After two minutes of internal preparation, Zhu Yun stepped forward. Just at that moment, Ren Di came walking out, and the two of them nearly collided.

And then Ren Di, guitar strapped to her back, walked straight past Zhu Yun without stopping.

Zhu Yun: “…”

Too dark to see?

“Ren Di?”

She tried to call after her, but Ren Di’s attention was elsewhere entirely. She hauled a small electric scooter out from a dark corner, climbed on, and vanished in a blur.

Well. That was awkward.

Now there was only one target left.

Every instinct in Zhu Yun told her to turn around and go back. But thinking of Fang Shumiao’s hoarse voice and her mother’s earnest counsel, she stood there for a few minutes before steeling herself and pressing forward.

“Um…”

This time Li Xun was not lost in his own world. He heard her and looked up.

The upward tilt of his gaze creased a few faint lines across his forehead. In the cold light of the screen, his brows and eyes and hair took on an added chill.

Regret hit her like a wave.

Regret, regret, regret.

She should have gone straight back to the dormitory and enjoyed both cups of milk tea by herself.

“What do you want?” Li Xun asked.

Zhu Yun’s stomach was in knots. She began with an introduction: “Um, hi, my name is Zhu Yun, we’re in the same——”

“What is it?”

“…” Zhu Yun did her best to stay composed. “It’s like this — the school has been checking attendance recently, for morning and evening study sessions…”

Li Xun lowered his head and went back to typing.

“…”

Would it kill you to let someone finish a sentence?

Zhu Yun kept her voice patient: “Since we’ve just started term, the teachers are watching closely, and the class president has been very worried. She’s been covering for you, hasn’t reported anything — but if——”

Something suddenly appeared in front of her.

Again, mid-sentence.

Li Xun was sitting on the grass. With one hand he held up the laptop, and with the other he fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.

He exhaled, looked at Zhu Yun, and said: “Hold this.”

“Hold this.”

Zhu Yun set the milk tea aside and took the laptop in both hands.

On the screen was a compiler window.

“Press the spacebar.”

“Hm?”

“Do you not understand plain speech?”

“…”

Zhu Yun pressed the spacebar. A small window popped up containing a tiny pixelated figure, sword in hand.

A game?

“Arrow keys to move. Dodge the balls falling from above. Get across the river to the other side.”

Li Xun sat in the overgrown grass with his back against the goalpost. He held the cigarette between two fingers, drew his long legs in, and tilted his chin toward her.

“Three lives. If you don’t die, I’ll come to morning study sessions.”

Oh really?

Fine — playing a game was easier than trying to have a conversation with him.

Zhu Yun took a deep breath, clicked start, and — crash! A ball immediately slammed down from above. Zhu Yun flinched so hard her whole body jolted. Dead.

He called that “falling”?

She looked up. Li Xun looked entirely at ease.

Zhu Yun: “How many balls are there total?”

Li Xun silently held up two fingers.

That’s workable then.

Three lives, two balls, Zhu Yun reasoned. She now knew where the first one dropped. The second run would reveal where the next one came from. The third attempt would be the real one.

She pressed start again. Zhu Yun immediately stepped back one pace, dodged the first ball cleanly, and kept moving forward. At the far end of the path, another ball came crashing down.

She had already been pressing the keys as fast as she possibly could. She was still hit.

She looked up. Li Xun was watching her with the corner of his mouth pulled up.

Your badly designed excuse for a game… This was not a speed any human being could react to.

But it was fine — she still had one more life. Zhu Yun made herself relax, flexed her hand, and noticed her palm had gone damp with sweat.

Last chance.

Zhu Yun dodged the first ball cleanly and moved forward. She reached the far end of the path, every nerve stretched taut. The moment the second ball showed any sign of dropping, she hammered the key with enough force to punch through the keyboard — and finally dodged it.

Zhu Yun let out her breath and jumped straight across the river.

Dead.

