Chapter 3: The enemy is a loner

After the brain surgery seven years ago, Tong An’yu had inevitably forgotten some things.

The surgery itself was very successful, but since it involved the nerves, there were bound to be some effects.

The doctor said that as time went on, she might gradually remember, but she would need to constantly engage in self-stimulation.

Tong An’yu found it troublesome and didn’t push herself.

So, regarding Lin Huaixu, she ultimately extracted three key pieces of information—

[Her family bankrupted his family; they are arch-nemeses.]

[She dated him, but he didn’t seem to love her deeply.]

[She should have pulled away immediately back then, but she really craved him ^_^]

Why was she so greedy back then…

Worried that the large bump on the back of her head would be seen by her parents and brother, Tong An’yu didn’t dare to go back to the family villa.

She called Tong Miao and made up a lie: “Mom, I have some work to deal with unexpectedly, so I won’t be coming home.”

“I’ll sleep at my place in the CBD for the night.”

“We even packed dessert for you,” Tong Miao said, patting her husband beside her and then gesturing to the phone, whispering, “Xiao Yu.”

Si Zhan exchanged a look with his wife and raised an eyebrow, asking the Tong An’yu on the other end of the phone, “Is the traffic from the airport really that bad that a great lady like you could be delayed for an hour?”

Passing by, Si Xu noticed his parents’ expressions and teased from a distance, “I find it strange too, but Yuming-ge doesn’t usually lie, unless someone pitifully begs him.”

Tong An’yu’s heart pounded wildly.

These members of her family were all sharp as tacks; fooling them was no easy feat.

“I drove to T2 by mistake at first.”
“The rain was so heavy I couldn’t see the signs at all.”

“Then the traffic started backing up in the parking garage, and it took over forty minutes just to get on the road, and I didn’t dare to drive fast.”

She used the script from Lin Huaixu’s driver.

This explanation was indeed plausible, and driving on a rainy night was truly dangerous.

Tong Miao regretted it: “I shouldn’t have let you go in the first place.”

“Yuming-ge has been away on business for so long.”

“We all went to dinner, but just sending a driver to pick him up would have been so cold.”

“Not bad, my little sister has such high emotional intelligence,” Si Xu teased her.

“Hmph.”

Si Zhan clearly had no more doubts: “Is your Yuming-ge home?”

“I dropped him off.”

“His parents weren’t even home when he arrived.”
Ji Yuming had coordinated their stories with her, ensuring there were no leaks.

“Alright, remember to eat dinner and go to bed early.”

“And cut back on the dieting,” Si Zhan reminded her.

“Make my brother give Cooper a bath!”

“Like you need to remind me,” Si Xu shouted back.

Cooper was Tong An’yu’s Maine Coon.
Since she was abroad for most of the year, Si Xu was mostly the one taking care of the cat.

The dying kitten that had once shivered under the wheel of a Mini Cooper was now living a life of luxury.

Having placated her parents, Tong An’yu lay on her side in bed, clutching the back of her head, with no appetite at all.

On a whim, she fiddled with her phone, looking at Lin Huaixu’s WeChat profile picture.

It was a ‘seascape’ after sunset—deep blue, with serene lights and gentle waves, reflecting the blurry silhouettes of two people.

Based on her knowledge of Jing City’s geography, she quickly recognized that it wasn’t the sea, but the Jinshui River, near Twilight Harbor.

This style of photography… was so familiar.

Tong An’yu furrowed her brow as small details from the past began to stimulate her memory.

She felt like she was sifting through a small mountain of broken fragments, searching for the right puzzle piece.

It was a bit difficult; her brain didn’t want to think at all.

Fortunately, she had years of experience with exams and was good at pushing herself.

So, fighting against her instincts, she rummaged around for a long time and finally, belatedly, remembered that she seemed to be the one who took this photo for Lin Huaixu.

She had taken it, sent it to him, and personally helped him set it as his profile picture, replacing his uninteresting generic web image.

The night air was damp, and the river water carried a cool scent.

She had been dazzled by the moonlight, her heart growing hot, and her arch-nemesis’s lips had been very sweet…

Then what happened that day?

As her memory reached this point, the large bump on the back of her head began to throb with pain.

She didn’t want to think about it anymore; it was just a photo.

Her arch-nemesis seemed to be a person who hated trouble.

He hadn’t changed his profile picture or status signature in seven years.

She had wanted to click on it to see their past chat history, but when she actually did, she realized belatedly that it was completely blank.

Those records were lost along with that old phone.

She only remembered her last message to him—

[I won’t bother you anymore.]

After sending that, she went in for the surgery.

They had never explicitly said they were breaking up, but Tong An’yu assumed this was it, because Lin Huaixu hadn’t replied after she sent the message.

No reply meant he agreed by default.

