Chapter 11: Thus Have I Heard

“Thus have I heard, admiration is even more painful than a crush.”

The first time Liang Yuanzheng met Lu Canran was during summer break. His homeroom teacher from middle school gave him a call and invited him back to school.

“I have a student here whose math scores are as excellent as yours were. She did especially well on the college entrance exam this year and wants to apply to the medical school at A University,” the teacher said, choosing words carefully and using both “especially” and “particularly” in succession. “Do you have some time to talk to her? Maybe give her some advice?”

Back then, Liang Yuanzheng didn’t have any particularly good suggestions. The path of medicine was a hard one. Regular college students only suffer during finals week, but for medical students, every week is exam week. The grueling study, standardized training, graduate school, doctoral studies—medical students start working years later than their peers. Unless one holds noble ideals or has family support, he wouldn’t recommend taking this path.

“Then, do you love medicine, Senior?” When Liang Yuanzheng tactfully explained how difficult medical studies would be, Lu Canran looked at him with eyes full of admiration, as if he were a gleaming, golden idol. “Did you choose medicine because you wanted to save lives?”

Liang Yuanzheng wanted to say no.

When he first applied to study medicine, he had neither lofty ideals nor sufficient financial support from his family. It was simply that his perspective was limited—he thought the profession was respectable enough, and that the salary would steadily increase over time.

At that point in his life, he desperately needed “respectability,” and he needed money.

Sometimes, one has to admit that the saying “children from poor families mature early” often only refers to taking on housework. When it comes to major life decisions, limited access to information and the vast information gap means that those from less privileged backgrounds are often forced to take a more winding path.

For example, Liang Yuanzheng choosing to study medicine.

If his main goal had been to make money and maintain respectability, with the grades he had at the time, he could have chosen a field like computer science. During graduation season, recruitment talks from major tech companies at A University were exceptionally lively—even ordinary product management offers could start at over 350,000 yuan a year.

While his high school classmates were showing off their employee badges from major tech companies on their Moments, Liang Yuanzheng was still staying up late studying for exams.

To say he never regretted it would be a lie, but unless one sees it through to the end, who can truly judge whether a path was right or wrong? Liang Yuanzheng wasn’t the type to dwell in emotions. He didn’t think, “What if I had…” Instead, he actively reached out to professors and fought for every opportunity he could get.

He was keenly aware of his disadvantages—he had no network, zero family support, and heavy financial burdens.

At the same time, he also knew where his strengths lay. And it wasn’t just his academic record, school background, or learning ability. It was that he could perform under pressure, was skilled at competing, and could seize every opportunity available to him.

After witnessing life and death countless times in the hospital, Liang Yuanzheng gradually began to feel the deeper meaning of the profession—but that meaning was something personal, meant only for himself. He wouldn’t romanticize the path he hadn’t had the choice to refuse, nor would he ignore the hardships he was currently facing.

Faced with Lu Canran’s naive and admiring gaze, Liang Yuanzheng found himself unable to deliver the kind of dissuasion the world would expect.

It would have been like shattering a child’s purest dream.

“It will be very hard,” Liang Yuanzheng finally gave a sincere piece of advice. “Studying medicine comes with more pressure, and it requires lifelong learning.”

He didn’t mention financial support, since the homeroom teacher had already noted that this junior’s family was well-off and had been quietly helping underprivileged students for the past three years.

Lu Canran asked, “Do you feel pressure too, Senior?”

“I’m human. Of course I do.”

She kept her head lowered, her voice muffled. “If you can do it, then I definitely can too.”

Childish words, spoken with all seriousness.

Liang Yuanzheng held no judgment toward it. He didn’t pass verdicts on other people’s lives. He simply thought—no wonder she was the student the homeroom teacher had praised so highly.

Without any hint of praise or criticism, this girl named Lu Canran had outstanding grades, a quiet personality, followed school rules, met standards, obeyed her teachers, and lived up to her parents’ expectations. She was a textbook model student, shaped by a good family upbringing and a healthy social environment.

Perhaps only after leaving the ivory tower of school would she realize that the results earned through diligence and effort often fall short of expectations. Many of the golden rules that proved invincible in student life, if still blindly followed, would only turn her into a workhorse grinding endlessly in the professional world.

Especially with a personality like hers.

Liang Yuanzheng noticed that Lu Canran didn’t know how to say no.

Midway through their conversation, someone knocked on the door—a student from another class. The person was clearly unfamiliar with Lu Canran and, without much courtesy, asked her if he could also speak with Liang Yuanzheng.

She just stood there in a daze and gave up her spot.

Liang Yuanzheng could clearly sense her reluctance, yet she still stepped aside out of politeness.

