Du Hongyuan gave Kong Liu a look that clearly said, "You're still too naive," and then said, "Plenty of guys have confessed to Campus Belle Gu. Have you ever seen her give any of them a nice look? Today is her birthday, which is a big deal, and this self-absorbed idiot ran over to confess to her. Isn't he just asking to be cursed out? If he's not an absolute idiot, what is he?"
"He's not wrong to yell at him, though." For once, Wang Qi actually agreed with Du Hongyuan. "Qin Zizhuo's reputation around school is so terrible. How could the Campus Belle ever give him the time of day?"
"Is his guy's reputation really that bad?" Whenever Kong Liu had free time, he buried himself in the library, rarely paying attention to anyone else in the class.
Wang Qi replied, "There was that huge scandal a while back where he got one of the girls from our department pregnant. It blew up and the whole school found out. You mean you didn't know?"
With that, Wang Qi stared at Kong Liu in utter disbelief.
"This..." Kong Liu scratched his head. "I honestly had no idea."
Du Hongyuan chimed back in, "We're just here to watch him make a fool of himself."
As they were talking, Kong Liu's phone chimed with a notification.
Thinking it was Gu Chenxi again, he pulled it out, only to find the message was from Gu Chenxi's mother.
Mother Gu: "Xiao Kong, did Chenxi come look for you to chat today?"
Kong Liu thought for a moment and typed back: "Not yet."
A moment later, Mother Gu asked again: "Where are you right now?"
Kong Liu glanced back at the girls' dormitory and replied, "Downstairs at the girls' dorm, watching the commotion."
He even snapped a photo and sent it to Mother Gu. He was dying to add a follow-up line—*Watching someone get rejected and publicly confessed to.*
Still, that was the kind of thought best kept to oneself.
A little while later, Gu Chenxi suddenly walked out of the girls' dormitory.
Seeing her emerge, Qin Zizhuo's face lit up with joyful surprise.
He had been out here playing guitar and singing for half an hour, half-convinced Gu Chenxi wasn't going to show up.
Qin Zizhuo immediately dropped his guitar, grabbed the cake and flowers, and hurried toward Gu Chenxi while calling out, "Chenxi, I've liked you for so long. Ever since the first time you..."
Holding her phone, Gu Chenxi walked straight toward him, but she didn't even glance his way, walking right past him as if he didn't exist.
Kong Liu also noticed something was off... because Gu Chenxi was actually walking directly toward him.
"Kong Liu!" Expressionless, Gu Chenxi cut through the crowd, walked right up to Kong Liu, and spoke in a cold, monotone voice that sounded like she was reciting lines she had memorized beforehand: "I sincerely invite you to attend my birthday party tonight!"
***
Chapter 6: Conflict
"Ah!"
Before Kong Liu could even process his surprise, his three roommates let out a synchronized gasp.
Sandwiched between the three of them, Kong Liu felt his ears go completely numb from the volume.
It wasn't just the three of them; the surrounding students watching the spectacle cast looks of utter astonishment in his direction.
"Oh my god! Am I dreaming? The Campus Belle actually invited someone in person!"
"Who is that guy she invited to the birthday banquet?"
"Never seen him. Look at what he's wearing—probably just some poor loser!"
"You're just jealous! Sure, he's wearing a cap and didn't bother to dress up, but just look at his face—he's obviously way better-looking than you!"
"What's the deal between the Campus Belle and this guy?"
"Are they actually dating?"
"Stealing a man's woman is a mortal grudge!"
"I came here to watch a clown show, so how come the goddess looks like she's about to run off with someone else?!"
Gu Chenxi's actions sparked a wave of buzzing conversation all around, the uproar loud enough to drown out Qin Zizhuo's sound system.
Holding the cake in one hand and flowers in the other, Qin Zizhuo stood frozen in place, turning his head to stare in utter bewilderment at Gu Chenxi and Kong Liu. His face flashed red and black—it looked far worse than swallowing actual garbage.
Even if Gu Chenxi had simply turned him down, or couldn't even be bothered to reject him verbally and just walked right past, it wouldn't have crushed his mood quite this badly. Plenty of people confessed to Gu Chenxi in the street, and even more got rejected on the spot. One more or one less didn't matter; nobody took it seriously.
Yet right when he had meticulously prepared a grand public confession, right in front of all these people, she walked right past him up to Kong Liu—a guy wearing a baseball cap, flip-flops, and looking as utterly ordinary as they came—and invited him to her family home for her birthday!
At that moment, all his careful grooming, the thousands of dollars spent on a custom cake and roses, and this grandiose romantic gesture felt like a massive joke. The even bigger joke was that his elaborate setup had drawn such a massive crowd, only for the leading man to be replaced by another guy. Right now, he felt like a total clown!
