Before entering college, Xia Zichen’s life had always been monotonous — nothing but studying. Everyone assumed he had entered college earlier than others because of his high IQ, but being smart was only part of it. How much effort and hardship he had put in along the way was something only he himself truly knew.
After getting into college, Xia Zichen, who had always been wound up tight, finally relaxed mentally. After all, college wasn’t like middle school or high school with its crushing coursework, and he wanted to properly enjoy college life. What he hadn’t expected was that the parts of his heart that had been empty all along would relax along with everything else…
The first time he met Shen Yicheng was at the new student registration desk. Not wanting to squeeze in with the flood of incoming freshmen, Xia Zichen chose to come on the very last day, and Shen Yicheng happened to go on the last day as well.
At the time, there weren’t many people at the registration desk. Knowing that Xia Zichen was the student who had entered University A at seventeen, the staff gave him extra attention, and some of the procedures that would have required him to run around were handled directly on his behalf.
Shen Yicheng came to register with the family’s chauffeur, and the moment he walked through the doors of the registration office, he drew plenty of eyes — including Xia Zichen’s. Like most kids from wealthy families, Shen Yicheng was very particular about brands and taste when it came to clothing. Although Xia Zichen didn’t know much about designer clothes, he could still tell that the outfit certainly wasn’t cheap. On top of that, Shen Yicheng was genuinely good-looking and carried a certain air of arrogance — the clothes on him happened to perfectly bring out that kind of presence.
Feeling your heart stir is sometimes just a matter of a first glance. But at the time, Xia Zichen didn’t dare to dwell on it. He took his dorm room key and freshman orientation handbook and walked out of the registration office.
Xia Zichen was a local, so he hadn’t brought much when he moved in — he could go home and grab things any time, easy enough. His suitcase, beyond basic clothes, was stuffed with a comforter, pillow, and bed sheets.
He asked around for directions to the dorm area and headed there pulling his suitcase. But he hadn’t gotten far before a horn blaring behind him stopped him.
“Hey, you heading to the dorms? I’ll give you a ride, we’re going the same way.” Shen Yicheng, sitting in the back seat, rolled down the window and said.
Xia Zichen’s first instinct was to refuse. Even though this guy had made a decent first impression, he didn’t like being a bother to others, especially strangers. But the other guy’s chauffeur had already gotten out of the car and was moving to help Xia Zichen put his luggage in the trunk, and the refusal that had risen to Xia Zichen’s lips got swallowed back down.
“Get in.” Shen Yicheng pushed the car door open and scooted over to make room for him.
Xia Zichen hesitated for a moment, but ultimately got in. His father had originally wanted to come send him off that day, but Xia Zichen felt that since the school was in the same city, there was no need to make such a fuss. Besides, he wasn’t a little kid — he could handle something like this on his own without needing his parents to worry. Seeing that Xia Zichen insisted, his father hadn’t said anything more.
He hadn’t let his family come, yet he’d ended up catching a ride from Shen Yicheng. Xia Zichen wasn’t sure whether that counted as good luck or not…
When they got to the dorm building, the two discovered they were actually roommates in the same room. Xia Zichen wasn’t short, but because he was on the lean side, he didn’t look as tall overall. Shen Yicheng looked him over for a moment and proactively helped carry his luggage upstairs, while his own bags were handled by the chauffeur. Xia Zichen walked ahead empty-handed, responsible for opening the door — which made him feel more than a little embarrassed.
After the two came in,
Tang Hui and An Jing had already moved in two days prior. The four of them introduced themselves to each other, and it was then that the other three discovered Xia Zichen was only seventeen. Being the youngest, the three of them were always very attentive toward him — if they could help him with something, they’d make sure he didn’t have to make an extra trip; if they could go grab food together, they absolutely wouldn’t let him run to the cafeteria alone.
Shen Yicheng especially. Shen Yicheng was a second-generation rich kid, but he didn’t have any of the self-important bad habits that came with it. He was loyal to his friends and generous with money. Xia Zichen had heard his family ran a company, but hadn’t asked for details — anyway, Shen Yicheng had always had no real concept of money.
Whenever Xia Zichen went to buy food and Shen Yicheng was around, Shen Yicheng would proactively pick up the tab. At class gatherings and karaoke, he would always sit next to Xia Zichen, order food for him, and shield him from being pressured to drink. Whenever a new movie came out, he’d buy tickets right away and take Xia Zichen to see it.
