It was the start of the school year, and the campus was full of new faces.

When Xu Ye drove past the stadium, the freshmen inside were still doing their military training. So much had happened in two years, and yet just like that he was a junior. It still gave him that feeling of where did the time go?

There was nobody in the dorm. Xu Ye dropped off his luggage and drove to the company. Over the two months of summer break, the company had taken on seven or eight more people, all new hires. A few of them were even graduates of big-name schools like Fudan and Jiao Tong University, which gave the company's credentials a real bump.

Xu Ye called a short meeting with Lü Cheng, Li Tongwen, Tang Bowen and Jiang Wei to get a rough idea of how the summer's projects were coming along. When they were done, he frowned. "Zhang Xinzhou. Where'd that guy run off to?"

Li Tongwen laughed. "Yanqing's back from Shenzhen. He drove to pick her up."

Xu Ye nodded. He spent the day at the company, and in the evening he got his three roommates and a few department heads together for dinner. While he was at it, he painted them a picture of the company's future: a pie in the sky that stood a very good chance of coming true. Xu Ye had this down to an art by now.

When they came out of the restaurant, Zhang Xinzhou had been drinking and couldn't drive Yanqing back to her school, so the two of them headed straight to a hotel. Watching the lovebirds head off together, Xu Ye thought back to the first time Zhang Xinzhou had brought Yanqing to dinner with them. He gave them the same meaningful look and the same two words: "Stay safe."

Zhang Xinzhou flipped him the middle finger, and Yanqing huffed and called him a jerk.

Back at the dorm, Xu Ye made his bed with the sheets he'd brought from home, showered, then climbed up to his bunk and video-called Chen…