[Female Dormitory Building 12, Hallway Outside Room 403 — September 15, 2:05 PM]
The fluorescent strip in the hallway ceiling had been buzzing for some time.
Zhang Tingting had been sitting on the floor against the door with her bag on her shoulder.
After sitting there for about five to ten minutes, she finally pushed herself off the door.
She took two steps down the hallway, her hand going out to the wall, supporting herself.
She stood there for a moment with her palm flat against the painted concrete. In the wall, there was a small bubble where someone had not smoothed the surface.
Her thumb pressed the bubble once.
Then she walked.
The hallway opened onto the stairwell. She took the steps down. Her phone was in her hand by the second landing, her thumb moving over the keyboard.
[Zhang Tingting: Lin Feng, I need to —]
She stopped, then deleted it.
[Zhang Tingting: Something happened with Qingxue —]
She deleted that one too.
By the time she reached the lobby her phone was face-down in her palm, her feet carrying her across the open space between the dormitory buildings. Before her was Building No. 8.
Zhang Yuting's building.
She looked at her wristwatch. It was already past two.
"It's Monday today. She should be free already."
"That's right, I'll just go and hang out with her for now. Maybe I'll go and sleep in her dorm since her roommates often sleep outside."
"Yes, I should stay with Yuting while Qingxue is acting like that."
Zhang Tingting put her phone into her bag, pulled the bag higher on her shoulder, and walked.
-----------------------
[Qinghua University, Campus Garden — 2:11 PM]
The osmanthus had been in bloom for a week now. The path through the garden was narrow enough that two people walking arm-in-arm had to stay close.
On the path, Zhang Yuting was walking first, with Long Tian following her by a half-step. Her blazer was folded over her arm, her shoulder bag hanging from it.
Her hand held onto his forearm, though her grip had loosened slightly after she began dragging him down the path.
They reached an alcove where the path widened around a stone bench. The bench was old enough that the surface had pitted. The osmanthus above had dropped a small scatter of yellow florets across the seat. She brushed them off with the side of her hand and sat.
He sat beside her.
The garden was empty except for them.
For a while she did not speak. He did not either. The fragrance of the osmanthus was thick enough to taste at the back of his throat.
Then she finally broke the silence. "Don't you find this place beautiful?"
Long Tian looked around. Leaves and flowers gently swayed in the breeze, with a few bees buzzing around and petals falling to the ground like a slow rain.
"Yes… This is indeed beautiful."
"My cousin found this bench during orientation. She drags me here when I'm being stupid about something. Her name is Zhang Tingting."
"Zhang Tingting?"
"Do you know her?"
Long Tian shook his head. "No. I don't know her."
Zhang Yuting chuckled slightly at his answer. "Ohhh, so you don't know my popular cousin? The most beautiful and accomplished girl from the culinary department?"
Long Tian shook his head. Zhang Yuting chuckled once more, then slowly her laughter died out, only for a heavier expression to settle on her face.
"I think the thing I'm afraid of is being a cogwheel."
Long Tian's eyes went to her face. She was looking at the path, not at him.
"Being a cogwheel?"
"Yes, a cogwheel. Useful, but disposable." Zhang Yuting paused for a moment, looking at Long Tian's curious expression before she continued.
"I'm the class representative. The one who organizes the trip. The one who emails the professor when no one else will. The one everyone needs but is only known as the class rep."
She paused again, taking a deep breath that sounded more like a sigh. "I'm afraid that's all I'll ever be. And by the time I figure it out it'll be too late to be someone else."
Long Tian looked at her, giving her a slight nod of understanding, but said nothing.
So even she had this feeling too, wasting away and working for people who view her as nothing more than a tool.
[Zhang Yuting Affection: 66 → 67]
"Coffee?" she asked.
"Sure," he replied.
Zhang Yuting stood. He stood up after her. Her hand then returned to his forearm and they walked.
-----------------------
[Campus Lake, East Side, Under a Willow — 2:32 PM]
The willow's lowest branches reached the grass. Inside their curtain the world dimmed by a degree. The light that made it through the leaves moved in small green-gold patches across Lin Feng's leg, across Xiao Yue's leg, across the bark behind their backs.
They had been sitting against the trunk for almost an hour.
Xiao Yue's hood was still up. Her hair fell on the side of her face.
Her hand was on his. The grip had changed three times in that hour — tight at the start, loose in the middle, settled now.
She was just there, basking in her own victory over Su Qingxue and Zhang Tingting.
After a long silence, Lin Feng finally asked her.
"How many?"
"What?"
"How many notebooks?"
She did not answer.
He waited.
"Uhmm… though… I stuffed it with so many extra pages that it looks like a book now."
The corner of Lin Feng's mouth lifted, then he continued asking her questions.
"So… Did you also write down my coffee orders?"
"...Yes."
