The first time Xue Ling met Wen Jiuzhe, he gave her quite a scare.
At the time she was twenty, a sophomore at Yu Normal University.
Whenever there was a holiday, she would go help out at the bakery her cousin ran.
That night, at around ten o’clock, her cousin had something to attend to and left early, leaving Xue Ling alone to watch the shop. With nothing to do, she stared blankly at the cake models on the shelves.
The street where the bakery was located didn’t have much foot traffic to begin with, and at that hour there were already very few people around. For a long while, no one came into the shop.
Xue Ling was lost in thought when suddenly there was a ding-ling sound. The door was pushed open, and someone quickly went to the shelves, grabbed a loaf of bread, and walked over to the counter.
“Welcome…” Xue Ling stood up half a beat late and said, but after seeing the person clearly, her voice abruptly tightened and vanished.
This customer was very tall, and moreover, his head was covered in blood.
The bright red color slid down along his cheeks. His neck was also covered in large swaths of vivid red, flowing straight into his black T-shirt and soaking the shoulder area.
His exposed, well-built arms were also smeared with dried bloodstains.
At this hour, seeing a tall man covered in blood, Xue Ling’s first reaction was to call the police.
Or call an ambulance—either way, her hand instinctively reached for the phone on the counter.
The moment she touched her phone, one of the man’s fingers pressed down on her screen as well, stopping her movement.
He casually wiped the blood that was about to drip from his chin and said with a smiling face, “Don’t be afraid, don’t call the police. This isn’t real blood, I’m playing COSPLAY.”
Xue Ling, who could smell the scent of blood: “……”
Do I look that easy to fool? Do I look like an idiot?
“I’m just here to buy some bread. Please help me check out first.” He took his phone out of his pocket to pay.
Xue Ling saw him pull out a phone with a cracked screen, covered in blood and dust. He pressed it twice, but the phone stayed black and didn’t turn on.
The man fell silent for a moment, then lightly sighed and put the phone away. He didn’t take the bread from the counter either, said sorry, and turned to leave.
“Hey! Take this bread with you, it’s on me,” Xue Ling called after him.
The strange man with his head full of blood took the bread, and as soon as he stepped outside, he tore open the packaging and took a huge bite.
One bite was worth ten of Xue Ling’s; that loaf would probably take him only three bites to finish.
Xue Ling saw the blood from his chin drip onto the bread, which he swallowed without the slightest concern. He looked extremely hungry, as if he hadn’t eaten in three days.
The man came in like a gust of wind, and left just as quickly, leaving behind only a faint smell of blood, and a bloody fingerprint on her phone screen.
For a long time after that, Xue Ling thought he must have been some street thug, probably injured from a fight with someone.
Until she met him the second time.
Xue Ling went with friends from the student union to the neighboring Yu University to look for someone, and in a secluded corner, they ran into a fight.
Or rather, a one-sided beating.
The man who had once come in covered in blood to buy bread was the one being beaten.
He was tall, with smoothly contoured muscles, looking like someone who knew how to fight. But another man, half a head shorter than him, was striking him with a stick. He did not fight back, only lifting his arm to block when the stick swung fiercely toward his head.
He looked completely indifferent, even keeping one hand in his pocket, as if the one being beaten wasn’t him at all, yet the wounds on his arm and neck were shocking to the eye.
By coincidence, the person holding the stick and wildly venting his fury with a ferocious expression was someone Xue Ling knew.
Wen Xuan, a member of Yu University’s student union, a senior one year above her.
Xue Ling was part of the External Relations Department of Yu Normal University. Their department head was in a relationship with the president of Yu University’s student union, and the student unions of the two schools had once held a joint gathering and dinner. That was how she had come to know Wen Xuan.
At the time, Wen Xuan had more or less tried to strike up conversations with her, and their department head had even jokingly tried to matchmake the two of them.
But Xue Ling felt they weren’t familiar, didn’t engage with him, and the matter ended there.
She hadn’t expected to see such a scene. Wen Xuan looked like he was beating the man to death; that kind of viciousness made one’s heart jump in fear, completely different from the gentle, courteous image he had shown before.
