The computer screen showed the current time as eight o’clock in the evening.

Wen Qi was in a state of suffocation.

Wen Qi’s supervisor was a native Englishman. However, the supervisor’s wife was a professor in the field of “East Asian Studies”—she was fluent in both Chinese and Japanese. She would be able to understand this email.

The title of the email even included the Indian senior student’s name.

In the body of the email, there appeared scattered English words such as “supervisor,” “vicious witch,” and so on.

As long as the Indian senior student copied and pasted the email content into an online Chinese-to-English translator, she would be able to roughly understand what Wen Qi meant to express.

Wen Qi had never encountered such a situation before.

His face was bloodless, and as his fingers just touched the keyboard, he knocked over the coffee cup. Warm coffee splashed onto his leg, and his email notification sounded again.

He glanced at it and saw that the Indian senior student had sent him an email.

The subject of the Indian senior student’s email was “We need to talk.”

We need to talk.

Wen Qi didn’t reply to the senior student.

His soul had already left his body. His physical form remained in the dormitory, but his consciousness had been broken into countless fragments. He was no longer a complete, independent person; he was a defective rag doll.

It was a dark, gloomy night with torrential rain pouring down. Wen Qi could neither go out to clear his mind nor hide in his dormitory to smoke—every student dormitory was equipped with a fire alarm that would emit a shrill and piercing sound at the detection of even a little smoke.

Wen Qi took out his phone, wanting to chat with his undergraduate classmates. He wanted to know how other students would handle this situation. Since last year, he has been using a social app called “WeChat.” Through WeChat, he sent a message to one of his undergraduate classmates: “Hello.”

A notification popped up on the phone screen: “The other party has enabled friend verification, you are not yet their friend…”

Wen Qi had been deleted from his classmate’s friend list.

In his WeChat contacts, there were a total of seventeen contacts.

And now, only sixteen remained.

He grew increasingly anxious and immediately pressed the power button to shut down his phone.

Outside the window, heavy rain fell noisily, showing no signs of weakening.

*

The next day, Wen Qi didn’t come to the laboratory.

He turned off his phone, not responding to any messages, as if he had vanished from the world.

Most students in the research group had used a “Chinese-to-English translator” to understand Wen Qi’s email. Today’s morning meeting atmosphere was somewhat awkward; no one took the initiative to mention last night’s incident, and Aishwarya mispronounced two words in a row during her report.

Aishwarya’s expression was quite unpleasant.

She held a marker and wrote a line of formula on a whiteboard.

With her back to everyone, she suddenly said: “What should I do if students dislike me or cannot meet my expectations? I wish I had thought about how to solve that problem before becoming a supervisor.”

Senior student Aishwarya’s attitude was very sincere.

At this point, their supervisor spoke up.

The supervisor said that all students in the group would play important roles in their respective fields after graduation, and he hoped everyone could maintain patience. He would always be available to provide help.

And so, their morning meeting ended in a harmonious and friendly atmosphere.

Senior student Aishwarya got up to leave. Her figure was projected onto a glass door, the white light from the grid lamp pouring down from above her head, making her silhouette appear particularly lonely.

Lin Zhixia quickly called out to her.

She stood with Lin Zhixia outside the conference room, and Lin Zhixia very seriously apologized to her.

Lin Zhixia said that the reason Wen Qi sent the wrong email was because she had asked Wen Qi why a senior student as good and as smart as Aishwarya would be complained about by undergraduates. Lin Zhixia was going to be a teaching assistant next semester and had never taught foreign students before, so she was especially afraid of making mistakes.

After listening to Lin Zhixia’s words, Senior student Aishwarya didn’t seem to be angry with her at all.

Lin Zhixia felt relieved.

However, Aishwarya immediately said that Wen Qi had greatly disappointed her.

Disappointed?

Hadn’t the senior student’s anger subsided?

The facts proved that Aishwarya was not just ordinarily angry.

Aishwarya and Lin Zhixia had collaborated on a paper. In that paper, there was also a small contribution from Wen Qi, but Aishwarya directly deleted all of Wen Qi’s work and replaced it with another experimental method.

And Wen Qi had not shown his face for an entire week.

Wen Qi had sent an email to the supervisor, falsely claiming that he was feeling unwell and needed to rest at home for a few days. He quietly stayed in his dormitory reading papers, rising early and sleeping late, his study efficiency still high.

During this period, the only person willing to chat with him was a young girl he had met at the banquet. Her name was Miao Danyi; she spoke Chinese very well and had studied Chinese culture extensively. Wen Qi could chat with Miao Danyi about ten sentences a day, which was a significant improvement for him—his chat content with his parents usually consisted of only one sentence: “I’m still alive, I’m studying.”

