In the past, Xu Zhi would have immediately apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, it wasn’t intentional.” But now, perhaps due to their growing familiarity, she gave Chen Luzhou a look that seemed to say “You’re so petty” and simply stated, “Stingy.”
Chen Luzhou: “…”
How the hell could this be described as stingy?
He coughed, getting back to the point. Pushing the computer in front of her, he gestured for her to look at the screen. “There are many majors under the Architecture category. I think if you’re not dead set on the Architecture Department, other majors might be relatively… But, I feel like you’re always like this.” His train of thought suddenly shifted again.
Xu Zhi had been listening attentively, not expecting his words to circle back. She looked at him, equally confused.
Xu Zhi:?
“The first time we met, in the hallway,” Chen Luzhou had one elbow casually resting on the table edge, legs spread, with his other hand propped on his thigh. He shot her a cold glance, with a hint of settling old scores, “What were you staring at back then?”
Xu Zhi recalled their first encounter in that narrow, cramped hallway. His mother had been scolding him harshly, while he lazily leaned against the doorway, ordering pork trotter rice for himself.
“Was the pork trotter rice tasty?” Xu Zhi asked with a smile.
“You’ve got sharp eyes,” he said with a cold laugh.
His words dripped with sarcasm. Xu Zhi belatedly realized and hurriedly explained, “I wasn’t staring at you—”
Chen Luzhou: …?
Moonlight spilled its silvery glow, falling on the wall outside. Someone had planted a courtyard full of roses, fiery red and brilliant, like a blazing flame, stirring one’s impulses. That red, like firelight, reflected in the restless eyes of the young man. The room was quiet, permeated by an eerie silence.
Chen Luzhou noticed her eyes seemed about to wander again. “Still looking! You’re that curious! I’m wearing them today!”
“I’m not curious about whether you’re wearing them or not,” Xu Zhi said, both amused and exasperated. She looked at him urgently, “I wasn’t looking at you. I’ve been trying to tell you, that your blanket is brushing against my leg. It’s itchy. Can you move it away?”
Chen Luzhou: “…”
Chen Luzhou leaned back in his chair weakly, not wanting to talk to her anymore. He loaded two files of A University’s Architecture Department’s historical score lines for various majors and let her look at them herself. He then curled up in his chair, looking sickly and dispirited, silently watching a movie on his phone.
“Are you angry?” Xu Zhi asked, resting her elbow on the table and supporting her head as she looked at him.
He leaned back in his chair with a cold, detached gaze, pretending to cough. “No.”
“Shall I tell you a joke?”
Here she goes again.
The blanket slid down, and Chen Luzhou rolled his eyes slightly, lifting his foot to pull the blanket back up. “Do you have any other way to comfort people besides telling jokes?”
“I don’t comfort anyone else.”
She was just messing with his feelings. But Chen Luzhou’s mood improved slightly. He was about to ask if she was done looking at the scores and offered to take her out for a late-night snack.
But Xu Zhi added, “No one else gets angry as easily as you do.”
Chen Luzhou: “…”
The roses in the courtyard had lost their luster, and the moonlight remained cold. The bedroom door was closed, but the soundproofing wasn’t great. They both spoke in low voices. Across from the door was the bathroom, where the young couple, probably done with their lovey-dovey phase, suddenly started arguing.
“Who is it? Let me see,” the boy said.
“Just a junior. Remember the flea market at school a few days ago? We left our books for this junior,” the girl replied.
“You need to add WeChat to sell books? That junior must be quite something,” the boy said sarcastically.
“Hey, Jiang Cheng, don’t be unreasonable. I didn’t ask about that girl you added on WeChat either.”
“You girls are amazing. When I bring up your issue, you always manage to drag me into it. Fine, I guess it’s always my fault, right?”
“Jiang Cheng, you’re being ridiculous. If this isn’t working, let’s just break up.”
“Say that again.”
“Let’s break up.” The girl’s voice was calm.
“Go ahead. If you have the guts, don’t ever come looking for me again.”
“…”
“…”
In the bedroom, the two looked at each other, momentarily speechless. To be honest, Xu Zhi had never encountered such a situation before. How to put it, the people from First High seemed quite peculiar. She propped up her head, looked at Chen Luzhou, blinked dryly, and said, “Uh… aren’t you going to go out and meditate?”