She didn’t seem to have had much time to be sad before she entered the post-surgery recovery period, followed by slight memory impairment.

For a long time, the thought of Lin Huaixu no longer caused any ripples in her heart.
Although she kept up with his news, it was like a bystander, peeking into the life of another person who refused to be mediocre.

At most, there was a bit of vigilance befitting an arch-nemesis.

Cuddling her phone, Tong An’yu fell asleep without realizing it.

She slept exceptionally soundly this time and even had a dream, a dream of her university days, back when they didn’t know they were arch-nemeses.

That year, the bauhinia flowers fell particularly quickly, and the bougainvillea competed to take their place.

The lights in their dorm room were on, and fly-proof tape hung behind the screen window.

There was no need for air conditioning this season; the natural breeze was very comfortable.

Tong An’yu was doing her homework while her roommate, Sun Han, twisted her waist and hips, showing Jiang Xiaoying and Zhu Yan a new K-pop dance she had learned.
Her energetic moves were on par with the idols themselves.

Jiang Xiaoying and Zhu Yan applauded and cheered enthusiastically.

Tong An’yu also freed an arm to give a very “OK” gesture.

Sun Han worked up a sweat from dancing and sat down on her chair, giggling and fanning her collar to cool down.

“That was a good recording, I’ll send it to the group chat,” Jiang Xiaoying said, tapping on the video and sharing it to the dorm’s group chat.

While waiting for it to upload, she opened the school’s confession wall for a quick look.

A few seconds later—

“This freshman is… too good-looking, isn’t he?”

“What did he eat growing up?”

“Which one? Let this empress have a look… Holy f*ck! No wonder he’s on the confession wall.”

“Even his military training photo is so handsome.”

That shocked and surprised tone… The promotional effect was too strong!

Driven by her instincts, Tong An’yu stopped her pen and perked up her ears to listen.

She followed eight male celebrities on Weibo, had over twenty albums on her bookshelf, a ita-bag full of various badges and dolls, and a thick stack of photo cards.
Even the algorithm accurately pushed male models to her feed.

Who didn’t love handsome guys in this day and age?

“Which department is he in?”

“What’s his name?”

“His name is Lin Huaixu, from the physics department.”

“Ah… but it seems he got in through the ‘Strong Foundations Program’.”

“And he’s twenty or twenty-one this year, only a freshman.”

Tong An’yu’s pen paused.

The name was quite nice.

“Twenty years old and only a freshman, seems like he repeated for two or three years.”

“Does he want to get into T University that badly?”

“Someone like Xiao Yu, who came from the gifted program, is only seventeen as a junior… Hey Xiao Yu, you’re seventeen, right?” Jiang Xiaoying asked.

Tong An’yu turned her head.

Her corrective glasses slid from the high bridge of her nose to the tip.

She tilted her chin up and looked back, “My birthday is in a little over a month, almost there.”

“It’s about time for your first stirrings of love.”

“Come and admire the handsome guy with your big sisters!” Sun Han called to her excitedly.

It would be a waste not to appreciate such a handsome face.

Tong An’yu thought to herself, ‘I’ve been admiring them for years, I was just waiting for you to say that!’

She immediately put down her pen, slid over in her turtle slippers, and took off her glasses to get a better look.

“Careful, classmate Xiao Yu.”

“Just look, you’re still young,” Jiang Xiaoying said with a smile.

The photo was a class group picture taken after the military training.

Eight girls were squatting in the front, and over twenty boys were standing in two rows behind them.

Without anyone needing to point him out, Tong An’yu’s gaze automatically locked onto the target.

Despite having stood under the scorching sun for half a month like everyone else, somehow this person was several shades whiter than the others.

And because he was the tallest, he was placed at the edge of the group, a distance of three fists away from the classmate next to him.

But so what?

He just stood there, and all the light seemed to converge on him.

This wasn’t scientific.

Doesn’t the sun shine equally on all of humanity?

“Handsome, right?” Sun Han asked.

Tong An’yu first grinned, then remembered to be reserved and quickly said, “He’s still a little bit behind my idol walls.”

He wasn’t.

“Yo, you can tell which one is him at a glance?” Sun Han winked.

“…”

The military training uniform was rough and stiff, and not of the best quality, but it didn’t look shabby on him at all.

On the contrary, the dark green T-shirt clung to his waist and abdomen, damp with an unavoidable thin layer of sweat, making his lean body look like a stalk of bamboo that would rather break than bend.

His bangs brushed against his eyelids, and his cold gaze was fixed on the camera, seemingly indifferent to his surroundings.
His grayish-brown pupils exuded a lofty air that kept strangers at a distance.

A pair of heartless eyes.

Meeting those eyes through the screen was like being sucked in.

Realizing this, Tong An’yu turned her head away as if kicking an addiction: “Hey, don’t you guys have homework to do?”

“Little one, what are you shy about?” Sun Han teased.

