about them. He introduced them to Xu Zhi, saying: “They’re all classmates from the same class, you know. The one wearing rimless glasses and a white shirt is said to be this year’s provincial top scorer, 746 points. I heard he has an additional 10 points from competitions, so his total score is over 750. The one wearing the school uniform is last year’s gold medal winner in the math competition. If they hadn’t canceled the direct admission policy, I guess these people would all have been directly admitted. There’s an even more impressive one, with so many competition awards you could wallpaper a city wall with them. I heard his raw score was 713.”
That’s the same as Chen Luzhou, though she didn’t think much of it. With just one point difference, there could be dozens of people, and No. 1 High School surely had many with the same score. She was still curious and asked, “Raw score?”
Yang Yijing nodded particularly solemnly, showing utmost respect, and said: “He didn’t take the elective subjects and directly scored over 700 points. But it seems he didn’t come this time. I just looked at the list and didn’t see his name. It’s a bit of a pity, I wanted to see what kind of genius could score like that. Our teacher even specially calculated his score, with the electives added, he should be able to break the 770 mark, definitely higher than 750.”
“That’s indeed impressive.” Xu Zhi nodded absent-mindedly, looking around. She remembered that Chen Luzhou’s mother was supposed to be a producer at the Radio and Television Station.
The makeup room was large, and the two groups were not close to each other. Xu Zhi had heard the name Chen Luzhou several times vaguely. She thought she might be a bit obsessed lately and didn’t think much of it. She casually observed the TV station environment, then sat on the other side chatting on and off with Yang Yijing.
Yang Yijing suddenly remembered and said: “They say we’re going for a meal after the recording. Are you going?”
“With them?” Xu Zhi asked incredulously.
She didn’t want to. They weren’t familiar, and there would be nothing to talk about. Besides, these geniuses had no intention of including them. She felt Yang Yijing might be presumptuous; they were probably just having a class gathering.
“This girl came over to inform me. She said it’s funded by the station. After the recording, they’re letting everyone go for a meal. The staff won’t join us, afraid we might feel uncomfortable, so they included us too.”
Yang Yijing pointed to a girl standing by the makeup table, reciting her script. She had a high ponytail that swung back and forth as she paced while reciting. She was very pretty with a unique aura. She was said to be the class monitor, ranking 12th in the province this time, and had also applied for the Architecture Department at University A. However, this time the score difference might not be big, as Xu Zhi had just seen that her total score was also 742, probably with many tied scores in between.
“How much funding did they give?” Xu Zhi asked.
“Ten thousand,” Yang Yijing even made a gesture.
“Let’s eat. Only a fool would refuse.”
Yang Yijing chuckled, “That’s what I said. Since we’re here anyway, let’s just enjoy it guilt-free. If they don’t talk to us, we can keep each other company. Otherwise, if you don’t go, I’ll feel awkward. By the way, let’s add each other on WeChat.”
Xu Zhi agreed, “Which major did you apply for?”
“University A,” he took out his phone and pulled up the QR code for Xu Zhi to scan, “I applied for the Finance Department, but my score is tight. I don’t know if they’ll transfer me to another major. I heard the same score range is very competitive this year. For example, you got 738, right? The ones right above you might directly be 740, with several tied scores at 740.”
Just as he finished speaking, a staff member hurriedly came over with a clapperboard, saying loudly: “Alright, alright, students, stop chatting. The recording is about to begin. Everyone, get ready and follow me. Please turn your phones to silent or airplane mode and hand them over to the staff.”
Everyone in the makeup room instantly started to stand up and walk towards the door. Xu Zhi and Yang Yijing were sandwiched among a group of academic elites, following the flow of people towards the studio. As a result, some conversations became increasingly clear in her ears, vibrating her eardrums, as if blood was rushing into her brain, making her scalp tingle.
“Hey, did you guys call Chen Luzhou and the others? Let’s ask him to come over for dinner later. Our class is only missing them.”
“I called out in the group chat. Xu Xun and the others said they’d come over later, but Chen Luzhou didn’t reply. I asked the class monitor to give him a call.”
“I called, but he didn’t answer. Is he out of town shooting these days? I asked Zhu Yangqi, and he said something about shooting a documentary at XX Television Station.”
“You can still contact Zhu Yangqi? Impressive, Class Monitor. Looks like you have a special relationship with our aloof king.”
“What nonsense are you talking about? Last time at the poetry recitation, Zhu Yangqi added me himself.”
Author’s Note: Let me explain again, the total score is 810 points, with 60 points of elective bonus points, which is why the scores are so high. No need to compare it with reality, I’m using S Province, which is fictional.
Ah, I didn’t have time to write more. This is the first update, there will be a second update later.
Before midnight, okay?