Unfortunately, Tan Yin never got to sneak a look at the pop quiz after all. She’d only just followed Zhu Kangmei out of the elevator when the thunder outside began to fade, and looking out, the rain had clearly lightened too — heading toward stopping soon.
This thunderstorm was about to end.
Tan Yin sighed with regret, forced to abandon this failed mission, and trudged off dejectedly.
By the time she got back to the dorm, she had indeed returned to normal, and Jiang Yilu could see her again.
She hurried over and lowered her voice. “So? Did you manage it?”
“No! But I did teach Zhu Kangmei a lesson.” Tan Yin flopped onto her bed and recounted the whole earlier incident to Jiang Yilu. “Either way, I doubt Chu Hang will actually show my manuscript to the department head now — given what he knows about the man now, that would just be setting himself on fire, hahaha.”
Jiang Yilu nearly rolled off the bed laughing. “Serves him right! Though honestly, Chu Hang really is innocent in all this — getting his backside groped for nothing!”
Tan Yin rolled her eyes. “He forcibly seized my manuscript without paying a cent — so what if I groped his backside a couple times?” She paused, recalling the sensation from earlier. “But honestly, Chu Hang’s backside really did have some substance to it. I think my character design for him might’ve been a little off — I drew him too soft and delicate. Take his clothes off and his muscles might actually be pretty solid!”
“Anyway.” Tan Yin glanced at Jiang Yilu, remembering something. “Do you know people out there are saying I jumped off a building for Chu Hang?”
Jiang Yilu blinked, stunned. “It’s gotten that exaggerated?! That’s outrageous!”
“It’s because you kept telling people I jumped off a building for a man!”
Jiang Yilu was quite unrepentant. “I didn’t say anything wrong! Didn’t you see a hundred-yuan bill by the railing on the second floor of the experiment building, and you tried to grab it, and it turned out there was water there, and the old wooden railing was already rotted through, so you slipped and fell? So really, wasn’t that for the sake of a hundred-yuan bill? Which technically is ‘for a man’ — Mao’s on the bill, isn’t he?”
“…”
Once she got going, Jiang Yilu even started lecturing Tan Yin. “Honestly, your family’s not exactly poor, so why are you so obsessed with money you won’t even let a hundred-yuan bill go?”
Tan Yin’s father had come up as a construction foreman, grinding away on job sites for years, taking on ever-larger projects. Compared to someone like Jiang Yilu, whose family ran a proper high-end home design company, he wasn’t exactly wealthy, but he was comfortably above average — Tan Yin was, reluctantly, something like a nouveau-riche second-generation kid. Except her father firmly believed that “kids with too much money go bad,” and was determined to raise Tan Yin with independence and frugality, giving her just barely enough allowance each month. And since Tan Yin habitually spent her money on the comics and merchandise she loved, she was always tight on cash — buying anything substantial required picking up several part-time jobs. She was, relatively speaking, quite poor.
“You wouldn’t understand.” Tan Yin shook her head. “Someone born with a silver spoon like you could never understand kids like us who came from hardship. You know how our family went from dirt poor to where we are now? All because of frugality! All because I never let a single hundred-yuan bill slip by!”
Jiang Yilu pursed her lips. “So, that manuscript — you’re just letting Chu Hang keep it?”
“Absolutely not! That’s my life’s work, my keepsake! Once I’m famous, that’s going in my exhibition hall or my former-residence museum as an important manuscript! When I’m broke, I can pull it out and auction it for a fortune! How can I just let Chu Hang have it for free? Besides, with that thing in his hands, I feel like it’s a ticking time bomb — if he ever takes it along with that recording to the school forum and makes it public, I don’t think I’ll survive!”
Jiang Yilu showed not an ounce of sympathy. “I told you from the start not to base your characters so heavily on real people — besides Chu Hang and the department head, there’s also the basketball captain who’s always cheating on his girlfriends, the literature school’s student council president who plagiarized his thesis… all of these are practically identifiable. If your identity gets exposed, you think they won’t come after you?”
“…”
Tan Yin, having learned her painful lesson, declared, “Whenever the next thunderstorm hits, I need to sneak into Chu Hang’s dorm and steal my manuscript back!”
Jiang Yilu said, not without envy, “Why doesn’t heaven send a lightning bolt my way too? If I had invisibility, the first thing I’d do is go check out the men’s shower room, or failing that, plan the heist of the century at a bank, then go beat the hell out of my cheating ex…”
“…”
This friend’s thoughts are getting dangerous, Tan Yin thought. I really don’t want her anymore.
