Editor and Proofreader: Rinrin

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While Lin Wu was “singing to the moon,” Ren Feiyu was looking at his phone with a troubled expression: “What’s going on?”

“What’s wrong?” Li Junchi asked, having seen him fiddling with his phone all night. “Is your phone broken?”

“No.” After holding back for a while, Ren Feiyu finally sought help from his roommates. “What do you think it means if someone gives you their WeChat ID, but after you send a friend request, they don’t respond?”

Li Junchi said, “That means they don’t want to add you.”

Xia Yang jumped into the discussion: “If they don’t want to add you, why give out the ID? They just act all aloof; what’s that about?” He looked down on that kind of behavior the most.

“Don’t say that” Ren Feiyu had spent all evening trying to find excuses for Jiang Tan in his mind. “Maybe their phone ran out of battery, or they had it on silent and didn’t notice, or they were in a game and couldn’t respond…”

Li Junchi: “You can keep self-hypnotizing yourself.”

The last glimmer of hope in Ren Feiyu’s eyes faded under the combined onslaught of his two roommates, and he slumped down like a wilted eggplant.

Lin Wu hadn’t intended to voice his opinion, as he could understand Ren Feiyu’s desire to repay kindness, but like Li Junchi and Xia Yang, he didn’t want Ren Feiyu to rush to warm faces only to get cold ones in return.

But seeing Ren Feiyu look so dejected that he was nearly burying his head in his pillow, Lin Wu couldn’t help but say to Li Junchi and Xia Yang, “You guys can stop now.”

Reluctantly leaving the window, he opened the drawer under his bed and rummaged around for a while, pulling out a bag of potato chips and tossing it to Ren Feiyu: “Here.”

Ren Feiyu caught it, and to his delight, it was his favorite butter and honey flavor, instantly brightening his eyes.

In an instant, he forgot about his sore waist and legs, and the high-cold figure in his mind became vague and transformed into the shape of potato chips. Happily tearing open the package, he crunched away, “Didn’t you say you would eat them all?”

Lin Wu glanced at him: “If I hadn’t said that, you’d be able to eat eight bags in one go.”

Nothing is more relieving than potato chips; if there’s anything more, it’s like Ren Feiyu, who could manage to eat two chips at once.

“No way” Ren Feiyu suddenly put down the chips and leaned out, trying to reach the door of the cabinet under his bed. “How can you have potato chips without a drink? I remember there’s still a bottle of Coke… hey?”

“Feiyu—” Lin Wu, Li Junchi, and Xia Yang shouted almost simultaneously.

Ren Feiyu had leaned out too far, and since he didn’t hold onto the upper bunk, he ended up tilting and falling!

The accident happened so quickly that there was no time to react.

The three of them just watched in disbelief as Ren Feiyu fell from the upper bunk, flailing his arms in the air in a panic, but couldn’t grab onto anything to break his fall, finally landing in the center of the room.

From Ren Feiyu’s upper bunk to the center of the room, it formed a large diagonal line—a free-fall movement that even Galileo’s coffin couldn’t hold back.

What was even more unbelievable was that when Ren Feiyu fell, he was head down, yet he landed on his feet, gracefully and steadily.

The air suddenly fell silent.

Crouched in the center of the room, Ren Feiyu slowly raised his head, looking bewildered and terrified: “What just happened?”

Xia Yang swallowed hard, even his accent had turned into standard Mandarin out of fear: “You fell from your bed.”

Lin Wu had never opened his eyes this wide in his life: “Tumbled, glided, landed.”

“Super magical, super unscientific,” Li Junchi felt the water for soaking his feet had turned cold.

At the same time, in the same dormitory building, in the Mechanical Engineering Department, Room 509.

Ge Liang, who had just ruined another drawing sheet, was on the verge of going crazy over the mechanical drafting homework: “Why do we still need to learn hand drawing when everything is done on computers now!”

No one paid him any attention.

Wang Ye was engrossed in a newly downloaded game, “Cat Garden.”

Jiang Tan was focused on a book, “Practical Mechanisms and Device Catalog.”

Yuan Sixue was voice chatting on WeChat: “Be good, behave.”

Ge Liang: “…”

He was struggling.

He slammed his pencil on the desk in frustration, stood up, and shouted loudly: “We have to submit the assignment tomorrow, don’t any of you feel a sense of urgency?”