Despite the deafening roar of the surrounding crowd, Gu Chenxi's expression remained completely unbothered. Keeping her icy gaze locked on Kong Liu, she urged, "Answer me, hurry up!"
"Ah... Uh..." Faced with the Campus Belle personally inviting him to her birthday banquet downstairs at the girls' dorm in front of a massive crowd, Kong Liu didn't feel a shred of joy. Instead, he looked rather troubled. After hesitating for a long beat, he finally agreed, "Alright, I'll go."
Finally receiving Kong Liu's affirmative reply, Gu Chenxi didn't linger for a second. She turned on her heel and walked away, looking as though she were desperate to escape this place.
As Gu Chenxi passed Qin Zizhuo for the second time, he suddenly blocked her path.
"?"
Gu Chenxi swept a chilly glare over him and demanded, "Move. What do you think you're doing?"
Struggling to suppress the fury raging inside him, Qin Zizhuo forced a fake smile and asked, "Chenxi, I prepared all of this for you today. Don't tell me..."
Gu Chenxi furrowed her brow, her freezing eyes fixed on Qin Zizhuo as she spat coldly, "What do you preparing all this have to do with me?"
Lifting the items in his hands, Qin Zizhuo said, "I know today is your birthday, so I specially bought these flowers and the cake for you—"
"Enough!"
Disgust marred Gu Chenxi's face as she cut him off. Staring at Qin Zizhuo as if he were trash, she said, "Stop deluding yourself. Who asked you to throw me a birthday party? Your little parlor tricks might work on naive schoolgirls, but you seriously think I'd be impressed by an outfit that totals less than ten thousand yuan?"
"Ha."
Insulted by Gu Chenxi, Qin Zizhuo's face turned pitch black. He pointed straight at Kong Liu and shrieked at Gu Chenxi, "I'm not good enough for you, so this stinking loser in flip-flops is?!"
"What the hell did you just say? Looking for a beating?"
Speechless, Kong Liu fired right back.
He had just been here to watch the show! Who did he offend?
Just because he didn't wash his hair and threw on flip-flops before coming downstairs to grab a delivery, he had to get called a loser?
He had purely intended to grab his package and go right back to sleep. Brushing his teeth and washing his face was already showing the utmost respect, wasn't it? Who in their right mind dressed up to pick up a package? It wasn't a date.
For the first time, Kong Liu realized that the world could hold such intense malice toward ordinary people!
Faced with Qin Zizhuo's screeching, Gu Chenxi appeared remarkably calm. Her face remained deadpan and her tone ice-cold as she stated, "Even if I really were with Kong Liu, I'd rather be with him than have anything to do with a piece of trash like you—someone who toys with young girls' emotions, doesn't know how to respect others, thinks a little filthy family money gives him the right to run wild on campus, and acts like an arrogant self-righteous scumbag!"
"Hahahaha!"
Gu Chenxi's words sent waves of laughter rolling through the crowd. Up in the girls' dormitory, curious students who had no idea what was going on poked their heads out of the windows to watch when they heard the laughter.
"Gu Chenxi, don't think you're all that just because you've got a pretty face!"
Pushed over the edge by her words, Qin Zizhuo gave up on yelling at Kong Liu. Dropping his fake facade entirely, he let his true nature show, spouting foul curses as he raised his arm to strike someone in the street.
Startled by the unhinged Qin Zizhuo, Gu Chenxi stared at the hand swinging toward her face, her mind entirely blank and unable to react in time.
Just as the blow was about to land, it suddenly stopped right before her eyes.
Blinking away her shock, Gu Chenxi realized that Kong Liu had lunged forward at some point. He was the one who had just intercepted Qin Zizhuo's attack.
Gu Chenxi blinked in bewilderment, the way she looked at Kong Liu shifting into something... different.
Gripping Qin Zizhuo's wrist, Kong Liu wrenched his arm backward behind his back. Qin Zizhuo grimaced in agony, completely powerless to resist as Kong Liu pinned his arm and forced his body to bend forward.
"Kong Liu, I'll fucking kill you!"
Screaming curses at Kong Liu, Qin Zizhuo hollered at his two lacklings behind him, "What the hell are you just standing there for? Help me!"
Hearing this, the two flunkies immediately charged forward.
Kong Liu's roommates weren't pushovers either. All three rushed right in: Wang Qi took the lead, Du Hongyuan—the best fighter of the bunch—guarded his left side, and Chen Zhirui covered the right. The three of them formed a defensive triangle, blocking the way in front of Kong Liu.
"Idiot." Kong Liu kicked Qin Zizhuo and sneered, "You start a street fight and you think you're in the right?"
