Chapter 80
Li Heng felt that it wasn’t so much that parents and teachers suddenly supported relationships after university. It was more like a tacit acceptance.
After all, university students were already adults, and the structure of university life was very different from high school. Even the school advisor, who was closest to the role of a homeroom teacher, mainly dealt with things like asking the class leader about attendance or forwarding school notices in the group. As long as students didn’t get into illegal situations or do things that harmed the school’s reputation, Li Heng felt that no one would care about what university students did.
Especially when it came to something like relationships, which theoretically everyone would go through.
“…That love letter wasn’t very elegant,” he organized his thoughts. “During the sports event, there were not only our school’s leaders but also other officials, like from the sports bureau, at the scene.”
He added, “During the event, we don’t have classes, but all the loudspeakers are on to create a lively atmosphere.”
Even if someone was in the dorm or studying in the library, they could hear the broadcast.
The loud music, continuous cheering, and occasional announcements like “Congratulations to student XXX for winning the gold medal” all mixed together, making it hard to concentrate on studying. After the event, Lin Mo even went to the school shop to buy earplugs.
“Not elegant…?” Xie Duzhi suddenly became curious.
“Well, that kind of letter,” Li Heng realized that Xie Duzhi was looking at him, and suddenly felt awkward. “It was quite explicit.”
“…Brother, stop looking at me. I’m too embarrassed to talk about it.”
He intentionally avoided looking into Xie Duzhi’s eyes, trying to describe the feeling. “Besides talking about love, it also touched on… other things.”
Although he knew it was theoretically normal to discuss such things, emotionally, he couldn’t feel that comfortable—especially when talking about it in front of Xie Duzhi.
He cleared his throat and began recalling the letter.
“…I like to see the sweat sliding down, sliding over, while your Adam’s apple moves, deeply, deeply and deeply embedded…”
He realized that despite the bold and somewhat unambiguous love letter being in his mind, he couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud.
After stumbling over a few words, he simply gave up, leaned back against the couch, and covered his face with his hands.
“Anyway, the person who submitted it reminisced about the process of love/sex, expressed their feelings for the athlete, and ended by hoping they wouldn’t fall on the field.”
At that time, he read it with passion, and even felt a little moved by the letter. But later, he realized that the letter returned to the event itself in the end.
“…It was quite novel and bold.”
Xie Duzhi was silent for a moment before offering his opinion.
Li Heng was about to tell him about the follow-up when he almost subconsciously looked at Xie Duzhi’s throat. He was inexplicably flushed and quickly shifted his gaze. “The interesting part isn’t the letter itself, but what happened next—the afternoon’s cheerleading messages.”
After he read that letter in the morning, various versions of it emerged, some even unchanged except for the names of the protagonists, with an additional line at the end.
The gist was, “Do you, my roommate XXX, feel disgusted? If so, good! Use that disgust as motivation and come beat me up at the finish line.”
Ironically, the student who was cheered on in this way ended up making a comeback and winning first place.
When he was taking photos on the podium, he didn’t feel embarrassed anymore when hearing those cheerleading words because everyone was laughing. There was even a pure edited version uploaded online with a huge number of views.
He saw the link shared by Gu Mingyue with an astounding number of views, and from the bottom of his heart, he thought that going to university was truly a wonderful and fun experience.
As for the notice from the advisor about maintaining school discipline, he pretended not to see it.
He hadn’t even clicked “read” in the class group, and he didn’t feel any shame about it.
Only the school leaders would feel embarrassed. The things that seemed like a loss of face were often the most interesting.
“I wonder if there will be a ‘Crazy Thursday’ version today,” he pulled out his phone and opened the screenshot sent by Wei Zhuowei the day before, enlarging it and showing it to Xie Duzhi. “It’s this!”
“Someone on the forum even said they were going to take over the entire S University broadcast with ‘Crazy Thursday.'”
Xie Duzhi didn’t initially think the story was particularly funny—just an interesting anecdote. But strangely, without feeling that it was weird, he still laughed when Li Heng got to the part about “V me fifty, and I’ll lead class two to victory.”
“Alright, V you fifty,” Xie Duzhi said.
Li Heng was still laughing, and when he went to look at the message prompt, he realized that Xie Duzhi had indeed sent him a 50 yuan red envelope.
The envelope had “V you fifty” written on it.