To outsiders, none of this seemed like a big deal — after all, Xia Zichen was the youngest among their cohort, and classmates in general were attentive toward him, especially the girls. But as time went on, An Jing and Tang Hui both sensed something a little off. They always felt that when these two were together, the atmosphere had a certain ambiguity to it.
As for that, Xia Zichen didn’t know what to say, and Shen Yicheng continued doing exactly as he pleased. Everything seemed like nothing more than the two of them overthinking it.
The good impression from their first meeting, the warmth and feeling of being looked after afterward — perhaps that was how a crush began to take root. He couldn’t pinpoint a specific moment, couldn’t identify which particular event caused it. Somehow, Xia Zichen had just fallen for Shen Yicheng, and he slowly let himself depend on the care Shen Yicheng gave him.
But Xia Zichen couldn’t figure out what Shen Yicheng actually felt toward him. Was it concern for a friend? Or… did he like him too?
When it came to feelings like these, Xia Zichen didn’t dare lay them out in the open and seek confirmation. He was gay by nature, and he understood clearly that society’s tolerance for same-sex relationships had always been limited. He had seen so many same-sex couples who started out loving each other so intensely, only to end up in a bleak, bitter conclusion because of various outside pressures — sometimes even turning against each other.
So even though he liked Shen Yicheng, Xia Zichen reminded himself at every moment to stay rational. The feeling of liking someone wasn’t something he could simply reel back in at will, but at the very least he had to keep his emotions in check — not let a moment of impulse destroy the relationship the two of them had right now.
From the moment he knew he was gay, Xia Zichen had never dared to hope that he might meet a man he could walk through life with. And the way things were between him and Shen Yicheng now — Xia Zichen already felt that was very good.
Given Shen Yicheng’s circumstances and family background, finding a well-matched girl to marry someday was the path he was meant to walk. So in truth, there was definitely no future for the two of them.
The hot cocoa was nearly gone, and there were barely any customers left in the shop. The street outside the window had grown quieter and quieter. He was still mulling over whether to head back to the dorm or sit for a little longer when his phone rang.
He glanced at the caller ID and picked up. “Hello?”
“Little Zhen-zhen, where are you? Why aren’t you back yet?” An Jing’s voice came through the line. “It’s late at night, get back here — do you have any idea how many upperclassmen at this school have their eyes on you just waiting to eat you up?”
“…Not everyone is as shameless as you.”
“Shamelessness? Bro has never had any to begin with.” An Jing sounded completely proud of his lack of shame.
Xia Zichen gave a soft laugh, stood up, and headed for the door. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay, and grab two bottles of Coke for Tang Hui on your way — that guy without his Coke is like someone without oxygen.”
“Got it.” He hung up and walked toward the convenience store next door.
An Jing’s name sounded like it meant “peaceful and quiet,” but in reality the guy was anything but — he talked a lot and was extremely nosy. Shen Yicheng often said that An Jing shouldn’t have studied advertising and should’ve gone into journalism instead, otherwise it was a total waste of his paparazzi potential. It was precisely because of An Jing’s personality that Xia Zichen got along with him especially well.
In a dorm room, wherever there’s someone who can really talk, there tends to be someone who is relatively silent by contrast — and that person was Tang Hui. Shen Yicheng was the steady, few-words type; Xia Zichen was the cool, doesn’t-like-to-talk type — though part of that was also related to his voice. And Tang Hui was the kind of person who was just naturally introverted, only occasionally saying a few caring words to those around him. But the quieter the person, the more clearly they tend to see things, and when they do speak, it tends to cut right to the point.
The four of them had lived together for over a year. Though their personalities were all different, they got along extremely well — never a fight, never a red-faced argument.
After that day, Shen Yicheng had been consistently running daily dungeons with Lian Feier, and they’d go together to participate in the faction battlegrounds and arena. The spot that had originally belonged to Chenxi had now been completely taken over by Lian Feier, and Shen Yicheng’s explanation was always “training a newbie.” The guild members weren’t without their grievances about it, but since Chenxi had always remained calm about it, they didn’t feel comfortable saying anything.
After Shen Yicheng and Lian Feier partnered up, Xia Zichen started forming PUGs to run his daily dungeons. Sometimes, if An Jing and Tang Hui hadn’t been dragged away by Shen Yicheng, they’d grind with him too. He hadn’t joined a faction, so there was no need to go to the battlegrounds, and his previous habit of following Shen Yicheng to the arena had been cancelled as well. Xia Zichen’s in-game character, Chenxi, had now become truly idle.
