A cool silence spread, their eyes met, and their gazes were locked. The old-fashioned wall clock made a faint ticking sound, and time quietly slipped away.
Chu Zihang suddenly regretted it, wanting to slap himself. The atmosphere was too weird! It was all because of his bad habit of giving speeches from his school days—he accidentally got emotional, as if he were on stage again. And he was slow to realize it; by the time he noticed Xia Mi staring blankly and not interrupting, he had already gone off-topic but couldn’t stop… How would he end it now?
Suddenly, there was a burst of applause.
“Well said! If you had started writing five years earlier, those romance novelists would be out of a job now!” Xia Mi clapped, as if she had just listened to some passionate speech.
Chu Zihang stared at her bright eyes, a bit dazed.
“If you like someone, you should tell her quickly,” Xia Mi nodded earnestly. “Otherwise, she’ll run away.”
“Some things only count if you say them. If you don’t say anything, people will just guess, and eventually, it all falls apart.” Xia Mi chuckled. “But that’s so indirect—it’s no wonder, Senior, that you’re a hopeless Cancer.”
“Gemini, born on June 1st,” Chu Zihang corrected.
Xia Mi bared her teeth in a smile. “But your rising sign is in Cancer, and you have four planets in Cancer in your natal chart. You’re a fake Gemini, a true Cancer. Isn’t Cancer exactly like you? Soft on the outside, full of emotions, sensitive, and your heart always races ahead of your words. By the time you’re ready to speak, you’ve already overthought it, and if you think your pride’s at stake, you swallow your words, holding it all in. People call that a ‘hopeless Cancer.’”
“How do you know my natal chart?” Chu Zihang was stunned.
“Don’t you think… I understand you really well?” Xia Mi made a funny face and then sighed faintly. “You’re just forgetful, aren’t you? We were classmates! At Shilan Middle School! We went to the same junior high! I transferred later on!”
Chu Zihang froze. He couldn’t remember meeting Xia Mi. There were many pretty girls at Shilan Middle School, but he always walked with his head down, not really looking at people. Could it be that on the bustling playground, while the boys played basketball and the girls gathered to watch them, flipping through fashion magazines, there was a junior girl about to transfer out, watching him from afar, unnoticed? Xia Mi’s name felt unfamiliar, but that scent seemed to be deeply etched in his mind.
“If you see the fish come up to breathe under the ice, if you wait there next winter, you’ll see the fish come up again. When you see it again, you can bring an ice pick, break the ice, and scoop the fish up to make fish soup! That’s the follow-up.” Xia Mi squinted and smiled, “Hey!”
She slung her bag over her shoulder, put her hands behind her back, and hopped out the door. When she reached the doorway, she turned around. “The friend you’re talking about is Brother Lu, right? Senior, you really can’t hide anything. You totally sold Brother Lu out.”
She laughed as she ran away.
“Can you reject Caesar’s application? Find some reason; you’re good at making excuses anyway.” Fifty meters below the Cassell College library, among dark servers and pipes, a man leaned back in a computer chair, his hands behind his head.
Soft light illuminated his stubbled face. The beam shone from above, projecting a semi-transparent girl. She wore a dark green school uniform, the pure white lace collar blending almost seamlessly with her pale face.
“I can provide a recommendation, but I can’t directly reject it. The Principal and Vice-Principal also give their input. Even if all three of us oppose it, the School Board can force it through.” EVA shook her head. “In this matter, the Gattuso family has enough influence to sway the entire board. If the family agrees to the marriage, no one can stop it.”
“That’s a bit of a headache…”
“But since you’ve asked, I’ll note my objection on the report.”
“Perfect! My girl’s reliable as always!” The man snapped his fingers.
“Last time you asked me to change his grades; this time you’re asking me to reject his report. You’re practically his nanny now. You’ve always hated meddling… why are you going out of your way for him?” EVA tilted her head, her hair cascading down to her feet. She smiled mischievously, but her expression was as clear as frost.
The man shrugged. “I want to delay the marriage, give Lu Mingfei a chance… at least some time to fight for it.”
“Pity him?” EVA shook her head. “But what’s the point? That child can’t grow up under your protection forever. Even if you give him a chance, it’s up to him to seize it. He’s too timid. Since learning about this, he’s just been drinking himself to sleep every day, like he’s lost his soul.”
“How do you know?”
“There are very few things in this college that escape my surveillance. I can tell just by looking at his nightly snack receipts.” EVA said, “A weak child, in the end, is useless.”
“Yeah, he’s a weak child. But those who need to grow will grow, and those destined to awaken will not be stopped. Those are matters of the future, not my concern.” The man shook a can of cold cola. “I just want to give the kid a bit of hope. A loser like him has so little, and values even less. Just a few things fill his heart completely. Chen Motong isn’t really his, but she takes up a huge part of his mind. Without her, there’ll be an empty space that nothing else can fill,” the man touched his left chest, “so he keeps drinking. There’s a thirst that only alcohol can quench, and that thirst is loneliness.”
After a long silence, EVA reached out her ethereal hand, stroking the man’s hair. “You’ve grown old. You didn’t used to talk like this—you were proud like a beast.”
“Since I lost you,” the man reached out to hold her hand, or maybe just a handful of light and air, and said softly, “I’ve been lonely too.”
“Someone’s invading.” EVA suddenly raised her head.
“It’s impossible for you to be invaded by design!” The man was shocked.
EVA sighed. “It’s because of you. You were originally the only one who could truly hack me, but you worried the School Board might copy hidden files from my storage core, so you used a super command to disable some of my functions, even forbidding white-card holders from accessing me. Because of that, my defense is incomplete.”
“Damn it! Is that super command really that powerful?” The man rubbed his forehead.
“You should really read the manual I gave you. Super commands operate on the system’s lowest level, each one being extremely powerful. One of them can even make me self-destruct. Want to remember that one?” EVA smiled, reaching out to touch the man’s face, like a mother treating a spoiled child who had made a mistake.
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