“Check the luggage again.”

Zhu Yun silently obeyed her mother, opening the suitcase once more to go through its contents.

“Got everything?”

“Everything.”

Her mother nodded, satisfied.

Finally, they could move on to the next step. Zhu Yun’s mother pulled her close and began stroking her shoulders, one slow pass after another, like someone combing wool.

“Call home as soon as you get to school, understand?”

“Mm.”

“I really wish I could just take you there myself.”

“There’s no need. School’s starting — you and Dad are both busy. I can go on my own.”

Her mother’s face was full of worry.

“It’s not even that far,” Zhu Yun said. “We’re still in the same province.”

“Be good to your teachers and classmates,” her mother reminded her.

“Mm.”

“Let me go over a few things you need to keep in mind. First, no matter what, don’t try to get special treatment — you’ll only invite trouble. Second, make sure you get along with your roommates. You’ll be living together for four years. Third——”

“I know, I know.”

Before her mother could really get going, Zhu Yun responded quickly, hoping to head her off.

Only the two of them remained at the ticket gate now. Her mother’s eyes had gone red at the rims. She reached out and touched Zhu Yun’s hair. “Be good. You’re Mama’s pride.”

A wave goodbye.

Zhu Yun pulled her luggage through the gate and onto the platform, drew a deep breath, and once her feelings settled, felt the whole world lift from her shoulders.

She hauled two large suitcases onto the train. Four hours later, she hauled two large suitcases back off.

This was not Zhu Yun’s first time in this city, nor her first time at this school. As one of the top universities in the country — and not too far from home — it had been placed at the top of her college entrance examination list by her parents practically from the beginning.

There had also been a professor here who was a close friend of her father’s. Word was he had died of a cerebral hemorrhage sometime before the new year.

On registration day, the school was especially lively.

True to the reputation of an elite institution, the new students arrived one by one with a certain gleam about them. No matter how carefully they pressed their lips into composed, restrained lines, the intensity in their eyes could not be suppressed.

The upperclassmen, by contrast, were far more detached. The seasoned veterans of the graduate school were even more so — slow-moving, blank-faced, without so much as a flicker of expression.

They watched the fresh arrivals flapping and scurrying about with heavy-lidded indifference.

By the time Zhu Yun carried her things up to the dormitory, someone was already there.

Zhu Yun had once had a friend who wore a lot of makeup. Thanks to her, somewhere in the shallower layers of Zhu Yun’s mind, all girls who wore makeup had been filed under the category of “beautiful.”

By that standard, the girl sitting with a mirror should have been extraordinarily beautiful — her makeup was layered as thick as a birthday cake.

The cake girl heard someone come in and turned to look. Their eyes met. Zhu Yun offered a friendly smile.

“Hi, I’m Zhu Yun.”

The cake girl looked her up and down.

The smoky eye makeup hadn’t covered the whites of her eyes, and being looked over so directly made Zhu Yun’s smile begin to falter.

“I’m Ren Di.”

The cake girl finally introduced herself.

But — how many years of heavy smoking would it take to produce a voice that raspy?

Zhu Yun stood there in a daze, uncertain what to do.

“Um——” Just then, a voice came from behind her.

Zhu Yun turned. A girl with glasses was looking at her and Ren Di, and said brightly: “We must be roommates — hi, I’m Fang Shumiao!”

Another round of introductions.

Ren Di said very little. Behind the heavy makeup, her face looked utterly cold.

Understandable, really.

What expression could you expect from a cake?

Zhu Yun tried every approach she could think of just to keep the conversation from going completely silent. Fortunately, Fang Shumiao was lively and cheerful — she chatted away while digging through her suitcase and pulling out dried fruits and nuts.

“These are from my hometown — try some.”

Zhu Yun thanked her and shared the dried meat her mother had packed in advance.

Perhaps because there weren’t many girls in the program, no fourth roommate ever arrived. After half an hour of politely making conversation, Zhu Yun suggested: “It’s about time — should we go pick up our military training uniforms?”

Fang Shumiao remembered too: “Right! There’s also the class meeting this afternoon.”

The very first class meeting of university, meeting the homeroom teacher and the rest of their classmates — it mattered.

The midsummer afternoon was stifling.