Good students who have been taught well don’t say no. Sometimes, they even wrong themselves because of it. With that kind of personality, she was even less suited to study medicine.

Excessive kindness and forbearance come dangerously close to self-destruction.

The two of them exchanged QQ numbers. Later, she reached out again for advice, and based on previous years’ admission rates, Liang Yuanzheng gave her a disappointing answer.

He later heard from the homeroom teacher that she was successfully admitted to A University, missing the medical school by just five points.

Liang Yuanzheng thought it was for the best. That kind of overly naive courage she had perhaps wasn’t suited for the grind of intensive study and standardized training.

He had assumed they would never cross paths again—until, by a twist of fate, they met once more.

The first time he noticed Lu Canran again was during his final elective course.

It was a coincidence that he ended up in cryptography. Liang Yuanzheng had originally planned to take a course on Darwin studies—not for any particular interest, but because the professor was known for being generous with grades.

Liang Yuanzheng didn’t have much time to cultivate his interests. His life, including his course selections, was driven entirely by practicality. But when the elective registration opened, the second-hand computer he had been using for years suddenly went black. By the time it rebooted, the only course still available with an easy passing rate was cryptography.

The course was a second choice. The person was not.

During the first session of that elective, Liang Yuanzheng saw Lu Canran.

In school-wide elective courses like this one, it was easy to spot the freshmen in a large lecture hall. It wasn’t about their style of dress—anyone carrying a notebook, a pencil case, and a water bottle, and sitting in the front row, was almost certainly a first-year student. They were still passionate about university life, full of the drive to study hard, with no thought of skipping class or playing on their phones during lectures.

Just like Lu Canran, sitting in the front row.

Liang Yuanzheng rarely made an effort to remember the trivial details of daily life. The brain’s capacity was limited. Unless one had hyperthymesia, people would naturally pick and choose what to remember, discarding the unimportant minutiae.

By all rights, what he saw of Lu Canran that day should have fallen under the category of “minutiae.” Yet it stubbornly carved out a corner of his memory and refused to leave.

He had arrived just five minutes before class began. The back rows and center seats were already taken. Liang Yuanzheng ended up sitting in the second row on the left, near the aisle. Lu Canran was in the dead center of the first row, three seats over from him, with nearly no one between them. Every time he glanced in the direction of the blackboard, his peripheral vision would catch on her bright dragon fruit–colored pencil case with precision.

Inside, a clear plastic ruler peeked out, decorated with red-and-white spotted poisonous mushrooms. The pens laid out on the desk were also red and white. She wore a pale-colored T-shirt—not quite gray, not quite white, not quite yellow. Women’s clothing brands carefully mixed dyes and gave each shade a fancy name, but that was outside Liang Yuanzheng’s realm of knowledge. He could only describe it vaguely as light-colored.

The professor who taught cryptography was already in his fifties, energetic and spirited, with a slow and measured way of speaking. Because the course was easy to pass, many students had signed up for it, including Liang Yuanzheng—but not many were actually paying attention. The professor, however, particularly enjoyed interacting with students. In the middle of each lecture, there was a ten-minute break. During the first half of the class, the only student who could answer his questions fluently and actively participate was Lu Canran.

When the professor explained the Caesar cipher, she was the only one who raised her hand high and went up to the board to decode the puzzle he had given.

Liang Yuanzheng couldn’t help but look at her.

Just like people can’t help but look at the sun.

Whether it was because of her influence or not, the atmosphere in the second half of the class noticeably improved. More and more students began to participate in the discussion, and the professor’s smile grew wider and wider.

Just last night, Liang Yuanzheng had been working as an assistant in the operating room. He had planned to close his eyes and rest during this elective, but now found himself unable to look away from Lu Canran, who was fluidly writing the plaintext on the blackboard with chalk.

In the field of cryptography, the Caesar cipher is considered the simplest and most widely known encryption technique. It also serves as the first decryption step for the Vigenère cipher.

To be fair, the cipher Lu Canran solved wasn’t difficult. Yet to Liang Yuanzheng, the sunlight that day, reflected off her, felt blinding.

He had intended to greet Lu Canran after class, but she was surrounded by friends, chatting about something he couldn’t hear. Her profile grew redder and redder, blushing deeper and deeper, until it matched the little mushroom on her transparent ruler.

She packed up her backpack, which also had a red-and-white mushroom keychain hanging from it. As she chatted with her friends about which dining hall to go to, what to eat, she passed right by him, light on her feet. She didn’t recognize Liang Yuanzheng, and he never found the chance to say hello.

