Xu Ye? Class president?
There’s no way Xu Ye could be class president.
Gu Mengyao stared at the group chat, momentarily stunned.
Back in high school, Xu Ye had always been the diligent, almost painfully reserved type. Borderline awkward, even.
Class presidents in college, meanwhile, were usually the socially gifted ones — people with high emotional intelligence and a wide circle.
She couldn’t make sense of it. Her first instinct was that Qin Zhiwei was just bragging in the group chat. But some small, nagging unease made her message Liu Qian privately.
Gu Mengyao: Liu Qian, you think what Qin Zhiwei said is actually true? Xu Ye’s class president now?
Liu Qian: Probably fake. Xu Ye’s way too rigid for something like that.
Gu Mengyao: That’s what I figured too.
Liu Qian: How’s school going for you?
Gu Mengyao: Fine, I guess.
Gu Mengyao: There are a lot of annoying types around here.
Liu Qian: Annoying types?
Gu Mengyao: Guys who keep trying to ask me out. I turn them down and they just keep messaging me anyway.
Gu Mengyao: And people keep posting my photos all over the school forum without asking.
Liu Qian: Why are they posting your photos?
Gu Mengyao: They’re saying I’m the campus beauty.
Liu Qian: Wait, really?!
Liu Qian: So there must be tons of guys chasing you, then?
Gu Mengyao: None of them I actually like.
Liu Qian, carefully: None of them measure up to Xu Ye?
Gu Mengyao: Yeah.
Liu Qian: It’s fine, there’ll be someone good eventually. Don’t rush it, the semester just started.
The two of them kept the conversation going back and forth, but by the end of it, Gu Mengyao found herself a little tired of Liu Qian’s company and just stopped replying.
Back in high school, part of why she’d been friends with Liu Qian at all was that Liu Qian made her own looks and her own gentleness look that much better by comparison. But these days, Liu Qian didn’t really serve much purpose for her anymore. Gu Mengyao decided it was probably time to move on to a different circle entirely — one more befitting someone with her newly minted title.
…
The afternoon had just one lecture, Introduction to Statistics.
After class, Xu Ye headed back to the dorm with his three roommates. Li Tongwen got straight into previewing the next Linear Algebra reading. Yang Fei loaded up League of Legends. Xu Ye, catching this, reminded him, “Yang Fei, put your headphones on if you’re gaming.”
Yang Fei glanced over at Li Tongwen and obediently put his headphones on.
Back at his desk, Xu Ye pulled up a spreadsheet on Zhang Xinzhou’s laptop and started transferring over all the personal information he’d collected from the class.
Zhang Xinzhou watched him move through the spreadsheet with practiced ease and couldn’t help but be impressed. “Damn, you’re good with Excel.”
“Easy as pie.” [TL: the original line was written with a parenthetical note indicating it was delivered “in Cantonese” — a small meme-y affectation where an ordinary phrase gets mentally voiced in Cantonese for added flair, a quirk borrowed loosely from Hong Kong pop culture]
Once the spreadsheet was finished and double-checked, Xu Ye sent it straight to Counselor Su Tong.
She replied with a thumbs-up, followed by, “There’s a freshman welcome party this Friday at the student activity center. Let the class know — anyone interested can drop by.”
Xu Ye typed out Received — then deleted it, and replaced it with Got it.
Zhang Xinzhou, watching this play out from the side, asked, confused, “Isn’t ‘received’ the more official-sounding one? Whenever the counselor’s messaged us before, the whole group’s always replied with ‘received.'”
“In the Han dynasty, the most common word a servant said was ‘nuò.’ In the Qing dynasty, it was ‘zhā.'” [TL: 诺 (nuò) and 喳 (zhā) are the stock servile acknowledgments servants and eunuchs use in Han- and Qing-dynasty costume dramas, roughly equivalent to “yes, my lord”] “Know what the modern servant’s go-to word is?”
“…’Received’?”
“Bingo.”
