Song Shi'an was woken by the system notification chiming in his head.
[100,000 Affection Points reached. The Elementary Academic Knowledge Assistance Skill has been automatically redeemed for the host, covering all undergraduate major courses.]
He opened his eyes groggily. Before he could digest those words, a huge mass of formulas, theorems, and derivations flooded into his mind like water bursting through open floodgates.
The three laws of thermodynamics, classifications of energy storage materials, battery charge and discharge curves-every piece of knowledge hung crystal clear in his mind, ready to be found with a casual flip.
The feeling was incredible. He sat up and tried recalling the page on energy storage principles he had read yesterday.
Those formulas that had looked like an indecipherable heavenly script now seemed as simple as elementary arithmetic.
But that joy was smashed to smithereens by the distance to his first class.
An eight a.m. class, in a classroom twelve kilometers from his dorm.
He stared at the classroom location on his timetable and checked it three times, then zoomed in and out of the map twice.
Why build a university this big? They might as well put in a high-speed rail station.
He scanned a shared bike, slung on his backpack, and pedaled furiously toward the teaching building.
There weren't many people on campus this early, just a scattering of students out for morning runs along the plane-tree avenue.
Song Shi'an swept past them on his bike, his speed stirring up a gust that blew the hair over his forehead backward.
He was in a hurry and never noticed a girl behind him holding up her phone and snapping several photos of his retreating figure.
When he reached the classroom's back entrance, Song Shi'an slipped silently through the door before the teacher started taking attendance and sat by the window in the last row.
He tugged his mask up, took out his textbook, and set it on the desk, pretending he had been there the whole time.
The campus confessions page posted a new submission, with a photo of someone riding a bike away from the camera.
His white T-shirt billowed slightly in the wind, the lines of his shoulders especially distinct in the morning light. The breeze lifted his hair, exposing a stretch of neat, clean-cut nape.
The caption read: "Help me find him! Who is this hottie!!! He went whooshing right past me, and by the time I reacted, I could only get a picture of his back!!"
Dozens of comments had already piled up below.
"Girl, you're not the only one. I saw him too. He was practically flying, and by the time I tried to get a better look, he was gone!"
"What are you all talking about? What hottie? How come everyone ran into him except me!"
"I just want to know if he was wearing a mask. Did you see his face? The suspense is killing me."
A new comment was bumped to the top: "Well, unfortunately for you, he's sitting next to me. I've been staring at him for ten minutes and only just came to my senses enough to comment."
The person who posted it was Li Meng. At that moment, she was sitting one seat away from Song Shi'an, her phone facedown on the desk, her heart racing as though she had just run eight hundred meters.
She stole a sideways glance. The morning sunlight happened to slant through the window and fall across his profile, tracing every contour from his brow bone to the bridge of his nose to his jaw.
Where had this guy come from? Had he been in their class before? Was he from another university, here to sit in?
Her mind was a pot of bubbling porridge, and her face kept getting hotter. She fanned herself several times to try to cool down, then slumped over her desk, sat up again, and flipped through two pages without taking in a single word. She kept squirming in her seat without a moment's rest.
A voice suddenly sounded beside her. "Hey, what's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?"
Song Shi'an watched the girl beside him slump over, blush, and fan herself by turns. She had been sitting there for half an hour, acting as though thorns were growing all over her.
He thought she had low blood sugar or heatstroke, and there was a hint of concern in his voice.
Li Meng felt as though that voice had lightly scratched her ears.
She turned her head mechanically and found herself facing the very face the sunlight had just traced, now less than half as far away.
Her mind went blank in an instant. She stammered for ages before finally lowering her head. "N-no, I'm fine... It's just my low blood sugar acting up."
Song Shi'an remembered that before he left that morning, Chi Xun had stuffed a bag of milk candies into his backpack, saying they were imported or something and telling him to eat them if he got hungry.
He opened his bag, fished out a few, and held them out. "Have one of these. You'll feel a lot better."
Li Meng stared at his open palm, his long fingers and well-defined knuckles, and the few milk candies in white wrappers resting in his hand.
She cautiously reached out. The instant her fingertips touched his palm, she jerked back as though shocked, clutching the candy, her face red enough to boil an egg.
Mommy, I think I've run into a top-tier succubus!!!
The moment the bell rang, Song Shi'an swung his backpack over his shoulder and was the first to dash out the back door.
He moved so fast that before the others who wanted to come over and join the fun after class could even stand up, all that remained at his seat was a textbook he hadn't had time to close.
Li Meng held the milk candy and stared at the empty back doorway, then lowered her head to look at the candy in her palm.
Song Shi'an really did have something to do that made him run so fast. Yesterday afternoon, he had found a part-time dog-walking job on a local listings site.
Sixty an hour per dog. The household had three dogs, and each walk lasted two hours. The job required plenty of energy and strength, and he could set his own hours.
He had contacted them immediately. Three dogs, two hours, three hundred and sixty. This wasn't a part-time job; this was the God of Wealth.
The other party had sent him the door code straight away and told him to just go inside and take the dogs out for a walk. There were cameras in the house, and they would contact him on WeChat if anything came up.
Standing in front of the door with its keypad lock, Song Shi'an wondered, Has trust between people really reached this level now?
He entered the code and pushed the door open. Three cameras faced the entrance in a neat row, their red lights blinking. He raised a hand in a friendly greeting.
Before he could lower his hand, two black shapes and one golden shape shot out from the living room at the same time. Two huskies and a golden retriever, six paws scrabbling madly on the floor, then all three lunged at him together.
Song Shi'an hurriedly steadied himself, nearly knocked over by the three large dogs.
He looked down at three pairs of shining eyes and three tails wagging like propellers, took a deep breath, then reached out and gave the nearest husky's head a vigorous rub.
"All right, you big cuties. You're under my command today."
He took three muzzles and leashes off the hooks by the door and put them on the dogs one by one.
Even with their muzzles on, the three dogs were just as enthusiastic, circling around him until the leashes had wound around his legs several times and nearly trussed him up like a rice dumpling.
It took Song Shi'an five minutes to sort out the three dogs and their three leashes. He held the two huskies in one hand and the golden retriever in the other.
As he went out, he felt less like he was walking the dogs and more like the dogs were walking him.