Chapter 16

It just so happened that Shen Jia was near that classroom too, helping deliver something to a teacher's office next door.
He was in a hurry and accidentally bumped into Shi Zhi as she walked out with the crowd after class, knocking her down jacket—draped over her arm—to the floor.
Shen Jia apologized again and again, picked up her coat for her, and brushed off the dust.
When he looked up at her, he froze for a moment.
He wore a duffle coat, with a knitted vest and a shirt underneath—exactly like the kind of gentle, attentive senior you'd see in TV dramas.
Later, when Shi Zhi came again to sit in on that teacher's class, she ran into Shen Jia at the back of the classroom.
Shen Jia had been waiting for her on purpose.
He said he'd asked around and found that in this year's finance cohort there wasn't a single girl who looked like her.
The sunlight was beautiful that day, falling in through the back windows. When Shen Jia smiled, there was light in his eyes. "I was pretty disappointed at first. It's really great that I got to wait for you. My name is Shen Jia—Jia as in 'commendation'..."
At that, the words "best/Jia combination" inexplicably surfaced in Shi Zhi's mind.
She felt nauseated. She stopped letting herself drift and quickly finished organizing the bar's cashflow spreadsheet, then opened her phone's photo album.
She rarely took selfies. The most recent image she'd saved was still the screenshot Fu Xiling had sent her.
In the screenshot was Tao Jia's Weibo ID.
And the brush width Fu Xiling used to circle that ID wasn't wide enough to completely cover Tao Jia's message to him. The chat hadn't been opened; only a few words were visible.
"Xiling, I'm coming back to China. Have you been..."
The timestamp next to the chat was not long after Shen Jia's birthday.
Shi Zhi only noticed this later, and that was when she decided to cooperate with Fu Xiling.
She deleted every photo and video on her phone related to Shen Jia and never contacted Shen Jia again.
Only once did Shen Jia's friend stop Shi Zhi and say Shen Jia had been doing terribly lately—often going out drinking, even crying when he drank too much, looking miserable.
Shi Zhi smiled and asked back, "What does that have to do with me?"
Those friends didn't know the full story. Perhaps they assumed Shi Zhi was the kind of bad girl who played two men at once. From then on, they stopped coming to her, and if they ran into her on the road, they'd stiffen and look away.
Shi Zhi enjoyed the peace.
In the last month of the semester, besides her classmates and roommates, the person she saw most often was Fu Xiling.
Aside from that first over-the-top stunt, Fu Xiling didn't do anything too outrageous.
Sometimes he'd drive over and sit with Shi Zhi for one or two classes, or eat a meal with her in the cafeteria. Sometimes he'd pick her up, pretend they were going on a date, then drive her to her uncle's bar.
In the last few days before the semester ended, the temperature reached unprecedented highs. The weather forecast issued heat warnings several times; even the news radio kept reminding citizens to take precautions.
Many of B University's teaching buildings and dorms were old and didn't even have air conditioning. The old electric fans spun dutifully, but barely helped.
The cafeteria started serving chilled mung bean soup. When Shi Zhi walked out of the cafeteria, she unexpectedly saw Fu Xiling standing downstairs with a frown, holding his phone to his ear, calling someone.
Then Shi Zhi's phone started vibrating.
It showed an incoming call from Fu Xiling.
She hung up. At the same time, Fu Xiling saw her and walked toward her.
It was B University's exam week. On top of the heat, classes had been suspended and students were told to review on their own.
Shi Zhi had told Fu Xiling that during review they didn't need to meet anymore.
After all, the self-study classrooms were far from the graduate labs and Shen Jia's advisor's office. Even if Fu Xiling came every day, Shen Jia probably wouldn't see it.
So Shi Zhi asked, "Why are you here?"
Fu Xiling grabbed Shi Zhi's wrist and pulled her two steps into the shade before speaking. "Are you free this afternoon?"
Up to now Fu Xiling had been accommodating her schedule. Shi Zhi had also asked him when she would need to show up—to scare off that supposedly smart Yaoyao.
Fu Xiling had never been in a hurry. He always said that when there was an opportunity, he'd let her know.
So in this heat, with barely anyone on the streets, Fu Xiling suddenly asking if she was free made Shi Zhi think the timing had finally come and she needed to appear.
"I'm free."
Shi Zhi pointed at her camisole and shorts. "But I was going to review in the self-study classroom this afternoon. If I go out with you dressed like this, is that okay?"
Fu Xiling didn't think there was anything wrong with how Shi Zhi looked. Beneath the thin straps was fair, smooth skin; her collarbone line was even and beautiful, clean and refined.
Following the direction of her finger downward, all he could see was a pair of long legs so white they were almost dazzling in the sunlight...
"I heard your self-study classrooms don't have AC. You're still going?"
Shi Zhi was irritated by the heat. She raised a hand to wipe away a bead of sweat from her temple and replied casually, "Still better than the dorm. The balcony faces the sun; in the afternoon it's like an oven."
"Then go get your review materials. This afternoon, come with me to a place."
Shi Zhi didn't overthink it.
In weather like this, even standing outside the cafeteria to talk for two minutes made you sweat through your clothes. Who had the energy to think that much?
She took Fu Xiling's car back to her dorm, grabbed her review materials, came downstairs, and got back in.
The air-conditioning finally chased away the heat. Shi Zhi felt better and patted the review materials on her thighs. "So you even gave your shield a diligent, hardworking persona?"
Fu Xiling didn't answer for a long time. In the end he only said, "I figure you really are pretty hardworking—it's forty degrees and you're still thinking about self-study."
The car pulled up to a hotel in the city center and stopped.
The lobby was dazzlingly luxurious—clearly very high-end. Shi Zhi stared at the hotel's English logo for two seconds, then suddenly turned her head, narrowed her eyes, and asked, "Fu Xiling, what are you trying to do?"