Though she’d been hoping for another thunderstorm, Tan Yin hadn’t expected her wish to come true so quickly — that very night, another storm rolled in.
“Heaven really is on my side!” Terrified the storm would end too soon, Tan Yin didn’t waste a single minute and sprinted straight toward the men’s dormitory building.
Thanks to her invisibility, she slipped into the building without any trouble. Chu Hang lived in room 304, and luck was on her side — just as she reached his door, it happened to open, and out stepped his roommate, Chen Ziqiang.
“Babe, I really was just organizing my desk, because I’ve got a bit of a cleanliness thing, I get anxious if my desk isn’t tidy — I definitely wasn’t ignoring your messages because I was gaming. What’d you say? Bad signal, hold on…”
As Chen Ziqiang explained himself to his girlfriend, he wandered along the hallway outside the dorm looking for better signal. Since he hadn’t gone far, still right by the door, the dorm door was left carelessly wide open.
Tan Yin seized this window and slipped inside during the gap, only to find, once in, that the room was empty.
This was like showing up to an Olympiad math exam and getting a freebie question!
With no one in the room, Tan Yin could freely search for her manuscript, and since the door was left open, she could also slip in and out without a trace.
A University’s dorms held four to a room, and Chu Hang’s roommates were all fellow architecture students. Under the four beds sat four desks. Tan Yin, head down, tried to figure out which one belonged to Chu Hang.
The first desk could only be described as a disaster — books piled haphazardly, half-opened snacks, leftover duck neck… Tan Yin rifled through it; this was clearly the desk of the supposedly clean-freak Chen Ziqiang.
The second desk was much tidier, but on it sat a full set of SK-II products, the essence bottle already half empty, clearly in genuine use. Tan Yin realized — this must belong to Zhang Chen, the one everyone envied for his flawless skin, who always claimed he’d never used skincare and was just naturally blessed.
The third desk didn’t even need checking, because the moment she glanced at the fourth desk, Tan Yin was almost certain that was Chu Hang’s. The surface held almost nothing — just a potted cactus and an Apple laptop. The bookshelf held a row of English-original architecture textbooks. No trace of personal life at all. This desk was practically a physical embodiment of Chu Hang himself, exuding the same emotionally sterile quality he did. Compared to Chen Ziqiang and Zhang Chen, Chu Hang really was consistent, inside and out.
“Just like a model home showroom, and with all these original-language books on display too — so fake…”
Muttering to herself, Tan Yin pulled one of the original-language books off the shelf, only to find, to her surprise, that though it looked brand-new on the outside as if purely for show, the inside was covered in dense notes, the handwriting strong and forceful — even though it looked hastily jotted and somewhat messy, each stroke still carried a certain vigor.
Though she hated to admit it, Chu Hang really did have beautiful handwriting, just as eye-catching as his looks.
Of course, now wasn’t the time to admire Chu Hang’s handwriting. Tan Yin got back to searching for her manuscript, only to be disheartened to find every one of Chu Hang’s drawers and cabinets was locked.
Just as Tan Yin was considering whether to search the wardrobe, footsteps sounded, and standing in the doorway was none other than Chu Hang himself.
Chu Hang had just finished playing basketball, his pale face flushed from exertion, giving his usually cool features a touch of seductive heat, and paired with his perpetually cold expression, he looked almost like some ruthlessly cunning fox spirit in male form.
And now, this fox spirit walked straight into the dorm, opened his own wardrobe, and pulled out a towel.
Tan Yin nearly failed to dodge in time. Heart pounding like a drum, she pressed herself against the wardrobe door beside him; in that instant, Chu Hang’s nose had nearly brushed against hers. At that close range, Tan Yin could even clearly smell the scent on him.
It wasn’t the smell of sweat from intense exercise, but rather… like the smell of sun-dried clothes, mixed with a faint hint of body wash. The exercise made the scent stronger, and Chu Hang’s own presence infused it with a touch of coolness — like burning flame mixed with the crisp air after snowfall. Such a contradictory scent — Tan Yin found it hard to imagine anyone could balance it so perfectly, clean, sharp, yet brimming with an intoxicating, masculine allure. That Chu Hang had been voted the male student A University’s women most wanted to sleep with — perhaps it wasn’t entirely without reason.
Fortunately, having grabbed his towel, Chu Hang left the wardrobe and headed for the bathroom. A University’s dorms were decent enough that each room had its own private shower stall.
Tan Yin’s heart had just begun to settle when she looked up, and the scene before her sent her head spinning all over again.
