After ninety-nine online romances, I finally met my ex in person when school started.

The next day at 11:58 a.m.

Zhu Xun Chuan stood at the end of the corridor on the third floor of the School of Literature, facing a wooden door with a plaque that read "Associate Professor Gu Qinghan," and took two deep breaths.

He knocked on the door.

"Come in."

The sound came through the door, as cold and indifferent as an air conditioner outdoor unit.

Zhu Xunchuan pushed open the door and went in.

The office was small, about twenty square meters, with a bookshelf against the wall crammed with various literary theories and journals. The blinds were half-drawn, and the sunlight was cut into strips of light that fell obliquely onto the floor.

The air conditioning was on full blast.

Gu Qinghan sat behind her desk.

Her blazer hung on the back of the chair, and she wore only a white fitted shirt. The shirt was tucked into a high-waisted black pencil skirt, the waistline extremely narrow.

She crossed her legs, black stockings extending from under her skirt, one leg draped over the other, a stiletto heel dangling from her toe, swaying slightly.

Thin-rimmed glasses perched on his nose as he looked down at something, grading papers with a red pen nib gliding across the paper without glancing up at him.

Zhu Xun Chuan stood at the door, hesitant to go inside.

It's not that I'm afraid of her.

The visuals are just too impactful.

"Close the door."

Zhu Xunchuan turned around and closed the door.

"Lock it up."

Zhu Xun Chuan's hand paused on the door lock for a second.

"Teacher Gu, locking the door in broad daylight isn't very appropriate..."

"Lock it up."

He had no choice but to lock it.

Gu Qinghan put down the red pen, stood up, walked to the window, and completely closed the blinds.

The office lighting dimmed by one shade.

Only the white light from the overhead fluorescent lamp illuminated the patch of skin around her shirt collar, making it stand out clearly.

She turned around, leaned against the windowsill, put her hands behind her back, and looked at Zhu Xunchuan.

"sit."

Zhu Xunchuan sat down in the chair opposite the desk.

Gu Qinghan didn't sit back down. She bent down, opened the bottom drawer of her desk, and pulled out a stack of A4 papers.

The thickness appears to exceed thirty pages.

She slammed the stack of papers on the table and pushed it in front of Zhu Xunchuan.

Zhu Xunchuan looked down.

The first page.

The title is in bold: "Selected Chat Logs between Zhu Xunchuan and Qingfeng Mingyue (147 pages in total)".

Zhu Xunchuan's pupils contracted sharply.

She printed it out.

She printed out the chat history.

Page 147.

"Open it." Gu Qinghan's voice was completely calm.

Zhu Xunchuan turned to the first page.

The first highlighted message:

"Sister, your name is so beautiful, like a gentle breeze and a bright moon, as pure as you."

Zhu Xunchuan's expression began to stiffen.

Gu Qinghan reached out and turned to the third page, pointing her index finger at a line of text.

She opened her mouth and read it aloud.

Her speaking pace was neither too fast nor too slow, her pronunciation was clear, and she used the same standard reading tone she used in class.

"My sister's legs aren't just legs, they're like the spring waters of the Seine."

There was a two-second silence in the office.

Zhu Xunchuan pressed his back against the chair back.

"This... that joke I was watching back then..."

Gu Qinghan didn't stop.

She turned to page seven.

"Sister, I had a dream. I dreamt that you were wearing a white dress and standing on the beach. The wind blew the dress up, and when I woke up, my nose was bleeding too."

Zhu Xun Chuan closed his eyes.

At sixteen, I should have been shot.

"And this one too." Gu Qinghan turned to page twelve, her tone still as steady as if she were reading aloud from a textbook, "'Sister, if only you were my teacher, I would skip class every day to attend your class.'"

After she finished reading the sentence, she looked up and gazed at him from above her glasses.

"Now it's come true. You're skipping my class."

Zhu Xun Chuan opened his mouth, but couldn't say anything.

social death.

A complete social death.

He now understands what it means for the Internet to have a memory.

"Teacher Gu..."

"Call me 'sister'."

"...What?"

"Didn't you always call me 'sister' before?" Gu Qinghan neatly stacked the A4 papers and put them aside. "What, now that you know I'm your teacher, you've changed your tune?"

Zhu Xunchuan remained silent for three seconds.

"Sister Qinghan."

Gu Qinghan's eyelashes fluttered.

She neither corrected nor responded, but instead walked around the desk and stood in front of Zhu Xun Chuan.

The high heels made a crisp sound on the floor, one step, two steps, three steps.

She stopped.

The pointed toes of his shoes pressed against the edge of the chair between his legs.

Then she bent down.

The second button of her shirt wasn't fastened tightly, and the angle at which she bent over allowed the collar to open slightly.

White, very white.

It's not the kind of white that's deliberately displayed.

It's either that she doesn't care at all, or that she knows he'll see, but she doesn't intend to cover it up.

"Yesterday afternoon," she said in a low voice, so close that Zhu Xun Chuan could smell the cool citrus scent on her, "whose car did you leave in?"

"A friend..."