Though Lian Feier had taken over Xia Zichen’s spot, Shen Yicheng’s attentiveness toward him in real life hadn’t diminished because of it. He still bought food for him and brought him things; he still woke him up when they had early morning classes; and he still reminded him to add or remove layers of clothing when the weather changed. It was as if nothing had changed at all…
After finishing today’s dailies with nothing else to do, Xia Zichen was called by a few lower-level guild members to help them kill the elite mobs in a quest. In Sword Soul, the current level cap was 100, and the game truly began only after reaching max level — factions and most dungeons could only be entered after hitting the cap. Leveling up was a frustrating process; when up against elite mobs with thick HP and high attack, sometimes even a group of three players at similar levels couldn’t necessarily clear it. In those cases, the guild would generally find a max-level main account to carry them through the quest.
As a healer, Xia Zichen’s attack power was very low, but as long as he could keep the lower-level characters’ HP topped off and make sure they stayed alive, it was only a matter of time before the elite mob went down.
After carrying the lower-level members through their quest, the return-to-city skill still had over twenty minutes of cooldown left, and he didn’t have any return scrolls in his bag, so Xia Zichen decided to just run across the map gathering herbs and mining ore. Among the life skills, Xia Zichen had only maxed out tailoring — and even that was originally just so he could craft good-looking gear with decent stats for newly joined appearance-focused lower-level members as a guild benefit.
As for alchemy, blacksmithing, and cooking, he had automatically given those up, so
gathering herbs and mining ore without anything else to do was only useful for selling for gold.
He was in the middle of gathering herbs by the riverbank when a party invite suddenly popped up on his screen. The one sending the invite was Jianlang.
Seeing that name, Xia Zichen immediately recalled that the last time he’d gone to run a daily dungeon, he had joined this very person’s party — an enemy guild member at that — along with that white-robed Duanyuan Sect disciple with excellent mechanics.
He accepted, and Chenxi quickly joined the party.
[Party] [Jianlang]: Come heal.
Xia Zichen checked the positions — the other three in the party were right behind a decorative rock formation not far away. They were clearly in the middle of a fight; their HP was dropping fast.
Xia Zichen charged over immediately. Once he had eyes on the group, he quickly threw a large single-target heal onto Jianlang, who was tanking, then turned around and tossed two HoT effects onto the other two party members. Once the HP bars were pulled back up, Xia Zichen finally noticed that the white-robed player from last time was in the party too. The name, just like his white robes, carried a quality of cold detachment and ethereal distance — Canmo Wuhen.
The other one, a male character named Baicao Zhe, was a Nanfu Sect disciple who carried an ancient guqin on his back. Also a DPS class, he specialized in long-range poison damage — very high DPS output, but relatively low HP, making him the member of the party who needed the most attention.
Having assessed the class composition, Xia Zichen waved his large fan and popped an AoE heal. The moment that skill went off, Chenxi’s aggro instantly surpassed Jianlang’s, who was supposed to be holding aggro on the boss — Chenxi had over-aggroed, and the boss turned around and started attacking him instead.
Fortunately Xia Zichen reacted fast enough. He threw a HoT on himself, then dashed out with a quick movement skill, immediately leaped high into the air, and simultaneously activated his damage-reduction skill to dodge the boss’s attacks.
As a healer, his innate aggro generation was already high. Normally when he started healing, Xia Zichen would always activate a threat-reduction skill before throwing out heals. This time he’d been too busy paying attention to Canmo Wuhen — and after that first round of healing, he’d forgotten to activate his threat reduction, and pulled aggro immediately.
He shook his head at his own carelessness and kept running, waiting for Jianlang to pull the aggro back. Xia Zichen had long since gotten used to scrambling away like this. Back in the leveling days, when all four of them played together, Xia Zichen was constantly pulling first aggro and getting targeted by bosses. So before he’d mastered the art of divine healing, the one thing he had learned was how to run…
At that moment, Canmo Wuhen activated a skill that transferred his own threat onto Jianlang, allowing Jianlang to smoothly pull the aggro back and continue holding the boss. Xia Zichen, who had run quite far in the chaos, was just about to run back and resume healing when Canmo Wuhen flicked the long whip at his waist — the other end of it coiled around Chenxi’s waist, and the next instant he was pulled right to Canmo Wuhen’s side.
The scene flashed before his eyes — Canmo Wuhen had positioned himself to shield him from behind. And yet, inexplicably, Xia Zichen felt his heartbeat stutter for just one second…