“Look at this — in this diagram, if we remove one support link rod A, that’s equivalent to removing one constraint. Then cutting at the steel joint removes another three constraints, giving us a statically determinate cantilever structure. So there are four redundant constraints — it’s a four-degree statically indeterminate structure…”

“…”

“For this problem, first analyze the right side — you can see the reaction force at the bottom right corner is zero, meaning the right half has no load and no reaction force, so it can be removed entirely. On the left half, there’s no shear force in the horizontal beam, only the vertical member on the left has shear force…”

“…”

Tan Yin looked despairingly at the problem in front of her. Every single word Chu Hang said, taken individually, she understood — but put together, she was completely lost.

This study group wasn’t mutual suffering at all — this was a one-sided massacre by Chu Hang!

“Tan Yin? Understand it now?”

Tan Yin shook her head with complete honesty.

To her surprise, Chu Hang didn’t show any hint of disdain or contempt. He remained as detached as ever. “Which part didn’t you understand?”

“Just… pretty much all of it…”

“I’ll explain it again. Listen carefully this time.”

Chu Hang’s attitude was still unenthusiastic, as if he were just completing a task, his brow slightly furrowed, clearly impatient — yet in stark contrast to his expression, his explanations were meticulous and patient. The moment any confusion showed on Tan Yin’s face, he’d go back over that part again, restating it more simply.

Because of her aversion to the architecture major, on top of her natural weakness in physics, Tan Yin had never had any interest or motivation for structural mechanics — even when she genuinely tried to review before finals, she had no idea where to even begin, utterly unable to grasp it. But now, with Chu Hang explaining, the problems that had once seemed like indecipherable scripture actually started to take shape a little…

Still, having some inkling of understanding was one thing — for a student as far behind as Tan Yin, truly catching up wasn’t easy, and these dry, frustrating problems made her instinctively want to run away.

“Chu Hang, should we call it here for today?”

Chu Hang frowned. “We’ve only been at this for an hour. With your foundation, you need at least two hours a day to see any real effect. One more hour before you can go.”

“It’s already been an hour?!” Tan Yin was shocked. She checked her watch. “Listen, Chu Hang, I’ve actually got something to take care of — how about we schedule the other hour for later?”

Chu Hang pressed his lips together and said nothing. Tan Yin quickly packed up her things and made her escape.

Having escaped the terrifying sea of structural mechanics problems, Tan Yin hurried to a small food stall outside campus.

The excuse about having something to take care of wasn’t a lie, actually — Tan Yin had arranged to meet someone there.

Sure enough, Zhou Ming was already waiting. Seeing Tan Yin, he pushed up his glasses and waved at her.

Zhou Ming was Tan Yin’s genuine childhood friend. Their mothers taught at the same middle school, and the two families had originally been neighbors as well. Born the same year, the two of them had always played together, essentially having grown up together.

Zhou Ming was about half a year younger than Tan Yin, so technically he should call her older sister — though the two of them had completely opposite personalities. Zhou Ming was soft-spoken, gentle, quite reserved, and easily embarrassed, only really opening up around people he knew well. In front of strangers, he could come across as downright quiet. He had delicate, refined features, and with his glasses, carried an air of scholarly gentleness. As a child, he’d always trailed behind Tan Yin, and Tan Yin had always looked after him like a little brother. The two of them had gone through the same kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, and now the same university — only Zhou Ming wasn’t studying architecture, he was in the law school, and his grades were excellent.

“I picked up a part-time delivery job downtown, I’m going to be delivering food — can I borrow your little electric scooter over the weekend?”

Zhou Ming nodded, then looked puzzled. “Delivery? Didn’t you take on that coloring outsourcing job from some comic studio? I remember you saying you got 30 per panel, and could do about 60 panels a week, so that’s an easy 1,800 — why go do delivery instead?”

Bringing this up only made Tan Yin furious. “Garbage studio — I worked hard coloring for them for a whole month, waiting to get paid, and then they just packed up and vanished. Total scam, cheating people out of their work. I did all that labor for nothing, didn’t get a single cent, I was furious for an entire week! I never want to work with those comic studios again! Coloring other people’s work has no soul anyway!”

Zhou Ming glanced at Tan Yin and cautiously pointed out, “Delivery doesn’t have a soul either…”

Tan Yin glared at him. “Delivery builds strength and character! It’ll get me into socialism faster! Jogging my way straight into the Chinese Dream!”

“…”

Zhou Ming shook his head, at a loss for words, then earnestly tried to talk her out of it. “But delivery work is really tough. If you’re short on money lately, I’ve still got plenty of living expenses left, how much do you need?”

Tan Yin waved him off. “No need.” She winked at him. “Didn’t you tell me last time you started dating someone? Save your money for your girlfriend.”

Bringing this up, Zhou Ming got a bit bashful, looking away. “Even though her family’s well-off, she’s not the materialistic type. She never spends my money — even when I try to treat her to a meal, she refuses.”

“So how do you two even date, then? Just eat at the cafeteria together?”

