University new life
The September sun shone like a layer of scorching gold leaf, covering the entire campus.
Xu Ying stood at the school gate, the wheels of her suitcase getting stuck in the cracks of the paving stones with a soft "click". Around her, new students gathered in twos and threes, their parents helping them carry their luggage, upperclassmen enthusiastically giving directions, their laughter and chatter washing over her like a tide, silently engulfing her.
She glanced down at her phone—the lock screen still held that same photo, taken on the day the college entrance exam ended. Zong Heng had his arm around her neck, his chin resting on the top of her head, laughing freely and unrestrainedly, while she turned her face slightly to the side, her ear tips flushed red.
"Hey, do you need any help?" A senior student wearing black-rimmed glasses walked over, with a volunteer badge hanging around his neck.
"No, thank you." She subconsciously locked her phone, a polite smile playing on her lips.
The senior seemed about to say something, but her gaze had already passed over him and landed on the crowd in the distance. For a fleeting moment, she vaguely saw a familiar figure—a man in a black T-shirt, one hand in his pocket, frowning impatiently.
But in the blink of an eye, there were only unfamiliar faces.
The dormitory is on the sixth floor, and there is no elevator.
Xu Ying carried her suitcase up the stairs step by step, leaving red marks on her wrists. When she reached the fourth floor, the suitcase suddenly slipped from her grasp and slammed heavily onto the steps with a loud bang.
"Are you alright?" A girl poked her head out from upstairs.
"It's okay..." She bent down to steady the suitcase, only to find that the handle was broken.
A beam of light shone through a window at the end of the corridor, swirling dust particles in it. She stared at that light for a long time, until her eyes ached.
Finally, a cleaning lady who happened to be passing by helped her carry the box.
"Little girl, did you come to register alone?" the aunt asked, wiping her sweat.
"Mmm," she answered softly, her fingernails unconsciously digging into the broken lever.
The dormitory is a four-person room, and the other three girls have already arrived.
The bed by the window was covered with posters of a popular boy band, and a girl with a ponytail was sticking fairy lights on the wardrobe; the parents of the girl in the opposite bed were making her bed, and the girl was pouting and saying she didn't want the sheets that color; finally, a short-haired girl was sitting cross-legged on the bed eating potato chips, and someone curiously looked her over: "Didn't your parents come to see you off?"
“They’re busy with work.” Xu Ying pushed the suitcase to the empty bed and squatted down to unlock it.
The suitcase was neatly organized—the clothes were all sorted into storage bags, and on top was a transparent document bag containing the admission notice and payment receipt. In the lower right corner of the document bag, a line of small pencil writing read: "Yingying, good luck!"—it was her mother's handwriting.
She suddenly remembered the morning before she left home. Her mother had packed a jar of homemade hot sauce into her suitcase, and her father had secretly slipped five hundred yuan into a hidden compartment in his wallet. They looked at her hesitantly, and finally only said, "Take care of yourself."
Zong Heng was not mentioned.
Ever since that rainy night when he was taken away in a black car, his name has become a taboo subject in the family.
While she was packing, she felt a hard object in a hidden compartment of the box.
It's that silver necklace.
The chain was somewhat oxidized, but the pendant was still shiny—a small lock-shaped piece with polished edges, as if it had been repeatedly rubbed.
A burst of laughter suddenly came from the corridor. Xu Ying snapped back to her senses and stuffed the necklace under her pillow.
At 4 p.m., the new students will go to the auditorium to attend the opening ceremony.
Xu Ying changed into a white dress—the one Zong Heng said she looked her best in. Before leaving, she applied a light layer of lipstick in front of the mirror, then quickly wiped it off.
The auditorium was blasting air conditioning. The principal was speaking on the stage, and some people around him were dozing off, while others were secretly playing on their phones.
"From today onwards, a new chapter will begin in your lives..."
Amidst thunderous applause, she inexplicably pulled out her phone and dialed the number she knew by heart.
"The number you dialed is currently switched off..."
When the mechanical female voice sounded for the seventh time, the girl in the front row suddenly turned around: "Excuse me, your phone is vibrating."
She then realized she was crying.
A heavy rain fell in the evening.
Xu Ying stood on the dormitory balcony, watching the rain meander like a river on the glass. Her phone screen was lit up; it was the last text message she'd exchanged with Zong Heng—
July 15, 23:47
【wait for me】
Water droplets blurred the writing, just like that summer soaked by rain.
The sound of a door opening came from behind her, and her roommates chattered excitedly about where to have dinner. The short-haired girl knocked on the balcony door: "Xu Ying, wanna go to the cafeteria together?"