"My shoes?"
"...Yes."
"Did you rate them?"
Xiao Yue paused, looking down shyly while avoiding his gaze.
"...Yes."
"Pfft!" A laugh got out of Lin Feng — quick, low, more breath than voice. His shoulder shook once under her head. His hand came up to his jaw, covered his mouth a beat too late, and lowered back to his knee.
She had gone still beside him. Watching Lin Feng trying to stifle his laughter.
"Why did you laugh."
"Because you said yes."
"...Was I supposed to lie?"
"No."
The smile and laughter eventually left Lin Feng, and the silence settled between them.
Xiao Yue then leaned her head towards Lin Feng's shoulder.
Then he asked, "Tell me about you."
Her hand on his did not move.
"...About me?"
"About you. Not about watching me. About you."
Xiao Yue went still.
Her mouth opened. But no words came out of it.
Lin Feng looked at her, waiting for her answer. Xiao Yue was just silent for a moment, her eyes on his, thinking of whether she should say something.
She closed her mouth. Opened it. Closed it again. The hand on his tightened by a fraction.
"I'm not very interesting."
"You don't have to say much. I can wait anyway."
Xiao Yue looked at Lin Feng, surprised at his answer. Then relief crossed her face, as if Lin Feng had just given her a lifeline.
Then she leaned her head back, looking at the lake in front of them.
"Well, I like electronics."
Lin Feng turned his head away and also looked at the scenery before them.
"Tell me more…"
"Well, I like to take apart what's broken. And sometimes I put it back together."
A pause.
"...And sometimes I make it do something else."
A breeze moved through the willow. The patches of light on his leg shifted by a knuckle's width.
"In my place, I also have a small workshop. It has a bench, a soldering iron, a microscope, and some other equipment."
"...I make things sometimes. Mostly small."
"Beyond that... I like buying components and making my own customized devices…"
Xiao Yue wrapped herself around Lin Feng's arm as if trying to make herself comfortable beside him, her speech getting a little weaker.
"And I... I also read some research... on electronics-related papers..."
And soon Xiao Yue was silent. A little later, her weight on him changed. Her hand on his went still.
Lin Feng glanced down.
Xiao Yue's eyes were closed.
She was asleep.
-----------------------
[Qinghua University, North Campus Café — 3:04 PM]
The café was the small one on the north side of campus. Six tables. A glass counter with three trays of pastry that had been there since morning. A speaker overhead playing something with a piano.
Zhang Yuting took the corner booth. Long Tian took the seat across from her. Her blazer sat beside her along with her shoulder bag.
She had jasmine tea. He had an americano he had not drunk yet.
The pastry between them was sesame.
"Long Tian."
"Yeah."
"Tell me something nobody else knows about you."
She looked up, waiting for his reply. His thumb then stopped on the rim of the cup.
"I'm an orphan."
Long Tian stopped, his eyes looking straight at Zhang Yuting's, as if telling her to only look at him, to keep her eyes on him, and him alone.
"I don't have parents. I never knew them."
"I was three when the foster system took me. Three foster homes between four and twelve."
"Then a state dormitory at thirteen. Then by fifteen, I began to work part-time jobs while living in a bedspacer apartment."
"I don't know what a normal family looks like. I have never seen one from the inside. I read a lot of novels growing up because I thought maybe the people in them would teach me, but the families in novels are not normal families either."
"To tell you the truth, I'm terrified that I'm going to mess this up. With you. Because this —" he gestured at the table, at the pastry, then at her — "I've never done any of this before. And I think the version of me who knows how — is still far away in the future."
"I'm still young. I don't know so many things. I still need to grow and learn more."
He looked down at his coffee.
The americano had gone a little cooler.
He waited.
Zhang Yuting did not say anything for a beat.
Then her hand came across the table.
She took both of his.
Her grip was firm. The way her grip on his forearm in the study room had been firm. Zhang Yuting then looked back into Long Tian's eyes with a more serious expression.
"You're not messing it up."
"Yuting —"
"You're not messing it up at all, Long Tian. If anything, you are doing very well."
[Zhang Yuting Affection: 67 → 68]
Her thumb traced the back of his hand once — the hand that had reached for hers across the study-room table when Su Qingxue's affection had been bleeding into the floor.
"Thank you, Yuting…" Long Tian said in a low tone as he turned his gaze away from her. "This means a lot to me."
"Hehehe! See? I'm such a reliable person." Zhang Yuting then looked at their hands on the table, rubbing them together slowly. "Well… my turn now."
Long Tian raised his head back, his attention on her.
"My family is not poor," she said. "But we are not rich either. We are the kind of family that has stretched as far as it can stretch to get me here."
A breath.
"Every day I am afraid that if I am not the best at this — every test, every project, every paper — I would fail my parents. That I will not get to be the kind of person who pays my parents back the way I owe them."
