WC ⋆ Chapter 69

Qi Lin was a man of his word. On the first day of the new semester, he and Jiang Yishen appeared on campus together.

He actually loved studying in the school library. The atmosphere there pushed you naturally toward the books. It was just that after graduating last year, he hadn’t gone back to campus even once. The reason was simple: the memories tied to that place cut too deep, and he found it nearly impossible to get into any kind of focused state.

Fourth year had almost no in-person classes, only an internship plan and a thesis to deal with. Fortunately, the first week of the new semester had a grade meeting, which happened to give Jiang Yishen the perfect opening.

Jiang Yishen dragged and cajoled Qi Lin into walking him there. Qi Lin had originally thought that showing up when the meeting let out would already be conspicuous enough, but he hadn’t expected this person to be even more conspicuous than him, insisting on arriving at the classroom right on the dot.

The lecture hall was packed to the brim. Fan Zi and a few roommates had saved him a seat in the back row, but he absolutely had to enter through the front door and walk all the way to the back in front of everyone.

And at the moment he stepped through the door, he deliberately and theatrically turned his head to wave goodbye to Qi Lin.

A ring on his finger.

Not everyone in the major knew who Jiang Yishen was, but those who did could see at a glance exactly what he was up to.

A few roommates watched him approach with wide, furious eyes, until Jiang Yishen stopped beside them.

“Let me through!” Jiang Yishen said, confused. “Wasn’t the seat saved for me?”

Fan Zi gritted his teeth and shifted over slightly, leaving a narrow gap. Jiang Yishen squeezed in and sat down. To his right was a teammate from the college basketball team, who leaned in close and whispered gossip: “Hey, wasn’t it supposed to be someone older? He looked pretty young just now.”

Jiang Yishen felt like he was seeing a ghost. He sucked in a sharp breath so hard he nearly choked himself, and had no idea what to say.

“That’s his partner!” the person next to the teammate explained for him.

The teammate said, “Oh? They’re actually together now?”

Jiang Yishen immediately made to stand up. “I need to find somewhere else to sit. There’s an idiot here, it’s terrifying.”

Fan Zi was laughing so hard he nearly keeled over, and frantically yanked him back down. “Look around and see if there’s even a single seat left. You want to sit right in front of the Instructor?”

Jiang Yishen sat back down, fuming. The girl in front of him turned around and said quietly, “So it’s that senior?”

Jiang Yishen only then noticed that the person sitting in front of him was Captain Jie, the top student in the major. Back when Yu Jiaming had been spreading nonsense outside, Captain Jie had thoughtfully sent him a private message to warn him.

He felt a rush of excitement at finally encountering a reasonable human being, and nodded. “Yes.”

“Oh, he seems a little different from the last time I saw him.” Captain Jie murmured to herself.

“Different?” Jiang Yishen paused. “You two have met?”

“We have. At last year’s fourth-year graduation ceremony, you went to give him flowers.”

Jiang Yishen suddenly realized that the six months they had spent broken up had been nearly invisible in the eyes of the people around them.

He had never publicly announced his relationship status, so people who didn’t know him well had simply assumed he was still together with someone. And Qi Lin had just graduated, so it was perfectly reasonable that he didn’t appear on campus much.

Those days that had ground both of them down to misery were, to everyone else, just ordinary days that passed in the blink of an eye.

The Instructor covered the usual well-worn topics at the grade meeting, with some graduation-related matters added this time.

Internships counted for a lot of credits. The department didn’t assign positions, but shared information about quite a few companies and firms that had taken on many short-term interns from the same major over the past two years.

The Instructor shared a document to the group chat. Jiang Yishen wasn’t paying much attention to any of that, and was scrolling through Moments with his head down.

March. Joy and sorrow were all woven together in Moments, a few photos and a few lines of text piecing together snapshots of people trying to live their lives.

“Hey.” Fan Zi elbowed him. “Are you still going to take the exam?”

Jiang Yishen said quietly, “Don’t go poking at sore spots.”

“What sore spots!” Fan Zi’s voice came out a bit loud. He glanced around, then lowered it again and continued, “I mean, whether you take it or not, don’t put too much pressure on yourself, you know? Wen Jie’s roommate, the tallest one, last year their dorm had people landing jobs and people passing exams, and he was the only one who took a second shot and still didn’t get in. But then he threw out a ton of applications through social recruiting and got into a car company. The position is relaxed, the office politics are simple, and he’s doing the best out of all of them now. What’s meant to be will come, and there’s always a way through, you know?”[[1]]

Jiang Yishen said lazily, “How do you know I’m not going to take it?”

Fan Zi finally figured it out: this person didn’t need any of his encouragement at all. He just went ahead and cursed Jiang Yishen out a few times.

The Instructor moved on to safety issues, electricity and fire, and everyone below was quietly scrolling on their phones. Jiang Yishen had just finished liking a few posts when he heard Fan Zi sneaking close to whisper in his ear again.

“Have you sorted out your internship yet?”

“Haven’t looked into it yet.” Jiang Yishen scratched his ear and pushed Fan Zi away. “Can you not lean all over me when you talk?”

Fan Zi got worse, practically pressing his face right up against him. “Let’s all go to this one, come on. I heard the internship workload isn’t heavy, and they’re short on people right now.”

Jiang Yishen leaned away in disgust and took a quick glance at the document on Fan Zi’s phone. His eyebrow went up. “Oh?”

It wasn’t one of the locations the Instructor had listed. This was the company where Qi Lin had worked after graduating last year.

“Xu Baili and Wen Jie spent time there, said it was good. The commute is decent too. Mainly the cafeteria food is great.”

Jiang Yishen said, “They went as interns in HR, and you’re going in as a programmer. Are you sure a review like ‘great’ applies across the board?”

