Hearing You Jing’s words, Yan Luqing felt both horrified and embarrassed, yet at the same time had an extremely strange feeling.

You Jing, with a face full of green-tea special effects, went off to find Yu Qin, whose face was full of small knives.

Yan Luqing turned her head to look at Gu Ci, lowered her voice, and said: “Your phone isn’t connected to the internet?” She was puzzled, “Isn’t it all automatically adjusting the time now?”

He looked completely matter-of-fact, “Before, there was something, I set it to another time zone.”

Then if you connect it to the network, won’t it automatically adjust back?

But before this sentence could come out of her mouth, Yan Luqing heard sparse applause sounding in the classroom, turned her head back, and saw a middle-aged female professor walking in from outside.

She immediately opened her phone, and while the professor was turning on the computer, she took a picture of the big title together with the professor, then opened WeChat and sent it to the Yan family eldest brother, showing that she really came, that she really wanted to study well.

【Yan family eldest brother】did not reply, but it showed as read.

And then above the avatar a bubble actually popped up, and it was yellow—

Not bad.

Yan Luqing instantly felt relieved.

As long as she had brushed some favorability points with this Yan family eldest brother, then this trip was not in vain.

She quickly locked her phone and began to seriously listen to the content of the symposium.

She tried listening for a bit, and it really was as Gu Ci had said—clearly they were all Chinese characters, broken down one by one she knew the meaning, but strung together she did not understand.

Yan Luqing originally thought, after all, since she was sitting in the third row, even if she didn’t understand she ought to at least put on a pretense, but she hadn’t expected this professor liked to pick people to interact.

Whoever made eye contact with her, she would pick that person to answer a question.

Because Yan Luqing couldn’t understand, she could only look at the professor, so when she was called up, she was completely dumbfounded.

But during school days everyone had such times before, so following her old habit, as she slowly straightened up she precisely caught hold of Gu Ci’s finger, desperately pinching his hand to hint at him.

Fortunately Gu Ci was quick-witted, and very soon his lowered voice came to her ear. Yan Luqing copied him word for word to finish answering, and she obtained the professor’s smiling nod.

After sitting down, Yan Luqing turned her head to thank him.

“I know you were nervous,” Gu Ci lifted his hand to show her, with a faint smile softly saying, “But you didn’t need to pinch so hard, right?”

The long fingers were even the joints beautifully formed, and on them were clearly two red marks, made even more conspicuous because the skin was white.

Yan Luqing immediately felt embarrassed. How could she scratch the princess like this, she repented.

“Sorry…” Yan Luqing sincerely sighed, “I really didn’t expect you to be so tender-skinned.”

“……”

What Yan Luqing didn’t expect was, after her apology came out, Gu Ci fixed those clear dark eyes on her for several seconds, then with a face of cold indifference lowered his hand and once again looked in the professor’s direction.

All the way until the symposium ended, the two of them never again exchanged whispered words.

When everyone began to leave their seats, Yan Luqing’s shoulder was tapped by You Jing beside her.

“Let’s go, little couple.” You Jing finished with a smile, and then suddenly bent down to lean close to her face.

Yan Luqing was attacked at close range; the overly three-dimensional tea leaves even made one feel they could smell the overflowing fragrance of tea all over her body.

She heard You Jing say: “I just don’t get it. What is there to be embarrassed about admitting? He looks this good, and you don’t declare sovereignty? If you don’t like him, then better give him to me. When you break up, remember to notify me on WeChat, oh.”

“……” Yan Luqing was about to explain, “We really aren’t—”

But You Jing had already taken Yu Qin away.

Thus Yan Luqing simply watched as one clump of green tea and one clump of knives walked out of the lecture hall doors and then disappeared.

She sat in her seat and let out a heavy sigh, turned her head toward Gu Ci: “Let’s go too. Where are you going to find your friend?”

The friend Gu Ci wanted to find, Yan Luqing had already seen once. It was that person they had met at Old Master Zhang’s birthday banquet—the one called Wei Chi.

Gu Ci said he was in the B District laboratory building.

Yan Luqing followed him to the signboard with the campus map, did not look at it at all, only waited until Gu Ci finished looking and then followed him.

“Gu Ci.” Walking along the campus main road, she again brought up the question from before the symposium began, “When you asked me the time back then, you did it on purpose, right? Connecting to the internet will automatically adjust the time, how could you not know that…”

“I actually did know.” Gu Ci gave a small laugh. “But I heard it.”

“Mm?” Yan Luqing was stunned, “Heard what?”

“Heard that person asking you, wanting you to help her add my WeChat.” After pausing for a few seconds, Gu Ci tilted his head to glance at her, looking very certain, “If I hadn’t spoken, you would have helped her, right?”

“……” Yan Luqing suddenly froze.

Because it was precisely when she was in the middle of considering that question that Gu Ci had interrupted her thoughts.

At that time she had originally been entangled, but Gu Ci had cut off her chance to be entangled, directly blocking the green tea’s path… and yet now he once again forced her into entanglement.