?????

Zhu Yun’s eyes nearly flew out of her head.

Beside her, Li Xun had his head ducked down, shoulders shaking with silent laughter, cigarette ash drifting away on the breeze.

Zhu Yun suddenly noticed the compiler window still quietly running in the corner of the screen.

Something moved in her mind. Without caring about Li Xun’s laughter, she pulled up the compiler.

They hadn’t started formally studying programming yet, but the code in the window was extremely simple — not unlike the flowcharts from high school mathematics, with a clear structure. At a glance she found the original conditional function.

Cross the river. Die.

Go to hell.

The laptop was snapped shut and pulled away.

Zhu Yun looked up to find Li Xun standing in front of her.

At this distance, she noticed he really was very tall… though height was not the issue at the moment…

“Your game…” Zhu Yun considered her words carefully and said: “Isn’t your game designed just slightly… unreasonably?”

Li Xun said nothing and brushed the dust off his trousers.

Zhu Yun smiled a little. “Getting hit by the ball is death, and crossing the river is also death. You made a mistake, didn’t you?”

“No.”

His head was lowered, cigarette between his lips. His voice came out slightly low.

Zhu Yun: “Then no matter what you do, you die.”

“That’s right.”

“…”

Zhu Yun chose her next words carefully: “So the game is impossible to win?”

“Yes.”

“Then why make me play it?”

“Because I find you unpleasant.”

WTF?

Zhu Yun thought she had misheard.

“What?”

“Because I find you unpleasant.”

Perfectly standard Mandarin. A rather nice voice, too.

Zhu Yun stood frozen for a long moment before she managed another word.

“Why?”

Li Xun finally finished dusting himself off and straightened up.

That she could still notice, at a moment like this, that his skin was remarkably smooth — that really was something else.

He looked down at her from his considerable height, took the cigarette from his mouth, and said, without any particular weight:

“You’re just so incredibly fake.”

The north wind cut sharp and cold.

Zhu Yun went to the library.

Not to read — to look at the view.

She had noticed on the very first day of term that the library, for the sake of ventilation, left its top floor open on summer evenings. You could walk straight up onto the rooftop.

The library had six floors. The top had no railing. Sitting on the ground, you could look out across the fountain square in the distance — a wide, unobstructed view.

When she was small, her mother had told her: when you’re in a bad mood, go somewhere open and breathe deeply. Your heart will open too, and all the small, troublesome things will stop feeling so heavy.

Zhu Yun faced the distance and drew a long, deep breath — and immediately caught the smell of a paint bucket from somewhere in the corner.

“Cough, cough, cough!”

…Never mind.

Zhu Yun sat down on the ground and opened one of the milk teas. She was halfway through when, from somewhere behind her, she heard a short, sharp——

“Damn.”

She turned. A dark figure was standing behind her.

It was too dark to make out a face, but the guitar on the figure’s back was unmistakable.

“Ren Di?”

The figure walked a few steps closer. Sure enough — it was Ren Di.

Zhu Yun shifted to the side, making room. “What brings you here?”

Ren Di frowned. “What about you?”

Zhu Yun didn’t want to go into the full story, so she said: “Just came up for some air. Cooling down.”

Ren Di showed no mercy. “There’s air conditioning in the dorm. You came all the way up here to cool down?”

Zhu Yun’s expression remained perfectly unflustered. “This is natural air. You get ill if you rely on air conditioning too much — natural wind is better.”

Ren Di’s frown deepened.

Zhu Yun quickly turned it around: “What about you — why are you up here?”

Ren Di sat down with obvious reluctance. “Practicing.”

“Up here?”

“Someone complained about me practicing in the dorm.”

“…”

Zhu Yun saw the look on Ren Di’s face — deeply unhappy — and held out the second milk tea.

“Want some?”

Ren Di glanced at it, seemingly weighing the decision.

Zhu Yun: “The ice has melted by now, it’s been a while.”