Once he’d finished off the counselor’s task, Xu Ye sat back down and called Chen Jianjun — the truck driver from yesterday — over WeChat voice.
Chen Jianjun picked up fast.
“Hey, Uncle Chen.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
Xu Ye got straight to it. “So here’s the thing, Uncle Chen — me and a friend are opening a fruit shop on campus. If everything goes smoothly, we’re hoping for a soft opening this weekend. Since you’re already in the delivery business, I was wondering if you’d want to handle our deliveries going forward. I’d pay market rate for the freight.”
Chen Jianjun sounded surprised. “You’re really starting a business at college?”
“Yeah.”
“No problem on my end at all, this is literally what I do. Send me the address later and I’ll see how far it is.”
“Sounds good. I’m actually heading out to Baoshan this Saturday — you’ll probably be out there too?”
“I’m out there every single day picking up loads.”
“Then let’s meet up and hash out the details in person?”
“Works for me.”
“All right, talk soon. Bye.”
Xu Ye hung up, dropped the phone in his pocket, and called out to Zhang Xinzhou. “Come on, let’s head out.”
“Where to?”
“Food street.”
“For what this time?”
“Find someone who can pull strings to get our business license sorted.”
Zhang Xinzhou followed him out, confused. “Can’t we just go file for the license ourselves?”
“Sure, we could,” Xu Ye said. “But if we go through normal channels, it could take ten days, two weeks. Find the right person, though, and it’s done in three to five.”
“How do you even know stuff like this?”
“Heard it somewhere.”
…
The two of them made it back to the dorm just before dark.
Yang Fei was still wearing his headphones, now watching Parents’ Love [TL: a real 2014 Chinese television drama — a slow-burn, beloved romance following a married couple from the 1950s into their old age], which had come out that February. Li Tongwen was still buried in his books.
The first thing Xu Ye did back in the room was shower. Then he pulled out the face masks Qingqing had given him, tore one open, and pressed it onto his face.
He checked himself in the mirror, took a selfie, and sent it off to her.
Xu Ye: Selfie.jpg
Xu Ye: Handsome or what?
Back in her dorm, sitting around staring into space, Qingqing heard her phone buzz, opened WeChat, saw it was him, and felt the corner of her mouth lift up before she could stop it.
Chen Qingqing: So ugly.
Chen Qingqing: Leave it on for at least thirty minutes. Those masks aren’t cheap, don’t waste them.
When Qingqing said something was inexpensive, that didn’t necessarily mean much. But when she said something was expensive, it definitely was.
Xu Ye: Guess I’ll just leave it on till I fall asleep, then.
Xu Ye: How many classes today?
Chen Qingqing: Three. Western Music History this morning, then Sight-Singing and Traditional Chinese Orchestral Music this afternoon.
Xu Ye: I only had two today. Tomorrow’s packed, though — I’ve got an early 8 a.m.
While he was still chatting with her, Yang Fei wandered over after finishing his episode. “Xu Ye, where’d you get the face mask?”
“Girlfriend gave it to me.”
“The more you talk about her, the more curious I get. When are you finally bringing her around to our school?”
“She’s got a terrible sense of direction, and our schools are pretty far apart. I’m worried she’d get lost, so no plans to bring her over anytime soon.”
“Tch tch tch. The sour stench of love.”
“Oh, right — you still talking to that Wang Shiyu girl?”
“Yeah, we talk.”
“Ran into her on campus today with Zhang Xinzhou. Let it slip by accident — turns out she already knows you’re my roommate. Knows your name too.”
“Fine if she knows. Hey, you guys going to the welcome party Friday night?”
“Zhang Xinzhou and I have other plans, so no.”
“Why not? I heard the campus belle, Jiang Wei, is performing too.”
“Couldn’t care less.”
Xu Ye hit the home button, held up his phone, and pointed at the lock screen. “Is she prettier than my girlfriend?”
Yang Fei snorted, plainly unconvinced. “If she’s actually your girlfriend, I’ll call you Dad every single day from now on.”
(End of Chapter)