Editor and Proofreader: Rinrin

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None of the four had any memory of how they got back to dorm 333. By the time they realized it, they were all either slumped in bed in confusion or dazed and leaning sideways on their chairs.

“My brilliant youth is just getting started, and I’m going to wither away at nineteen and a half like summer flowers” Xia Yang stared blankly at the dormitory ceiling. “I haven’t even experienced the flavors of life yet! I’ve never held hands, never kissed, never run with a partner under the moonlight on a dark windy night, showing off our love. I’ve really been cheated!”

Lin Wu, initially anxious, found that Xia Yang’s lamentations lifted the oppressive atmosphere: “Your youth is already ‘like summer flowers,’ so it’s bound to wilt in autumn.”^[1]its like the youth energy is fading

“Then it’s over” Li Junchi added, “It was already autumn last month.”

“I’m just making a comparison!” Xia Yang sat up abruptly. “I’m telling you, with the situation heating up, aren’t you at all worried? We could wake up tomorrow and all have mutated!”

After drifting through the day, Lin Wu slowly calmed down: “Don’t panic. The news said that those who have mutated have good health indicators, meaning even if we do mutate, it won’t affect our health.”

“Besides, we might not even mutate” Li Junchi looked at Xia Yang. “Do you feel unwell?” Then he turned to Lin Wu. “Have you experienced any strange reactions?”

“Why don’t you ask me…” Ren Feiyu, who had been waiting for a long time without being called, finally raised his hand and cued himself.

Li Junchi slowly turned his head and squinted at him.

Ren Feiyu’s voice lowered: “I was just saying it casually…”

“Stop hoping for the best” Xia Yang sighed heavily, rebutting Li Junchi. “We eat, live, and go to class together with Feiyu. The only thing we don’t do is sleep in the same bed. If Feiyu mutates and we don’t, is that fair to our deep friendship that’s as profound as a thousand-foot-deep peach blossom pond?”^[2]deep friendship

Li Junchi: “…”

Friendship aside, he needed to figure out those two lines of poetry first.

“If Feiyu really mutates, we probably can’t escape either” Lin Wu agreed with Xia Yang on this point. “But the issue is, we can’t be 100% sure that Feiyu has mutated.”

“Are you serious?” Xia Yang raised his arm and twisted it in the air, trying to imitate Ren Feiyu’s falling posture from last night. “He almost did a full 360-degree Thomas spin…”

Ren Feiyu swallowed hard and muttered, “Not really…”

“Think harder” Li Junchi moved his chair right in front of Ren Feiyu, plopped down, and started a face-to-face interview. “When you fell yesterday, how did your body feel?”

“Honestly, nothing” Ren Feiyu had answered this question last night. “My brain was completely blank, and by the time I came to, I was already on the ground.”

“What about now?” Lin Wu joined in. “Do you feel anything strange or different in your body now?”

Ren Feiyu closed his eyes, making an effort to “self-assess” for a while but still shook his head pitifully.

Lin Wu gazed at him intently, pondering for a moment, then slowly revealed a brotherly smile: “How about we try again?”

Ren Feiyu: “??”

Ten minutes later.

Four straw mats, four comforters, four blankets, and all the thin and thick clothes for spring, summer, autumn, and winter were gathered under Ren Feiyu’s bed, creating a sufficiently thick and safe cushioning zone.

Lin Wu, Xia Yang, and Li Junchi positioned themselves at three directions around the cushion, ready to catch him if Ren Feiyu changed direction mid-fall and glided off the cushion.

After all, he was just jumping down from the upper bunk; the impact from that distance shouldn’t be too high.

With everything set, the three looked up at Ren Feiyu squatting on the upper bunk, their six eyes shining brightly: “Come on, from now on, just pretend you’re a rock star and jump boldly into the sea of the audience!”

Ren Feiyu didn’t see a sea of people; he only saw a pile of messy down jackets and thick sweatshirts, along with three eager roommates.

He had a bad premonition that he was getting on a pirate ship.

“You guys have to catch me for sure…”

After repeatedly reminding them, Ren Feiyu closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and finally threw himself down!

“Bang—”

His body hit the ground squarely, landing perfectly on the pile of cushions.

Lin Wu and the others were all prepared to catch him, but he didn’t even graze the edges of their clothes.

Ren Feiyu fell straight down, in a perfect drop line, without rolling or gliding. Even when he landed in the cushions, his upper body hit first, so standard that Lin Wu and the others began to doubt whether everything they had seen last night had really happened or if they had collectively hallucinated.

Li Junchi: “Let’s do it again, best out of three!”

Ren Feiyu: “…”

“Bang—”

“Bang—”

“Bang—”

“That should be enough, right?” After another fall into the cushions, Ren Feiyu looked around, seeing golden down jackets fluttering everywhere. “That’s seven rounds and four wins…”

Four consecutive falls, all identical and normal; nothing from last night had occurred.

Xia Yang, who had been firmly in the “mutation camp,” was now a bit dazed: “Could it be that this mutation just disappears on its own?”

“Maybe. It’s like a cold; sometimes if we don’t take medicine, we can tough it out and get better” Li Junchi stroked his chin and thought further. “Or, as Lin Wu said, maybe Feiyu didn’t mutate at all, and what happened yesterday might have some other scientific explanation…”

Before Li Junchi could finish his thought, Xia Yang’s phone suddenly rang, interrupting them. Someone was inviting Xia Yang for a video call.

As a contemporary single college student with extremely simple social relations, the only person who could skip a greeting and jump straight to a video call invitation was none other than his mom.

