Chapter 29

The September sea breeze, carrying a salty, damp scent, filled Li Muxue's lungs for the first time. Standing at the unfamiliar school gate, looking at the large characters "Binhai Foreign Languages ​​College," she felt as if she had been cast onto a deserted island. This was in the east, more than 400 kilometers away from her dusty, inland hometown in the north. The air was no longer dry and dusty, but humid, saturated with moisture, clinging to her body and making it hard for her to breathe. Autumn of 2000 had begun.

She was a freshman majoring in French. Her choice of French stemmed from a well-worn copy of "The Little Prince" from her teenage years, from her vague fantasies about the Eiffel Tower and the Seine, and even more so from a desire to escape—to escape the northern industrial city filled with the shadow of layoffs and the smell of rusting machines, to escape those suffocating, gloomy memories.

The campus was bustling with activity, filled with new students dragging suitcases and parents busy seeing their children off to school. Li Muxue struggled to carry her old canvas bag, deliberately avoiding the crowds and slowly inching along the edge. Without her parents' escort or words of advice, she was all alone, like a prematurely fallen leaf in early autumn. The excessive noise and the curious stares of her classmates made her want to retreat into her shell.

Like a lost fawn, she cautiously asked upperclassmen for directions to her dormitory building. After searching for nearly forty minutes, she finally found her own room, 415.

The dormitory room was for four people, with bunk beds. Li Muxue was assigned the top bunk by the window. Her three roommates had already arrived and were chattering away, sharing their hometown specialties and their aspirations for university life.

"Hey, Li Muxue, where are you from?" The speaker was Gao Yun, from a bustling city in the south, wearing a fashionable sundress and speaking with a distinct Jiangzhe accent.

"The North," Li Muxue answered softly, burying her head in organizing her things, avoiding their eyes. Her introverted nature was almost ingrained; she always had an instinctive tendency to shrink back when facing strangers.

"Is it very cold in the North?" Yue Bingrou, another roommate, asked curiously. She was a local and had an unconscious sense of superiority about her.

"Hmm. It's alright." Li Muxue gave a simple reply and then fell silent. She could sense the scrutiny in their eyes and a hint of barely perceptible distance. She knew she didn't belong with them. They talked about the latest idol dramas and popular singers, while her world consisted only of classic old songs playing on the old radio and books she had read over and over again.

The first week of school was military training. The drills under the scorching sun left her almost exhausted. Back in the dormitory that night, Gao Yun and Yue Bingrou complained that their sunscreen wasn't good enough and their skin had gotten tanned, while Qin Xin excitedly discussed the handsome instructors from the next company. Li Muxue silently hid in her corner, applying a damp towel to her burning cheeks, listening to their lively conversation, feeling like a transparent shadow.

She started to miss home, missing her father who worked at the auto repair shop, missing her mother who had just started a new job and wasn't sure if she could adjust, missing...

Memories always come unbidden. Especially in the dead of night, when the even breathing of my roommates fills the air, that name rises from the depths of my heart like rust. Xu Chen.

The name is like a fine needle; a gentle prick can cause a dense, persistent pain in the softest part of her heart.

It was as if a venomous snake was coiled within Li Muxue's heart, gnawing at it day and night. Guilt surged like a tide, longing burned like a flame; the two intertwined and collided, causing her excruciating pain every midnight. She felt unworthy of anything beautiful, including this dream university, this seemingly new chapter in her life.

Xu Chen sacrificed his dream of going to university and his entire future to protect her. Was this overwhelming guilt love? Li Muxue asked herself countless times. If it wasn't love, why did her heart ache so intensely when she thought of him? But if it was love, why was it so heavy that it made it hard for her to breathe, leaving only a desperate desire to repay and make amends? This tearing feeling became an unhealable wound in her heart.

The French class began. The teacher was Jean-Pierre, a tall, blonde woman from Montpellier, France, who spoke elegant French with a voice as melodious as flowing water. Li Muxue tried hard to immerse herself in this beautiful language, wanting to grasp that imagined Parisian starry sky. She diligently took notes and practiced pronunciation: "Bonjour," "Merci," "bienvenue," but the syllables she rolled with her tongue always seemed to carry a hint of bitterness.

In class, she always sat in the corner. When the teacher asked everyone to practice dialogues in groups, she was always the one left out. Gao Yun and Yue Bingrou naturally formed a group, and Qin Xin quickly found a partner as well. Only she sat there awkwardly until the teacher reluctantly asked her to practice with him. She could feel the gazes from her classmates, gazes that contained both pity and alienation.

"Li Muxue, why are you always alone?" Gao Yun couldn't help but ask her after class, her tone tinged with a hint of confusion. "We're planning to have a barbecue at the beach this weekend, why don't you come along?"

Li Muxue paused for a moment, then shook her head: "I... I'm not feeling well, I want to read in the dorm." Gao Yun shrugged, said nothing more, and walked away arm in arm with Yue Bingrou. Li Muxue knew they were already used to her "unsociable" nature.

On the weekend, she was the only one left in the dormitory. As if possessed, she walked out of the school gate and followed the crowd to the beach.

In September, the sun still shone brightly on the beach, and the sand was filled with people playing. Children were building sandcastles, couples strolled hand in hand, and waves crashed onto the shore, then receded, leaving behind white foam.

Li Muxue found a quiet corner to sit down, took off her shoes, and let her toes sink into the warm sand. The sea breeze was strong, tousling her hair and carrying with it the salty, damp scent. She gazed at the boundless sea in the distance, blue and deep, seemingly capable of swallowing everything…

(To be continued)