“We actually don’t see each other that much. Sometimes we go study together at the library, but she’s in a lot of clubs, so she often gets pulled away halfway through.” As Zhou Ming talked about his girlfriend, his face took on a happy, bashful expression. “And she’s a freshman, I’m a sophomore, so our class schedules already conflict a lot — we mostly just text on WeChat.”

Zhou Ming’s girlfriend was a freshman in the law school; they’d met during freshman orientation and had naturally hit it off.

“You’re both at the same school and you’re still acting like it’s long distance?” Tan Yin sucked hard on her pearl milk tea. “When are you going to bring her around so we can meet? Why didn’t she come today?”

“She’s got club stuff today, a meeting.” Zhou Ming’s face flushed slightly. “Next time — once we’re a bit more stable, I’ll introduce you two.”

“Fine, then.” Tan Yin laughed too. “You’d better hurry up and get stable then. You’re the only one who’s this cautious about everything — introducing your girlfriend to a friend and it’s like meeting the parents. And you still need to wait until it’s ‘stable’?”

…

After chatting with Zhou Ming about other things, complaining a bit about how boring life had been lately, and eating a fair amount of snacks, Tan Yin said goodbye and headed back to her dorm.

The moment she walked in, Jiang Yilu shoved a piece of gossip at her, curing Tan Yin’s boredom instantly.

“Breaking news — my source just spotted Chu Hang treating some really pretty girl to dinner at a Western restaurant off campus. You know how Chu Hang is basically dead behind the eyes normally — well apparently he was all smiles and laughter having dinner with this girl, and she seemed really close with him too.” As she spoke, Jiang Yilu pulled out her phone. “Look, this is the on-site photo from our frontline source!”

Tan Yin leaned in for a look. Though the photo was clearly a candid shot at a bad angle, she could clearly make out Chu Hang and the girl across from him — long, wavy hair cascading down, waving her dessert fork with a coquettish charm, while Chu Hang, head bowed, cut into his steak with a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Jiang Yilu sighed. “The whole campus forum is in mourning right now — everyone thinks Chu Hang’s finally getting a girlfriend. Ugh, tonight’s a scorching date night for Chu Hang, but for a thousand girls out there, it’s a night their dreams got shattered!”

Tan Yin stared at the campus forum post over and over, but the more she scrolled, the more bored she felt. With “Under the Ten Thousand: The Temptation of the Campus Heartthrob” no longer being drawn, she suddenly had a lot of free time on her hands, so she pulled out the problem set Chu Hang had given her that afternoon and started chewing on her pen, working through it.

Only then did Tan Yin realize just how big a difference having someone explain things made — when Chu Hang taught, he broke things down clearly, and she could always understand it in the end, but without him, the problems were like reading heavenly script again. She stared at it for half an hour and started to lose steam.

Tan Yin knew perfectly well she was severely lopsided academically — for anything art-related, her grades were always among the best, but for anything science or engineering, she was a complete disaster. Even knowing this couldn’t continue, people just naturally had a kind of inertia — the more skilled and interested you were at something, the more willing you were to spend time refining it, and so the easier it became to produce results and feel a sense of accomplishment; while something you neither loved nor were good at became harder and more discouraging to work on, so you became even less willing to try, and so it went in cycles — one side becoming a virtuous cycle, the other a vicious one, growing weaker and weaker.

Just as she was thinking about this, her phone rang. She looked down at the caller ID, and her hand, about to hit answer, froze for a moment.

Chu Hang?

What did Chu Hang want with her? Wasn’t he supposed to be enjoying his scorching date night right now?

Unless…

Tan Yin suddenly snapped to attention and quickly picked up, and almost before Chu Hang could say anything, she blurted out a preemptive assurance: “That comic! I already stopped updating it! I know your girlfriend definitely can’t accept it if she saw it, I’m going to apply to have the posts deleted! I’ve already posted a public apology too! But please give me some time to make a backup — I’ve been serializing it for almost a year, a lot of the comments and interactions on it were really fun, and it’s kind of my labor of love, I can’t bear to lose it all just like that, I promise I’ll only keep it for myself, I won’t let it circulate anywhere!”

After her rapid-fire outburst, Chu Hang paused for a moment, clearly not following at all. “What girlfriend?” His voice was cold and hard. “I don’t have a girlfriend.” Then, after a beat, he added, lowering his voice pointedly, “And obviously, no boyfriend either.”

“…”

“Now, come downstairs, to the open study area on the second floor of the library. Bring your structural mechanics textbook. I happen to have time right now, so I’ll make up that other hour of tutoring from today.”

Tan Yin resisted. “Chu Hang, you might have time, but I might not, you know — you didn’t even ask if I had something going on…”

“Oh, do you have something going on?”

“Yes!”

“Then you have ten minutes, then clear your schedule.” Chu Hang said coldly. “I’ll be waiting here. If you’re not here in ten minutes, tonight’s study session will be extended by another half hour.”

“…”

“The study group system requires a weekly mutual-help report. I’ll be truthfully reporting your level of cooperation and diligence.”

