The next day in Old Professor Lin’s class, the spiky-haired young lord shuffled in yawning, and dropped himself into a seat.
“Water.”
Am I your housemaid?
“Water.”
Zhu Yun dutifully passed him a bottle of mineral water. Li Xun drank, summoned what little energy he had, and opened his laptop.
“I need to take a few days off,” Zhu Yun said.
“For what?”
“Something came up.”
“What something?”
“Why do you need to know?”
Li Xun ran his eyes over her once, top to bottom.
“Your period?”
“………………”
Li Xun said magnanimously: “Fine. Paid leave.”
The conversation seemed to go smoothly enough.
But that same evening, as Zhu Yun was in her dorm room studying the Baoke project brief, her phone rang. It was Li Xun.
She had noticed this habit of his back at the base — the top-scoring Li almost never sent text messages, and practically never used any chat applications. He considered them too inefficient. If he wanted to reach someone, he called directly. If you didn’t pick up, that was your problem.
Zhu Yun took a sip of water first to clear her throat. “Hello?”
“Come outside.” His voice was low and flat.
“Now?” Zhu Yun glanced toward the window. “It’s pretty late.”
“I’m downstairs at your dormitory. You have one minute.” He hung up.
I still need to change. One minute — what am I supposed to do, jump out the window?
Zhu Yun weighed her options — clothes versus Li Xun — for approximately three seconds, then headed downstairs exactly as she was, in her pajamas.
Li Xun was waiting beside the milk tea shop at the entrance of the dormitory building.
The sky had gone fully dark. The faint glow of the milk tea shop was nowhere near enough to dispel the low-pressure front radiating off Li Xun. Zhu Yun walked over, and while she was still five meters away, the proprietor opened his mouth —
“Did you get your brain caught in a door?”
“……”
Would it kill you to speak like a human being.
The combination of wild-haired delinquent and pajama-clad girl was drawing far too many glances from passing students. Unable to bear the stares, Zhu Yun went over and said quietly, “Come on, let’s move somewhere else.”
Li Xun followed her to a spot beside the shrubbery.
No lights here. Only moonlight.
And firelight — Li Xun lit a cigarette; the amber ember glowed and dimmed in turns.
“Tell me what exactly is going through your head,” he said again.
There was a moon overhead, silver and beautiful.
…But not quite illuminating enough for the moment.
“You’re laughing?” Li Xun stared at her.
Zhu Yun quickly shook her head and arranged her expression into something serious.
Li Xun had said his piece. Now he got to the point. “Zhang Xiaobei found you for a project?”
Zhu Yun nodded. She hadn’t even opened her mouth before Li Xun cut her off —
“Turn it down.”
“…I’ve already agreed.”
“I’m telling you to turn it down!”
He was losing patience. Zhu Yun held her ground.
“No.”
“You dare disobey me?”
“……”
Zhu Yun paused, then said: “Li Xun.”
“What?”
“I think you might be under a slight misapprehension…”
“What misapprehension?”