“I’m here because you invited me.”

The words had barely left her mouth before four or five people around the room set down what they were doing and turned to look at her.

Gao Jianhong wore a wide grin. Liu Sisi stuck out her lower lip, watching to see what would unfold.

Li Xun chewed his gum, expression blank.

Zhu Yun quietly straightened her spine. Have you forgotten you were the one who invited me? Don’t pretend otherwise.

After a moment of locked eyes, Li Xun closed his laptop and said simply: “Fair enough.”

Fair enough what?

Li Xun drew a mild breath, stood up, planted one hand on his hip, and turned to face the room.

The moment Zhu Yun saw that expression, her instincts told her something was about to go very wrong.

What are you doing.

What are you about to do.

Li Xun rapped the desk. “Alright, everyone pause for a second.”

Zhu Yun tensed up.

Li Xun raised a hand and made an introduction with zero ceremony.

“This person,” — he pointed at Zhu Yun —

“is our invited princess.”

Zhu Yun: “………………………………..”

Gao Jianhong burst out laughing on the spot. Liu Sisi clapped a hand over her mouth. The other students, not entirely sure what was happening, applauded along cooperatively. It was a testament to Zhu Yun’s years of disciplined self-cultivation that she managed to remain as unmovable as a mountain through the whole thing.

Li Xun glanced at the time. “I’ll treat everyone later — a welcome dinner for the princess. Come if you want.”

Zhu Yun suppressed the urge to set that whole mess of tangled hair on his head ablaze and said to him: “Thank you, but that’s not necessary.”

Li Xun looked at her. “Come on — after all, she is our invited guest. We can put anyone through it, just not Her Highness the Princess.”

Did I slaughter your entire family in a past life? Is that why I’m being made to suffer like this in this one?

Liu Sisi excitedly hooked her arm through Li Xun’s. “Where are we going? I want to come too.”

Li Xun named a KTV near campus. Liu Sisi obediently pulled out her phone and went outside to reserve a room.

There was nothing more Zhu Yun could do. She sat back down and waited for the others to finish their work before she could be properly “welcomed.”

Just after seven, a group of six set out from the base.

Zhu Yun had no idea KTV places off-campus were so popular. On a Friday night, every private room was fully booked. Only thanks to Liu Sisi’s familiarity with the staff did they manage to wrestle one room away.

The décor was decent enough, but the soundproofing was another matter entirely. The hoarse, off-key bellowing from next door left Zhu Yun’s head spinning.

Liu Sisi warmed up briefly, then took to the microphone in full reign. True to her arts college background, she sang well and moved with flair — professional enough to pass for a minor celebrity.

Though the gathering was nominally in Zhu Yun’s honor, a whole crate of drinks had already been consumed, and Zhu Yun still felt not the slightest sense of being the evening’s protagonist. She occupied herself by trying to pick out Liu Sisi’s voice from the surrounding layers of noise.

She wasn’t paying close attention when a tall figure came over carrying two bottles.

The space was genuinely cramped. Li Xun dropped down beside her and landed squarely on half of her jacket.

He held out one of the bottles.

Zhu Yun shook her head. “I don’t drink.”

Li Xun didn’t push it. He set the bottle on the table in front of her and started in on his own.

Zhu Yun snuck a glance at him.

It was loud in here, but the atmosphere was genuinely good — and Li Xun appeared to have had a fair amount to drink already. He looked entirely relaxed.

Zhu Yun decided this was her chance. The time had come to have a proper conversation with Li Xun about her future at the base.

“Hey, Li Xun.”

With all the noise, Li Xun showed no reaction whatsoever.

Zhu Yun gathered herself, then shouted directly in his ear: “LI XUN!”

Li Xun inhaled his drink the wrong way and swore loudly: “Are you trying to kill me?!”

“…”

Zhu Yun decided the apology could wait until after she’d said what she came to say.

“Write her assignments yourself next time!”

Li Xun looked at her.

“Writing your own girlfriend’s assignments is the most natural thing in the world!”

Li Xun laughed and said something in return — Zhu Yun couldn’t hear a word of it over the noise.

“What?!”

He said it again. Still nothing.

“Louder —!”

The next second, Zhu Yun felt the back of her collar tighten, and then she was pulled forward all at once.

Li Xun’s chest carried a faint, clean scent.

Strange, wasn’t it.

He smoked, he drank, he dyed his hair, he lived recklessly — and yet the smell of him was always clean.

His unruly voice sounded close against her ear —

“Doing what I say — that’s the most natural thing in the world.”

Why don’t you just ascend to heaven while you’re at it.

Zhu Yun extricated herself from him with great composure, but in the process of pushing herself upright, her palm slipped and landed on his thigh.

Well…

Zhu Yun looked up.

Li Xun sat loosely on the sofa watching her, making absolutely no move to shift. The colored lights of the private room swept around and around, casting his golden hair in something gaudy and vivid.

Zhu Yun stared at him and found herself thinking that if a vice squad raided this place right now, they could probably take him away without asking a single question.

Li Xun: “What are you looking at?”

His voice was low, nearly swallowed by the noise — but Zhu Yun only needed to watch his lips to know what he’d asked.

Zhu Yun shook her head, her own voice equally quiet. “Nothing…”

Li Xun leaned closer. With his monolid eyes, his features took on something sharp and precise.

“Be more upfront. People like that better.”

“…”

Li Xun turned back to the others in the room, half-joking: “Hey, question for all of you — isn’t it better when a woman’s a bit on the simple side?”

Everyone had been drinking for a while. When they heard Li Xun’s question, Gao Jianhong was the first to throw his hand up in his pleasantly foggy state.

“Yes!”

