Lu Yixin’s freshman year was not particularly smooth.

When she first entered university, because of her mother’s talk about “socializing,” she had no real idea of what that meant, so she randomly picked three clubs from a pile of recruitment posters. During the interviews, she was rejected by two, and finally got into the Film and Television Review Club.

It was only after joining that she learned Li Xiao’an was also there.

The reason she passed the interview was because she and Li Xiao’an were in the same dormitory.

“After our Wednesday movie nights, it’s usually quite late. It’s safer for you two girls to go back together.” The club president looked particularly upright and proper.

But after he finished speaking, Lu Yixin saw the president give Li Xiao’an an obvious wink.

Lu Yixin: “…”

She didn’t know why, but the scar on her shoulder suddenly started to ache faintly.

But that was only the beginning.

After military training ended, the freshmen had to elect a dorm leader. A salted fish like Lu Yixin naturally had no interest in such things, and she thought that for a dorm of just three people, having a “leader” was actually quite stupid.

But she couldn’t stand the fact that there was a hidden troublemaker in their dorm — Wu Qi.

Wu Qi was truly a master at stirring up conflict. Lu Yixin was just peeling an orange on her upper bunk — hadn’t even put a slice into her mouth yet — before she suddenly found herself becoming the target of everyone’s criticism.

“Actually, I think you’re quite suitable for it,” Wu Qi said to Li Xiao’an, “but since our dorm only has three people, if I directly vote for you, it wouldn’t be fair to Lu Yixin.”

The orange in Lu Yixin’s mouth suddenly refused to go down.

“If it’s unfair, then why not vote for her?” Lu Yixin threw away the orange peel.

She was a little angry.

If they had just said straight out that they wouldn’t choose her, she wouldn’t have cared — she hadn’t wanted the position anyway.

But this kind of yin-yang tone lit the fire she’d been suppressing ever since the first day she moved in and somehow got irritated for no reason.

She had held it back before — partly because her mother wanted her to experience collective life, and partly because she was in love at the time, seeing everything through rose-colored glasses.

But holding it in once didn’t mean she could hold it in twice, especially when someone was slapping her face like this.

Wu Qi’s expression changed.

Li Xiao’an looked up and frowned. “Wu Qi just said one thing casually, why do you have to talk so aggressively? We’re all new here, can’t you just be patient and get along?”

Lu Yixin: “…”

Fine. She had only said one sentence, and somehow everything became her fault.

So be it then.

Lu Yixin’s stubbornness flared up.

“Why should I be patient with you?” she said from the upper bunk, looking down — this angle was just perfect for arguing.

“Was I the one who started that fight before?”

“I didn’t say a single word at that time. You were the one with messy hair and tears flying everywhere, accusing the instructor of favoritism, and even yanked open my locker to take out the photo.”

“There were so many people who sneaked things into the training center during military training. Why do you think you were the only one reported? Don’t you have any idea why? With your kind of personality, even if I hadn’t fought you, do you really think no one else would have?”

Lu Yixin fired off like a string of firecrackers, giving Li Xiao’an no chance to interrupt at all.

Li Xiao’an glared with her phoenix eyes, her face flushing red.

She had always thought Lu Yixin was easy to bully — always smiling, looking innocent.

She hated girls like that the most.

Because Lu Yixin’s innocence was the kind of cheerful innocence that came from being pampered since childhood, not the kind that was pretended.

And her family background was good too.

Even though the clothes she wore weren’t from expensive brands, they were tasteful and well-made — the kind worn by people whose families had money and connections.

People from within the system.

That kind of natural confidence, that sense of security — she simply couldn’t stand it.

Her neck flushed red, and she held back for a long time. Just when she finally waited for Lu Yixin to pause for breath so she could speak, Lu Yixin suddenly turned her head and wasn’t even planning to deal with her anymore.

“And you.” Lu Yixin looked at Wu Qi.

“Do you have some kind of psychological problem? Do you just love watching people fight?”

Wu Qi: “…”

Li Xiao’an: “…”

“The day I moved in, I hadn’t even set my luggage down yet, and you were already making Li Xiao’an hostile toward me over an upper-and-lower bunk. Isn’t it perfectly normal that whoever comes first picks the spot they like? Yet you had to act all conflicted, forcing Li Xiao’an to come out and whine.”

“Honestly, are you just scared that Li Xiao’an and I would team up against you, so you decided to strike first?”

“Are you sick or something? There’s only three girls — what, you think you’re living in a harem?”

“If you wanted to be dorm leader so badly, why didn’t you just say so? Why go in circles and drag me into it? Did you think if Li Xiao’an and I started arguing, I’d get mad and vote for you instead?”

“We all got into university through the college entrance exam. We’ve all got basic intelligence, who exactly are you looking down on?”

Lu Yixin popped another slice of orange into her mouth.

The two sitting on the lower bunks were stunned by her indiscriminate bombardment, not knowing what to say for the moment.

“Weren’t we supposed to be choosing a dorm leader?” Lu Yixin brought the topic back around. “Then choose.”

Wu Qi: “…”

Li Xiao’an: “…”

“I don’t stay in the dorm on weekends, so I definitely can’t be dorm leader. You two can decide between yourselves.” Lu Yixin ate another slice of orange.

“Oh, and try not to assign me to weekend duty. Any other day, I’ll cooperate as much as I can.” After finishing, she tossed the remaining two oranges aside, crawled back up to her bunk, and opened her university physics textbook.