“At least the company name carries weight. A bit of grinding for just these two months is fine.” Fan Zi laid out his reasoning with great confidence.

Jiang Yishen then opened the internship recommendations the Instructor had sent, browsed through them, and asked, “How come you didn’t mention that Xiao Qi also spent time there?”

“Xiao Qi was there too?” Fan Zi lost control of his volume again and got a smack from Jiang Yishen.

Quite a few people nearby looked over in puzzlement. Fan Zi buried his face on the desk in embarrassment. This time it was Jiang Yishen’s turn to lean in close, their faces nearly touching. “You didn’t know?”

“I had no idea!” Fan Zi’s eyes went perfectly round. “When did that happen?”

“Right when the two of us had just broken up.” After saying it, Jiang Yishen understood why Fan Zi hadn’t known.

During that period, forget Fan Zi, even Xu Baili had probably barely seen Qi Lin. Normally they could all hang out together, but right after graduation a lot of the year above them had gone back to their own cities, and no one had managed to organize a gathering in the short term. Qi Lin had also been deliberately keeping his distance, so drifting out of the circle was inevitable.

But Jiang Yishen’s heart was beating fast. He stared at the company logo on the screen, and a completely absurd hypothesis suddenly took shape in his mind.

If there had been no loop. If neither he nor Qi Lin had taken the initiative to seek the other out. If they still hadn’t gotten back together by now…

Then he would have unknowingly joined this company as an intern alongside Fan Zi, and they would have had their first shared topic after the breakup.

So many standoffs only ever lacked an opening. Once a crack appeared, all the emotions that had been dammed up behind that thin paper wall would find somewhere to pour out, and rekindling an old flame would no longer seem like such an impossible thing.

His feelings were a tangled mess, and they hadn’t settled by the time the grade meeting ended.

The meeting let out at eleven in the morning, and it had lasted barely an hour all told. Jiang Yishen didn’t want to disturb Qi Lin. He had probably only been studying in the library for about forty minutes, and might not have even gotten through many pages.

But Qi Lin was on his mind, and the guess he had just made left a faint ache in his chest. He wanted someone to come and hold him.

He trudged along with the crowd toward the exit, and as he neared the door he noticed that many of the classmates walking ahead of him turned to look back at him after stepping outside.

Jiang Yishen couldn’t figure out why, not until he walked down the steps and saw Qi Lin standing at the entrance waiting for him.

The appearance was so sudden, like a surprise dropping from the sky. He stood rooted to the spot. Qi Lin, embarrassed by all the stares, stepped forward two paces, grabbed his hand, and started walking.

“Come on, come on, so many people.” Qi Lin muttered under his breath, head down as he headed for the stairs.

Jiang Yishen gripped his hand in return, astonished. “How did you end up here?”

“I was studying in the empty classroom next door. I heard the noise when you all finished.” Qi Lin swung their joined hands. “Cafeteria?”

The campus in early spring was lush and green, new shoots on the trees and shrubs, crabapple blossoms just beginning to bud, and the gale-force winds that belonged only to spring were about to arrive. It was the vibrant, familiar vitality of spring that both of them knew well.

Fan Zi sent ten WeChat messages in a row condemning Jiang Yishen for going too far, saying he had never seen anyone like this, that he was insufferably enviable.

Jiang Yishen couldn’t be bothered. He refused to believe there was anyone in the whole major who harbored more resentment toward peers than Yu Jiaming.

The cafeteria had opened quite a few new windows for the new semester. Since it wasn’t yet time for classes to let out, there was no need to queue. They waited together at the counter for their food, shoulders touching, a familiar scene that felt almost dreamlike.

Jiang Yishen had found another reason to push himself through a second attempt at the graduate entrance exam. He wanted to stay at this school a few more years, to eat a few more cafeteria meals together with Qi Lin.

The last time they had come onto campus together was just after the end-of-semester exams before the new year. Qi Lin had accompanied Jiang Yishen to the dormitory to move some things. That time, Qi Lin hadn’t gone upstairs, letting Jiang Yishen go up alone, and on the way out they had run into the ill-omened Yu Jiaming.

This time Qi Lin didn’t ask to wait downstairs. He followed naturally at Jiang Yishen’s side. He already knew this dormitory thoroughly, having come and gone through it countless times during the loop.

All the roommates except Fan Zi were in, sitting at their desks eating packed lunches they had brought back, the spicy, fragrant smell drifting all the way into the corridor.

Jiang Yishen went in to grab a few things. The dormitory wasn’t big, and there wasn’t really anywhere to stand once you were inside, so Qi Lin waited at the dormitory door.

Not wanting to keep Qi Lin waiting, Jiang Yishen was quickly stuffing things into his bag when a WeChat notification came through. Seeing it was another friend request, he assumed it was Yu Jiaming haunting him again, but when he tapped it open it turned out to be an unfamiliar number.

No bio. The profile picture was a patch of blue sky and white clouds. The username was “Do Good Deeds.”

Jiang Yishen saw how the person had added him: through a contact card from Yin Yu. He had a guess forming in his mind.

Back in the fourth loop, he had been dead set on marrying Qi Lin and had demanded that Yin Yu find some Master to get a consecrated keepsake. Yin Yu had said he would think about it, looking very much like he had something up his sleeve.

Unfortunately the loop had been overwritten. After the new year, Jiang Yishen had gone back to Yin Yu with the same persistence and put the request forward again.

About a week had passed with no reply, and he had nearly forgotten about the whole thing. Who would have thought Yin Yu had actually come through with a Master’s WeChat.

He tapped on the profile picture for a look. Mountains and flowing water, not a stock image, looking quite in keeping with the identity of a mysterious Master. He tapped to accept the friend request.