The others chimed in one after another in enthusiastic solidarity, and in the end even Liu Sisi, from the front of the room, joined in — lifting the microphone and cheering joyfully into it: “That’s right! Simple women are the best! Long live simple women —!”

…These people had completely lost the plot.

Zhu Yun could take no more of this. She stood up and took her leave: “I’m heading back — you all keep going.” She needed to seriously reconsider whether she still wanted to remain at the base.

She was pulling on her jacket when she heard Li Xun’s voice, unhurried and mild: “There you go, overthinking again.”

No. My thinking is entirely well-founded and evidence-based.

Li Xun crooked a finger at her.

“…” Zhu Yun wrestled with herself for ten full seconds, then decided to extend her patience one last time.

She went over. Li Xun said, with his usual languid ease: “Go home and check your email.”

That said, he turned his attention away from Zhu Yun entirely and got into a dice game with Gao Jianhong.

Zhu Yun returned to the dormitory thoroughly puzzled, opened her laptop, logged into her email — and there was indeed an unread message, with the subject line: For Her Royal Highness the Princess, to open personally.

Zhu Yun’s nerves gave a sharp, indignant twitch. She gritted her teeth and opened it, then went still.

What was inside was something she recognized — the “Related Recommendations” feature she had written for Fang Shumiao. But the specifics were different from what she’d originally produced. It had been revised.

Li Xun’s code, measured against his personality, was disarmingly approachable — possessed of an exceptional readability. At every point where he’d made changes, he had added detailed annotations and explanations, textbook-precise, and Zhu Yun paused only two or three times to look something up; the rest she absorbed in one unbroken stretch. Understanding the entire thing took her just over half an hour.

Reading his code was like having a conversation with him. Close her eyes, and his intentions, his logic, even that insufferably arrogant face of his — all of it presented itself with perfect clarity.

His code carried none of the elaborate flourishes one might expect. It resembled his manner: direct and unobstructed, holding nothing back, laying everything out plainly for you to see.

Zhu Yun brewed herself a cup of coffee. She checked the timestamp on the email: seven o’clock that evening.

Seven o’clock — hadn’t that been just before they left the base?

So he’d spent the entire afternoon revising her code? But wait — how had he known the feature was hers? When had he figured that out?

With a head full of unanswered questions, Zhu Yun turned over the image of Li Xun’s easy, careless smile, and his slouched figure tapping away at the keyboard — and then she dropped face-first onto the desk.

In any case, the matter of withdrawing could be put aside for now.

The next day was Saturday. Zhu Yun got up early, ate a few quick bites, and made her way over to the base.

It was early enough that she had expected to be the first one there. Instead, she walked in to find Li Xun asleep across two chairs pushed together.

The entire base carried the stale, heavy scent of a night’s worth of drinking.

Zhu Yun went to open the windows for some air, and only on her way back did she notice that Li Xun’s shirt had ridden up in his sleep, leaving his midsection exposed. One arm was thrown over his eyes, the other resting loosely on his abdomen.

Those chairs looked none too stable. Not very secure at all…

And that bare stomach — with the window open and a breeze coming through, would the direct draft give him a stomachache?

Zhu Yun peeked cautiously out into the corridor.

Saturday morning. The campus lay completely still, everyone asleep just like Li Xun.

Zhu Yun crept over, pinched the hem of Li Xun’s shirt between both hands, and prepared to tug it down.

Would something happen?

In the natural order of narrative events, something always happened at this point.

Zhu Yun kept her hands as steady as possible and gently began to pull the fabric down.

Halfway through, Li Xun stirred. Perhaps the brush of cloth against his skin had produced a ticklish sensation — he lowered the arm that had been over his eyes and scratched at it.

And in doing so, scratched himself awake.

Zhu Yun pulled her hands back immediately, and regarded Li Xun as he opened his eyes with a look of perfect composure, musing to herself:

Told you. Something always happens at this point.

Fortunately the something was fairly minor. Li Xun was visibly sleep-deprived — a deeply pained expression on his face, hair exploding back into its usual Super Saiyan formation as he sat up, brow furrowed so tightly it could have crushed a fly. His mind wasn’t yet fully online, but the very first thing he did upon rising was flip open his laptop and press the power button.

Does it have to be this relentless? Aren’t you afraid of dropping dead?

Li Xun’s expression was too murderous to trifle with. Zhu Yun decided not to provoke this particular active volcano and turned back to her own seat.

Li Xun scrubbed vigorously at his face. Between the lack of sleep and last night’s drinking, his eyes were slightly puffy — no amount of rubbing could put any life back into them. He staggered off to the bathroom to wash his face with cold water.

When he came back, the fearsome energy around him had dialed down somewhat. He wiped his face on the hem of his shirt but didn’t quite finish the job, leaving his hair, face, and shirt dotted with water droplets.

He sat back down, hunched slightly forward, and said in a low voice: “Lighter.”

Zhu Yun tossed him the lighter sitting on the table.

Li Xun lit a cigarette.

“Tell me a joke.”

His voice, for once, was rough and low in a way she didn’t usually hear.

Though…

Tell him a joke?

Zhu Yun turned around. Li Xun was smoking and pressing two fingers to his temple.

“Cheer me up a bit.”

The campus outside was quiet in the morning stillness.

The sun hadn’t climbed high yet. The room was dim, the light gentle and unhurried.

Zhu Yun thought for a moment, then said: “Smoking isn’t allowed in the academic buildings.”

Li Xun lifted his eyes from behind that long-fingered hand.

Zhu Yun noticed with surprise that the fatigue had temporarily given him double eyelids.

Single-lidded people really are a remarkable species.

The corner of his mouth curved slightly.

“That is genuinely a joke.”