They had been standing in line for over ten minutes with no sign of movement up ahead. A long queue stretched all the way into the gymnasium.

Zhu Yun had come prepared. She pulled an umbrella out of her bag.

“Come under here, you two.”

“Thanks.”

Fang Shumiao ducked in beside her.

“Ren Di?”

“I’m fine.” Ren Di had been standing toward the back listening to music, but when Zhu Yun interrupted her she simply put her phone away entirely and shouted toward the front:

“Are you handing these out or not?!”

Both Zhu Yun and Fang Shumiao startled.

Students at elite schools generally had good manners — soft-spoken and orderly most of the time. But these were new arrivals fresh out in the world, still buzzing with excitement they couldn’t quite contain, and with Ren Di’s shout, the queue stirred to life.

“Yeah!”

“Are we getting them or not?! Someone’s going to have a heatstroke out here!”

“I’m going to faint!”

The flock erupted in a clamor.

After a while, a sweaty-faced administrator finally emerged from inside the gymnasium.

“Hold on! I’ll call your name and you come in! Everyone remember their student ID number, right?!”

People scrambled to fish out their newly issued student cards.

The administrator held up a crumpled sheet and bellowed: “Computer Science first! Applied Technology, Class One! Number One — Li Xun!”

Zhu Yun felt a small wave of relief. At least she’d be out of the sun a little sooner.

“Class One, Number One! Li Xun!”

No answer.

The administrator’s voice cracked with strain: “Li Xun! Is Li Xun here?! Is there anyone by that name?! Li——”

“Here.”

From somewhere, a response drifted in — easy and unhurried as a passing lantern.

Zhu Yun blinked. That voice is so clean.

Clear and resonant, with a natural depth behind it, softened and slightly loosened by long hours in the heat — a voice with unusually high presence in the drowsy stillness of a campus afternoon.

As expected, the school’s best students were something else.

Zhu Yun was thinking this with a contented sort of satisfaction as she slowly turned around — and was promptly struck as if by lightning.

Everyone else was startled too. As the person stepped forward, the queue split down the middle on both sides, like the parting of the Red Sea.

When he disappeared into the far end of the gymnasium, the flock erupted again.

“What the hell, who does he think he is?”

“Who is that, anyway——”

“The school actually allows that?”

——

“Hey, did you see that?” Fang Shumiao nudged Zhu Yun. “That hair — all gold.”

She’d seen it.

How could she have missed it? It was as blinding as a lightbulb.

Zhu Yun’s parents were both teachers. She had grown up around all kinds of students. But not even at the worst school she had ever visited had she once seen a student with hair dyed to that level of purity.

Zhu Yun looked around.

Compared to high school, university was much more relaxed, and there was no shortage of dyed hair. But even so, it was an engineering school and leaned conservative — most people went for brown or chestnut, a few at most bleached to a muted dark teal.

Hair that was so gold it turned white in direct sunlight — there was no one else like it.

What was his name again?

Li Xun.

What’s the point of dyeing it that gold — trying to be the sun? The only one in the whole school, and he doesn’t even seem embarrassed… Zhu Yun thought, with a vague sense of secondhand awkwardness.

While Zhu Yun’s thoughts were still spinning, Li Xun came back out after collecting his training uniform.

Without any prior agreement, everyone fell quiet and looked away, sneaking glances from the corners of their eyes.

He wore an ordinary grey cotton short-sleeved shirt. Because of the heat, the sleeves had been pushed up to his shoulders, revealing the clean lines of his arms, with the particular lean quality that belongs only to the young.

He took long strides, didn’t fall in with any of his classmates on the way out, and left directly.

He passed right by Zhu Yun.

Tall. Narrow-faced. Exhausted. That was the first impression he left.

“Hmph.”

A soft sound broke through her thoughts.

Zhu Yun turned her head and saw Ren Di standing with her arms folded across her chest, eyes narrowed, staring in the direction Li Xun had gone, her expression none too pleasant.

This was the first time she had shown any expression since her arrival — left eyebrow raised, right corner of her mouth pulled down, gaze angled coolly to one side. It could charitably be called a cold smirk. It held, unbroken, until Li Xun’s figure disappeared from view, followed by a few seconds of silent contemplation, and then, in a voice that was low and deliberate, she spat out two words:

“Arrogant prick.”