"Rolls-Royce Cullinan, Beijing license plate number A88088," Gu Qinghan announced the license plate number. "It's the Jiang family's car."

Zhu Xun Chuan's explanation stuck in his throat.

"Disappeared for a year, and you dismissed me with a single message." Gu Qinghan straightened up, took half a step back, and crossed her arms. "The first day I came back, I got into someone else's car. Zhu Xunchuan, you're quite capable."

Her tone was still cold.

But the last sentence had a slightly upward inflection at the end.

That's not a question.

It's a feeling of being wronged.

Zhu Xun Chuan looked up at her.

Under the fluorescent light, her eyes had a very faint red rim.

She quickly looked away, walked back behind her desk, sat down, opened another drawer, and took out a document.

"Starting today, come to my office every day from 12 noon to 1 p.m."

"What are you doing?"

"Help me organize the materials, proofread the paper, and archive the literature." She pushed the files over. "This is the research project for this semester. My assistant resigned, so you'll have to take over."

Zhu Xun Chuan picked up the documents and flipped through them. The workload was considerable.

"Why me?"

"This is punishment because you skipped my class."

Gu Qinghan picked up the red pen, lowered her head and continued grading homework, no longer looking at him.

"Any objections?"

Zhu Xun Chuan looked at her profile as she lowered her head. The light shone down from above, highlighting her clean and sharp jawline, with a few stray hairs sliding down from behind her ears and resting on her collarbone.

He suddenly noticed a detail.

Her earlobes were slightly red.

"Okay, no objection." Zhu Xun Chuan put away the documents, stood up, and said, "I'll come tomorrow at noon."

"Let's start today."

"……good."

He sat down again, opened the files, and began to look at the first paper that needed proofreading.

The office fell silent. Only the sound of pens scratching across paper and the low hum of the air conditioner could be heard.

About ten minutes later.

"Zhu Xunchuan."

"Um?"

"The spring waters of the Seine." Gu Qinghan didn't look up, drawing a circle on the paper with a red pen, her voice calm, "Have you ever seen the Seine?"

"no."

I spent a year as an exchange student in Paris.

She paused.

"That river isn't as pretty as my legs."

Zhu Xun Chuan's hand stopped on the page.

He looked up at her.

Gu Qinghan continued to revise the papers with her head down, her expression unchanged, as if she were saying that the weather was nice today.

Zhu Xun Chuan's lips twitched slightly.

"Sister Qinghan."

"Um."

"I don't know whether to take your words as an academic statement or as a self-evaluation."

Listen to the facts.

Zhu Xun Chuan couldn't help but chuckle.

Gu Qinghan paused for a moment.

She didn't say anything more, but her fingers loosened their grip on the pen a little.

A sliver of sunlight peeked through the gap in the blinds, landing squarely on her crossed leg. The sheen of her black stockings refracted a thin layer of light within that tiny sliver.

Zhu Xunchuan turned his attention back to the thesis.

He caught a glimpse of Gu Qinghan's computer screen out of the corner of his eye.

The screen did not turn off.

A webpage was open above, and the page title read...

"Jiang Group Corporate Structure and Key Personnel Relationship Chart".

Zhu Xun Chuan's gaze lingered on that page for half a second before shifting away.

He didn't say anything.

One o'clock.

"Time's up." Gu Qinghan capped his pen. "Same time tomorrow."

Zhu Xun Chuan stood up and placed the proofread paper on the corner of the table.

He walked to the door and placed his hand on the lock.

"Sister Qinghan."

"Call him Teacher Gu."

"Teacher Gu," Zhu Xun Chuan turned to look at her, "I've never seen that river before. But if I have the chance in the future... I'll go see it myself and then give you a more accurate analogy."

Gu Qinghan adjusted his glasses but did not answer.

But in her lowered eyes, there was a tiny curve.

Zhu Xunchuan opened the door and walked out of the office.

The corridor was brightly lit, and he squinted.

Then he saw the end of the corridor.

Two men in black.

He was 1.85 meters tall, with a fleshy face, and wore sunglasses.

Yesterday's "assistant".

One of them walked towards him, speaking in a businesslike tone:

"Mr. Zhu, Miss is waiting for you in the car downstairs."

He paused for a moment.

She said...now.

Zhu Xunchuan stood in the middle of the corridor, with Gu Qinghan's office behind him and Jiang Yao's people in front of him.

He glanced down at his phone.

Two new messages.

Shen Tianxi: "Brother Chuan, let's have lunch together! I'll be waiting for you at the second cafeteria~"

Su Mucheng: "Brother Chuan! The place where I recorded the MV today is so close to your school! Are you free this afternoon? I've washed your shirt! I'll return it to you personally!"

Zhu Xun Chuan put his phone back in his pocket and walked towards the two men in black.

His lips twitched slightly.

I don't know if it was a bitter smile or something else.

Behind me, the office door was ajar.

Gu Qinghan leaned against the door frame, watching his back as he walked towards the two people.

She took off her glasses and slowly wiped the lenses.

His gaze was light, but he didn't look away.