Ren Di finally took it.

In the dark of the evening, Ren Di began to play.

Zhu Yun couldn’t name the piece, and Ren Di had only been learning for a short time — the technique was quite rough. But somehow, as she listened, the agitation that the golden-haired anomaly had stirred up in her slowly began to settle.

The power of music was a remarkable thing.

When the practicing was done, Zhu Yun remembered Fang Shumiao’s request.

“Um…”

“Mm?”

“Why don’t you come to morning study sessions?”

Ren Di chewed on the milk tea straw.

“Don’t feel like it. Things to do.”

“Things to do every single day?”

“Mm.”

“What kind of things?”

“Why is it any of your business?” Ren Di turned to look at her. “My skipping study hall doesn’t affect you.”

“No, no — you’ve misunderstood. That’s not what I mean. It’s mainly that things aren’t easy for Fang Shumiao, and if the absence rate gets too high——”

“I didn’t raise my hand.”

“Hm?”

“When she ran for class president. I didn’t raise my hand to vote.”

Zhu Yun hesitated for a moment. “You don’t like Fang Shumiao?”

“It has nothing to do with her. I wouldn’t have voted for anyone.”

“Why not?”

Ren Di looked at Zhu Yun with an expression of absolute detachment.

“Deliberately electing someone to manage you — what kind of person does that willingly?”

“…”

“I’ve never voted for that kind of thing, not since I was small.” Ren Di gave a cold laugh. “Not that anyone cares whether I raise my hand or not. But from my perspective — I didn’t vote for her, so she has no authority over me.”

“…………”

Zhu Yun was struck motionless by the sheer bewildering self-consistency of Ren Di’s logic.

Ren Di glanced at her. “Do you actually enjoy running these errands for her?”

Zhu Yun paused, then said quietly: “We’re all classmates, after all.”

“Are we.” Ren Di smiled faintly and said nothing more.

They sat a little longer. Then Ren Di packed up the guitar and stood.

Zhu Yun rose too. “Let’s head back together.”

Ren Di shook her head. “I’ve got something on tonight. Going out.”

“This late?”

“It’s fine.”

They parted ways. Zhu Yun walked back to the dormitory alone. She had barely been sitting on her stool for a moment before she made several urgent trips to the bathroom.

Fang Shumiao asked with concern what was wrong. Zhu Yun kept explaining: “Too much milk tea.”

A run-down bar, music blasting loud enough to shake the walls.

Li Xun and Gao Jianhong were sitting in a booth with two other male students from Class Two, deep in conversation. Li Xun’s current girlfriend, Liu Sisi, was pressed close against his side.

After a while, someone pushed through the crowd and came to stand before them.

Gao Jianhong looked up. “Ren Di — what took you so long?”

Ren Di: “Nothing.” She directed her gaze past him. “Li Xun. Come here a second.”

Liu Sisi glanced at her. Li Xun stood up, took two long strides out of the cramped booth.

Ren Di led him to one side.

“Can that deal be confirmed?” Ren Di asked.

Li Xun leaned against the bar.

“It can.”

Ren Di frowned. “Really? You’re sure?”

“Mm.”

Ren Di said seriously: “All right. Once there’s a return, I’ll pay you back at the rate we agreed.”

Li Xun smiled. “Sure.”

Ren Di let out a breath of relief.

Li Xun looked at her. “Why so tense? What took you so long tonight?”

“Someone held me back to lecture me.” She glanced at him. “My roommate — Zhu Yun. You know her?”

Li Xun made a sound of recognition.

Something seemed to occur to Ren Di, and she suddenly laughed.

Li Xun: “What?”

Ren Di leaned in a little closer, the corner of her mouth pulling up.

“She’s not as straightlaced as she looks.”

“Oh?”

Ren Di raised an eyebrow at him.

“When I went up to practice just now, I saw her on the rooftop — smoking.”