What a wonderful morning. Sunlight poured through the skylight onto Xia Mi, the slender and graceful girl standing on one leg with ballet-like elegance, reaching out to steal them two cans of Coke. Lu Mingfei watched her leg rise into the sunlight, every line youthful and smooth, every inch of skin soft and delicate. For the first time, he understood the ancient phrase “a perfect balance of flesh and bone.”
“TRY A WEEK WITHOUT RAILWAY!!!” read a huge white banner hanging in the empty waiting hall of Chicago’s train station.
Lu Mingfei looked up at it and let out a deep sigh, his heart filled with a sense of bleakness.
They had flown all the way to Chicago, hurrying straight to the train station, only to find this—a waiting hall littered with paper, signs, and soda cans. Just hours before they landed at Chicago International Airport, all the railway workers of Chicago had marched in protest, and then they’d all gone home. They wouldn’t be back for a week.
They were on strike.
Lu Mingfei had grown up under the banner of socialism, always singing praises about strikes. During his high school political exam, when the teacher had asked about strike movements, Lu Mingfei had passionately quoted Comrade Lenin: “The spiritual influence of strikes is profound! Every strike greatly encourages workers to think about socialism and the struggle needed to liberate our class from the oppression of capital!”
But now that he had to use his own wallet to support the Chicago Railway workers, Lu Mingfei felt a pang of pain. The CC1000 Express Line was operated by the college, but without signalmen and a dispatch center, no trains could run. There was no way they could make it to campus on time. While it might be excusable as an “act of God,” meaning it wouldn’t affect their GPA, the cost of staying in Chicago for a week wasn’t covered by the college.
“Then we’ll stay in Chicago for a week,” Chu Zihang said calmly. “If it’s inconvenient for you, you can share a room with me. I’ll cover the cost.”
Lu Mingfei felt secretly happy—he’d already guessed that his stoic senior wouldn’t be stingy with money and had been waiting for those very words!
He hoisted his luggage onto his shoulder. “Alright! Let’s go get a room!”
A light giggle came from above. “Two grown men getting a room together?”
Lu Mingfei was startled. Just moments ago, the waiting hall had only contained him and Chu Zihang. Could it be that Lu Mingze was being mischievous again? He looked up for the source of the voice, suddenly noticing the large white banner—ten meters long on each side—trembling slightly, as if someone was hiding behind it. That person-shaped shadow moved left along the beam, a hand reaching out from behind the cloth to unhook it from the left side, then moving to the right to unhook the other side.
“Careful!” Chu Zihang said suddenly.
He saw the beam shake, and the person behind the banner lost balance, pulling the entire banner down. At that moment, a gust of wind blew into the waiting hall, and the banner fell like a descending cloud. Both Chu Zihang and Lu Mingfei lunged forward to catch the person—after all, falling from five or six meters would almost certainly break some bones. Lu Mingfei hadn’t gone two steps before the banner wrapped around him, causing him to panic and trip, falling face-first to the ground like an angel. Chu Zihang was a step slower, but he saw the figure wrapped in the cloth clearly and caught them smoothly.
Light as a feather.
“Who are you, who are you? Are you crazy? You made me fall flat on my face!” Lu Mingfei grumbled as he got up, rubbing his waist.
A head poked out from the banner, looking around. For a moment, both Lu Mingfei and Chu Zihang were silent. Chu Zihang gently set the person down and took a step back.
It was both an expression of respect for a woman and a kind of reverence for beauty. Like a tomb raider who had stumbled into Tutankhamun’s tomb, gazing silently at the exquisite golden mask, seemingly sealed in time, not daring to touch it for fear of disturbing its beauty and causing it to age upon awakening.
The girl looked at them curiously. In her clear eyes, both of them could see themselves looking awkward and uneasy.
As a homebody, Lu Mingfei had his own ranking of beautiful women. Nono and Su Xiaoyan were tied for first place—no need to explain about the red-haired witch, and Su Xiaoyan didn’t earn the nickname “Little Celestial Maiden” for nothing. She was mixed race, her mother was Portuguese, so she had the sharp features of a European but also the softness of an Eastern girl. Ranked second was Zero. The Ice Queen’s beauty was somewhere between that of a young woman and a girl—aloof like snow, with an air of arrogance—but she always wore a cold expression, as if the world owed her millions of rubles. Liu Miaomiao was third, while Chen Wenwen was only fourth, even with Lu Mingfei’s personal bias likely affecting the scoring.
But none of these girls could be called “flawless.” “Flawless” wasn’t necessarily a good word—anything alive had imperfections, and a truly flawless face only existed under the sculptor’s chisel.
But looking at this girl’s face, you felt like a sculpture had come to life.
“Hey, monster, how are you?” Lu Mingfei mumbled.
He meant that only a monster could be this beautiful—a deep joke he doubted his stoic senior or the beauty herself would understand.
Chu Zihang elbowed him. “She’s our classmate.”
The girl grinned. “I’m not a monster, I’m a softie!”
Lu Mingfei laughed. It seemed there was someone who understood his humor. He then noticed that the girl was holding a black train ticket in her mouth—the special CC1000 Express Line ticket.
“Chu Zihang, Department of Mechanics.” Chu Zihang reached out to pull her up.
The girl emerged from the white cloth. She was wearing a simple white tank top with indigo floral designs and a pair of short shorts, with short socks and sneakers, topped with a pair of sunglasses on her head.
“Senior!” The girl hopped up. “I’m a freshman, Xia Mi.”
“Hey, hey, don’t ignore me.” Lu Mingfei elbowed Chu Zihang to the side. “I’m also your senior! Lu Mingfei, History Department.”
“Oh, you’re a humanities guy?” Xia Mi widened her eyes and looked Lu Mingfei up and down.