Chen Luzhou was quite used to this. They were always like this, breaking up who knows how many times in the past year. No matter how fiercely they argued in front of others, they could never really separate. Chen Luzhou didn’t even bother to intervene, because their relationship was like sugar-coated shit. Everyone else could see it clearly, only Jiang Cheng was fooling himself. Zhu Yangqi and Jiang Cheng weren’t particularly close, but after witnessing this scene twice, even he understood what was going on with Hang Sui.
“I think you shouldn’t go after her this time. This is pointless. You abandoned her to get back with your ex-girlfriend, and now she’s with you purely out of revenge. You’re just hurting yourself. Don’t continue like this with her. She’s suffering, and so are you,” Zhu Yangqi sincerely advised from outside the door.
Chen Luzhou hadn’t heard the sound of mouse clicks or scrolling for a while. He looked up and found Xu Zhi intently eavesdropping, no longer interested in researching majors. He clicked his tongue impatiently, “Mind your own business. It’s none of your concern.”
But Xu Zhi found it refreshingly exciting. She looked at him and sighed, “I suddenly envy Zhu Yangqi and Feng Jing’s girlfriends.”
Chen Luzhou:?
Xu Zhi: “They must know a lot of gossip.”
Chen Luzhou: “Why don’t you envy my girlfriend?”
Xu Zhi: “You don’t seem as gossipy as them. You don’t strike me as someone who would gossip with a girlfriend.”
Chen Luzhou laughed and pointed his chin at the computer screen, “Stop analyzing other people’s love lives and focus on your score lines.”
Xu Zhi made a sound of acknowledgment and slowly turned her attention back. However, after glancing at the score lines for a moment, she found herself studying Chen Luzhou’s hairline instead. He had been lowering his head, focusing on his phone, and occasionally scratching his hairline out of boredom. As a result, his bangs had been unconsciously pushed up. If he were to shave his head, it would probably look like a peach, because his hairline had a very standard widow’s peak.
While observing him from the corner of her eye, Xu Zhi noticed a violin hanging on the wall. “Chen Luzhou, you play the violin?”
He looked up absently, following her gaze, before carelessly coming back to his senses, “Mm, learned it as a kid.”
“Did you take any exams for it?”
“I did.”
Xu Zhi made a sound of acknowledgment. Chen Luzhou was prepared to say he had reached level ten, but she didn’t ask further. As usual, she didn’t follow the expected script.
“My grandfather also has a violin, but he doesn’t know how to play it,” Xu Zhi said, looking at the violin hanging on the wall. “But during the years when my grandmother was sick, my grandfather would sit in the courtyard every day and play the violin for her. It was noisy. At that time, I couldn’t understand why my grandfather played so terribly, yet my grandmother still insisted on him playing.”
“Why?” Chen Luzhou looked at her curiously.
“I’m not telling you,” Xu Zhi thought for a moment and said, “How about this: when I’m eighty years old, if we’re both still alive, you play a piece for me, and then I’ll tell you the answer.”
“Dream on. Who still plays the violin at eighty?” Chen Luzhou leaned back in his chair, returning his gaze to continue watching the movie on his phone. The main characters were about to kiss, and he didn’t want to watch such scenes at the moment. So while scrolling through the progress bar on his phone, he said with foresight and shamelessness, “At eighty, I want to sit in the park and play the erhu. By then, who knows if I’ll be single or have a partner. If I have a partner, I’ll play for them. If not, I’ll play for someone else’s partner.”
“Well, that’s one way to live.”
Xu Zhi loved this quality in Chen Luzhou – “the emotions of youth, like densely growing trees in spring, even if it’s green, it’s defiantly, unapologetically green.”
“Done looking?” Chen Luzhou asked her.
Xu Zhi made a sound of agreement, “More or less.”
Chen Luzhou turned off his phone and tossed it on the table, “What do you think?”
Xu Zhi thought for a moment and said, “What do you think about Landscape Architecture and Design? These were the two majors I was most interested in from the beginning. Landscape design is very interesting too. When I was little, I always thought that I would buy a big villa in the future, one with a garden, and design it myself.”
What would you plant in the garden? He originally wanted to ask, but instead said, “As long as you’ve made up your mind, it’s fine.”
“What about you?” Xu Zhi asked him.
“Me?” Chen Luzhou glanced at her, with a hint of self-mockery tugging at the corner of his mouth. He lowered his head to reach for his phone again, “I’m going abroad.”
Xu Zhi said, “The first-segment list hasn’t come out yet, but I estimate your provincial ranking is around 300. You could get into a 985 university domestically. Is there no school in Beijing you want to attend besides A University?”