“…” Zhu Yun thought to herself: you two are perfectly matched.

After collecting their uniforms, students drifted in ones and twos toward the main building.

“Oh, the library!” Fang Shumiao grabbed Zhu Yun’s arm and pointed to a building nearby.

Generally speaking, a school’s library is a reasonable reflection of its academic atmosphere. Fang Shumiao peered inside — it was packed, a solid mass of people — and she exclaimed with delight: “So many people! Wonderful!”

They must be distributing new books.

The corridors of the teaching building were jam-packed with new students, as noisy as a market.

The three of them found their classroom without any trouble and sat down toward one side. Gradually the other students filtered in, most of them sitting with their roommates, carrying on scattered conversations.

Then, at a certain moment, the room went briefly quiet.

Zhu Yun instinctively looked back. Sure enough — Li Xun. He sat diagonally behind her, and just as she was about to get a better look, the bell rang, and Zhu Yun reflexively faced front toward the podium.

The whole corridor fell silent.

Not long after, a middle-aged male teacher walked into the classroom. He was not particularly tall, and his head was perfectly round. He came to the front of the room and smiled at everyone first.

“Hello, everyone.”

A scattered, half-hearted response rippled back.

“Hello, teacher——”

The teacher rubbed his hands together. “Let me introduce myself first. My name is Zhang Dai. I’m the homeroom teacher for Applied Technology, Class One, and I’ll also be teaching your advanced mathematics course.”

Teacher Zhang was the obvious academic type — a résumé that shone on paper, but an absolute inability to make conversation. He stumbled along, trying with considerable effort to warm up the atmosphere in the room.

“How about this — let’s all do a round of self-introductions so I can get to know everyone, and you can all get to know each other too. Who wants to go first?”

Dead silence.

Teacher Zhang dabbed the sweat from his forehead. “How about… we just go by student number.”

Student number?

Which meant… the Class One, Number One student would go first…

Someone stood up diagonally behind her and passed by Zhu Yun on his way to the front.

He stepped up to the podium, and instantly the people’s teacher beside him looked even shorter than before.

Zhu Yun looked properly.

This time, at least, she had a legitimate reason to study his face.

In all fairness.

He was somewhat good-looking.

Except for that hair.

Now that she was closer, Zhu Yun could see he had also used styling product.

Nothing wrong with using it, but use it properly. No.

His short hair was raked into complete disorder — at best, it resembled a patch of barren weeds; at worst, a broom that had seen better days.

The students below, Zhu Yun included, were half-holding their breath waiting to see how Teacher Zhang would react.

Teacher Zhang, to his credit, was someone who had seen a great deal. He paused for only a moment, composed himself quickly, and turned to address the class: “By the way — quite a few of you are from this province, am I right?”

“Mm——”

Several people responded; Zhu Yun nodded along.

Teacher Zhang continued: “This student here is this year’s top science scorer on the college entrance examination. You probably didn’t know that.”

A giant WHAT materialized in Zhu Yun’s mind.

Top scorer?

Come to think of it, when the results were released this year, the top science scorer had not been featured in any of the newspapers. She had found it a little odd at the time, but it hadn’t been her business, so she had thought about it once and let it go.

So the situation now was——

Every science student in the province had lost to this avant-garde fashion statement?

Zhu Yun’s stomach gave a quiet lurch.

Teacher Zhang clapped Li Xun on the arm. “Go on — introduce yourself.”

The whole class held its breath.

He had deep shadows under his eyes — clearly someone who was chronically short on sleep. Teacher Zhang’s words roused him to gather himself, just barely.

“I’m Li Xun.”

Again, that clean, clear voice — unhurried and steady, like two pieces of the finest wood struck against each other in a silent courtyard.

Everyone waited for what came next. He, however, seemed to have no idea what else he intended to say. He considered for a few seconds, then appeared to arrive at something, and broke into a smile that was aimed at no one and everyone at once —

“Top scorer on this year’s college entrance examination.”

In the hearts of more than a dozen students from the same province sitting below, a single collective phrase floated up, wordless and unanimous:

Well, to hell with that.