But Liang Yuanzheng did recognize the mushroom on her backpack. Amanita muscaria—also known as the fly agaric. Unlike its cute and cartoonish appearance, in reality its red cap and white stalk, dotted with white granular scales, is highly toxic. When consumed, it can induce neuropsychiatric symptoms and powerful hallucinations.

By the time Liang Yuanzheng left the classroom, Lu Canran and her little mushroom keychain were nowhere to be seen. He looked up and realized there hadn’t been any sun at all that day. It was a perfectly overcast sky.

After that, every Wednesday, Liang Yuanzheng shared the same class with Lu Canran.

There was always someone sitting beside her, which led Liang Yuanzheng, passively and thoroughly, to become familiar with all of her dormitory friends, as well as several other classmates from her major.

She was still the same—incapable of turning people down. During in-class quizzes for the cryptography course, each student received a different test. The questions were all composed by the professor himself and couldn’t be found online. After class, some students would run over to Lu Canran and ask for help solving them. Whether she knew them or not, she would foolishly help them all, like a bottomless well of kindness.

How could someone be so naive?

How could someone be so good to others?

When that one male classmate, who habitually went to Lu Canran for answers, was about to approach her again, Liang Yuanzheng stepped in and blocked his way.

At the time, Lu Canran was napping, and Liang Yuanzheng motioned for the male classmate to look.

“Helping once is being kind. But doing it again and again—what is that?” Liang Yuanzheng asked. “Taking advantage of her good nature?”

The classmate gave an awkward smile, clearly embarrassed, and turned to walk away.

See? Something that could be solved so easily with just a single refusal—yet she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Aside from this unnoticed episode, every class, Lu Canran remained her usual sunny self.

She always sat in the front row. Liang Yuanzheng always sat in the second row on the left. Two people in fixed seats, never once greeting each other, never exchanging a word. He had no choice but to accept that this junior of his had truly forgotten him.

Which made perfect sense. She had many friends, was well-liked, and wouldn’t remember a senior she had only met once.

Moreover, Liang Yuanzheng could feel that the late nights and constant pressure were slowly wearing down his mental state.

At the time, he was preparing for his graduation exams while also reaching out to potential master’s advisors. His younger sister had just entered a rebellious phase, and their elderly grandmother, unable to shoulder the responsibility of properly guiding her, called him in distress. Liang Yuanzheng took a leave from school and returned home, dragging his sister out of an internet café where she had been secretly skipping class to go online.

He didn’t punish her physically. He simply asked their grandmother to wash her face and hair, wiping away the clumsy and childish makeup from her face and rinsing out the stiff setting spray from her hair.

Liang Yuanzheng understood that his sister’s rebellion came from a lack of affection. A living father who was as good as dead, and a gentle mother who had passed away early. Their grandmother was elderly, her monthly pension barely reaching three thousand yuan. As the older brother, he hadn’t even finished his studies, could barely hold everything together, and was relying on scholarships and the money he had previously earned to keep the household afloat.

At that time, they were living in the apartment his parents had split during the divorce—a worn-down staff housing unit. The property certificate said it was fifty square meters, but the usable space was only that and a small balcony. Two bedrooms—one for their grandmother, the other for his sister. Liang Yuanzheng didn’t have a bed of his own and slept on a mat in the living room. He would lay it out at night and fold it away into the cupboard during the day.

He asked his sister why she didn’t want to go to school.

Her face turned bright red as she said, aggrieved, that her classmates had made fun of her for wearing fake shoes. She felt humiliated.

They were domestic-brand sneakers called “Nike New Star,” with a logo that looked deceptively similar to Nike’s. Their grandmother had bought them at the supermarket.

Liang Yuanzheng remembered that when she first put them on, Liang Yueyun had been so happy, running outside in them with joy.

He didn’t say anything like “our family is poor, you should be grateful,” nor did he go on about brand premiums or how chasing labels was vanity. He had gone through the rough patches of adolescence himself. He knew that things which seemed trivial to adults could feel like the end of the world to kids at that age.

How could that be considered vanity? It was just one of the little pitfalls most people stumble into during their teenage years.

He calculated how much money he had left, asked Liang Yueyun which brand of shoes she liked, took her to pick out a pair, and paid for them.

Throughout the entire process, Liang Yuanzheng remained calm. He didn’t mention how hard that money had been to earn, nor did he take the opportunity to lecture her. As long as the family environment was open and understanding, children would come to realize things on their own with age. There was no need to impose some kind of suffering-based education now.

Liang Yueyun was already very sensible—this was just a small act of rebellion in adolescence.

