001
A certain university dormitory in C City
Su Ximu woke up and, as usual, climbed down from his bed in the dorm. With a slightly dazed expression, he walked to the sink to wash up.
Standing at the sink with him was his roommate Wu Yang, who had gotten up two minutes earlier.
Wu Yang, with toothpaste foam in his mouth, noticed the movement. He made some space to the side and glanced over, mumbling, “Had a dream again?”
Su Ximu, not fully awake yet, nodded vaguely. This made Wu Yang look worriedly to the side.
After the two finished washing up and came out of the bathroom, Zhou Chuan—who had heard their conversation—lowered his head to gnaw on a leftover bun from last night. At the same time, he pulled a pill bottle out of the drawer. “Lao Yao, catch.”
Lao Yao—in some regional dialects—meant the youngest.
If they ranked the entire Dorm 301 by age, it went Lao Da Zhou Chuan, Lao Er Li Zhuofan, Lao San Wu Yang, and Lao Yao Su Ximu.
Su Ximu reached out to catch it and looked down at the label on the bottle.
Wu Yang curiously craned his neck over. “What’s this?”
Zhou Chuan swallowed the bun in his mouth. “Daddy’s loving gift.”
Su Ximu had just picked up his campus card, ready to head out to buy breakfast and bring some back for his roommates. Hearing this, he silently set the card down.
“No, no…” Zhou Chuan, who had just finished teasing his Lao Yao verbally, saw this and immediately begged for mercy. His tone turned serious. “It’s nothing much. Just some health supplements I got from my sister. They’re supposed to help with sleep. Mu, you haven’t been sleeping well at night. I’m worried you’ll flunk the finals if this keeps up.”
As he spoke, he looked Su Ximu up and down. Tsk, that little face was so pale. He was starting to believe what that bastard Li Zhuofan had said. Could Lao Yao really be like in those TV dramas—not just a restless sleeper, but someone who had lost his memory as a kid? These increasingly frequent dreams weren’t from exam stress, but his memories resurfacing?
Otherwise, who dreamed the same vague stuff from childhood to now, like some ongoing TV series?
Thinking this way—and knowing the content of Lao Yao’s dreams—Zhou Chuan rubbed his chin and couldn’t help but let his imagination run wild. “Childhood playmate, one-sided redemption, eventual separation. And most importantly, Mu, you even lost your memory by accident!”
This plot development… whoa~
It was just like the novels he secretly read with his cousin!
Following the plot, was there really some CEO in the world whom their Lao Yao had healed, now searching for his childhood playmate?
Did they have any token between them?
Like a jade pendant or something?
If so, he had to keep it safe.
After all, CEOs of this type were all about token fetishism.
Lost in these thoughts—and voicing them aloud—Zhou Chuan rambled on. By the end, he was so into it that he grabbed Su Ximu’s free hand—the one not holding the bottle—and shook it vigorously up and down. “Mu, if I get rich, don’t forget me!”
Look at their Lao Yao’s little face, that figure. Standing there, he was the epitome of a pure-hearted campus heartthrob, the original white moonlight.
Su Ximu, whose hand was being shaken by Lao Da, had a low laugh threshold. After Zhou Chuan’s whole performance, he couldn’t help curving his eyes in a smile.
He knew Lao Da was just trying to cheer him up. With exams approaching and his nightly dreams leaving him mentally drained, Lao Da was afraid he’d crack under the pressure.
But he knew his own situation best.
He did have some fuzzy memories from when he was very young. Back then, his parents had divorced and remarried. Neither wanted him.
He had always lived with his grandma in their hometown county.
Grandma ran a tiny convenience store, and most of the money went to raising him.
One day, he suddenly came down with a high fever and was sick for a long time. Grandma stayed by his side. He had no time to go out and play, no chance to meet strange playmates, and certainly no extra tokens appearing.
Because of those childhood experiences, Su Ximu hadn’t interacted much with kids his age. Over time, he wasn’t great at social stuff.