Long Tian's hand tightened around hers.
"You will succeed, Yuting," Long Tian said before Zhang Yuting could continue.
She then turned her gaze away from him.
"You don't know that."
"I know," he said. "And will do my best to help you, just trust me."
She held his eyes for one beat. Two. Then she squeezed his hand once and looked down at her tea. Then she let out a small nod, her face burning crimson.
Outside the café window, the campus path carried students past in the slow shuffle of mid-afternoon. None of them looked in.
-----------------------
[Campus Lake, East Side, Under the Willow — 3:25 PM]
His arm had gone numb at the elbow.
Lin Feng had felt it a while ago. Yet, every time he thought of moving the culprit, he stopped — he just sat there, letting the pins and needles stay on his arm.
Xiao Yue's breath against his collarbone was even — long and slow.
He looked down at the top of her hood.
Strands of her black hair fell from her hood. The hair against the dark of his shirt was almost the same dark. The willow light caught the edge of one strand near her temple and made it briefly visible.
However, she would unconsciously place her head back onto his arm, only to slip back and forth.
In the end, Lin Feng lifted his hand from her while supporting her with the other. He then slowly brought her head down to his lap.
"Lin Feng… Please… Don't leave me…"
She muttered in her sleep, turning towards him. She slowly placed her arms around his waist and made herself comfortable once more.
Lin Feng's hand wandered over her forehead, swiping away some of her loose hair strands, showing him more of her face. As if detecting his presence, she snuggled closer into him.
Xiao Yue… Lin Weiwei…
The two of them truly loved Lin Feng.
And then there is also her. Zhang Tingting, his 'matchmaker'.
Lin Feng's thoughts paused as memories of the other Lin Feng surfaced, replaying to him all that he and his matchmaker had done.
Then he sighed as more thoughts came to him.
The problem is that the only thing I share with that Lin Feng is the name Lin Feng.
The original Lin Feng was gone the moment I replaced him.
I know this is wrong, to assume his identity, to take his identity.
But still… I'm just a man wearing his face.
I know who you are, Yue. You are the person with the most amazing background.
No heroine, aside from Weiwei, can match you. Not even Tingting can compare herself to you.
And I know what you are about to face in the future, the tribulations that are heading your way.
But you don't know me at all. Not one bit.
I hope you forgive me when the day comes when I tell you who I am…
Lin Feng gently caressed Xiao Yue's cheek, his expression solemn.
Such a thin and frail woman, trying to face such extreme tribulation. Well, from now on, you can relax. In this life, the name Lin Feng will not give you any further burdens.
From this point forward, I will help you succeed in your training with flying colors.
I promise you that.
Lin Feng continued to silently watch her sleep.
A faint hum came down through the willow leaves from somewhere higher up. Around them, the sound of cicadas filled the atmosphere.
Lin Feng shifted his weight, his backside settling on a grassy patch between two willow tree roots. He leaned his head slightly forward and closed his eyes.
His breathing soon evened out, and he was also asleep, his unkempt silver hair covering his face.
-----------------------
[Qinghua University, Building 8, Room 312 — 3:36 PM]
It had been an hour since Zhang Tingting let herself in with her spare key.
Zhang Yuting's dorm was smaller than the one Zhang Tingting shared with Su Qingxue — noticeably smaller.
Three bunk beds lined the walls where she and Su Qingxue each had a single. Six desks were wedged along the window, each barely wide enough for a textbook and a lamp.
The chairs were the same plastic ones the dormitory supplied, the sheets the same polyester Zhang Tingting slept on. No imported curtains, no leather chairs, no mahogany.
It was just the standard-issue room stretched to hold three times the people in almost the same space.
But right now, all six occupants of this room were somewhere else.
The desk lamp was off.
Zhang Yuting's bag was nowhere in sight.
Zhang Tingting rolled over in the polyester sheet. Then another roll. Then she looked at the ceiling.
There was a crack she had never seen before. It started somewhere near the light fixture and walked toward the window in a thin pale line that branched once near the wall and again near the curtain rod and disappeared.
She traced it with her eye. Then she rolled again, looking at the phone beside her.
Her gaze drifted to an unanswered message on the messaging app.
[Zhang Tingting: hey, yuting, are you busy?] Sent: 2:20 PM.
She turned the phone back over, the screen facing the bed this time.
The light through the window had moved across the desk. The desk was bare. There was a small dust mark where the laptop usually sat but the laptop itself was missing.
"Did Yuting have some meeting with the representatives today?"
She lay there, her arms on the bed, her eyes on the crack in the ceiling. Then she rolled again and turned to look back at her phone.
"Maybe she just forgot to tell me or something urgent came up and she didn't have time to tell me…"
Zhang Tingting said to no one in particular. Her hand then slowly began to reach for her phone, only to stop midway.
