The moment Xiao Qingyue took her seat, the air in the entire lecture hall seemed to be sucked out for half a second, only to be immediately filled with an even more turbulent undercurrent.
Hundreds of gazes, like searchlights in focus mode, were fixed on this inconspicuous corner in the back row.
Whispers buzzed, traveling from the front row to the back, and then spreading from the corner to the center.
"That's Xiao Qingyue, isn't it? The new campus belle?"
"Why did she sit there? Who's that guy next to her?"
"Don't know him, but it feels like there's a good show about to start…"
Zhou Ye, Li Mo, and Su Zhe felt like they were sitting on pins and needles; the gossiping stares made them incredibly uncomfortable.
This was even harder to bear than being publicly criticized by the counselor.
Zhou Ye couldn't take it anymore. He leaned forward, lowered his voice, and said to Chen Ming in a tearful whisper, "Brother Ming, I can't take it! This pressure is worse than the calculus final! I… I'm out of here!"
With that, he suddenly stood up, grabbed Li Mo next to him, and gave Su Zhe a look with his other hand.
The three of them, like refugees, scurried out through the aisle on the other side, using both hands and feet, almost sprinting, and awkwardly darted to empty seats at the other end of the classroom.
Before leaving, Zhou Ye didn't forget to look back and give Chen Ming a tragic look full of "Brother, take care of yourself; we are with you in spirit."
In the vast back row, only Chen Ming and Xiao Qingyue remained.
The air was awkwardly quiet.
Chen Ming leaned lazily against the back of his chair, turned his head, and his gaze fell on the tense profile of the girl beside him. He broke the silence: "I say, Scholar Xiao, why did you come to Jiang University? Who was it that swore they didn't want to go to the same university as me back then?"
His tone carried a familiar, nonchalant teasing.
Xiao Qingyue's cheeks flushed slightly, but she still tried to maintain a cool demeanor. She hummed, her eyes stubbornly fixed on the podium, not looking at him: "If you can come, why can't I? Jiangcheng University isn't run by your family."
"Oh?" Chen Ming's lips curved into a mischievous smile, and he continued to tease her in that annoying tone, "So, you didn't perform well in the college entrance exam and got reassigned here?"
This sentence precisely hit the most sensitive sore spot from when they broke up.
Back then, her grades were better than his, and when they broke up, this was her most plausible reason for drawing a clear line.
Stung, Xiao Qingyue immediately looked at him.
She suddenly turned her head, glared at him, let out an indignant snort, and straightened her back, with a hint of unhidden pride, announcing word by word: "My college entrance exam score was six hundred and twelve! That's more than ten points higher than Jiang University's admission line!"
That proud and eager-to-prove-herself expression clearly screamed, "I'm super amazing, praise me quickly."
Chen Ming raised an eyebrow in feigned surprise: "Oh, not bad. So it seems dating me early didn't affect your studies much. I thought Uncle and Auntie would blame all of it on me."
At the mention of her parents, Xiao Qingyue's recently boosted confidence instantly deflated.
She lowered her head, her gaze falling on her clean notebook, and mumbled softly, "They would think that, of course…"
She paused, her voice so low that only she could barely hear it, and added, "After we broke up… I had a long time when I wasn't in the mood to study…"
That sentence floated lightly, yet it gently tickled the softest spot in Chen Ming's heart.
Just then, the white-haired old professor on the podium opened his PPT and began his public lecture, which was comparable to a lullaby.
"…Next, let's discuss the deconstruction and reshaping of postmodern structuralism in contemporary society…"
Chen Ming's eyelids started to droop after only a few minutes of listening.
He simply gave up resisting, lay down on the desk, found a comfortable position, and openly fell asleep.
Xiao Qingyue diligently took notes in her notebook while, from the corner of her eye, she secretly observed his sleeping profile again and again.
The sunlight from outside the window passed through the glass and fell on his face, his long eyelashes casting a small, quiet shadow beneath his eyelids.
His breathing was steady and long; his sleeping appearance shed all deliberate pretense, making him seem clean and harmless, which made her feel a little lost in thought.
It was this face that she had loved and hated for so many years.
Looking at his unguarded sleeping face, a thought, as if by some strange impulse, popped into her head.
Xiao Qingyue's heart, against her will, began to beat faster.
She picked up her pen, hesitated for a moment, and then cautiously, with the cap of the pen, gently poked Chen Ming's cheek.
No reaction.
He was sleeping soundly.
This realization made her bolder.
She put down the pen, her fair fingers paused in the air for a few seconds, and then, gently, tentatively, she pinched his cheek.
The touch from her fingertips was warm and soft, with the unique elasticity of a young boy's skin.
At that moment, her heart thumped heavily in her chest, and a wave of warmth spread from her earlobes all the way to her neck.
Just as Xiao Qingyue thought she had succeeded and was about to withdraw her hand contentedly, the man with closed eyes suddenly spoke.
His voice carried the hoarseness of just waking up and a hint of lazy magnetism.
"Is it fun?"
Boom.
Xiao Qingyue felt her brain directly crash.
She recoiled as if electrocuted, her cheeks instantly turning so red they could drip blood.
She had been caught red-handed.
The girl froze completely, like a primary school student caught doing something wrong by a teacher, sitting ramrod straight in a state of helplessness, her eyes fixed on the notebook in front of her, wishing she could stare a hole through it, not daring to move an inch.
"Ding-a-ling—"
After what felt like an eternity, the bell for the end of class finally rescued her.
Chen Ming yawned, slowly lifted his head from the desk, and opened his eyes.
He turned his head, looking at the girl beside him, who was flushed from her face to her neck and stiff as a statue, a playful smile playing on his lips.
"Class dismissed, ex-girlfriend."
He spoke lazily, word by word, clearly audible to her ears.
"How much longer are you planning to admire my sleeping face?"