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◎ Two yuan and eighty cents ◎
Shi Li lay in the darkness for a while, adjusting to Chen Du’s body.
Five years ago, she had known every inch of him. Graduation, exams, work… during so many stressful and anxious nights, that activity had been one of the cheapest and most effective stress relievers.
There wasn’t a part of him she hadn’t touched.
But no matter how familiar, “wearing” someone else’s body was still a completely different experience.
Shi Li curiously touched Chen Du’s chest, feeling both amused and strange.
So this was what his heartbeat and breathing felt like—slower than hers, breath longer than hers. No wonder he could argue with her without turning red or panting. His muscles and bones were also firmer and straighter than hers, every part felt solid.
Shi Li played around for a while. After all, as the “ex-girlfriend” she felt a bit embarrassed to go too far, so she sat up and started thinking about where she should go for fun.
She’d been away from the human world for five years. It really felt a bit unfamiliar. The rules of the underworld and the mortal world were completely different.
…Forget it. Better to go out first.
Shi Li pushed up with her arms and sat up on the bed. As soon as her legs swung over the side, her soles touched the ground…
She fanned Chen Du’s eyelashes and glanced at the long, strong legs under the sleep pants, unable to resist pinching them.
“Hiss—” That hurt quite a bit.
These damn legs were really long.
Shi Li herself wasn’t tall, more than a head shorter than Chen Du.
When they first started dating, they often made study dates at the library. Chen Du was busy with programming projects and often forgot how short her legs were, striding ahead on his own. He’d walk for a while before realizing someone was missing beside him.
Then he’d frown, turn around, and wait coldly where he was.
Shi Li never gave in to him either. She’d walk slower on purpose, just to make him wait. The more he frowned, the happier she got, almost grinning to her ears.
Later, no one knew when it started, but he got used to her “crawling” speed. No matter how she walked—sideways or crooked—he always stayed half a step behind her. With those long legs of his, he followed lazily and effortlessly behind her—
Shi Li shook her head.
Speaking of which, Chen Du was her first love. But when she recalled the relationship, there didn’t seem to be any romantic scenes.
Flowers, candlelight dinners, dazzling fireworks… none of it.
All they had was the daily life of two poor college students: walking in a hurry, squeezing into crowded subways, throwing out countless resumes like snowflakes, eating greasy and cold fast food.
Tch, no wonder they broke up over a mundane argument. It was just too ordinary.
Thinking of Lin University… it had been a long time since Shi Li returned to her alma mater. She wondered how it was doing now.
She had spent four years at Lin University. Compared to her home, she actually missed it more.
Shi Li grabbed some of Chen Du’s clothes from the sofa, closed her eyes, and got dressed in the dark. Then she walked quickly to turn on the living room light.
The black reflective screen of the TV showed her current appearance. Shi Li froze and stood still. In the reflection, “Chen Du” was bouncing around and staring back at her, eyebrows uneven, eyes half-squinting, with an expression of confusion and curiosity he never showed.
“Pfft—”
The scene was just too funny. Shi Li couldn’t help but laugh, then made an ugly pig nose and funny face before finally composing herself. She imitated Chen Du’s walking style, taking a few steps properly.
Mm, that felt right. She touched her face, couldn’t help praising it. So handsome.
Shi Li admired herself for a while, then left the house with the keys.
Late autumn in Beilin was even colder than she remembered.
As the cold wind blew into the collar, Shi Li realized she hadn’t dressed Chen Du warmly enough.
She tightened the suit jacket on her body and shivered. She remembered Chen Du didn’t seem that afraid of the cold back then. In late autumn, he still wore a single shirt and threw his jacket to her coolly—so this guy was just pretending to be tough back then.
The apartment was within walking distance of Lin University.
Shi Li walked and stopped, looking curiously at this “new world,” touching things here and there. She even plucked some of the sparse roadside weeds.
Five years had passed. The area around the university didn’t seem to have changed much. The curb looked older, and the concrete roads built five years ago had started to crack.
The streets were full of restaurants. The pancake stand they used to frequent still had the same old sign. The utility poles were still covered in messy water, electricity, and job ads.
It was already eleven-thirty. Lin University’s dorms had turned off the lights. There were hardly any pedestrians, and the streets were quiet. Only a few students on bikes rushed by, their tires crunching the fallen ginkgo leaves, stirring up a cool breeze.
