An embrace

Before the second semester of his freshman year officially began, Li Shu made a point of checking his bank balance. When the screen opened and he saw that long string of zeros, for a moment he thought his phone had frozen.

Only after confirming that this really was the original owner's bank balance did Li Shu let out an exclamation that betrayed how little of the world he had seen.

"No, seriously, I have to say something about him."

"He had all this money, and instead of improving himself and broadening his horizons, he insisted on suffering for love over Chen Yannan?"

The system offered an explanation.

[This is a manifestation of a lack of love. The original owner rarely experienced care or paternal love growing up, and would unconsciously magnify the care Chen Yannan showed him. In such an environment, it could easily develop into 'love' during his impressionable years.]

"Okay, okay, okay. Aren't you the educated one."

Although the original owner had fallen out badly with his family, Li Shu discovered that a deposit came into this account on the first of every month. It was probably the living allowance his family sent him.

Unfortunately, the original owner had been stubborn, too. Li Shu could practically picture him craning his neck and talking back to the Li family: "I don't want lots of money. I want lots of love."

Sigh. If I just went back like this...

Then simply said, 'I was wrong,' it wouldn't seem very sincere.

Li Shu decided that once he successfully changed majors, he would earnestly apologize to the original owner's older brother and father on his behalf.

Morning exercises and evening study sessions could be called the two great tortures of freshman year.

Cheng Zhen simply couldn't understand how Li Shu still had the energy to go off campus to see Zhaocai before morning exercises at seven thirty. All he had to do was go to the sports field to see a whole crowd of sleepy freshman dogs.

Li Shu had never studied finance in either of his lives, but fortunately, freshman year included plenty of general foundation courses, and the regular exams covered basic material.

Finding instructional videos online, reviewing the material in the textbooks, and then doing the exercises at the end of each chapter already put him ahead of eighty percent of college students.

On top of that, online scams had been running rampant lately. Only one week into the semester, the university had already organized two anti-fraud lectures.

With his little backpack on, Li Shu had barely left the classroom after his eight a.m. class before he went pounding toward the neighboring teaching building as though his backside were on fire. Once he finished there, he ate lunch at the cafeteria in the teaching area, then turned straight toward the library.

Seeing Li Shu work so hard immediately put Cheng Zhen on alert.

His own descent into sloth was painful enough, but his roommate's hard work was even more distressing.

Especially when Cheng Zhen heard Li Shu turning pages while he was gaming in their room. It was practically a horror movie.

The library.

"I thought you were joking. Have you told Chen Yannan about changing majors?" Cheng Zhen picked out a CET-4 vocabulary book and sat across from Li Shu.

Li Shu shook his head, found where he had stopped yesterday's online lesson, and put on his earphones.

"Why would I tell him something like that?"

"That's true, but given your relationship, wouldn't it be a little bad not to give him a heads-up?" Then Cheng Zhen changed tack. "Still, I heard Chen Yannan has another guy around him lately. I went to scrub my shoes the day before yesterday and saw the two of them coming back from off campus."

Li Shu said, "It's not the first time Yannan's had someone around."

He made it sound so easy.

Cheng Zhen really couldn't see any strain on Li Shu's face, but he kept feeling that Li Shu was putting on a brave front. He had liked Chen Yannan so much before. How could he have one birthday and suddenly renounce love altogether? Was he secretly preparing some big move?

But that thought vanished when he glanced over and saw that Li Shu had already started working on reading comprehension.

A buddy can screw me over, but he absolutely cannot outwork me.

Watching the video's progress bar on his tablet, Li Shu suddenly saw a scene flash before his eyes.

It was the first time he had seen Chen Yannan walking with a pretty boy on campus, shortly after he started university. Even in high school, plenty of boys and girls had had crushes on Chen Yannan, but Chen Yannan was a man of firm principles in certain respects.

Chen Yannan had told Li Shu that he wasn't allowed to date before adulthood, so Chen Yannan had strictly observed that rule himself.

So when Li Shu had gone looking for Chen Yannan full of excitement, only to find an unfamiliar boy standing beside him with something intimate in the air between them, his vision had gone dark. He had come within a hair of breaking into tears.

