Shall I help you rub it?

It was the same restroom. For Su Yuan, it had only been a few minutes, but she found herself back in the same place. Some things were truly unpredictable. Unlike last time, however, she was somewhat reluctant to be here now.

Their eyes met. Lan Qiuzhu said awkwardly, "Um... classmate, are you alright?"

Su Yuan grunted. How could I be alright? My butt feels like it's split open! It still hurts!

Seeing Su Yuan's silence, Lan Qiuzhu tried to apologize. She knew she had really hurt the younger student with that fall. Thinking back, she felt a bit regretful. The other person was just a young girl; why had she been so serious?

Lan Qiuzhu came from a martial arts family and had been trained since childhood. However, as she grew older and became a beauty, she had fewer opportunities to use her skills.

In fact, Lan Qiuzhu's parents didn't want their daughter to practice martial arts. Like most people, they believed that in today's developed society, studying hard and entering the workforce was the right path. Even her parents had abandoned martial arts for academics, becoming business owners and a teacher, let alone their daughter.

But Lan Qiuzhu often snuck over to watch her grandfather train her brother, which was how she learned a move or two.

Although she later blossomed into a beauty and developed her own sense of propriety, she rarely resorted to physical action. However, her foundation remained solid. Occasionally, when no one was around, she would practice a few moves, appreciating them in solitude. Seeing Su Yuan's fluid and skillful attack just now had instantly reactivated a move she had long relegated to the back of her mind.

"How about I help you rub it?" Lan Qiuzhu thought she had come up with a good idea. The junior student was hurt from the fall, so she would rub it for her.

"No!" Su Yuan dodged away.

Lan Qiuzhu's eyes darted around. She thought the junior student was being shy. "Don't be afraid, let your senior rub it for you. Oh, right, my surname is Lan, I'm Lan Qiuzhu. What happened just now was a misunderstanding. I didn't mean to make you fall."

Seeing her insistence on rubbing her butt, Su Yuan felt both embarrassed and angry. She quickly said, "There's no need to rub it. I believe you didn't do it on purpose just now." Speaking of the whole incident, she had also been reckless.

"But you fell so hard, are you okay?" Lan Qiuzhu asked with concern.

"I'm fine."

"Does it still hurt?"

"A little."

"Then let me rub it for you."

The conversation had come full circle. Su Yuan rolled her eyes and looked at her. "How persistent are you!"

Lan Qiuzhu smiled. "I'm just afraid you injured yourself. I believe that fall must have hurt a lot!"

"Of course it did!" Su Yuan replied with dissatisfaction.

If a person simply fell on the ground, and the ground was soft, it might not hurt much. But if the ground was even slightly hard, the problem became very serious. Especially since Su Yuan had fallen almost completely flat, the pain had nearly made her pass out. It was no wonder her eyes had welled up.

Lan Qiuzhu said apologetically, "Okay, it was my fault! Do you want me to accompany you to get an X-ray?"

Su Yuan shook her head. Getting an X-ray seemed like making a mountain out of a molehill. She said, "No, it's just a little pain, nothing serious."

"Then let me treat you to a meal."

"Uh, no need." Actually, Su Yuan was quite tempted by a free meal, especially one with a beautiful woman. But as the saying goes, "Unsolicited kindness often hides ulterior motives." Su Yuan's intuition told her that this girl named Lan Qiuzhu had some improper intentions towards her.

Her approach from the beginning had been very purposeful.

"Oh, what a shame," Lan Qiuzhu sighed and shook her head. However, she found the junior student increasingly cute.

"We've been talking for so long, and I still don't know your name," she said.

"You don't know me?" Su Yuan was a little surprised.

Lan Qiuzhu looked surprised. "Why should I know you? Are you famous at school?"

Su Yuan came to her senses. She suddenly realized she had fallen into a misconception. She always thought she was infamous at school and that no one wouldn't know her. But at this moment, she knew she had been thinking too highly of herself. The world didn't stop turning without anyone. How could she expect everyone in the school to know her?

Her reputation was bad, that was an objective fact, and it wasn't an exaggeration to say it was trending towards worse. Because of this, Su Yuan always felt people pointing fingers at her. Through constant exposure, she believed everyone was talking about her behind her back. But in reality, the number of people who had actually heard her name was probably a very small circle.

