Chapter 49: Separate Ways
Qingchuan really was a beautiful city, just a bit far from home. It felt a little lonely being here all by myself.
Coming to Qingchuan University, An Zhi felt both lucky and unlucky. Lucky because she had performed exceptionally well on the gaokao. It would have been difficult for her to get into Qingchuan with her usual grades, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have been able to choose a good major.
She knew she was clumsy, no matter how hard she studied, she couldn’t compare to others. She usually couldn’t get into the top ten in her class. But her mom was right, fools have a fool’s luck. The heavens saw how clumsy she was and let her ace the gaokao, getting first place in her class. When she was filling out her university application, she felt like she was grinning from ear to ear. She had finally gotten lucky once, and it wasn’t a waste of being clumsy for so long.
But the unlucky part was that she had played too hard during the summer break, and had probably eaten a lot of junk food. A few days before she was supposed to leave, she got appendicitis. When she was on the operating table, she was afraid she would die. She hadn’t even had a chance to properly hold her Qingchuan University acceptance letter. She didn’t want to die.
By the time she was discharged from the hospital, she was still crying, whether from fear or from losing her appendix, she didn’t know. After a few more days of recovery, she had already missed the start of the semester. Although she had escaped most of the military training, she hadn’t been assigned to a suitable dorm and had to live with students from other majors.
Although everyone in her dorm was nice to her, they weren’t in the same major, and An Zhi felt it was hard to fit in. Her other three roommates were all dance majors, with long legs and arms. And her? Standing next to them, she was a pathetic ugly duckling.
She was clumsy… and timid. She didn’t dare to actively make friends, and when her three roommates went to a haunted house on the weekend, she was too scared to go. So on a weekend, she could only stay in her dorm, spacing out.
An Zhi suddenly realized that this was a far cry from the colorful university life she had imagined. The campus encounters, the rich club activities, and all the things she had never experienced… they were all absent. Loneliness was her reality now.
She thought she should be stronger. After all, she was an adult, an independent woman. But sitting alone in the dark dorm, she felt sad. Her stomach growled at the wrong time, like a signal. Tears welled up in her eyes, and the area around them turned red.
She really wanted to go home. She missed her bed, her mom’s braised pork, and her little cat, a cute blue shorthair.
An Zhi, An Zhi… how could you be so useless, crying over this?
An Zhi pouted, looking pitiful, feeling both ashamed for crying and yet still running out the door with her keys.
She should probably fill her stomach first. After crying for so long… she seemed even hungrier.
An Zhi, you have to believe in yourself. You can have a fulfilling weekend on your own.
The girl silently cheered herself on, slammed the dorm door shut, slung her favorite little cat head bag over her shoulder, wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, and walked out confidently. She would turn the shame of her tears into motivation. And so she made a decision she had been contemplating for a long time.
She, An Zhi… was going to go shopping alone today!
…
It had been a while since school started. The initial passion had faded. Sleeping in and staying up late had become a habit. On the mornings with 8 AM classes, the campus paths were filled with students rushing to class at the last minute, the air filled with the smell of breakfast, everyone looking tired and sluggish.
Late autumn, the days were getting shorter. The new curtains blocked the light from the balcony, plunging the entire dorm into darkness. Faint breathing sounds could be heard. It seemed that there was no morning on a university weekend. Most people woke up around noon, when the sun was shining brightly.
Su Yu had actually woken up early. His sleep had been very light since his rebirth. As long as he didn’t go to bed too late, he would wake up on time in the morning. Of course, he would still feel sleepy in the afternoon, his energy still not what it used to be.
He was awake, but he didn’t want to get up. His gradually waking mind and lazy body were engaged in a fierce battle. Unfortunately… his willpower was probably too weak, unable to overcome human laziness.
Chu Feng was the first to get up in the dorm. He would go for a run on the track on mornings when he didn’t have class, and he would work part-time on weekends. In this fast-paced world, he still maintained this excellent tradition of going to bed early and waking up early, which was truly admirable.
Su Yu suddenly felt a chill and instinctively pulled the blanket tighter. He didn’t know where the cold wind was coming from. He simply tucked his entire body into the blanket, leaving no gaps.
Qingchuan was indeed a city with four distinct seasons. After the “autumn tiger,” the temperature began to drop day by day. No one on the streets wore summer short-sleeved shirts anymore. At the very least, they would wear a jacket. It was clearly getting colder.
Su Yu reached out and turned on his phone, which was by his pillow. He knew it wasn’t good to sleep with his phone so close, something about radiation. But waking up and not being able to feel his phone felt like something was missing, like… he had completely lost contact with the world. It was fine before, because when he woke up, he would first look at the girl’s sleeping face.
The faint fluorescent light illuminated his somewhat pale face. The morning mist coated the screen, creating a hazy rainbow.
He frowned and wiped the moisture from the screen with a dry bedsheet. He unlocked his phone with his fingerprint. The message bar was empty.
He hadn’t made any new friends since starting school. He was occasionally dragged to a bar by Gu Chuan and would get contact information from some girls who smelled of alcohol. Out of politeness, he would chat with them for a bit and then gradually distance himself. He wasn’t interested in that type of girl and couldn’t be as slick as Gu Chuan. His social circle was getting smaller and smaller, and then it was completely locked.
Gu Chuan always said he was a strange person. He was good at games but never played, had a decent face but didn’t know how to dress, and was always so serious, like an old man who had lived for decades. He could only grin. Gu Chuan had accidentally guessed right. Including his previous life… he was almost an old man’s age.
Actually, Su Yu felt that this was fine. The loneliness after starting work would be a hundred times more intense than now. He would just be commuting between his company and home. He used to have a goal to chase, but now that the goal was gone, it was really hard to find much motivation.
Su Yu would give his current personality a passing grade. He wasn’t as wild as Gu Chuan, nor as serious as Chu Feng. As for why he hadn’t had any luck with women since starting college, he didn’t know.
Perhaps if he had woken up a little earlier on days without 8 AM classes, gotten himself ready, and gone out for a walk like Chu Feng, he wouldn’t be having these boring thoughts.
He was aimlessly scrolling through his phone when a message suddenly popped up. The profile picture was a cute cat head. It seemed to be An Zhi’s profile picture. The girl hadn’t messaged him in a long time, only occasionally saying hello when they saw each other in class.
“Su Yu!! Are you free right now?” An Zhi had used several exclamation marks, as if it was urgent. He could almost imagine her baby-fat face with its furrowed brows, looking pitiful.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Su Yu, be my boyfriend.”