It wasn’t until university, with these dorm mates as good friends, that he gradually became more talkative in the dorm.
So after laughing, he nodded and played along with Zhou Chuan. “Sure. If I get rich, don’t forget me. Daddy remembers. I’ll look out for you guys.”
He still didn’t quite get why Lao Da and the others were so obsessed with him being the dorm’s “daddy,” but whatever. He’d go with the flow.
Zhou Chuan and Wu Yang froze at his words, struck by a bolt from the blue!
“Daddy?! And looking out for us?” Wu Yang was heartbroken beyond words. “Su Xiaomu! Who taught you that?”
His expression was one of utter devastation, like a dad watching his good kid get corrupted by some wild outsider.
Just then, with perfect timing for their ire, Zhou Chuan and Wu Yang turned together toward the doorway where noise had started.
Dorm Lao Er Li Zhuofan pushed the door open after a stroll outside.
As he stepped in, he shouted to the room in the tone of someone with massive gossip. “Good news! Brothers, huge good news!”
Li Zhuofan spoke fast and didn’t hold back. He couldn’t wait to share with his roommates. “Word from the student council: Starting tomorrow, our school is giving us a big break! Apparently, some super important international exchange event is taking over the campus. We can’t come back until at least the 18th!”
The 18th was already past the exam date.
Their school’s exams were joint with other schools in C City. The others wouldn’t wait just for them—they weren’t some heavyweight like C University.
In other words, no exams!
Li Zhuofan was Dorm 301’s top student, but not all top students loved exams.
Sure enough, the news hit, and Zhou Chuan and Wu Yang instantly forgot their earlier grudge. They asked excitedly in unison, “For real?”
Li Zhuofan nodded firmly. “The student council’s holiday notice is already printed.”
Zhou Chuan and Wu Yang immediately cheered.
Even Su Ximu relaxed a little.
His nightly dreams had indeed been tanking his daytime study efficiency lately.
After the cheers, local boy Wu Yang invited them. “Once holiday starts tomorrow, come to my place. We’ll game all night! Make the other schools jealous.”
As for what event needed their campus so badly they had to commandeer it—that wasn’t for students like them to worry about.
At five in the afternoon, the school’s holiday notice officially came down.
It was even longer than the students expected. The notice also said to pack luggage, as after the break, all Old Campus students had to move to the new campus for classes.
Apparently, the school wanted to use this holiday to properly renovate the Old Campus.
That night, after finally packing his luggage, Zhou Chuan shot up from his bed. “Wait, don’t you guys think the school putting us on break this time feels off?”
Li Zhuofan, who had broken the news first, had come down from his high. He nodded too. “Yeah, it’s weird. Can the new campus even fit all these students?”
“And renovating the school? The seniors have begged for years, and suddenly the school isn’t stingy?”
“And what’s this about clearing out all personal items by deadline to leave a good impression for the incoming international exchange group? Brown-nosing foreigners! Usurping the nest!”
“Exactly! And after we leave, they’re hiring a professional cleaning company for the dorms? Saying if we don’t clear our stuff, the cleaners will handle it? What right do they have? Who can pack everything in this short time?”
“My rose-tinted glasses on this school are shattered.”
Zhou Chuan and Li Zhuofan went back and forth, shifting from suspicion to complaints.
Unlike their pure griping about the school’s foreign pandering, Wu Yang—who about half a year ago had gone through a real weird incident with Lao Yao and been pulled by the relevant department to sign a confidentiality agreement—suddenly sensed something off.
This wasn’t their school’s style. The principal was famously stubborn.
To pull this off under the principal’s nose, unless the principal wasn’t the principal anymore.
This vibe of steering public opinion and muddying the waters felt so familiar.
Wu Yang couldn’t help nudging Lao Yao, who was reading a novel beside him. “Mu, what do you think about the school suddenly giving us this break?”