Wen Qi’s parents did business in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions. He also had an older brother and an older sister at home. His parents didn’t pay much attention to him, and apart from sending him money, his brother and sister rarely had other interactions with him.

So, sooner or later, he was destined to get used to living alone.

However, his peaceful world was disrupted on Saturday at noon.

At noon that day, he first received a WeChat message from Miao Danyi: “Where do you live?”

He didn’t reply.

A moment later, Miao Danyi said, “I asked someone and found out, I’m coming to visit your place.”

He nearly went crazy.

At half past twelve, WeChat sounded again.

This time, Lin Zhixia told him, “Classmate Wen Qi, you haven’t come to the lab building for a week. The supervisor said you were sick, and we were all a bit worried about you. How is your health? I promised the other students I would come to see you. May I visit you with my boyfriend? I will bring you some food, hope you don’t mind (I plan to bring a claypot rice, I remember you often eat claypot rice at school).”

Wen Qi’s gaze focused on one line: The supervisor said you were sick, and we were all a bit worried about you.

He couldn’t help feeling a bit dazed.

He had stayed in England for so many years, and how many times had he just toughed it out through illnesses by himself? Taking painkillers for stomachaches, covering himself with blankets to sleep through fevers, sleeping in a daze, half-dreaming and half-awake, only to wake up to cold pots and cold stoves.

*

Today’s weather was very clear, and Lin Zhixia was in a good mood.

Lin Zhixia held Jiang Yubai’s hand as they walked toward Wen Qi’s student dormitory. Jiang Yubai asked her, “Wen Qi only replied with one word?”

“Yes,” Lin Zhixia faithfully relayed, “he said, ‘okay.'”

Jiang Yubai suggested: “Let’s leave the plastic bag at his doorstep, and you can come back home with me.”

Lin Zhixia held onto Jiang Yubai’s arm: “We should at least say hello to him.”

Jiang Yubai carried a plastic bag in his right hand. The bag contained a claypot rice, a plate of chicken wings, a box of strawberries, and a bottle of orange juice that Lin Zhixia had bought from a restaurant.

Today at noon, Lin Zhixia had specially gone to a restaurant to personally buy lunch for Wen Qi.

Jiang Yubai felt a vague sense of crisis. He knew that Lin Zhixia’s nature was quite kind and soft. In elementary school, she had been quite nice to Ding Yan and Dong Sunqi, and had even treated everyone to strawberry candy—the strawberry candy of those years was like today’s lunch; there was no difference between the two.

Moreover, international students away from home, without relatives or friends, were like rootless duckweed. Everyone had their difficulties, and looking out for each other could embody the traditional virtues of “unity and friendliness.”

In this way, in just a few short seconds, Jiang Yubai dispelled his jealousy and persuaded himself. He calmly said, “Wen Qi sent the wrong email, and no one in your group mentioned this matter again, so it’s pretty much over. If there’s an opportunity, it would be best if he could talk with the senior student.”

“Yes, I think so too,” Lin Zhixia agreed.

Jiang Yubai said concisely: “You will collaborate on papers in the future.”

Mentioning the paper, Lin Zhixia felt troubled: “The senior student deleted all of Wen Qi’s contributions. This article could have been published in Nature, which would have been good for Wen Qi. Because of my question, he sent the wrong email.”

Jiang Yubai held her palm tightly: “Don’t take all the blame on yourself…”

Jiang Yubai’s voice trailed off.

“What’s wrong?” Lin Zhixia asked him.

At the foot of the student dormitory, Jiang Yubai saw Miao Danyi.

This dormitory building was close to the street, with a continuous stream of pedestrians. Miao Danyi hadn’t yet noticed that Lin Zhixia and Jiang Yubai were nearby.

And Wen Qi happened to be wearing a windbreaker, walking out of the main entrance of the building. Wen Qi and Miao Danyi appeared to be on familiar terms. Miao Danyi jumped up and patted his shoulder, and quite naturally helped him adjust his collar.

He didn’t struggle much, halfheartedly complying.

“Is that his girlfriend?” Lin Zhixia asked.

Jiang Yubai pondered for a moment and responded: “Hard to say.”

“What do you mean?” Lin Zhixia’s reaction was extremely quick: “Do you know that girl?”

Jiang Yubai was honest with Lin Zhixia: “She’s the girlfriend of one of my classmates.”

Lin Zhixia was facing this kind of situation for the first time. She tended to think positively. So, Lin Zhixia said with a candid expression: “Maybe she also knows Wen Qi, is concerned about his condition, and came to check on him.”

Beyond this, Lin Zhixia didn’t make any other assumptions.