The ones gaming and voice chatting in bed, and the one reading under the bed finally turned their attention to him.

“You haven’t finished your drawing yet?” Yuan Sixue’s gentle voice carried a hint of surprise.

“…” Ge Liang looked at the two of them.

Wang Ye and Jiang Tan’s expressions conveyed the same meaning, but they lacked any gentleness; these two would never be gentle.

“Wait, so it turns out I’m the only one who hasn’t finished?” Ge Liang finally realized the harsh reality of being at the bottom of the pile and reluctantly sat back down at his desk, still grumbling, “When did you two secretly finish drawing? You didn’t even bring me along…”

In terms of academic performance, Ge Liang definitely wasn’t at the bottom in the dorm, but when it came to mechanical drafting, his hands seemed to have a mind of their own, making every part he drew look like it wanted to take flight.

Just as he was feeling troubled over the new blank drawing paper, his phone suddenly buzzed. Someone in the college group had @everyone.

[Mechanical and Power Engineering Department]

Office of the Dean – Teacher Fu: “Student Jiang Tan from the 19th year-grade Mechanical Engineering Class selflessly rescued two drowning classmates at the school swimming pool today. To commend Jiang Tan’s spirit of bravery, the college has decided to publicly recognize him and award him 2,000 yuan.”

“Are they really issuing a notice this quickly?” Ge Liang had heard about Jiang Tan’s heroic deed as soon as he returned in the afternoon, and even the video of Jiang Tan diving in to save someone had circulated in all the class groups in the Mechanical Department, but he hadn’t expected the college to react so fast.

“Everything now emphasizes efficiency.” Yuan Sixue put down his phone and took a sip of the still slightly cool sparkling water. “What needs to be done today must be finished today; who knows what might happen tomorrow.”

“That’s true” Ge Liang deeply agreed, “The world is unpredictable. Even Wang Ye has caught the attention of a girl, and it’s our department’s flower senior. I wouldn’t be surprised if anything else happens.”

The “campus flower” title held by the senior was not acknowledged by the male students in the Mechanical Department; they could only refer to her as the “department flower.” This was a matter of ownership, and whoever tried to take it would face dire consequences. Wang Ye was the only one from the Mechanical Department who had not yet accepted her, so he barely escaped.

However—

“Hey, Wang Ye” Ge Liang had always been curious about this, “What exactly don’t you like about the senior? She’s fair-skinned, beautiful, has a good personality, and her grades are top-notch. It’s like she’s doing you a favor and you’re still picky?”

The noise around him was too loud, so Wang Ye paused his game and shot him an impatient glance: “I just don’t like people.”

Ge Liang: “…”

Yuan Sixue shrugged, looking as if he already knew the answer.

Wang Ye was actually quite difficult to get to know; he wasn’t close to anyone. Half the class probably still couldn’t match his face with his name.

But he was different from Jiang Tan. Jiang Tan’s coldness was deep-rooted and applied equally to everyone. Wang Ye’s coldness, however, was only directed at “outsiders.” Once he recognized someone as a friend or a buddy, he would be exceptionally loyal and supportive—he was a completely different person.

Yuan Sixue felt lucky that after more than a year of living together in the same dormitory, he, Jiang Tan, and Ge Liang had been categorized as “insiders” by Wang Ye, even if it came at the cost of “brothers ≠ humans.”

Ge Liang had a deeper understanding of Wang Ye, as they attended the same high school. Although they were in different classes, Wang Ye was a legendary figure who struck fear into the hearts of everyone in the school and neighboring colleges, even from eight classes away.

That’s why he felt the senior was unworthy of Wang Ye: “What does the senior see in you? Your personality? Your poor grades?”

—In high school, Ge Liang would avoid Wang Ye, but now he could shamelessly gloat.

Wang Ye couldn’t be bothered to respond to him.

Yuan Sixue added, “Maybe she thinks he’s handsome, or maybe she likes his physique. Or maybe it’s just his aura of walking hormones. What do you think?”

Ge Liang stubbornly shook his head, despite lacking any of those traits: “The senior can’t be that superficial. So many people have pursued her before, including handsome and wealthy guys. Have you ever seen her show interest?”

Yuan Sixue replied, “That’s because the handsome ones aren’t as wealthy as him, and the wealthy ones aren’t as handsome.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Yuan Sixue’s phone buzzed again—this time it was a call.

