Chapter 148: A war without gun smoke
In the end, Su Can fled Shanghai International Studies University in disarray. Even as he left, he still dared not look into Lin Luoran's half-smiling eyes. As always, the girl stood at the campus gate, watching with lake-like eyes as the group left with their arms around one another's shoulders after their day and night of revelry, the curve of a smile never leaving her lips.
A university administrator who had just presented awards onstage sat in a sedan pulling out near the campus gate. Seeing her through the window brought to mind those jewel-bright eyes on the podium, and a certain stirring within him began to take concrete form.
Yet that sedan, which surely ranked among the top ten at Shanghai International Studies University in terms of its occupant's administrative standing, ultimately failed to stop in front of Lin Luoran as she watched her friends leave.
Instead, it passed right by her fluttering blue skirt.
Whether it was because of her own rather distinguished background, or simply because her gaze made certain powerful older men with long-complicated minds afraid to meet her head-on, no one knew.
Only, rain fell again later that night, and amid the torrential downpour, nowhere in the entire university could one find eyes clearer than those of Lin Luoran in her fluttering dress, eyes that seemed capable of piercing the curtain of rain.
In January 2003, as winter set in, Su Can received a letter from California in the United States in his Nanjing University dorm room. The paper envelope bore a postmark from Stanford University's mail center in California and had crossed the ocean to reach his hands.
The envelope was thick. Su Can carefully opened it and, somewhat excited, pulled out its contents. They were