"How is Lin Feng right now?"
She asked, looking at the phone.
"Should I go and ask him? Ask him why he changed all of a sudden?"
She then retracted her hand and rolled away from the phone. She saw a tiny crack by the bedside wall too.
For a moment, she just looked at it, and eventually, her eyes started to close.
-----------------------
[Campus Lake, East Path — 3:53 PM]
The path along the east side of the lake ran past a row of willow trees. Their branches hung low, touching both the path and the water on the lake side.
Zhang Yuting let go of Long Tian's hand and ran forward, only to stop just a few steps away from him. She then placed her arm around a willow tree and swung herself around it, giggling like a child, her blazer and bag on her shoulder waving like a flag as she went.
"Weee!"
Long Tian let out a restrained laugh as he watched her.
Zhang Yuting saw Long Tian laughing at her. She stopped and leaned to the right, showing him a pouting face that looked more cutesy than pouting.
"Hmph! I'm not talking to you anymore. Judger."
She then moved on to the next willow tree where Long Tian followed her.
"Hey Long Tian, look! Those ducks!"
Long Tian looked.
A loose formation of six ducks had assembled at the shoreline less than ten meters ahead. One in the center was larger than the others. The five smaller ones followed behind the bigger one in a V-formation.
"That one's the manager," he said.
"The big one?" she asked back.
"Yes, the big one. He doesn't move. Just look at him."
"He's not even looking at them."
"That's the management style."
Zhang Yuting let out a laugh and playfully slapped Long Tian's arm.
"I'm… I'm sorry, Brother Tian. I couldn't help but laugh. I'm not sure which one though, the humor part or the corny part."
[Zhang Yuting Affection: 68 → 70]
"Hey, stop teasing me. I'm not good at this, you know… The only people I talk to every day are the guy who works at the convenience store and that Uncle Qiang by the roadside food cart. And it's mostly about 'Hey how much is this?' or 'Here's my payment?'."
Long Tian let out a self-deprecating laugh, his mind failing to register the recent system notification.
Then, they reached the next willow.
Inside the willow's curtain, against the trunk, was a couple. The hooded girl was asleep on the man's lap. The man was sitting with his head lowered, his silver hair covering his face.
Long Tian glanced through the leaves.
For a moment, his eyes looked at the man's unkempt hair, his dirty hands, his clothes with bits of dirt, leaves, and flower petals on them. The girl was wearing what looked like a cheap hood.
They didn't look rich at all. If anything, they looked like him and Zhang Yuting.
He then nodded and continued.
Beside him, Zhang Yuting also glanced. For a moment, her eyes squinted at the two, as if she had seen these two before.
But then she shrugged it off, following Long Tian's gaze back to the lake.
They kept walking.
A few more meters past the row of willow trees, around the bend, Zhang Yuting asked, "What do you think the manager duck will do tomorrow?"
"He has a board meeting," Long Tian replied, letting out a shrug.
"With other ducks?"
"With other ducks."
"What a serious and hardworking bird!"
Zhang Yuting laughed out loud as the two of them walked out of the path, leaving the couple behind.
-----------------------
[Campus Lake, East Side, Under the Willow — 4:03 PM]
Xiao Yue's breath changed. A loud noise woke her up from her dream. She then opened her eyes and saw a set of buttons before her.
She then looked up, only to see Lin Feng, his face leaning forward, his unkempt hair falling over his face like a curtain.
Xiao Yue slowly sat up, her vision still blurry. She placed her hands on his face, cupping his cheeks, then leaned closer and planted a small kiss on his cheek.
Lin Feng soon opened his eyes, only to see Xiao Yue's face so close to him, kissing his cheek.
"Oh… I fell asleep."
"Mm." Xiao Yue quickly stood up and stepped away, as if she had just touched something hot. "I saw some petals on your face… so I took them away."
Lin Feng touched the place she had kissed him. "Oh… Thanks, then… So how long have you been awake?"
"I just woke up. I heard someone laughing out loud or something."
Xiao Yue turned her gaze toward the end of the path.
Lin Feng followed her gaze, only to see two silhouettes walking away.
"Oh… a couple…"
Xiao Yue then took a step back. "Thanks for allowing me to sleep on your lap… You must feel numb all over… Sorry… about that."
Lin Feng stood with her. "It's nothing. It'll be gone in a minute."
He then removed some of the petals, leaves and dust on his clothes while Xiao Yue brushed the back of her hoodie off with one hand.
She then straightened her clothes and put the hoodie properly back on.
After that, she turned to face the path the way they had come. Her hand reached for his arm.
As she did, the faint humming in the background continued, joining the symphony of bees buzzing and cicadas chirping.
Xiao Yue looked up for a moment, only to look away as soon as she did.
"So, Lin Feng, let's continue our date, shall we?"
-----------------------
[End of Chapter]