They were the so-called "Xiao fans."

Su Yuan felt an urge to cry tears of joy. What did they mean by "the clouds parting to reveal the moon"? It turned out she wasn't as pathetic as she thought.

Her confidence suddenly returned. She smiled at Lan Qiuzhu and said, "My name is Su Yuan. Su from Su Dongpo, Yuan from origin. I'm a sophomore this year."

"Su Yuan? Why would a girl have a name like that?"

Su Yuan's expression froze. She realized then that this senior had thought she was a boy all along. No wonder she had wanted to rub her butt earlier. She had thought she had ulterior motives. A woman rubbing a man's butt would be very intimate, but between two women, it was nothing unusual.

Perhaps realizing she had said something wrong, Lan Qiuzhu smiled. "I'll just call you Su Su then."

Nodding blankly, Su Yuan didn't bother to correct her gender. The more she explained, the more confusing it would become, and she might even be thought of as mentally unstable.

"Oh, right, I almost forgot the main reason. Here, this is for you!" Lan Qiuzhu took out a stack of club application forms from her bag and handed them over.

"Anime club?" Su Yuan glanced at them, looking surprised.

"Yes, I'm the president of the Anime Club. I wanted to invite you to join earlier, but I didn't expect such a big misunderstanding to happen."

Su Yuan's cheeks flushed slightly. She had misjudged Lan Qiuzhu's intentions.

But Lan Qiuzhu being the president of the Anime Club was truly unexpected! She looked more like the president of a martial arts club.

"I have a few more forms here. Take them all. If you find any promising talent, feel free to introduce them to the club."

After taking the forms, Su Yuan said goodbye to Lan Qiuzhu. As for whether she would join the club or not, she hadn't considered it. Now that Lan Qiuzhu thought she was a girl, Su Yuan had no reason to risk her identity being exposed.

Anime club. She would have to pay attention to their activities in the future and try to avoid them.

As she was walking, she passed by an experimental building. From a distance, Su Yuan saw a woman in a white lab coat. The woman also saw her and waved.

"Sister Xia, what are you doing here?" Su Yuan ran over, a smile on her face.

Xia Linfei reached out and casually stroked her head. "I'm doing my postgraduate studies here. I do experiments in this building."

"So that's how it is!" Su Yuan nodded. Seeing that Xia Linfei was still holding a tray of reagents, she offered, "Let me help you carry that."

Interactions between people are strange. Some hit it off immediately, while others clash the moment they meet. Take Lu Wei, for example, who was in the same class as Su Yuan. They had no direct conflict, yet they seemed to instinctively dislike each other, as if connected by a telepathic rivalry. But Xia Linfei gave Su Yuan a different feeling. There was no sense of awkwardness between them; walking together felt as familiar as if they had known each other for years.

Su Yuan liked the wildness about Xia Linfei, especially how it was wrapped in a gentle, mature aura. When it surfaced unintentionally, it made her seem both strong and soft.

"Su Yuan, what's wrong with your butt? Why are you walking so strangely?"

"I don't want to either. It still hurts," Su Yuan said with a wry smile, recounting the misunderstanding in the library.

"I don't think you can completely blame the other person. If she hadn't been capable, she probably would have been the one knocked down."

Su Yuan nodded.

The building Xia Linfei was in was an experimental facility specifically built by Binhe Institute of Technology for biochemistry students and professors. It was constructed with immense investment and housed the most advanced equipment in Binhe City. Currently, many graduate students like Xia Linfei were conducting research in their respective fields within this building.

"Sister Xia, your research direction is molecular biochemistry, right?" After passing through a locked gate and then a glass door, Su Yuan's mind suddenly had an idea as she looked at the precision instruments in several rooms.

"Yes, why?"

"What does molecular biochemistry do?"

Xia Linfei smiled. "It's nothing special. Aren't you a biology student? Molecular biochemistry is a branch of biology that focuses on research at the molecular level."

"So, it's about modifying and analyzing things like DNA and genes within cells?"

Xia Linfei placed the reagents on the table and nodded. "What you're talking about is genetic engineering. In fact, genetic engineering isn't much different from molecular biochemistry; the names and focus are just slightly different."

Su Yuan excitedly asked, "So, can it also examine chromosomes?"