Caught off guard, Su Ximu paused his page-turning and thought. “School holiday, no exams, but the packing time is too short.”
Wu Yang whispered on. “Don’t you feel anything off?”
Su Ximu shook his head again.
Undeterred, Wu Yang coaxed patiently. “Think harder. Just because you don’t see a problem doesn’t mean we don’t.”
“Boldly say out loud any recent school stuff you think we’d find abnormal.”
After over a year together—plus sharing that bizarre incident and getting “tea” from the department with a confidentiality agreement—Wu Yang had figured out that his classmate Su Ximu, besides being good-looking, had one unavoidable trait: his nerves were unusually thick in certain areas.
Those areas covered anything a normal person would find abnormal.
This thickness was cultivated, deliberate.
In other words, Su Ximu was actually far more sensitive than average in those spots.
He sensed it but didn’t say.
He even subconsciously hypnotized himself to ignore the anomalies.
Making himself blend in with everyone around him.
Like a little sparrow with beautiful feathers rolling in dust to dirty them up, then sneaking into the flock to pretend it was just another drab gray one.
Maybe from when it was a fledgling, it got used to this. Gradually, it even convinced itself it was gray.
Needing other sparrows to point out its colorful feathers.
Who knew how this personality formed.
Wu Yang only pieced it together slowly after that real bizarre weird event.
The world, at some unknown moment amid ordinary people’s daily grind, was changing.
Years ago, little Su Ximu, with his special, sensitive perception, might have witnessed some of those changes.
In witnessing, kid Su Ximu might have told others—or not.
In a flock where gray was normal, a sparrow with colorful feathers got rejected, pecked.
Maybe his family saw that too.
So they raised him this way.
Reminded like this, Su Ximu blinked as if receiving a signal. He dazed out briefly, then recalled.
This time, he rephrased. “This morning when I got up, there seemed to be fog over the school. Sparrows flew into it and never came out. By evening, the fog had lowered a bit.”
Wu Yang sucked in a breath, goosebumps rising.
The teen finished, frowned uncomfortably on his own, lowered his head, and aimlessly flipped through the novel in his hands.
Wu Yang reassured him. “It’s fine, it’s fine. These are normal. Our school gets foggy sometimes too, right? Everyone can see the fog. We’re all the same.”
Under Wu Yang’s comfort—especially that line “we’re all the same”—Su Ximu, sitting there flipping the book, finally stopped his aimless turning.
Wu Yang knew Lao Yao’s habits and personality weren’t formed overnight, so they wouldn’t change that fast.
With his self-hypnosis just broken once, he must feel off. Wu Yang tried switching topics.
As for the rest, he was just an ordinary college student. If the sky fell, taller folks would prop it up. Since the school had evacuated everyone, the Confidentiality Bureau probably had a plan. No need for them to worry.
His gaze scanned the room before finally settling on the novel in Lao Yao’s hand. He casually asked, “Mu, what novel do you have there? I haven’t seen you reading stuff like this before. If you like novels, I can go dig some up from my cousin later.”
Su Ximu couldn’t focus on the novel anymore, so he simply closed the book, showed the cover to Wu Yang, and replied, “Last time I went to the off-campus library to borrow books, I accidentally grabbed the wrong one.”
But the money had already been deducted from his borrowing card.
Wu Yang nodded in understanding. Might as well read it.
He glanced down at the novel cover again. Three character designs of handsome guys in wildly different styles leaped off the page with full impact.
In front of the three hunks was the huge, eye-catching novel title:
Evil Charm Mad Arrogant, Overbearing Brother Indulgent Pet
“Haha, this title’s got some personality. These character designs—so handsome, and three of them. Must’ve cost a fortune. Wonder if the author can make it back.”
Su Ximu nodded. “Yeah, it feels expensive.”
As they spoke, in a spot neither of them noticed, a somewhat ominous dark glow flashed across the cover where the young man had stroked it with both hands before vanishing.
