September 1st.

The day most elementary and middle school kids hate most of all.

It was the first day of classes. His three roommates must have been a little excited, because they were all up by seven thirty. Xu Ye got up too, and the four of them headed to the cafeteria.

The four of them had barely sat down when the freshmen, done with their morning drills, came swarming into the cafeteria.

Over four years of college, students are completely different from one year to the next.

Freshmen are brimming with youth. Every face is bright and eager, and you can pick them out of a crowd at a glance.

Sophomores have been at school for a year. Some are in the honeymoon phase of a relationship and strut around every day like peacocks with their tails fanned, oozing hormones. Some have had bad luck in love and mope around all day. The ones who got dumped, the ones who can't find anyone, the ones who failed an exam: they're either miserable, or fired up and ambitious, or they've already checked out completely. Sophomore year, you could say, is every kind of flower in bloom at once.

By junior year, they're jaded veterans in every sense. If they've been single the whole time, they've pretty much lost any shot at the dating pool by this stage. They tend to stop caring how they look. If you're walking across campus and see someone in flip-flops and shorts with a scruffy beard, nine times out of ten it's a junior deadbeat.

Seniors are like the dragon in the clouds: you catch a glimpse of the head, never the tail. Some are off at internships, some are writing their theses, some are holed up in the library. Basically, they've all gone into "seclusion."

When that crowd of freshmen poured in from their morning drills, the cafeteria, which had been dead a minute earlier, suddenly came alive.

"Auntie, two eggs! I want two eggs!"

"Auntie, please, just one more scoop. I swear I'm still starving."

"Quit shoving back there, dammit!"

"…" Zhang Xinzhou…