Perhaps assuming he was alone, Chu Hang, on his way to the shower, began peeling off his sports jersey. His movements were somewhat absent-minded, lifting the hem of the shirt with a lazy, unhurried air, and as he moved, the firm lines of his abdominal muscles came into brief, teasing view… then, like a slow-motion film shot, Tan Yin watched, wide-eyed, as Chu Hang’s abs gradually revealed themselves inch by inch, followed by his waistline, the v-cut lines at his hips, and everything else she wasn’t supposed to be looking at…
So much for scrawny and delicate!
Tan Yin instantly felt cheated — she’d never imagined Chu Hang would have a body like that.
In Tan Yin’s subconscious, the name Chu Hang had always evoked something frail and willowy — like some old-society aristocrat from a declining household, forever reclining on a chaise lounge smoking opium, the type who wouldn’t live past thirty. Combined with his excessively pale, perpetually indifferent face, Tan Yin had more or less assumed Chu Hang was the slender type, decent-looking but probably scrawny and weak underneath his clothes, the kind of “boiled chicken” body with zero muscle definition… And yet? And yet Chu Hang had just completely shattered the mental image Tan Yin had built of him!
Unaware of any of this, Chu Hang finished pulling off his jersey entirely, revealing the muscled lines of his back…
A man’s bare back — this was Tan Yin’s Achilles’ heel! No matter how she tried, she could never draw a sexy, hormone-charged male bare back convincingly. And now, seeing Chu Hang’s near-perfect specimen up close…
“It’s all for the sake of art!”
Tan Yin consoled herself, gritted her teeth, and kept watching…
If he takes his pants off too, then… then I really won’t look anymore…
Fortunately, before her inner turmoil got too far, Chu Hang put an end to her struggle — he walked into the shower stall and closed the door, and shortly after, the sound of running water began. Guess the pants were staying on.
Tan Yin exhaled in relief, finally calming down. It seemed the manuscript wasn’t happening today after all. But unfortunately, just as she was about to slip away, Chen Ziqiang came back from his phone call, walked into the room, and instinctively kicked the door shut behind him.
“…”
Tan Yin nearly wanted to scream — Chen Ziqiang, why couldn’t it have been your leg that broke instead of mine?!
Tan Yin gritted her teeth. She could hardly just fling the door open and stroll out right in front of Chen Ziqiang — wouldn’t that look like some kind of paranormal event? The door handle turning on its own, the door opening by itself — how would that look? Did that align with socialist core values? He’d probably be terrified straight into a psych ward.
Fortunately, the other two roommates hadn’t returned yet, so Tan Yin wasn’t in a rush — she just needed to slip out whenever the other two came back. For now, she’d have to kill time in Chu Hang’s dorm.
Chen Ziqiang, despite his unnecessary kick, went straight to his own bed once back, leaving the row of desks below entirely unattended.
Growing rather bored waiting, Tan Yin glanced at the still-open computer on Chu Hang’s desk and, on a whim, tapped it, only to find it had no password.
“Guess I’ll browse the internet a bit.” Tan Yin thought, and opened a forum thread she hadn’t finished reading earlier —
“Top-Tier Nude Men, Blood-Pumping, Instant Arousal Guaranteed.”
Tan Yin wasn’t reading this thread to satisfy any personal desire — she was purely studying it from the angle of improving her ability to draw the male body, approaching it with a learning mindset. Most of the thread’s content featured Western men, nude or semi-nude, with remarkably fit body lines. Despite the clickbait, provocative title, the thread’s content genuinely wasn’t pornographic at all — it featured legitimate, award-winning work from foreign artistic photographers, showcasing the power and beauty of the human form, entirely pure in intent.
“Hey, everybody! I’m back!”
Along with a male voice, Zhang Chen had returned, and unfortunately, he too quickly shut the door behind him, leaving Tan Yin only enough time to stand up and step away from Chu Hang’s desk — no time at all to slip out of the room.
She had no idea what kind of mess she’d just left Chu Hang with…
The moment Zhang Chen reached the desk, his attention was immediately drawn to the muscular nude man on Chu Hang’s computer screen. Puzzled, he wondered why a guy like Chu Hang would be looking at something like this. Driven by curiosity, he leaned in closer to Chu Hang’s screen, and then he saw the large text at the top —
“Top-Tier Nude Men, Blood-Pumping, Instant Arousal Guaranteed.”
…
Zhang Chen was shocked. Zhang Chen’s mind was reeling. Zhang Chen felt like his entire world had turned upside down…
Could it be… that Chu Hang… likes men?!
At first Zhang Chen couldn’t accept it. But thinking it over carefully, if this were the setup, then everything suddenly made sense. Someone with conditions as good as Chu Hang’s, chased by so many girls, and yet so single-mindedly focused on his studies, with zero interest in dating — why?