Xue Ling was stunned by the scene, hesitating for a moment over whether she should intervene.
She watched as the stick in Wen Xuan’s hand smashed down on the other person’s shoulder and snapped on the spot, yet he still didn’t seem willing to stop.
Xue Ling’s eyelid twitched, and she couldn’t help raising her voice and shouting, “Wen Xuan, what are you doing?”
Seeing her and the strange, frightened looks of the two other girls beside her, Wen Xuan froze, then forced out a smile and began to stammer and brush it off.
The one being beaten glanced at them, rolled his injured shoulder, and left the place, his expression indifferent.
The next day, Wen Xuan actually ran to her school to look for her and said a bunch of inexplicable things to her.
“Yesterday that was my cousin Wen Jiuzhe. He’s an illegitimate child. His… mother saw that our family has money and latched onto my uncle…”
“I didn’t really want to hit him either. Usually I can’t even be bothered with him, but he was only acknowledged by my grandfather at twelve. Before that he lived outside and picked up all sorts of bad habits—he’s liked fighting since he was little, stole things, and bullied people at school. As his cousin, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I stepped in to discipline him…”
Xue Ling was listening to him talk during a general lecture, desperately wanting to escape but unable to.
Why are you telling me this? We have nothing to do with each other, and we’re not even close, okay?
Her smile at the time must have been extremely stiff, but Wen Xuan seemed not to notice. He first complained and scolded his undisciplined cousin at length, asserted the righteousness of beating him, and then began, intentionally or not, to show off his family background.
“Families like ours are different from ordinary people—we have heritage, and the family rules are strict… my cousins and I had to learn all kinds of things from a young age. You know the Six Arts of the ancient gentlemen, right…”
Xue Ling was forced to listen to all this, and nearly cracked apart.
Are we living in the same world? What era is this already, and you’re still playing at old masters and young lords, legitimate and illegitimate lines?
She had heard that Wen Xuan’s family was quite wealthy, and that over in Anxi City they were even a rather famous big family.
It was said their ancestors had made their fortune robbing tombs, then laundered themselves a few hundred years ago and began dealing in cultural relics, and that Wen Xuan’s grandfather was some renowned cultural relics expert.
At the joint gathering, aside from showing off his very expensive watch, Wen Xuan showed off how his grandfather was respected by others, what famous people came to pay visits during the New Year.
Back then, Xue Ling had only thought he was too fond of showing off and wanted to keep her distance. Now she felt he truly lived up to his family heritage—he carried a whiff of something just dug out of the dirt.
Wen Xuan, who felt he had thoroughly explained away the misunderstanding and washed off any negative impression after his barrage of words, then proposed to treat her to lunch. Xue Ling forced a dry laugh and refused, and the instant class ended, she hurriedly packed up and ran off.
Students from other schools coming to their school’s general lectures to disrupt classroom order—was no one going to deal with this?
She hadn’t liked Wen Xuan to begin with, and after that avoided him even more. But thanks to Wen Xuan, she did learn that the tall cousin he had beaten was called Wen Jiuzhe, and was also a student at Yu University.
Wen Jiuzhe was a freshman, majoring in Chinese Language and Literature, only nineteen, actually a year younger than her.
Xue Ling: How is he full of contrasts?
So tall and big-looking—turns out he wasn’t even a man yet, just a boy.
Because of activities for the External Relations Department, Xue Ling often had to run over to the neighboring Yu University, and she ran into Wen Jiuzhe a few times as well.
Unlike the image his cousin Wen Xuan described—rebellious, violent, fond of fighting, and bullying classmates—every time Xue Ling saw Wen Jiuzhe, he was keeping away from the crowd, alone in a corner.
Let alone bullying classmates, he didn’t interact with anyone at all. He carried an air of constant listlessness about him, as if he wasn’t interested in anything.
In fact, his aura was quite distinctive, and he was especially good-looking. Quite a few people paid attention to him, whether intentionally or not. Xue Ling had even seen girls take water and try go over to strike up a conversation with him.