“I… probably wouldn’t have helped.” After thinking for a moment, Yan Luqing said, “Because that’s your WeChat. I don’t have the right to decide for you which friend to add or not add.”

Although she still felt that in the instant when the green tea had asked, aside from this reason, there seemed to be a little something else—

But Yan Luqing couldn’t be bothered to think about it.

And Gu Ci, upon hearing this, only cast her a faint glance, without expressing any opinion on that answer.

The topic was thus passed over.

They walked side by side, the distance not close in intimacy, but not far either, and along the way they received countless gazes washing over them.

Yan Luqing was in fact rather used to such stares, so ordinarily she would automatically filter and ignore them, but being together with Gu Ci, the stares became much hotter, so much so that they could not be ignored no matter what.

After ten minutes, the two finally arrived together beneath the laboratory building.

Because she still remembered that look on Gu Ci’s friend’s face when he saw her last time, like seeing a monstrous flood or fierce beast, Yan Luqing did not go up with him. “I’ll wander around down here a bit, you go up by yourself.”

Gu Ci nodded, turned, and entered the laboratory building, and very soon took the elevator to the floor and classroom where Wei Chi was.

This time seeing Wei Chi was mainly to fetch an item. After a simple exchange of courtesies, Wei Chi handed the item to him, and then wanted to casually chat a bit, “You came by yourself?”

“No.”

“Then you came with…” Wei Chi was not stupid, one could even call him sharp, and instantly spoke out that name, “Don’t tell me it’s with Yan Luqing again?”

Seeing Gu Ci nod, he couldn’t help but curse, “What are you two, conjoined twins now? Living together, even going out you have to walk together?” Wei Chi paused for a moment, then suddenly asked seriously, “Are you two actually together now?”

Gu Ci, holding a bag in one hand and a phone in the other, even when standing upright gave people a certain inexplicable lazy feeling.

He gave a small laugh: “No.”

Wei Chi let out a breath of relief.

He had long known that the lunatic goddess liked Gu Ci. Although when he saw her last time, she seemed much better than when they were in school, her spirit livelier, her appearance much prettier, but still—that was a lunatic. How could a lunatic recover so quickly?

But as long as Gu Ci said no, then that was enough.

Because he was the kind of person who disdained lying.

Thinking this, Wei Chi suddenly saw Gu Ci unlock his phone screen and glance at the time, then say farewell to him: “I’ll head off first, someone is waiting below.”

Wei Chi agreed, waved a hand at him: “Let’s get together another day.”

Watching Gu Ci leave, he was just about to return to the inner room of the classroom to continue his experiment, but in his mind the image of Gu Ci checking the time just now kept flashing again and again. The more he recalled it, the more wrong it seemed.

His eyes weren’t mistaken, right.

Gu Ci.

That screensaver.

Damn it… wasn’t it Yan Luqing????

—

When people wander around idly, it’s easiest to be drawn by activities where a crowd has gathered.

After Gu Ci left, Yan Luqing soon noticed not far from her a small temporary tent, gathered with many people. With the mentality of joining the bustle, she squeezed in to take a look—it was a place similar to an outdoor film screening.

Yan Luqing originally thought it was some movie, but when she squeezed into the tent and saw the projector, she realized it was one segment after another of recorded footage.

At first it was the image of an infant in swaddling clothes, the image of being in the arms of parents; afterwards around one year old, when the little child still couldn’t walk, being held and supported by the parents to learn to walk; then afterwards as the age gradually grew, the child slowly turned into a young girl, still some trivial yet warm scenes of interacting with her parents.

The videos followed chronological order, the picture quality also from blurry to clear, the entire process no more than a few minutes; once one segment ended, the next would play.

Each segment was of similar content and process, all about a child growing up, but every family had its own unique warm scenes.

Yan Luqing watched several segments before noticing the big title and posters pasted around—this was a screening event with the theme of kinship, jointly organized by several departments, showing entirely works edited by the students themselves.

Yan Luqing somewhat didn’t know how to describe her feelings.

She had never experienced such kinship, but ever since she began school she had kept telling herself not to envy others, not to envy other people’s families, because that had no meaning.

But these kinds of growth-record videos seemed extremely moving, as if personally watching a child grow up from birth, living always in the love of their parents. That sort of family atmosphere, more or less, would touch you.

It was not about envy, only making one purely feel it was especially beautiful.

Yan Luqing at last gave a few more glances, and when she turned to leave the tent she discovered that on the side of the tent there were actually large posters pasted with the titles “Kinship,” “Family”—it was only that she herself hadn’t noticed before.

She sighed in her heart.

What had originally been a fairly happy day, her mood now turned uncontrollably steeply downward.

Leaving the screening tent, she had not even taken two steps when Yan Luqing’s path was suddenly blocked by a girl.

It was a baby-faced girl wearing glasses, half-raising her phone, who greeted Yan Luqing with great enthusiasm: “Hello, classmate!”