But his sadness hadn't lasted long. The next day, he heard that Chen Yannan had broken up with the boy.

At the time, Li Shu had felt alive again.

He had found countless seemingly reasonable excuses for Chen Yannan, refusing to consider just one thing-

Anyone could play the role of Chen Yannan's lover except him, Li Shu.

His thoughts drifted away and returned in an instant.

He looked up and saw Cheng Zhen scratching his head in frustration over English vocabulary, and most of his unease abruptly settled.

It's all right. There's still time to correct every mistake.

They studied until after four in the afternoon.

The weather was still chilly, and the sun set much earlier than it did in summer. Hugging his CET-4 review materials, Li Shu furtively crept around to the other side of a bookshelf and stood the materials up by the window.

Then he took a step back.

Facing that pile of materials, he bowed devoutly three times.

"This faithful believer is willing to eat vegetarian and chant Buddhist prayers. Please bless me with a pass on the CET-4 this time."

As though afraid these CET-4 materials wouldn't be satisfied, Li Shu gave another two emphatic bows.

With his mysterious ritual complete, Li Shu turned around in satisfaction-

And met a pair of dark, smiling eyes.

Hiss-

That single look frightened Li Shu so badly his scalp nearly exploded. Luckily, he managed to stifle his voice in time, but his heart kept pounding away.

"Pei Song'an, do you walk without making a sound?"

The young man was handsome and sunny. The words that slipped out carried a hint of reproach without being affected, but the lilt at the end made the listener's heart itch.

Only after saying that did Li Shu let out a long breath. Thinking of his bizarre bowing just now, he suddenly grew embarrassed first and guiltily avoided meeting his eyes.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

The library's central air conditioning kept the temperature comfortable. Li Shu wore a light coffee-colored knit sweater with a slightly wide neckline, exposing a long stretch of pale neck and a little of his collarbones.

Pei Song'an lowered his gaze. Beneath his lashes, his calm yet intensely predatory eyes rested silently on Li Shu's collarbones and the hollows where light and shadow collided.

"I just wanted to test whether your radar would go off if I walked near you."

Li Shu bared his teeth in irritation. "Of course it wouldn't. I'm not a dog!"

"Are you here to study?" Li Shu asked.

Pei Song'an chuckled. "No, I'm here to bow devoutly to CET-4 study materials, and burn a little incense while I'm at it."

Li Shu was so embarrassed that even his spine tingled.

He felt that even though Pei Song'an was exceptionally handsome and pleasing to look at right now, it couldn't make up for him being a teasing jerk.

"You're so annoying. I'm not talking to you anymore."

Li Shu ducked his head and hugged his CET-4 materials, ready to flee. He had only taken two steps when the system, which had been quiet all this time, suddenly let out an unusually piercing sound.

[Beep! Beep! Beep!]

[Warning!]

[An action trajectory outside the plot is about to occur. Host, please immediately restore the plot to its original trajectory!]

Li Shu panicked.

You haven't told me anything! What am I supposed to fix?!

Ignoring Pei Song'an's strange look, he turned and ran back to where he had been standing, but the alarm in his mind kept blaring.

So the problem wasn't that I left on my own. And the system said 'about to occur,' which meant someone or something that would affect the plot was about to appear?

Anyway, I just have to keep Pei Song'an here, right!

At that thought, Li Shu stopped worrying about whether he was being presumptuous, set his materials on the windowsill, and lunged straight at Pei Song'an.

"Please, don't hit me, don't hit me. I can explain!"

Despite the pleading words, Li Shu held Pei Song'an tight, looking ready to fight him to the death if he dared push him away.

In an instant, a clean, refreshing scent of soap flooded Pei Song'an's nose. Though clothing separated them, the press of skin against skin was too close, too unrestrained, as urgent as a spring wind that rustled ceaselessly past his ears.

The young man's waist was firm and slender. Moving a palm just a little higher would bring it to the shoulder blades beneath his sweater, and the back of his neck glowed a lustrous milky white under the library's incandescent lights.

Perhaps he had been bewitched.

Pei Song'an didn't push him away.