That girl was quite pretty too, but he just sat there with his long legs stretched out, as if he were deaf, ignoring her completely, making her leave with her face flushed in anger.
Without realizing it, Xue Ling stopped and watched for a while. The lazy way he sat there made her think of a cat sprawled on a wall basking in the sun, uninterested in dealing with people.
Cats have their own world, different from humans.
She and Wen Jiuzhe were completely different kinds of people. Xue Ling thought there wouldn’t be any further intersection between them.
Not long after, Xue Ling was confessed to.
The boy’s surname was Wu, also a member of the student union, someone she had worked with a few times.
Xue Ling had absolutely no idea why he chose to confess to her, and why he made such a big spectacle out of it.
Wu so-and-so arranged hundreds of candles in the shape of a heart downstairs from Xue Ling’s dormitory, surrounded it with flowers, stood in the middle himself holding a guitar, sang a love song toward her dorm, and shouted her name.
Xue Ling had just finished blow-drying her hair in the dorm when she was told about it. Seeing the ever-growing crowd of onlookers downstairs, her vision went black.
Her roommates giggled and teased her. “Lingling has so much romantic luck!”
“Lingling is so lovable—hurry and go down to take a look, don’t keep him waiting too long!”
“Hurry, hurry, change your clothes and go down! We’ll go with you!”
Listening to the loud shouting from downstairs, Xue Ling painfully changed out of her pajamas and was pushed in front of that boy by a group of roommates and curious onlookers.
The boy she barely remembered at all put on an affectionate expression and played a confession pop song that was fairly smooth.
“Xue Ling! I’ve thought about this for a long time, and I feel that you are the person I want to marry, so today I’m here to ask you to be my girlfriend, to take the first step of our lives together!”
“Your gentleness, patience, and understanding all make me feel that you’re wonderful. Do you remember when I first joined the student union and made mistakes at work? It was you who helped me. I believe I’m special to you too, otherwise you wouldn’t always take care of me and pay attention to me…”
The boy went on and on, his face glowing red as people around them egged him on.
Xue Ling felt as if she were being roasted on a fire, listening to the confident speech of a boy she wasn’t very familiar with, feeling like her toes were about to dig through her slippers.
She had come here to refuse him, but felt too awkward to interrupt the boy’s self-moved reminiscing. With the crowd, led by Wu so-and-so’s friends, shouting for her to agree, it only made Xue Ling more embarrassed and headachy.
In this chaotic scene, Xue Ling suddenly saw Wen Jiuzhe.
He was standing among the onlookers, both hands in his pockets, looking like he was enjoying the show. Xue Ling felt that the smile on his face carried a bit of schadenfreude.
Wen Jiuzhe also noticed her gaze, and the two of them locked eyes across the crowd for a moment.
Xue Ling didn’t know whether he saw some hint of a plea for help in that glance of hers.
He seemed to raise an eyebrow slightly, then stepped back two paces out of the crowd, sprang up into a spinning kick, and sent the half cup of milk tea sitting on a nearby trash bin flying.
That half cup of milk tea arced over the heads of the onlookers and smashed with perfect accuracy into the back of Wu so-and-so’s head, bursting open with a slap.
The surroundings suddenly fell silent. The boy who had been knocked to the ground by the half cup of milk tea scrambled up in a rage, clutching the wet, sticky milk tea on himself, turned his head in humiliation and anger, and demanded, “Who! Who hit me!”
Wen Jiuzhe was still standing among the crowd with his hands in his pockets, still wearing that smiling expression, not the slightest bit guilty.
Xue Ling really couldn’t hold it in anymore and let out a snort of laughter.
The boy, feeling his self-esteem had been damaged, left in a hurry with a darkened face along with his friends, not even bothering with the pile of candles and flowers on the ground.
Xue Ling had no choice but to borrow a broom and a dustpan, clean everything up, and stuff it all into the trash bin.
Wen Jiuzhe didn’t disperse along with the crowd of onlookers. While Xue Ling was cleaning up, he sat on the railing across the road, watching her.