As a fellow fangirl, how could she not know the ins and outs of the community and her sisters’ true feelings.

“I’m not shy,” Tong An’yu said, pretending to be calm as she put on her little turtle sleeping cap and buried her head in complex function theory, relying on science to clear her mind of distracting thoughts.

“Sigh, but a handsome guy like this is not for us to pursue.”

“He’ll be snatched up by the junior girls at the freshman ball,” Sun Han said, pushing away Jiang Xiaoying’s phone and lighting up her own screen saver.

“My long-suffering bias is better.”

“Consistently ugly, peacefully single.”

After the military training, the school planned to hold a ball for the freshmen.
The ball required formal evening wear and ballroom dancing.

Dance partners were most likely to develop intimate relationships.

After all, everyone was young and vigorous, with no pressure in life, so they naturally fantasized about university romance.

There was also a freshman ball when Tong An’yu enrolled, but she was too young at the time and didn’t participate in such activities, which she still regretted to this day.

As Sun Han had predicted, the day the notice was sent out, Lin Huaixu received a continuous stream of invitations to be a dance partner.

It was said that a beauty blogger from the foreign languages department with three hundred thousand fans had also extended an olive branch to him.

“But he, rejected, them, all! Can you believe it?” Zhu Yan announced this big piece of gossip as soon as she returned.

Jiang Xiaoying: “His standards are that high?”

“He even rejected someone with three hundred thousand fans?”

Sun Han: “Does he have a girlfriend?”

“He’s already twenty, after all.”

Jiang Xiaoying: “I heard he didn’t have the ability to get into T University on his own, but he exploited a loophole in the policy, cramming for math and physics, and got full marks in those two subjects in the college entrance exam, which is how he got in through the ‘Strong Foundations Program’.”

“To be a freshman at this age, even though he’s handsome, is there a need to be so arrogant?”

Sun Han: “Don’t say that.”

“It’s not wrong for him not to like them.”

“Neither looks nor grades should be the only standard for judgment.”

Zhu Yan shook her head: “According to people in his class, it doesn’t seem like he has a girlfriend.”

“Anyway, he does whatever he wants, spends all day in the library, very reclusive.”

Tong An’yu slurped her cold noodles and listened quietly.

In fact, if it weren’t for Zhu Yan, she would have already forgotten about Lin Huaixu.
The pile of hardcore major courses in her junior year was like a heart-cleansing mantra.

She hadn’t even checked on her eight male celebrities on Weibo for a week.

Her concerned fellow fans would ask her every few days if she had left the fandom.

After all, she was the most precious money-spending fan in the fandom.

Zhu Yan was the head of the office department of the student union and was also responsible for some of the ball’s preparations, so she had the most up-to-date information.

After the ball, she officially handed over her student union duties and didn’t plan to run for president.

“There were too many people, I’m exhausted,” Zhu Yan said, chugging water frantically when she returned, downing a whole bottle in one go.

“Aren’t the departments responsible for their own sections?”

“How could there be so many people?”

Zhu Yan: “I’m from the university’s student union, so I naturally have to take care of everything.”

“I spent the whole night running around like a parkour athlete.”

She took a moment to catch her breath, then said, “By the way, Lin Huaixu didn’t attend the freshman ball.”

Tong An’yu immediately lifted her head: “How could that be?”

What adult university student would give up such a good activity?

“Exactly.”

“The student union and his class committee both called him, but they couldn’t get through.”

“Later they found his advisor, and after a lot of trouble, they finally got in touch with him.”

“He said very calmly that he had something to do and went out.”

“Note that it was ‘very calmly’,” Zhu Yan said, getting angry just thinking about it, instinctively taking the student union’s perspective.

Jiang Xiaoying: “I remember the ball is mandatory unless you have special circumstances and write a leave request.”
“For him to act first and report later…”

Sun Han: “I’m used to it.”

“Are there not enough weirdos at our school?”

“Look at Xiao Yu, a rich second-generation from a big city, doesn’t she still like to plant things?”

“…”

“Succulents, those are succulents!” a university student speaks up for succulents!

Zhu Yan: “Their advisor was furious.”

“You guys know about the freshman scholarship, right?”

“This thing requires scoring from the class committee and evaluation from the advisor.”

“He submitted an application, and now it’s certain he won’t get it.”

“If you ask me, he shouldn’t get it anyway, teach him a lesson!”

Sun Han: “Ah… that’s too subjective.”

“Does he know?”

“Of course not.”

“A freshman, how could he know about this kind of unwritten rule,” Zhu Yan pouted.

And so, Tong An’yu’s first impression of her arch-nemesis was refreshed to be someone with stunning looks, but reclusive, unsociable, and fond of causing trouble for others.

Compared to looks, she actually appreciated a gentle and modest nature more, so this impression wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t good either.