After all the companies had exited in order, everyone left the Sports Field and went their separate ways.
The instructors were gone. No one even knew when they had left. Maybe... it was when they heard that orderly running sound.
In just half a month, the instructors' faces had already been etched deep into everyone's memories: kind, stern, and always true to their word...
In Mo Jingchun's eyes, the instructors were a group of lovable people. Like their students, they were all teenagers under twenty.
The maturity on the instructors' faces had fooled them. If one instructor hadn't mentioned during a break that he was only eighteen, Mo Jingchun and the others would never have guessed.
No one said goodbye, and no one saw them off. That lovable group quietly returned to their barracks. What awaited them now was the veterans' discharge.
As one instructor had put it, "To be a company commander before discharge, leading an entire company of new recruits—my life has been worth it."
Unless something unexpected happened, the students would almost certainly never cross paths with their instructors again, even if they all lived in the same city!
And if they happened to meet years later, who would recognize whom by then?
Even if they saw a stranger who might have once been their university's new-student military training instructor, who would ask if they weren't sure?
Mo Jingchun took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Then, smiling, he walked toward Zhang Huizhen, the senior student serving as their class assistant, and Yang Wenzhao, the senior student serving as their class assistant, who were standing nearby.
Zhang Huizhen held Candy's little hand and waved it at Mo Jingchun as he approached, murmuring:
"Candy, look who that is!"
Mo Jingchun clapped his hands and held out his arms, inviting his little sister Candy to come to him.
Candy had been drinking her milk, but when she saw Mo Jingchun without his hat, she forgot to put the bottle in her right hand back in her mouth.
The little one stretched out her neck, looking left and right, uncertainty in her eyes.
"Hahaha, I'm dying, Mo Jingchun."
"Your sister's starting to wonder if you're really her brother."
"I told you ages ago to buy some sunscreen and put it on, but you wouldn't listen. And now look at you! Military training's over, and the pale pretty boy's turned into Bao Qingtian."
Nearby, the usually taciturn Yang Wenzhao grinned when he heard Bao Qingtian.
Come to think of it, with a crescent moon added, Mo Jingchun really would look like a special-edition Bao Qingtian.
Mo Jingchun rubbed his nose and gave an awkward smile. "I didn't think it would get this bad."
As he spoke, he furrowed his brow. "I don't mind being a little darker. It's a healthy tan. But I don't know why the skin on my arms and neck has started peeling. I pull at it and a huge piece comes off. Once it's off, it looks especially white against the darker skin around it."
"Here, take a look." Mo Jingchun held out his right arm. A very noticeable white patch marked his elbow.
Yang Wenzhao glanced at it and said calmly, "That's normal. It's just dead skin. Some people's skin is like that. A few people in my class had the same thing after military training."
Mo Jingchun breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good. I was about to go to the hospital and get it checked. I thought it might be..."
"Vitiligo."
Mo Jingchun nodded awkwardly.
Yang Wenzhao hummed. "It does look a little like it. Back then, those guys in my class thought the same as you. They figured the chances of all of them getting vitiligo at once were practically zero, but they still went to the hospital together to get checked. The results were pointless—it was just dead skin."
Candy had been staring at him for a while. Only after she heard Mo Jingchun's voice and caught his familiar scent did she finally recognize him.
Mo Jingchun didn't need to reach for her. The little one bent toward him, wanting to be picked up.
Holding his little sister Candy, Mo Jingchun put the bottle in her hand to her mouth. Then he thanked Zhang Huizhen and Yang Wenzhao. "Senior, thank you both for the past half month. You've helped look after my little sister for so long."
"The day after tomorrow's Saturday. I was wondering if you'd be free. I'd like to invite you and Na Jie over for a meal. Um, I'll cook it myself."
Zhang Huizhen had been about to refuse. If Mo Jingchun invited her, Yang Wenzhao, and Na Jie out to eat, it would cost at least two or three hundred yuan. But when she heard he planned to cook, her eyes lit up.
He could cook, and he was confident enough to invite them over. That meant he had faith in his own cooking.
A rare catch!!!
"Sure, sure! If a junior's treating us to a meal, I'm definitely free!" Zhang Huizhen said, then gave Yang Wenzhao, who stood there without reacting, a threatening look, as if to say, "You'd better not refuse, or you're done for."
"I'm free on Saturday too," Yang Wenzhao said with a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"That's great. It's settled, then. I'll ask Na Jie whether she's free Saturday at lunchtime or in the evening when I get back, then I'll message you on QQ to let you know which."
"Sure, no problem."
After saying goodbye to Yang Wenzhao and Zhang Huizhen, Mo Jingchun happily carried his little sister back to the apartment. Along the way, Candy kept glancing at his face and touching the spots where his skin was a different color with her little hand.
The little one's head was full of big question marks.
Candy: ?????
Military training was over, and the school gave them a day off. With Saturday and Sunday added, they had a three-day Short Holiday.
By evening, when Mo Jingchun took his little sister out for a stroll, there were hardly any students still wearing their military training uniforms on campus. But as they walked around, it was easy to tell who had just started university that year.
All the new students, like Mo Jingchun, had skin that looked different from the seniors'—a healthy tan.
Even though plenty of girls, and even boys, had put on sunscreen, they still couldn't withstand the blazing sun.
It was just that Mo Jingchun, who hadn't taken any precautions at all, looked darker than they did.
Mo Jingchun had looked it up on his phone. Generally, how long it took new students like them to regain their fair skin after getting tanned during military training depended on how dark they'd gotten. It would take one to two months.
Along the way, Mo Jingchun noticed that most of the people he passed were new students. There were fewer seniors around than freshmen.
But he glanced at the brightly lit library nearby, and the answer was obvious.
A good learning environment really mattered. It was contagious, too. If everyone around you was working hard and studying, you'd find yourself becoming like them, settling down and focusing on your studies.
The opposite was true as well. If you stayed in an environment with no academic atmosphere, you'd become one of them unless you were exceptionally self-disciplined.
It wasn't easy to be like a lotus, rising unstained from the mud.
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