You’re clearly free enough to be this petty — must really not have a girlfriend…

Yet in the face of Chu Hang’s threat, Tan Yin still caved completely: “Give me five minutes! I’ll be there in five!”

Chu Hang, oh Chu Hang, you just wait!

By the time Tan Yin arrived, breathless, at the library’s open study area, Chu Hang was indeed already sitting properly at a table.

Though the library had many quiet study rooms where talking wasn’t allowed, to accommodate the need for discussion while studying, they’d turned a few oddly-shaped corners on the second floor into open discussion areas, with small tables set up where people could talk and even have drinks.

“Chu Hang, the moonlight’s so nice tonight, don’t you want to go for a walk?”

Tan Yin hadn’t even finished her attempt to get on his good side before Chu Hang’s voice cut her off coldly: “Have you solved the multi-span continuous beam problem? Finished the force analysis on the symmetric truss? Do you understand the zero-force member identification method now?”

“…”

This man really was a merciless killing machine with no feelings whatsoever…

Chu Hang clearly had no interest in engaging with Tan Yin beyond the problem set. He shot her a look that forced her to sit down, then went straight into explaining the problems.

And once he started explaining, Tan Yin’s usual confidence quickly crumbled to pieces.

“Don’t get this one either?”

“Mm…”

“This one?”

“Also… not really…”

“What about this?”

“…”

Ten problems in a row, either completely clueless or hopelessly confused. Even though Chu Hang showed no particular reaction, Tan Yin herself started feeling utterly humiliated.

She instinctively wanted to flee. “I’m not really in the right state of mind tonight, I usually need to be drinking milk tea while I do problems.”

Chu Hang said nothing. He took out his phone, and after a moment, looked up. “I’ve ordered milk tea delivery. Keep going.”

“…”

After grinding through two more problems, Tan Yin tried again to save herself. “Actually, the atmosphere in the library is a bit too solemn for me, it makes me feel a bit oppressed. In this environment I get nervous more easily, it makes my thinking freeze up, I can’t reach peak learning condition…”

Chu Hang pressed his lips together. “Then where would you reach peak condition?”

“Maybe… the little garden behind the library?”

**

Fifteen minutes later, sitting on a bench in the little garden behind the library, holding a cup of milk tea and swatting mosquitoes nonstop, Tan Yin felt like crying.

This little garden had originally been a favorite spot for couples, with its dim, romantic lamplight and quiet, beautiful scenery, its winding paths flanked by benches scattered among the trees. On a summer night like this, those benches should have been full of couples cozying up together — except right now—

“In this diagram, the reaction force on the left vertical member is a vertical force, oriented along the axis direction…”

Chu Hang was a man of his word — Tan Yin had said the little garden, so to the little garden they went. He sat properly at one end of the bench, ordering Tan Yin to use her phone’s flashlight for lighting, and continued explaining the problems with full focus.

Tan Yin’s original intent in proposing this idea had simply been to smoothly suggest that it was too late tonight, that they should just call it quits and hold the next study session during the day back in the little garden — of course, when it came to “next time,” there were always plenty of ways to keep delaying it indefinitely.

Except Chu Hang, it turned out, wasn’t playing by the expected rules at all…

“Chu Hang, why don’t we head back to the library?”

Chu Hang raised his eyes, his tone infuriatingly calm. “No. Since you wanted to come here to study, then let’s stay here.”

“But there are so many mosquitoes here! It’s like I’m here donating blood voluntarily!” Tan Yin said, on the verge of breaking down. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

Chu Hang gave a completely emotionless smile. “Mosquitoes don’t bite me. If it itches, just bear with it — after all, you’re studying better here.” He gave her a meaningful look. “Ever heard the saying — the path you chose yourself, you walk to the end even on your knees.”

“…”

Chu Hang glared at her. “What’s wrong? I satisfied your requests for milk tea and studying in the little garden, and you still can’t focus?”

“Actually… there’s one more, most important requirement that hasn’t been met yet, for me to really get into the right state here in the garden.” Tan Yin blinked, sighed. “If that one can’t be met, I think we might as well head back to the library — after all, thinking it over, the study atmosphere in the library really is more focused, it gives me more motivation!”

Chu Hang gave a cold laugh. “Fine. Whatever else you want, say it. I’ll grant it all.”

He was clearly prepared to go head-to-head with Tan Yin — determined to make her suffer the consequences of her own actions, insisting she study in the little garden feeding mosquitoes no matter what.

But Tan Yin was undaunted. She cleared her throat and, putting on a bashful, timid air, made as if to lean against Chu Hang.

Chu Hang startled and immediately stood up, lowering his voice while glaring at her. “What are you doing?!”

“Didn’t you say you’d grant whatever I asked?” Tan Yin said calmly, smiling. “My last request is to lean on your shoulder — studying like that, I’m sure I’d learn twice as fast with half the effort!”

“…”

“Didn’t you say we had to keep studying in the little garden?”

Chu Hang glared at her through gritted teeth, and finally admitted defeat, turning his head away. “Back to the library!”

Ha — the thick-skinned shall inherit the earth!