NOVEL WEB Ch. 1
Chapter 1
Jiangbei City in August was brutally hot. At dusk the air turned thick and damp, making Lin Zhe feel as if he were breathing through a wet blanket.
God, I just want to stay in the dorm and crank the AC...
He had just left the counselor’s office with an “important-document pouch” the man had asked him to deliver. Worse, he’d promised his roommates he’d show up at tonight’s inter-dorm social. He’d planned to skip it, but the Dormitory Head had invited him with the earnestness of a mother summoning her only son, and Lin Zhe hadn’t found a polite way out.
Evening sunsets in late summer are always beautiful—and always gone in a blink. Sunlight filtered through the leaves and scattered across the ground like scattered gemstones.
Lin Zhe glanced at the folder in his hand. She should be here by now. He fished the counselor’s slip of paper from his pocket and dialed.
The moment the call connected, he heard the exact same ringtone behind him. He turned; the call was answered by a cool, quiet voice:
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
A waterfall of black hair spilled to her waist. A plain white blouse, a pleated skirt to the knee, and slim calves wrapped in sheer black stockings outlined a silhouette that made the other girls on the sidewalk fade into background noise. She lifted a hand, tucking a stray lock behind one ear, revealing a face so finely carved it looked cold to the touch—eyes the color of late-winter snow about to melt.
The humid evening suddenly felt several degrees cooler.
Lin Zhe stood frozen, staring at the beautiful upper-classman he used to call—
“Zhao Ge...”
The name slipped out, and a tide of memories crashed over him. He hadn’t expected to meet her again, here, by pure chance—the “problem girl” he had once “completed,” the silly senior who was only one year ahead of him.
Her figure overlapped with the one in his head, and a hundred things he wanted to say jammed in his throat, sour and raw, until they dissolved into a sigh small enough to be carried off by the evening breeze.
She wouldn’t remember him, of course. He had made sure of that.
Seeing him gaping, the black-haired senior frowned.
“Could I have that, please?”
Oh—right.
Lin Zhe handed over the document pouch. His ex-girlfriend—Zhao Ge—accepted it, set an untouched iced lemon tea on the nearby stone pillar, and left him with a single sentence.
“Thanks for the trouble. I haven’t opened it—if you don’t mind, it’s yours.”
He watched her walk away, then picked up the drink, cupping the cold plastic like a relic.
So this is how we meet again. A stranger bearing my gift of forgetfulness.
Ever since he was a child, Lin Zhe had seen what no one else could: the color of a person’s soul. In certain girls he found a hollow, an expanding void that would eventually swallow them whole. He made himself the repairman of those broken hearts, filling the emptiness at the cost of every memory they had of him.
Each rescue ended the same way: a blank smile, a “nice to meet you,” and a reset relationship. Loop after loop, he tried to stay friends, lovers, anything—but the universe hit reload every time. Finally, on the eve of college enrollment, after mending the last hollow, he swore off love for good.
His phone buzzed again. It was the Dormitory Head.
“Xiao Lin, where are you? The ride’s here.”
“On my way.”
He jogged to the front gate of Lihai University. The other three animals in his dorm were already waiting. Yang Zhen—tall, broad, built like a PE major—had organized tonight’s mixer with the girls across the hall. His girlfriend’s roommates, to be precise.
Lin Zhe couldn’t care less. He’d dated more girls than these three had finished mock-exam papers in their entire senior year. Thanks to his “condition,” romance felt like a game rigged to wipe the save file.
They piled into the pre-booked VIP room at the KTV. The two single roommates instantly latched onto Yang Zhen’s arms, drooling.
“Knew electing you Dorm Head was the best decision we ever made.”
“A public servant of the people!”
Yang Zhen—Dormitory Head, unofficial big brother—clapped Lin Zhe on the shoulder and lowered his voice.
“Xiao Lin, I know you’re fresh off a breakup. Chin up, all right?”
Lin Zhe’s heart warmed at the Dormitory Head’s words; the gloom he’d carried since bumping into his ex earlier that evening finally lifted.
The good mood didn’t last.
The moment he pushed open the private-room door he spotted another ex-girlfriend—Chen Zhijing, the Problem Girl he himself had “completed” the day before freshman registration, now an art-major classmate.
I’m so screwed...
She’d forgotten every memory that involved him, so she no longer knew who he was.
They had been high-school classmates, though, the pair who’d promised each other they’d get into this university together.
Now they might as well be strangers.
In the dim booth the girl sat alone in the corner, the glow of her phone screen brushing her delicate, adorable face with soft light.
Dormitory Head Yang Zhen was holding his girlfriend’s hand, wearing the dopey grin of a guy who thinks he’s the luckiest man alive.
Liu Xuefei and Han Xinglong—those two animals—were already whispering, targets chosen: the other two girls.
Maybe because Chen Zhijing looked aloof, hard to approach; cute, sure, but difficulty level: nightmare.
Anyone could see she was campus-goddess material.
Lacking confidence, the two beasts settled for the ordinary-looking girls and left the frosty beauty for Lin Zhe.
The Dormitory Head’s girlfriend slipped behind Lin Zhe and poked his back.
“Xiao Lin, don’t mind her cool act—she’s actually really easy to get along with.”
Lin Zhe swallowed the words he wanted to shout: I know exactly what kind of girl she is—I was the one who finished the job.
After all, none of his girls had ever been easy to handle.