***
Chapter 7: Ten Years
Having been repeatedly humiliated, cursed, and beaten by both Gu Chenxi and Kong Liu, Qin Zizhuo finally snapped completely. "Kong Liu, I'm going to kill you!"
Disregarding his purple, bruised wrist caught in Kong Liu's grip, he lashed out with a kick. Kong Liu sidestepped to dodge, but because he was wearing flip-flops, he lost his footing. His sandal flew off, and he tumbled backward, landing squarely on his rear.
Taking advantage of the moment, Qin Zizhuo wrenched himself free from Kong Liu's grasp and lunged straight at the seated Kong Liu, straddling him to rain blows down on him.
Before he could even land a single punch, however, this unlucky bastard was sent flying by a kick to the chest from Du Hongyuan. Having grown up running the alleyways, Du Hongyuan was exceptionally skilled when it came to street brawls.
Pointing right at Qin Zizhuo, Du Hongyuan roared, "Little punk, I've had your number for a long time!"
"I'll fucking kill you!" Qin Zizhuo shrieked at his two sidekicks, "Are you two bastards going to help or what?!"
Though those two lacklings were inwardly terrified of these four guys, they didn't dare disobey Qin Zizhuo's orders, so they braced themselves and charged.
Wang Qi wasn't much of a street fighter, but having done farm work since he was a kid, he was built like an ox with immensely powerful hands from swinging farming tools. Dealing with Qin Zizhuo's two scrawny minions was an absolute breeze, especially with Chen Zhirui backing him up and assisting on the side—they thrashed those two like it was a game.
Meanwhile, Du Hongyuan and Kong Liu completely pinned Qin Zizhuo down, literally beating the arrogance right out of him.
Though it looked like a free-for-all brawl among seven people, it was actually just Kong Liu's four-man squad single-handedly crushing the other three punks.
Caught completely off guard, Gu Chenxi stood rooted to the spot. Having grown up sheltered, she had never witnessed a chaotic melee like this. Watching the two sides tear into each other all because of her, she didn't know what to do. The moment she reached out to pull Kong Liu back and tell him to stop fighting, Kong Liu dashed off to help Wang Qi's group.
Everyone present whipped out their phones to start snapping pictures. The smart ones had been recording video from the very beginning without missing a single second, and plenty of people were already begging to add them on WeChat for footage of the entire confession.
Spectators loved the chaos and started egging them on. Some people whom Qin Zizhuo had wronged in the past even used the opportunity to slip into the crowd and hurl random objects at him.
Once one person started, others quickly followed suit, and a few individuals even waded into the fray to kick the three of them. The scene devolved into utter pandemonium.
"What do you think you're all doing?!"
Following an angry roar, a few security guards charged furiously into the crowd.
Seeing campus security arrive, the onlookers scattered in all directions like startled birds.
Realizing things were going south, Kong Liu immediately shouted to his three brothers, "Stop fighting! Run!"
At Kong Liu's command, the other three snapped to attention. Having zero intention of lingering, they melted straight into the fleeing crowd and vanished without a trace.
Kong Liu could have easily gotten away too, but after taking a couple of steps, he spotted Gu Chenxi still standing frozen in place. He turned right back around, grabbed her arm, and pulled her along with him.
As Gu Chenxi was dragged along by Kong Liu, watching his back ahead of her, her mind suddenly drifted off in a daze.
In that hazy moment, the figure running before her suddenly merged with a memory from ten years ago.
She felt as though she were seeing that slender little boy from her memories once more, holding her hand and running through the pitch-black night...
That frail, short silhouette suddenly magnified manifold in an instant, overlapping perfectly with Kong Liu's back!
"Stop right there!"
The dense crowd had dispersed, making the two running figures stand out like a sore thumb. Before they could cover much ground, security guards cut them off.
Just like that, Kong Liu, Gu Chenxi, and Qin Zizhuo were hauled into the campus disciplinary office.
To protect his three best friends, Kong Liu stubbornly insisted that he alone had beaten up Qin Zizhuo and his two lacklings.
Naturally, the disciplinary teachers weren't about to buy his single-sided story, especially since his lean frame didn't look like it possessed the muscle to take down three guys single-handedly.
Qin Zizhuo and his cronies babbled wildly about the atrocities committed by Kong Liu's entire dorm, prompting the faculty to summon Wang Qi and the others to the office as well, along with their class counselor.
While Qin Zizhuo blustered and threatened to call the police to have them locked up, Gu Chenxi countered that the other party had initiated the physical violence and Kong Liu and his friends were merely acting in self-defense. She pointed out that while they might look worse off from the fight, the other side bore the majority of the blame. Backed by Gu Chenxi's testimony, Wang Qi whipped out the footage he had just managed to acquire of the incident and placed it right on the desk.