It’s not that he doesn’t want to! It’s that with different gender preferences, he can’t date the way everyone assumes!
Zhang Chen also suddenly recalled — whenever he applied his SK-II products, Chu Hang always seemed to look at him with an air of incomprehension. Now, thinking back on it, it wasn’t that he genuinely couldn’t understand — it was that! It was that maybe he’d been using that as a cover to disguise the attention he couldn’t help but pay him! And of course, Chu Hang’s attention toward him wasn’t hard to understand at all — after all, wasn’t he the second-best-looking man in the dorm, right after Chu Hang himself? And beyond looks, his own personal charisma was simply irresistible!
Chu Hang’s computer screen had already dimmed into standby mode, but the tremor inside Zhang Chen showed no sign of settling anytime soon.
Chu Hang walked out of the shower, and whether it was his imagination or not, the atmosphere in the room felt oddly off. Zhang Chen stood in front of his own desk, staring at him with a subtle, meaningful expression, as if wanting to say something but holding back.
Chu Hang ignored him and went to towel off his hair, and only once he started organizing his wardrobe did Zhang Chen finally work up the courage to speak.
“Chu Hang, I like women.”
Chu Hang looked almost baffled.
As if having taken the first step gave him confidence, Zhang Chen cleared his throat and, feigning nonchalance, explained: “I know I use SK-II skincare, but that doesn’t mean I’m feminine, and it definitely doesn’t mean I like men. I just think, well, a man should take care of himself too, right? Appearance matters. A successful man should focus on self-care — clear skin, refined pores — that’s how you build a flawless self…”
Chu Hang, reaching for his water cup, glanced at Zhang Chen for a few seconds like he was looking at a ghost. “Do you have a fever?”
“…”
Chu Hang was thoroughly confused, but the same could not be said for Tan Yin, crouched off to the side. She was nearly laughing herself sick.
And because her emotions were running so high, she momentarily misjudged the distance and accidentally bumped into Chu Hang. The collision came seemingly out of nowhere, and Chu Hang, caught completely off guard, lost his grip on the water cup, sending it splashing outward. And, of all the terrible luck, the water splashed directly onto Zhang Chen — and due to the height difference between them, it landed with peculiar precision right on the front of Zhang Chen’s pants.
Chu Hang frowned and glanced back over his shoulder, somewhat bewildered. “Sorry, that wasn’t on purpose. Felt like someone bumped into me — maybe I lost my footing.”
But to Zhang Chen, this scene looked entirely different. Chu Hang had been holding the cup perfectly fine, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, seemed to fake being bumped and precisely splashed water right onto his crotch. But no matter how convincing his acting was, it couldn’t hide the fact that there was nothing but empty air behind him! Zhang Chen looked down at the water stain on his pants, and understanding dawned.
Wasn’t this exactly the kind of trope from romance novels? Deliberately spilling something on someone you liked, just to get their attention. It even carried a hint of calculated scheming. Chu Hang had splashed water right on his crotch — wasn’t that clearly just to see him change his pants right in front of him, so he could get an eyeful?!
Sure enough, Zhang Chen heard Chu Hang say, calm and composed —
“Your pants got pretty soaked. Go change.”
Zhang Chen felt an odd blend of smug self-satisfaction at his own irresistible charm and a rising alarm bell of indignation. This Chu Hang guy really means business — even at a moment like this, his voice stayed so steady and composed! What an act! I can’t let him have his way, Zhang Chen thought.
“No! No need to change!” Zhang Chen said stubbornly. “I actually think wet pants feel kind of good!”
Chu Hang frowned, looking utterly incredulous. “What could possibly feel good about that?”
“Just… kind of like reliving those innocent days of childhood, wetting your pants… you know…”
For a moment, the atmosphere turned rather strange. Chu Hang looked at Zhang Chen like he was an idiot, while Zhang Chen sized up Chu Hang like he was some kind of pervert.
Tan Yin simply couldn’t stand it anymore — she was terrified that if she kept laughing internally, she’d dislocate her own jaw.
Fortunately, at that moment, Chen Ziqiang, curled up in the top bunk, climbed down and opened the door. “It’s a bit stuffy in here, let’s leave the door open.”
Tan Yin didn’t dare linger any longer. Taking advantage of the moment when Zhang Chen and Chen Ziqiang both returned to their beds and Chu Hang had his back turned organizing his wardrobe, she quickly closed the thread she’d been browsing earlier, cleared her browsing history, and slipped away.