Chen Luzhou looked down at his phone. The movie screen had already exited, and he was now aimlessly opening WeChat to check his Moments. He made a low sound of agreement, “My family has made arrangements.”
Xu Zhi made a sound of acknowledgment, “That’s a pity. I was thinking it would be nice if we could study in the same city in the future. We could visit each other’s schools on weekends.”
Chen Luzhou leaned back in his chair, laughed, and said with disbelief, “Once you get to Beijing and make new friends, you’ll be so caught up you won’t even think of me.”
“It might not necessarily be Beijing. If A University doesn’t accept me, there’s a high chance I’ll go to Shanghai. F University or T University are both possibilities, or I might return to Q University,” Xu Zhi said. “When the time comes, I won’t tell you where I am, and you don’t tell me where you’ve gone abroad.”
With only three or four places, wouldn’t it be easy for him to find her? How childish.
Chen Luzhou looked at her for a good while before nodding and saying, “Alright.”
The air conditioning was on in the room, probably set too high. Xu Zhi still had beads of sweat on her forehead. Chen Luzhou noticed her lips were dry and asked, “Want some Häagen-Dazs? There’s some in the fridge.”
Chen Luzhou had bought it yesterday. Jiang Cheng’s girlfriend had eaten one, and earlier Zhu Yangqi wanted to eat some, but he didn’t let him. He had a feeling that if Xu Zhi didn’t come today, she would come tomorrow. Sure enough, he had saved it for her.
Xu Zhi was already parched and nodded, “Yes!”
Chen Luzhou had just taken the ice cream out of the fridge and was washing the cherries he had bought in the afternoon to bring them to her. However, Zhu Yangqi approached him from behind with mischievous intent, cornering him in the kitchen. “Young Master Chen, you’re quite skilled at hiding girls in your room, aren’t you? Seems like you’ve had plenty of practice before. Did you always bring girls back during gatherings?”
“Yeah, I played with you,” Chen Luzhou couldn’t be bothered to humor him.
Zhu Yangqi stopped teasing, “Is Xu Zhi still inside? What are you two doing? Bring her out to play for a bit?”
“Helping her choose a major,” Chen Luzhou turned off the water and drained the cherries. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Better not. To avoid Jiang Cheng and Tan Xu from gossiping. I just ran into Tan Xu’s parents at the door, they might still cause trouble for her.”
Cai Yingying had mentioned this before, and it was indeed true. Tan Xu’s parents probably resented Xu Zhi to death. Their son had helped someone else become the top student in the school, while their son’s grades had tanked. “How about this, my dad knows the principal of Ruijun. Do you want me to ask my dad for help? Don’t worry, I’ll beg him on my knees if I have to, he’ll agree. Just let me have one cherry.”
Chen Luzhou looked at him strangely, “Why ask your dad?”
Zhu Yangqi said, “To ask the principal not to give Xu Zhi trouble. If Tan Xu’s parents try to cause problems, we can at least provide some protection.”
Chen Luzhou thought Zhu Yangqi’s brain must be stuffed full of cherries. “Use your brain and think. Xu Zhi is now the top student. Would the principal make things difficult for her? Even if Tan Xu’s parents want to cause trouble, everyone has graduated now. What trouble could the principal possibly cause her? Make her write a self-criticism. Go ahead, you’re the expert on writing those.”
“That’s true,” Zhu Yangqi said. “Looks like I was overthinking it.”
Chen Luzhou casually asked, “Where are you planning to apply?”
“Beijing Opera, their Stage Art Design major. I’ll be the next Zhang Yimou.”
“Mm, Xu Zhi is planning to apply for A University’s Landscape Architecture and Design,” Chen Luzhou said. “She’ll probably be in Beijing too. Keep an eye on her for me.”
“What do you want me to watch for? Not let her have a boyfriend? I can’t control that. When girls fall in love, there’s no stopping them,” Zhu Yangqi said with a sigh.
Chen Luzhou instinctively looked back at the slightly ajar bedroom door. A dim light seeped through the crack as if a moon was hidden in the room, known only to him.
“She can date whoever she wants. Just don’t let anyone bully her,” he said.
“Really? You’re okay with her dating anyone?” Zhu Yangqi said with feigned kindness, “Then I’ll send you photos of them holding hands on the beach and kissing.”
Chen Luzhou had originally left half a bag of cherries for him, but he took them all away now. “Mm, go ahead and send them if you have a death wish.”