"You guys go ahead." She didn't turn around, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible.
The rain was getting heavier.
She slowly pulled the necklace out from under her pillow, and when the cold metal touched her lips, she tasted a salty and bitter flavor.
Xu Ying spread her textbook out on the desk and mechanically copied notes. The classroom was well-heated, and a thin layer of condensation had formed on the windowpanes. She stared blankly at the condensation until the professor's voice suddenly rose, and he slammed the chalk down on the blackboard twice.
"—This part is the key point for the exam, so please be sure to write it down."
She snapped back to reality and looked down at her notebook—it was filled with dense writing, but not of class content; instead, it was the same name, repeated over and over, like some kind of unconscious incantation.
Zong Heng.
She quickly closed the notebook, her fingertips trembling slightly.
"Hey, are you alright?" the girl with black-rimmed glasses next to me asked quietly. "You look so pale."
"I have a bit of a cold." Xu Ying forced a smile, took out a strip of pills from her bag, peeled one off, and swallowed it.
Actually, it wasn't cold medicine, it was sleeping pills. She hadn't had a full night's sleep in a long time since Zong Heng left.
The design club's recruitment booth was set up at the entrance of the cafeteria, with colorful posters fluttering in the wind.
"Hey, interested in joining us?" A senior student with a ponytail enthusiastically handed over a flyer. "We get free coffee every week, and you can even get extra credits at the end of the semester!"
Xu Ying wanted to shake her head, but her gaze fell on the hand-drawn illustration in the corner of the flyer—it was a very small paper airplane with naive lines, as if it had been drawn casually.
Zong Heng also liked to draw paper airplanes like this. In his senior year of high school, he would always fill his draft paper with airplanes and then slip them into her textbook when she wasn't looking.
“I’m in,” she heard herself say.
The club activity room was filled with the smell of coffee and paint.
"Today we'll practice figure sketching." The club president clapped his hands. "Two people per pair, each acting as the other's model."
Xu Ying's partner was a boy named Lin Xiao, wearing a black hoodie and a silver earring in his ear cartilage. He casually sat down in the chair and said, "Draw whatever you want, just don't make me look too ugly."
The pencil scratched across the paper. Halfway through her drawing, Xu Ying suddenly stopped—Lin Xiao's tilted head was strangely similar to the way Zong Heng would rest during a game of basketball.
"What's wrong?" Lin Xiao leaned over to look. "Wow, it's really well drawn... Hey, why are your eyes red?"
"It's got dusty." She quickly rubbed her eyes, tore off the drawing paper, and crumpled it into a ball. "Let's redraw it."
After the dorm lights were turned off, my roommate across the bed suddenly said, "Have you heard? The School of Economics and Management has an exchange student spot at the University of California."
Xu Ying paused as she was sorting through emails.
"Really?" the girl in the upper bunk peeked out. "What are the conditions?"
"GPA above 3.8, TOEFL score over 100... Oh, and you also need to have design competition awards."
Xu Ying took out her phone and searched for "University of California, Los Angeles"—it was only a 20-minute drive from Zong Heng's school.
The light from the screen reflected on her face, making her appear deathly pale.
On the weekend, her roommates invited her to go shopping.
"You've been wearing this coat for three years, haven't you?" In front of the fitting room mirror, her roommate picked up a beige trench coat and held it up to her. "Try this one, it'll make you look more elegant."
Xu Ying shook her head: "I..."
"Don't tell me you don't have money." Her roommate pushed her into the fitting room without saying a word. "You eat steamed buns and pickled vegetables from the cafeteria every day, do you think you're some kind of ascetic?"
The person in the mirror was shockingly thin, with a prominent, defined collarbone. The trench coat hung loosely on his body, like a sack.
"Zong Heng would be heartbroken to see this." The moment this thought popped into her head, she took off her clothes as if she had been burned.
The coffee machine in the design club broke down, so the club president sent Xu Ying to buy coffee outside the school.
"Twelve lattes, three Americanos, all large—and remember to get an invoice."
The autumn wind swirled fallen leaves at her feet. She carried the heavy paper bag back home, and suddenly stopped as she passed the basketball court—there was someone on the court wearing a red jersey with the number 23, and his jumping posture was exactly the same as Zong Heng's.
The paper bag fell to the ground with a "thud," spilling coffee all over the floor.
"Are you alright, buddy?" The boy in the basketball jersey ran over. "Did you get burned?"
His voice didn't sound like Zong Heng's. Zong Heng always spoke with a slightly impatient tone, and the last syllable of his voice dropped slightly, like a small hook.
"It's nothing." She crouched down to pick up the cup, and a shard of plastic cut her finger. The moment the blood seeped out, she actually felt a sense of relief—it still hurt after all.