Wu Qi: “…”

Li Xiao’an: “…”

Wu Qi’s face turned red. “But, you’re part of the dorm. You still have to vote.”

Lu Yixin poked her head out from the upper bunk, her round face wearing a devilish smile. “I am voting. I vote for myself.”

Wu Qi: “…”

Li Xiao’an: “…”

Lu Yixin pulled her head back again and said nothing more.

Her collective life was over.

She had managed to offend two people at once, and there were only three people in their dorm in total.

She glared at the university physics book on her bed.

When she was arguing just now, her emotions had been surging, and she’d felt fearless — worst case, she could just pack her things and move to the place across from Fang Yongnian’s. They weren’t even in the same department, so it’d be easy enough to never see each other again.

But now that the argument was over and silence had settled in, the dorm was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, and she couldn’t focus on a single word.

She glanced at the time. It was 7:30 in the evening.

Then she looked at Li Xiao’an and Wu Qi.

Both of them were silent, sitting on the lower bunks, each busy with their own thing.

With a snap, she shut her book, put on her jacket, climbed down from the upper bunk, grabbed only her phone, half-stepped into her shoes, and rushed out of the dorm without looking back.

Lu Yixin hadn’t brought her keys.

It wasn’t until she patted her jacket pockets after getting home that she realized they were in her backpack.

She turned her head toward Fang Yongnian’s apartment across the hall.

It was 8 p.m. Fang Yongnian was usually very busy, probably still at the company, but she still couldn’t help knocking on his door a few times.

Reality didn’t bring any surprises.

Standing in the corridor between the two doors, she sniffled, pulled out her phone, thought for a moment, and put it back.

Zheng Ranran was a medical student now — she only surfaced once or twice a week, and even then she was barely alive.

Her mother had told her to get used to dorm life and not to keep running to Fang Yongnian’s place, so she couldn’t ask her for help.

Her father occasionally stayed here, but if she brought something like this up, he’d probably scold her until she cried.

As for Fang Yongnian…

Lu Yixin sniffled again.

She should be more sensible. She was Fang Yongnian’s girlfriend now, not his niece.

He was busy with work, and she hadn’t seen him for several days. It would be childish to bother him over something like this.

She kicked the door with her foot, then crouched miserably beside it, curling herself into the corner between the door and the wall.

She had clearly won the argument, but now she felt as wronged as a two-hundred-jin child.

Her best friend, her parents, and her boyfriend were all not around. Sitting there in the corridor, she felt completely abandoned by the world.

She hadn’t been adapting well to university life.

It seemed that ever since she left Hecheng, left her parents, and no longer had Zheng Ranran by her side, she had become utterly useless.

Why did she have to run off after the argument…

She was very vexed.

If only she had endured it.

If only she had slammed the door harder before leaving, it would have looked more imposing.

Fortunately, October this year was not too cold. The cardigan she had hastily thrown on was an especially long knit, able to pull over her head and wrap her up.

Pretty warm.

She decided to wait there.

Wait a little longer, until Fang Yongnian finished work.

She made a melodramatic helpless face at herself in the dark, pulled up the hood on her cardigan, fastened the buttons, fiddled around a bit in the dark, and played on her phone for a while, then yawned.

She had come out in such a hurry that her phone only had half charge.

She fidgeted with her fingers for a bit, yawned again, and this time, she closed her eyes.

Two minutes later, she began to snore.

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ 

Fang Yongnian did not get off work until after eleven.

He had also gone two or three days without a proper sleep, leaning in the elevator feeling both sleepy and exhausted.

At Yu Hanfeng’s company he was constantly in a state of paying back debts, and he did not want any technical negative comments about the medicines he put out. In pharmaceuticals, he still had his pride.

He never thought himself inferior to those abroad, even after losing a leg and going through so much, he still did not think so.

He knew his nerves were too taut. For some data deviations that were actually just process issues he would fly into a rage. He became lazier at listening to others’ explanations, holding his project team to his own standards.

He was a terrible project manager; he was close to driving the people at the company crazy.

He knew all this.

But he was helpless.

There was always a fire burning in his heart, and he did not know when it would explode. While tormenting others, he was also tormenting himself.

He wondered whether he should leave before these batches of drugs were filed for production.

He had already trapped himself. Staying in the company would trap everyone in the project team, including Lu Boyuan, who had long wanted to do pharmaceuticals with him for life.

Then the elevator doors opened.

Most of the lights in the building’s common areas were sensor lights. When the elevator doors opened, the corridor lights snapped on.

At the same time, there was a faint snore.

Fang Yongnian: “…”

The Lu Yixin he had not seen for several days was now sprawled in a star shape in the middle of the passage between the two doors. After the sensor light turned off, she had even turned over, scratched her face, smacked her lips.

Fang Yongnian stood there dumb for two seconds in the dark, until the one sleeping on the floor, probably feeling cold, pulled the large cardigan up over her face, exposing half a calf, then frowned and mumbled, and stretched her leg to pull the cardigan down to her feet.

Her movements were smooth and effortless.

Even in her sleep, she minded the head but not the tail.

Fang Yongnian glanced at his watch. It was 11:40 p.m.

Originally Lu Boyuan was supposed to come over to sleep tonight. Before leaving he had eaten a bit of late-night food, felt sleepy, and decided not to go, falling asleep in the company dorm.

Luckily he had decided to order late-night food on impulse tonight.

Otherwise, if Lu Boyuan saw this scene, when the fight broke out, who would he help…