He decided to return the gesture and sent him a 50 yuan red envelope as well. It was his first time sending a red envelope to Xie Duzhi, and he decided to do the same next Thursday but with a different version—one from the neighboring McDonald’s.
Even though it had no real meaning, and Xie Duzhi wouldn’t actually go to McDonald’s, why did everything need to have meaning? As long as it was fun, that was enough.
However, during lunch, Xie Duzhi did use the fifty yuan to order McDonald’s and gave all the egg tarts to Li Heng.
“The spiciness of the spicy chicken bones is basically zero,” Li Heng said, swapping half of his egg tart for the spicy chicken bones with Xie Duzhi, then taking a photo and posting it on his social media.
“That way, big brother will know that you came to find me, not him,” Xie Duzhi spoke slowly, though his tone wasn’t serious.
Li Heng could even sense a hint of smugness in his voice.
“But it was big brother who said not to come looking for him during the sports event,” he winked at Xie Duzhi, shrugging his shoulders, defending himself confidently. “It’s clearly big brother’s own problem.”
“By the way, I remembered some gossip.” He took another egg tart from the box. “You know, my roommate, the one you guessed might have been a target of campus bullying and isolated by rich classmates, Mo Mo!”
The reason Xie Duzhi had analyzed it this way was simple: when Li Heng talked to him, he had mentioned the weird atmosphere in his dorm and shared some of his frustrations.
Li Heng genuinely wanted to be friends with his roommate, not just because Lin Mo was serious, meticulous, and gentle, but also because he reminded him a bit of the person he had dreamed about. He always lacked confidence and would worry about being disliked after saying anything.
He wanted to be friends with Lin Mo and help him.
“What’s going on with him?” Xie Duzhi noticed the change in how Li Heng referred to him.
From the subjective tone, he could tell that “Mo Mo” was clearly more affectionate than “A Mo.” It seemed like their relationship had improved, and Li Heng had succeeded in making a friend.
“You told me before that I could only slowly help him change his ingrained beliefs or habits, and it would take a long time to really become friends and get into his heart, right?”
Although Xie Duzhi had indeed expressed that idea, he didn’t think he’d been as gentle as Li Heng had made it sound. His original words were: “You need to help him stop being on guard against you out of instinct and habit.”
“But Xie brother, when we were talking about this, we overlooked one thing: does Mo Mo himself want to change, and does he want to be friends with me?”
“Is his determination as strong as mine? Is he just as eager?”
Li Heng knew that Lin Mo liked him too. Even during the awkward days in the dorm, he would place homemade fruit candy on his desk every morning after returning from the National Day break.
“I feel like he’s really becoming more open recently.”
He couldn’t help but feel happy for him. “He used to speak so softly, and halfway through a sentence, he would suddenly stop, quietly watch everyone’s reactions, and then decide whether to continue speaking.”
If he thought others seemed unhappy, he would hurriedly apologize.
Especially during group work.
But now, Lin Mo could express his opinions fluently, and when making eye contact with others, he no longer quickly recoiled or avoided it.
Though his reaction was still somewhat instinctive, Li Heng genuinely thought he had made great progress.
“If it were me, it would probably take me much longer to improve like he has.”
“And now, he even asks me how to match clothes to look fresher, and he cut his bangs!” Li Heng looked at Xie Duzhi expectantly, hoping he would acknowledge his friend’s efforts.
Then, when he returned to school, he could tell Lin Mo, “I was talking to Xie Duzhi, and he praised you when mentioning you.”
But it seemed like Xie Duzhi didn’t quite understand his point.
“Because your taste is just excellent,” Xie Duzhi said seriously. “Every time my mom goes out wearing the outfits you suggested, her friends always surround her, asking this and that.”
“…The point isn’t about my taste, third brother!”
Rather than being speechless, Li Heng’s expression looked more like he was teasing him.
Xie Duzhi suddenly remembered when he had just returned home, at that time, Li Heng had been so cautious when speaking with him, always polite, well-behaved, and cute, yet not very lively.
He thought, maybe he could be more lively—he didn’t need to hold back so much.
Thinking this, he met those eyes filled with both amusement and slight dissatisfaction. “Third brother, you’re so slow.” In fact, you’re the slow one.
Xie Duzhi silently retorted in his mind but maintained a perfectly puzzled expression on his face.
“Both Wei and I think he might have someone he likes already.”
Li Heng suddenly became serious. “And I wouldn’t rule out that it could be an online romance.”