—

**Xia’s Mom**: “Honey, did you see the news about the body abnormalities? It scared me to death. I keep worrying about you getting into trouble at school, and I can’t sleep at night…”

**Xia Yang**: “How could the news at five this afternoon keep you up all night?”

**Xia’s Mom**: “I’m just using that as an expression! You’re such an inconsiderate child!”

**Xia Yang**: “…”

**Xia’s Mom**: “What are you looking for under your pillow? Did you lose some money?”

**Xia Yang**: “I’m looking for my Bluetooth earbuds!”

**Xia’s Mom**: “Oh? You’re using the speaker here? Well, here’s the thing: I saw the news today, and there have already been quite a few cases in Tianjin. I wanted to ask how things are at your school?”

**Xia Yang**: “Why are you suddenly speaking Mandarin…”

Just as Xia Yang found his Bluetooth earbuds and muted his mom’s broadcast tone in Mandarin, Ren Feiyu’s phone rang.

However, Ren Feiyu received a call, so he answered directly: “Mom…”

Lin Wu couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end, but from Ren Feiyu’s increasingly lowered head and voice, it was clear that Ren’s mom and Xia’s mom were definitely not of the same style.

“Yeah… I’m fine… I know… Okay… Sure…” Ren Feiyu was initially able to say a few words, but soon he was reduced to one-syllable responses.

If it weren’t for his initial shout of “Mom” when he answered the phone, Lin Wu would have thought it was more like a call between a boss and a subordinate, with the boss reprimanding and the subordinate meekly agreeing—like a corporate drone.

Li Junchi wasn’t watching Ren Feiyu and Xia Yang; he was fully focused on his phone, waiting patiently. He couldn’t believe that while everyone else’s moms were checking in on their sons, his mom was being completely silent.

Five minutes later.

Yes, she was being silent.

With mixed feelings, he opened WeChat and initiated a voice invitation to his mom.

As Li Junchi’s voice connected, dorm 333 became lively, filled with Tianjin dialect, Northeast dialect, and even variations of “Harbin flavor” and “Jilin flavor,” all mixing together chaotically.

The atmosphere was infectious; Lin Wu couldn’t help but open WeChat as well.

He had pinned both of his parents’ accounts to the top, making it easy to see their messages.

Sending a voice or video message was simple—just a press of a button. But when Lin Wu actually opened the chat interface and saw the past conversation history, his racing mind suddenly cooled down.

In the end, he sent the same text to both: Everything is normal at school.

After sending, he quickly exited and opened the “Shushan Loushi^[3]app like fb” app, instinctively searching for something else to distract himself.

To his surprise, the forum was buzzing with activity.

**Topic**: “There are two students in the Materials Department with body abnormalities who have been hospitalized!”

**Topic**: “What counts as body abnormalities? Is being able to eat one?”

**Topic**: “Water basin challenge! Let’s see who can hold their breath the longest. I’ll post a video first; come at me if you disagree!”

**Topic**: “…”

After scrolling through a few pages, the only post that seemed somewhat serious was about the Materials Department.

It said that two students had voluntarily reported feeling bodily abnormalities, but the specifics were unclear. The poster mentioned that these two had shown no unusual behavior in the dorm but were required to be hospitalized upon arriving at the hospital, so their abnormalities were undeniable. This news shocked their classmates.

The other three finished their calls in succession, each bringing back “local news”—

**Ren Feiyu**: “The situation in Harbin is similar to Shenyang…”

**Xia Yang**: “Well, Tianjin is in chaos, with everyone rushing to the hospitals!”

**Li Junchi**: “My mom said something happened in our village too. Someone single-handedly took down several wild boars on the mountain, and then he was taken to the hospital!”

**Lin Wu**: “…”

He couldn’t help but wonder what that brave person was feeling at the time.

Lights out at eleven didn’t quell their restless hearts, and the four of them had a long “pillow talk” in the dark before finally drifting off to sleep.

Before sleeping, Lin Wu finally received a reply to one of the two messages he had sent.

**Lin Wu**: “Everything is normal at school.”

**Mom**: “Good.”

The next day, at the athletics field.

Lin Wu had never seen such a large gathering at school.

There were crowds everywhere, with people jostling, voices buzzing, and the crowd surging… In short, it was a spectacular scene that couldn’t be described even with all the idioms for large gatherings.

When they held the sports meeting last year, the first and second-year students from various departments were present, and only about sixty percent of the seats in the stands were filled. Now, there wasn’t even room on the grass or the track; students were everywhere, even the sand pits were occupied.

Even so, some departments still had to stand outside the athletics field to listen to the principal speak.

At exactly eight o’clock, the principal and a group of school leaders appeared at the podium without any lengthy preamble. This emergency meeting convened hastily focused directly on the topic.

First, the spread of mutations was very severe, and everyone needed to take it seriously. Faculty and students from all departments must report any body abnormalities immediately.

Second, during the school closure, classes would continue as normal, and the logistics department would ensure the cafeteria and supermarket operated smoothly.

Third, no health impacts from the mutations had been discovered yet. Therefore, while it was important to take the situation seriously, it was equally important to maintain a calm mindset. Even if bodily abnormalities did occur, there was no need to panic excessively.

Fourth…

Listening to the various points, Lin Wu truly began to feel the gravity of the situation.

In the past, no matter what upheavals happened in society, the campus felt like a fortress, always keeping them buffered from the outside. No matter how big the incident was, it seemed like they could laugh it off within the campus.

But this time, it was different.