He immediately answered, his tone turning gentle in an instant: “Hmm, I’m here… I’ll keep you company…”

Ge Liang: “…”

When he walked into this dormitory as a freshman, seeing the fierce Wang Ye, the cold Jiang Tan, and the mysteriously gentle Yuan Sixue, he should have realized that Room 509 wasn’t going to be his home.

He might as well continue drawing; it was the only thing that could calm his restless heart.

He bit the pencil and stared at the blank sheet for five minutes.

Then he started drawing again.

Five more minutes passed.

Ge Liang completely lost his composure—(what he was drawing was getting worse!)

Giving up on self-study, Ge Liang walked over to Wang Ye’s bed and tossed his latest failed masterpiece onto him: “How the hell do you draw this thing?”

Wang Ye paused his game, picked up the “scrap paper” from his body with one hand, and reached for Ge Liang with the other.

Ge Liang immediately handed over his pencil, the action so skilled and synchronized that it clearly wasn’t their first time.

With just a few swift strokes, Wang Ye corrected several key lines that had issues and touched up the general outline. What had just moments ago looked like a chaotic mechanical component suddenly transformed into a proper part with a clear shape.

Ge Liang had seen Wang Ye work wonders like this before, but each time, he still felt that the concepts of “talent” or “inspiration” truly existed.

In freshman year, Ge Liang realized he was hopeless at hand-drawing. No amount of effort could help, but thankfully, mechanical engineering primarily relied on computer-aided design in practical applications, so he only needed to get through the basic course on hand drawing. Whenever it was time to submit assignments, he would hunt down whoever in the dorm could help him.

After a while, he noticed that his roommates all had distinctly different drawing styles. Jiang Tan was meticulous, closely following reference diagrams and recreating them one-to-one, achieving a level of accuracy that was terrifying. Yuan Sixue also used reference diagrams, but as long as it was close enough to meet the basic requirements, he was satisfied.

Wang Ye was different from both of them.

Wang Ye only needed to glance at the reference diagram before he would just start “blindly drawing”!

Initially, Ge Liang thought he was impatient with his “consultations” and was just making a few random strokes to get by. But when the drawing came back to him, while it wasn’t as freakishly accurate as Jiang Tan’s, it easily outperformed Yuan Sixue’s work, as if the data had already been scanned into his brain.

As a result, Wang Ye completed his drawings incredibly quickly, as if he didn’t need to think at all.

What took Jiang Tan an hour to draw with meticulous attention, and what Yuan Sixue could finish in fifty minutes with a more relaxed approach, Wang Ye only needed half an hour. Ge Liang even thought that if Wang Ye weren’t so impatient and willing to be a bit more meticulous, he could easily match Jiang Tan’s level of detail without taking as long.

When Ge Liang first discovered Wang Ye’s talent, he thought it was just an ordinary skill. After all, it was normal for a student who consistently scored at the bottom to have one subject he was particularly weak in.

It wasn’t until a later chance encounter that he saw Wang Ye’s mechanical sketches on his computer that he was truly astonished.

Wang Ye’s sketches had nothing to do with their mechanical drawings; they were pure art pieces, combining beautiful imagination with the aesthetics of machinery. They looked like works from someone who specialized in drawing or industrial design, certainly from someone skilled enough to produce such pieces.

However, Ge Liang didn’t mention this to anyone, nor did he ask Wang Ye why he enrolled in such an engineering field instead of pursuing one where he could draw freely.

Was he afraid of asking something that might upset Wang Ye or make everyone awkward?

No.

Ge Liang wasn’t as thoughtful as Yuan Sixue; he simply felt that Wang Ye probably didn’t want to talk about it. If he asked, he might end up getting beaten up.

After Wang Ye helped Ge Liang finish his assignment, he continued to immerse himself in arranging his “cat garden.”

After placing a new little toy, he noticed that Ge Liang hadn’t left yet. Frowning, he looked up and saw Ge Liang staring at him, deep in thought, with the pencil in his mouth.

Wang Ye didn’t remember Ge Liang having a habit of chewing on pencils when he was deep in thought, but tonight, it seemed like he had developed this bad habit, and he was doing it obsessively.

Just as Wang Ye was looking at him, he heard a “snap”—Ge Liang had bitten the pencil in half.