After she changed into her new shoes, Liang Yuanzheng finally sat down to have a proper talk with her. He looked over her recent report card, and once he confirmed that she had completely calmed down, he made dinner, cleaned the place thoroughly, and discovered that the sink pipe in the bathroom was clogged. He untwisted the securing wire, dismantled the pipe by hand, removed the tangled long hair and semi-hardened soap residue inside, then reassembled it. After testing to make sure the water flowed smoothly, he took a shower and finally caught a bus back to school.

On the way back, riding the city bus, Liang Yuanzheng saw a post Lu Canran had shared on QQ, her Qzone: nine pictures in total—a selfie with a heart-shaped hand gesture while wearing a birthday crown, a little tree made of stacked gift boxes, a large round dining table in a restaurant, a nine-tiered cake tower, a photo with her parents… and right in the center was a group photo with her friends, where all of them laughing freely and joyfully.

Like a princess sleeping atop twenty mattresses and twenty goose-down quilts who could still feel a single pea beneath it all.

He thought about giving the post a like, then noticed the cut on the side of his thumb—the wound left by the iron wire while unclogging the drain.

Liang Yuanzheng didn’t give it a like.

Every Wednesday, he attended the same class as Lu Canran. She had already become the class representative for the elective, responsible for collecting the in-class exercises each session—this was also how the cryptography professor took attendance. Many students would leave immediately after class, simply leaving their papers on the desk. Liang Yuanzheng didn’t. He always waited for Lu Canran to come by and collect it, just to hear her softly say, “Thank you.”

She always moved quickly, like the little girl picking mushrooms in fairy tales, diligently hopping from row to row gathering up the quizzes. Every time Liang Yuanzheng turned around, she had already collected from the three or four students behind him.

When did he start taking the cryptography class seriously? Liang Yuanzheng wasn’t sure. He only knew that he had begun to look forward to Wednesdays more and more—that this day had become his favorite day of the week.

He began treating the class like a core course, and through the gaps between the heads and figures of different classmates, he could precisely and unerringly spot a certain little princess huffing and puffing as she did practice problems, disguising herself as a little mushroom. His gaze remained calm, underlaid by an emotion as flat and heavy as if it had been pressed by a scorching-hot iron.

So it went for three months, thirteen weeks, thirteen sessions. In Western religions, thirteen is considered an unlucky number—because at the Last Supper, the thirteenth guest, Judas, betrayed Jesus; and in Norse mythology, the god of mischief, Loki, arrived uninvited as the thirteenth guest, leading to the death of Balder, the god of light.

In the thirteenth session of the cryptography class, the friend sitting beside Lu Canran was Chen Wanli.

In the normal trajectory of education, elementary school students move up to middle school and become middle schoolers. But some people mutate—though they reach the age of a middle school student, their personality, thinking, and even their naive malice remain at an elementary school level. These are the “elementary-middle hybrids.”

Chen Wanli was one of them.

Ever since his father stopped paying child support, Liang Yuanzheng had severed ties with the man who was his biological father. He hadn’t had any contact with his father’s side of the family, until the man showed up again, bringing along the son from his second marriage, choking up as he said that the younger brother wanted to meet him.

The boy was still very young—thin, pale, named Zheng Tianwang. He had been born with a congenital heart defect, along with immune system complications, and his weakness was visible to the naked eye.

Liang Yuanzheng refused. He knew the child was innocent, but forgiving his father would feel like a betrayal of his mother. He couldn’t bring himself to show mercy in this matter. The only person qualified to forgive his father was the mother who had already passed away. If his father truly felt guilty, he should jump from the tenth floor right now and go kneel before her to confess and apologize.

He had no right to forgive, and he would never acknowledge that boy as his brother.

That so-called “younger brother” had a cousin—Chen Wanli—who immediately jumped in, unable to believe what he was hearing, accusing Liang Yuanzheng of being cold-blooded and heartless.

Everyone knew that Zheng Tianwang could die at any moment. Refusing to fulfill the final wish of a dying child made Liang Yuanzheng seem truly ruthless and unfeeling. He didn’t care about that judgment, but when he saw Chen Wanli chatting and laughing so easily with Lu Canran, a ridiculous thought crossed his mind.

—Did Chen Wanli ever tell her about that incident? He wondered what she thought of him.

Just then, a nearby male student suddenly drew in a sharp breath and exclaimed with a sigh, “Wow, that’s real money.”

“What?” Liang Yuanzheng didn’t catch it. “What did you say?”

“Class rep, Lu Canran,” the male classmate said, handing over his phone, speaking with a tone of envy. “I looked up the brand logo on the back of her shirt. Guess how much that T-shirt costs? Looks totally ordinary—six thousand!”