บท 21: 19. Can only accept it
The sunset and twilight painted half the sky red, while on Nanhu Lake, the shimmering waves reflected clouds and weeping willows along the shore.
A few egrets glided gracefully over the water's surface, bathed in the sunset's afterglow, leaving behind a trail of ripples.
Zhong Ruixi had just finished talking with her advisor and was walking alone on the tree-lined path beside Nanhu Lake when she noticed a familiar figure emerging from the campus multipurpose building, constantly spinning a keychain around his fingers.
"Lu Jincheng!"
The man turned around, saw it was her, and stopped.
"Did your class just finish its meeting?"
"Yeah, I also asked the teacher for some stuff."
The two walked shoulder to shoulder across the campus, the breeze fluttering the girl's ponytail as if dancing a light melody.
"What stuff?"
Zhong Ruixi asked, curious.
"This, well, I'm not sure yet. Want to check it out together?"
Lu Jincheng spread his hands and pointed towards a building not far from the dorms before continuing forward.
The empty space that Cai Shangdong had allocated for him to set up a studio was uncertain—whether it was an empty classroom, a storefront facing the street, or a storeroom, he wasn't sure.
"Sure."
"And you call this... stuff from your teacher?"
The said empty space, located on the ground floor at the junction between two dorm buildings, wasn't far from the south gate of Nanhu University and was officially considered a storefront.
Zhong Ruixi watched as Lu Jincheng took out his keys to open the door, her eyes widening in surprise.
"I applied for the school's entrepreneurship program; this is the space they allocated to me."
Mr. Lu smiled broadly, raising his hand to invite Zhong Ruixi into the room. "What do you think? Isn't it a nice place?"
The empty room was quite clean and was furnished with a few sets of wooden tables and chairs, as well as an old-fashioned sofa.
"Wow... the light really is nice. What's your project about?"
Zhong Ruixi sat down beside the sofa. The summer evening sky was vast, with a huge floor-to-ceiling window allowing the warm sun to stream through.
"Simply put, I run a studio that could make people into internet celebrities."
Lu Jincheng sat down next to her, the sofa soft to the touch.
"Turn into an internet celebrity?"
Zhong Ruixi covered her mouth, laughing. The laughter accentuated the beauty mark near her eye, drawing a lovely curve.
"You have that skill? Can I do it?"
"Not really; you're too straightforward and not suited for this line of work."
Lu Jincheng pondered for a few seconds, then shook his head.
Mr. Lu's fondness for Zhong Ruixi in his previous life was not merely because of her beautiful face.
Beauty alone might be ordinary, but with her personality, it was a winning hand.
Zhong Ruixi was a quintessential northern girl—frank, warm, and direct, always speaking straightforwardly and expressing her thoughts and feelings directly.
Her emotions were always clear on her face; she was genuine, never pretentious, and could quickly blend in anywhere.
In the real world, people of course preferred genuine girls.
But the internet was not so simple to conquer.
Without a cunning heart, it was easy to misspeak or misstep.
"Whatever, I don't want to anyway."
Zhong Ruixi didn't take it seriously and pouted, leaning back in the sofa and looking out the window.
Having an afternoon free from military training and sitting on the same sofa with a not-so-dislikable man while staring at the sunset, she stretched, relaxing and closing her eyes.
"Want to listen to some music?"
His proximity quickly caught by Lu Jincheng, he leaned in closer.
"Huh?"
Zhong Ruixi opened her eyes.
"Here?"
"Yeah, don't you think sitting here in the sun and listening to music is a lot like... like the times before our night study sessions?"
"Here, I brought headphones."
Lu Jincheng actually pulled out a pair of headphones from his pocket, like a high school student sharing them with a deskmate to listen to their favorite love songs.
Zhong Ruixi took one, sat a bit closer to him, and they both leaned their heads together to share the headphones.
The screen brightened and then dimmed as a familiar tune slowly streamed into their ears.
It really was just like he said...
Zhong Ruixi's initial fantasy about romance was about sharing headphones on the way to and from school, on a bus going somewhere, under tree shadows and a gentle breeze, where suddenly the other person would offer her one side of the headphones to share their favorite song.
The small headphones isolated them into a world belonging just to the two of them.
Perhaps, no one could resist this type of quiet beauty.
"Oops~"
"I fell for it earlier than you~"
Jin Haixin's sweet and light voice rang like morning bells and evening drums, resonantly striking the heartstrings of Zhong Ruixi.
What did he mean by playing this song?
Was it a random selection from cloud music, or... deliberate?
She couldn't help but turn her head to look at him.
The setting sun slanted, illuminating half of his face, merging the boy in her imagination with the real Lu Jincheng beside her.
Thus, that evening, they truly lounged on the sofa in what would be their future studio, basking in the sun, and quietly listened to music for most of the half-hour.
Of course, they did not have dinner together.
Mr. Lu had an evening appointment at a small café in Beiyuan.
But when Zhong Ruixi got close to the cafeteria with him, he naturally changed his tune.
"My roommate is treating tonight, so I won't be having dinner with you today."
"By the way, remember to call your roommates after the military training for a gathering."
"Alright."
Zhong Ruixi crossed the cafeteria and the sports field, reminiscing about the series of sweet songs from the afternoon until she pulled out her dorm key to open the door.
By the end, she could definitely confirm that Lu Jincheng's playlist was not some random personal FM; he had intentionally played those love songs!
"By the way, is everyone free this weekend?"
"How about we go to a mixer this weekend?"
"Sure~!"
Having received her roommates' affirmative replies, she also took out her headphones, climbed the ladder to her bed, pulled the curtains shut, burrowed into her blankets, found the song from the afternoon, and played it.
Not good~
All the elegance was gone~
...
"Lu Jincheng~ over here, this way!"
Next to Jiangcheng Finance and Economics University in the Zhengyuan residential area, there is a café named Floating Light.
Zhou Sinin and Guan Yongyi wore knee-length sister dresses, each with different sized white shoes—a cold beauty, the other charming—drawing sidelong glances from people in the café.
"You picked this place, why did you arrive so late?"
As soon as Lu Jincheng sat down, Zhou Sinin pushed the latte on the table towards him, and cheerfully started to tease.
"There was a bit of a delay because of something at the academy."
Mr. Lu sipped his latte and looked around ceaselessly.
If he remembered correctly, it should be here.
"What happened?"
Zhou Sinin today looked like a princess straight out of a fairy tale, with her dress's elements maxed out—voluminous skirts, sweet puff sleeves, a delicate waist design, plus the bright hair clips she matched herself, ridiculously cute.
She really loved investing, and for the past half a month, even if she just held stocks to watch, she almost visited the exchange every day.
Of course, her gains were quite substantial too; she had accumulated nearly 200,000 yuan in her little vault, with the cost being to entertain Mr. Lu with food, drinks, and fun every now and then.
This was the deserved treatment for a wealth code.
"The academy teacher chose me as the class leader and even gave me an empty room to start a business, so I had no choice."
Lu Jincheng shrugged: "I could only accept it."
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