Chapter 39

— “The vice principal dragged me here way too suddenly. I left my phone in the office. Don’t be scared. This will end soon.”
Just those few words got spammed over and over in the live comments.
[Damn—other people confess “I love you,” Campus Xi confesses like he’s making a phone call]
[The most god-tier “confession” I’ve ever seen]
[Ugh, he really got to show off]
[The way he says it seriously is what hits]
[Came from P1, gently crying]
[Other people’s universities…]
[Came from #1 trending, I’ve seen the world now]
[Huada is insane]
[Vice principal: and what about my part in this?]
[Is the vice principal also called Fahai?]
[You can hear Campus Xi is mad about being yanked here LOL]
[Without vice principal could you even see this confession? He’s basically a bodhisattva]
[#ThanksHuadaVicePrincipal#]
[Help, is there a supertopic? I NEED their past and present today]
[UP: quick PSA—we built off-campus “shipping sugar” groups in the pinned comment. 7 groups are full now. Freshmen please join the freshman group]
[There is a supertopic: “Temple CP.” Too scared to put it under CP category so we put it under “Education”]
[LMAO under Education—teaching you how to date in college?]
[Q: how do I find a boyfriend like Xi Siyan]
[Q2: how do I find a boyfriend like Jing Miao, I’m a top]
[Xi Siyan, I covet your wife]
[Answer: first you must do a PhD at Huada; second you must get into the hardest Sci/Math/Chem cluster; last you must meet]
[Answer: become Jing Miao and you get Xi Siyan; become Xi Siyan and you get Jing Miao]
[Thanks, I’ve been educated]
[Admitted already, starting term I’m going to see the Temple CP, nya nya]
[Unprovoked flex, reported]
[Wuwu if I apply to Huada grad school this year can I still see them]
[@SouthChinaUni: come learn effective recruitment]
[@Xida: you too]
[@WuhanU @BJNormal @Haidu and @all 211/985 schools]
[Same “university,” our Tier-2s are still closeted while they’re dominating Bilibili]
[Same “university,” we’re still preaching “study hard,” they’re trending for being in love]
[Huada official site putting Campus Xi’s project interview + Jing Miao’s first-prize photo on student highlights is so on point]
[Our motto: lofty ideals, embrace all rivers]
[So yeah, study hard—better schools are freer and more progressive]
[Thanks, educated again]
[Okay I’m back from the supertopic: no “past-life lore”]
[Too many versions, too wild—basically fanfiction]
[If you look at their daily sweetness, the fanfic is super OOC]
[Stop roasting, our students tried their best]
[It’s real: one re-enrolled, one graduated years ago. It’s hard]
[Xi Siyan’s cohort had only a few PhDs in the group. Really hard]
[Little crybaby is too introverted, so it’s hard]
[Can’t piece together a story so we just imagine—no one comes out to speak]
[Premium danmaku: he calls him “gege,” he calls him “Miaomiao” or “baby”]
[Damn, premium danmaku is showing off]
[“Gege/baby” is normal, not sweet]
[Spit. You’ve never heard it. It’s not “normal” like you think!]
[Classmate of Jing Miao here: not sweet and I’ll give you my head]
[Premium danmaku: “gege baby not sweet I’ll give you my head” +1 +1 +1]
……
As the video’s views climbed higher, Huada—being generous—directly used the video as the cover for an admissions feature on the official account.
Their fame spread through alumni circles too. Graduates who had returned for the centennial—who had once been Jing Miao’s classmates for two years—were completely baffled.
Some even suspected their own memory had glitched.
That chain-reaction car accident had injured too many people. Three died on the spot. Dozens of students and pedestrians were affected. They only knew Jing Miao had been one of them.
Later, up until graduation, they never saw that low-presence classmate again.
They first assumed he must have recovered and returned to campus.
But as they joined the shipping frenzy and tried to piece together “the lore,” these old alumni grew increasingly disoriented.
In the leaked clips, photos, and first-hand sugar testimonies, that person didn’t resemble the Jing Miao in their memory at all.
Jing Miao’s current classmates believed he was an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boy.
His former classmates, now mostly twenty-three or twenty-four, fell into confusion—yes, Jing Miao had enrolled young, but not *that* young, right?
In pictures and stories, he looked tender and inexperienced, always like a child beside Xi Siyan.
It was almost like a parallel universe.
When Jiang Hongyue learned about it, he came out to explain quickly: Jing Miao had memory issues after the accident.
It didn’t really solve the age-perception mismatch, but people stopped nitpicking.
They all knew Jing Miao’s old life had been too hard.
That quiet, beautiful male classmate who rarely spoke always wore the same few plain clothes, thin layers in every season; his life bore traces of part-time work everywhere you looked.
Milk tea shops, bookstores, cafés off campus.
Supermarket cashier, promoter…
Winning the highest scholarships in his department while haunting the library, study rooms, cafeteria…
That Jing Miao was something Huada students today could barely imagine:
poor, diligent, stubborn, strong.
The Jing Miao now was like a butterfly remade in bone and blood, luminous and unreal—you couldn’t feel the cocoon he once lived in.
Jiang Hongyue would always remember the day he saw Xi Siyan and Jing Miao come buy a dog together.
All he could think was:
beautiful people deserve beautiful endings.
Human suffering had drifted far from him.
All that remained was flowers and full moons.
And by a tangle of fate, without really noticing, Jing Miao finished his undergraduate degree in eight years.