Lin University had no fences, with paths leading in and out from all directions. Shi Li picked a familiar one and walked along under the night lights.
The university at night was very familiar.
Back then, she and Chen Du were the most diligent students in their departments. Two small-town exam grinders, they had always hoped to change their fates through studying, bearing the heavy burden of “bringing honor to their ancestors.” Even in college, they had no right to slack off.
They first met on a deep autumn night in their junior year.
She had finished reviewing her homework and was carrying a pile of books from the library, heading to a nearby bar for her part-time job. She was tired and sleepy and crashed straight into Chen Du’s arms—he was the opposite, just returning from work and planning to pull an all-nighter in the library.
The beginning was dreamy, the ending tragic—she broke Chen Du’s laptop and couldn’t afford to pay for it.
Chen Du looked coldly as she shakily pulled out one hundred and thirty-two yuan and eighty cents from her pocket, along with a tragic Huabei bill from Alipay. He stared at her awkward pale face for a few seconds, then took two yuan and eighty cents in coins from her hand.
“…Two yuan eighty. What can that even do?”
She asked, still embarrassed.
Chen Du glanced at her, speechless.
“Buy a roll of tape. I’ll fix the chip myself, but the screen and casing need to be stuck together.”
“Classmate,” Shi Li grinned at him with guilt, “You’re such a good person.”
“……”
Chen Du couldn’t be bothered to reply anymore.
Later, Shi Li always spotted Chen Du in the library crowds—not because he was especially handsome, but because that old laptop held together with tape was so unique and eye-catching, while its owner remained calm and indifferent. His hands typed away on the broken keyboard, eyes gleaming with focus.
Whenever she saw that, Shi Li always felt uneasy—afraid that laptop would fall apart the next second under his furious typing.
So she started bringing him breakfast and lunch, helping him run errands to ease her guilt, using cheap manual labor as compensation. Until one day, Chen Du took the soy milk from her hand, calmly inserted a straw, took a sip, and looked up from the screen full of code.
“Be with me?”
“……ah?”
“You don’t want to?”
“…Ahhhhh???”
How sloppy.
She was just tricked by his face, which was why she foolishly agreed to such a baffling ‘confession’—though honestly, it didn’t even count as a confession.
Just as Shi Li thought of this, she arrived at the entrance of the library. Rolling her eyes, she couldn’t help but kick the stone statue at the door to vent her frustration.
Suddenly, there was a creak behind her—
A shared bicycle with a swapped license plate abruptly stopped. Shi Li turned around. Standing before her was a teenage boy with a buzz cut, around eighteen or nineteen, wearing thick glasses and a faded checkered shirt. He looked at “her” in astonishment.
Just like they used to be, the boy carried a big backpack. Perhaps he had just finished a part-time job and was on his way to pull an all-nighter at the library.
Shi Li met his gaze and dramatically patted her chest, muttering, “Why’d you stop so suddenly? Scared me.”
The boy gave a strange look at the statue covered in several dusty shoe prints.
“Good evening, Professor Chen,” he said with a forced smile. “Out for a walk?”
“Professor?”
Shi Li turned to look—there was no one else at the library entrance. She pointed at her own nose. “You mean me?”
The boy nodded in confusion, returned the bike at a distance far from her, glanced at her again, then turned and ran off, leaving behind a shouted farewell—“…Good night, Professor Chen.”
“…”
Shi Li stood in the wind, deep in thought.
Well then.
So this kid actually made it as a professor at Lin University? And the kind that makes students flee at the sight of him?
Looks like she worried for nothing—Chen Du really made something of himself. After all, this was Lin University.
Shi Li rubbed her chin, but something still felt off.
That couldn’t be right.
Back then, Chen Du was top of the class. The head of the computer science department strongly recommended him for a direct Ph.D. with a future teaching position at the university, but he turned it down.
Rather than suffering through years of a Ph.D., working as a poor lecturer, and enduring the long wait for tenure, Chen Du wanted to go into business. He studied the most lucrative major precisely to make money.
The department head was disappointed in him, but Shi Li totally understood.
He was just like her.
Terrified of poverty from a young age.
Things like ideals and integrity were not part of a small-town test-taker’s default future. Making money was.
Shi Li flicked Chen Du’s long eyelashes and let out a thoughtful “hmm.”
So, Chen Du wasn’t able to stay in a company like he hoped and had to come back for a Ph.D. and teaching job?
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Arya[Translator]
૮꒰˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა ~♡︎