"Xu Ying!" Lin Xiao caught up with her at the library entrance. "Let's team up for the design competition next week!"
She held a stack of books and shook her head: "I've been very busy lately."
"Who are you kidding?" Lin Xiao chuckled and snatched the top book, "California Travel Guide." "Studying so hard, are you planning to chase after your boyfriend to America?"
A photo fell out of the book—a picture of her and Zong Heng at the ski resort last winter.
Lin Xiao was stunned: "I'm sorry."
“It’s okay.” She tucked the photo back into the book, her voice soft. “He doesn’t want me anymore.”
At three in the morning, the blue light from the computer screen was particularly glaring in the darkness.
Xu Ying stared at her email interface—seventeen days had passed since Zong Heng last contacted her. The last email contained only five words: "Don't reply to me recently."
She opened her drafts folder, which contained dozens of unsent replies. The latest one read: "I passed by the basketball court today and saw someone who looked a lot like you. I stood there watching for a long time until he turned around—of course, it wasn't you. What are you doing here?"
The cursor hovered over the delete key for a long time, but in the end she just shut down the computer and buried her face in her knees.
It started raining outside the window, and the raindrops tapped on the glass, like someone gently knocking on the door.
"Xu Ying!" Her roommate rushed into the dorm. "The preliminary list of exchange students has been posted, and you're on it!"
She was drawing a design draft when her pencil snapped.
The bulletin board was crowded with people. Her name was prominently listed, followed by striking red text: Interview date: December 5th.
That day was Zongheng's birthday.
She reached out and touched the notice paper. The moment her fingertips touched her name, she suddenly remembered that snowy night in her senior year of high school. Zong Heng shoved a hot milk tea into her hand and said, "When we go to college, I'm going to take you to Disneyland on your birthday—I heard the fireworks in California are especially beautiful."
The milk tea had long since gone cold. And the California fireworks, in the end, didn't come to them together.
Late at night in the dormitory corridor, Xu Ying squatted in a public phone booth and dialed the international number she knew by heart.
"Beep—beep—"
After seven rings, the voicemail notification sounded. Zong Heng's voice, sounding tired, said, "Leave a message if you need anything."
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
The phone suddenly clicked through, with background noise and a woman's voice speaking in English.
“Zong Heng?” she asked, her voice trembling.
There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone, followed by a busy tone.
Xu Ying slowly slid down to sit on the ground. Moonlight slanted in through the window, illuminating the necklace she was clutching tightly in her hand, its engravings deeply embedded in her palm like a scar that would never heal.
At 3:17 a.m., Xu Ying suddenly woke up from her dream.
The dormitory was pitch black, with only the power indicator light on her laptop casting a faint green glow in the darkness. Almost reflexively, she reached out and flipped open the screen, squinting to adjust to the glaring blue light. The email icon in the lower right corner showed unread emails (1).
Her heart skipped a beat.
Opening the email, there was only one line of text:
"It's raining in Los Angeles today, just like the day you transferred here."
There was no signature, no extra emoticons, not even a greeting. But Xu Ying's fingertips were already trembling slightly—she recognized the sentence structure, recognized this awkward way of expressing emotion.
It is Zong Heng.
She read it three times, then suddenly buried her face in her palms. The dormitory was very warm, but her fingertips felt icy cold. It had been three months since he was forcibly taken onto that flight to America; this was their first contact.
Outside the window, it was snowing in Beijing, the fine snowflakes tapping against the glass. Xu Ying curled up in her chair, replying word by word:
"It snowed in Nangang today, just like the day you left."
Before sending it, she deleted it and changed it to:
"Remember to bring an umbrella."
The cursor hovered over the send button for a long time, but she didn't click it. She turned off the computer, lay back down on the bed, and waited with her eyes open until dawn.
The second email arrived a week later.
This time it was a photo: Zong Heng's hand was on the steering wheel, the background was the blinding California sun, and the dashboard showed a speed of 120 mph. Xu Ying zoomed in on the picture and found that he was still wearing the red bracelet she had made last year on his right wrist—it was a rough and laughable piece made with leftover embroidery thread from art class, and the edges were already frayed.
The email subject line contains only a period.
She stared at the photo for ten minutes, then suddenly grabbed a pencil and began frantically sketching on her sketchbook. When she came to her senses, the paper was covered with the outline of a steering wheel, each line so deep and chaotic that it almost tore through the paper.
"Xu Ying?" Her roommate peeked out from the top bunk, still half asleep. "Aren't you asleep yet?"