Because so many people had been recording at the time, there were multiple angles of the video, all of which clearly captured everyone's faces.
The footage showed Qin Zizhuo grabbing Gu Chenxi and refusing to let her leave, harassing her when she tried to pull away. Humiliated by her insults, he flew into a rage and threw the first punch. After Kong Liu blocked him, he attacked a second time, which led to Kong Liu losing his footing, Du Hongyuan stepping in to save the day, and Qin Zizhuo ordering his lacklings to jump in.
The video made it blatantly obvious that Qin Zizhuo bore primary responsibility for the fight. Faced with ironclad evidence, Qin Zizhuo had no way out and was forced to admit that he had started it.
Now it was Kong Liu's group's turn to refuse to let it go, demanding that the police be called to arrest Qin Zizhuo and his crew.
Another round of sharp verbal sparring broke out inside the office.
Ultimately, mediated by the disciplinary teachers and the counselor, both sides agreed to settle the matter privately rather than blowing it out of proportion.
Having gotten the beating of a lifetime only to be forced to bow and apologize, Qin Zizhuo felt a suffocating rage building up inside him. He felt like he was harboring internal injuries. When in his life had he ever suffered such utter humiliation?
Watching the departing backs of Kong Liu and his crew, Qin Zizhuo clenched his fists so hard they shook, the flames of revenge burning fiercely in his eyes...
"Why did you help me back there?"
Standing on the pathway between the men's and women's dormitories, Gu Chenxi asked Kong Liu.
To create some privacy for the two of them, the three best friends had retreated far out of the way and were currently loitering near the flower beds by the men's dorm, observing their every move.
"Uh..."
Kong Liu scratched his head, momentarily at a loss for how to answer.
He couldn't exactly say, "You're my online girlfriend, which basically makes you my girlfriend in real life. There's no way I could just stand by and watch another guy bully my girlfriend."
Kong Liu wasn't planning on exposing their online relationship just yet, because he had no clue how the two of them should interact afterward once the truth was out. They used to chat with plenty of sweet-talking banter; once everything was laid bare, it would definitely get awkward and weird.
Plus, Gu Chenxi still somewhat disliked him—he wasn't delusional enough to think that helping her this once would completely flip her opinion of him and prompt her to throw herself at him.
After all, cheesy tropes like that only happened in novels.
After a few seconds of thought, Kong Liu replied, "I just seriously can't stand Qin Zizhuo, that's all. No other reason."
"Just because of that?"
Clearly, Gu Chenxi didn't buy a single word of it.
***
Chapter 8: A Shift in Perspective
Hesitating for a moment, Kong Liu added, "Uh... you could also consider it my way of thanking you for inviting me to your birthday party, so I beat the crap out of an annoying suitor for you!"
The next second, Gu Chenxi poured a bucket of cold water on him: "If my mom hadn't forced me to do it, I wouldn't have bothered inviting you!"
Hearing that, Kong Liu broke out in a cold sweat of embarrassment, thinking to himself, *This girl really is brutally annoying with her honesty!*
In the end, Kong Liu could only say, "Then let's just call it thanking your family for taking me on as a tutor, paying me a salary, and bailing me out of my current financial crisis. How about that?"
"Are you in financial trouble?"
After asking, Gu Chenxi looked Kong Liu up and down. His baseball cap had gotten lost during the brawl, leaving him with a messy, just-out-of-bed bird's nest of hair. He wore a cheap, online-ordered T-shirt and shorts, and one of his flip-flops was split down the middle from the fighting—judging purely by appearances, he certainly looked like someone hard up for cash.
"S-Sort of... barely scraping by."
Whenever Kong Liu lied, he had a habit of unconsciously rubbing his nose. In reality, the balance on the silver-white diamond card tucked inside his wallet back at the dorm was enough to donate an entire building to the school.
"Oh."
Gu Chenxi gave a flat acknowledgment, though she quietly tucked the information away in her mind. She told Kong Liu, "Thanks for what happened today. Wait for me by the school gates tonight."
With that, she turned on her heel and walked toward the women's dormitory without looking back.
His three roommates instantly bolted out from hiding, swarming around Kong Liu and firing off a barrage of questions.
Du Hongyuan: "You sneaky bastard, keeping your cards close to your chest! You quietly bagged the Business Department's hardest-to-get ice queen!"
Wang Qi: "Quick, spill! How far have you two gotten?"
Chen Zhirui: "Brother Kong, you lied to me last night!"
Forced into an awkward chuckle, Kong Liu didn't know how to answer their questions, so he simply played dumb and marched straight back toward the dorms.