"Right away." She closed her sketchbook, her fingers unconsciously tracing the edge of the computer screen. This time she replied quickly:
Speeding fines are very expensive.
The new email notification sounded three minutes after it was successfully sent.
"I was chased by the police for three blocks."
"The police cars here are faster than those in Nangang."
Xu Ying suddenly laughed out loud, then quickly bit her lip. She seemed to see him raise an eyebrow, and the curve of his Adam's apple as he spoke. The words on the screen carried a familiar arrogance, as if the ten thousand kilometers separating them didn't exist at all.
Gradually, this became a kind of secret ritual.
Xu Ying started carrying her laptop with her everywhere. She set up a regular seat in a corner of the library because it had the best Wi-Fi signal; she set a special notification sound for her email so she would immediately reach for her phone even if she heard it in class; she learned to calculate time differences—Los Angeles is 15 hours behind Beijing, which meant that her 3 a.m. was his noon.
But Zong Heng's emails never followed the rules. Sometimes there would be new messages for three consecutive days, and sometimes there would be no news for two whole weeks. The longest Xu Ying waited was twenty-seven days.
That day, she was revising her work in design class when the professor suddenly tapped on her desk: "Xu, your phone has been vibrating the whole time."
The lock screen displayed "Unread emails (1)". Xu Ying grabbed her phone and ran into the corridor, almost knocking over the easel.
The email contained only one photo: Zong Heng standing in a laboratory, the sleeves of his white lab coat rolled up to his elbows, revealing a fresh wound on his forearm.
Her fingertips immediately pressed against the screen, as if that would allow her to touch the wound. She typed and deleted in the reply box, finally sending only:
"How did you do that?"
Five hours later, a new email arrived:
"fight."
"We won."
Xu Ying stared at those two words for a long time, then suddenly threw her phone into her bag. That night, for the first time ever, she didn't wait for the email and went to a club gathering instead. But when her alarm rang at three in the morning, she still reflexively opened her eyes.
The worst is video calling.
They agreed to video chat every Saturday night, but this arrangement fell through eight out of ten times. Sometimes it was because Zong Heng had to attend a family business video conference at the last minute, sometimes it was because the signal was too poor, and more often than not, there was no explanation at all.
One Saturday in December, Xu Ying started preparing at four in the afternoon. She changed three sweaters, tidied her dorm room twice, and even secretly applied her roommate's lipstick. At six o'clock sharp, the alarm sounded.
"Hello?" She quickly clicked to answer, her fingers trembling slightly with nervousness.
The other end of the screen was completely black.
"Zong Heng?"
Amidst the noise came muffled breathing sounds, followed by his hushed voice: "Don't speak, just listen."
The background noise included muffled English conversation, footsteps, and then the sound of a door lock turning. The video suddenly lit up—Zong Heng's face appeared for less than three seconds; he was wearing a suit, and the background was a luxurious office.
"Next week's appointment is canceled." He spoke quickly. "Don't reply to this email—"
The video abruptly ended.
Xu Ying remained frozen in place, still holding the mouse. Twelve hours later, she received an email from her new address:
"It's safe. Don't worry."
"Do not reply to this address."
That night, Xu Ying spread all the printed emails out on the bed. She discovered that Zong Heng never mentioned his family, never described his residence, and deliberately avoided showing background details in all the photos. It was like a carefully cropped jigsaw puzzle, only showing her the parts he was allowed to see.
At the end-of-semester design exhibition, Xu Ying's work "Time Difference" was placed in the center of the exhibition hall.
It was a set of four illustrations: the first was two little people standing back to back on opposite sides of the earth; the second was them trying to connect with each other with a rope, but the rope wasn't long enough; the third was one of the little people starting to dig a tunnel; and the last was them each standing in place, holding a mirror in their hand, letting the sunlight shine through countless reflections and eventually illuminate each other's faces.
"This is a brilliant idea," the professor praised. "Using light to overcome physical distance."
After the exhibition ended, Xu Ying received a text message from an unknown number:
"The fire extinguisher cabinet in the east corridor of the exhibition hall."
She ran to the designated location and found a small box behind the fire extinguisher cabinet. Inside was a starry sky projector lamp, along with a note:
"Now you can see the stars even during the day."
The handwriting was so messy it was almost illegible, but Xu Ying recognized it at a glance. That night, she turned on the projector light and projected it onto the dormitory ceiling—the starry sky of Los Angeles was thus brought into the four-person dormitory room in Beijing.
While her roommates marveled at identifying the constellations, Xu Ying quietly pasted the note on the first page of her diary. On the back of the paper was another line of small writing, as if hastily added:
"I'll come see you as soon as I learn to control the speed of light."
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