A Love Confession - Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - Stumbling Upon His Want on Ambiguity

When Xu Sui first started university, social software like WeChat had not been popular for very long. It was precisely in October of that year that Xu Sui officially began crossing paths with Zhou Jingze.

In early October, the autumn tiger heat had not yet dissipated. Heat surged, the air felt sticky and viscous, and if someone stood outside a little too long, the sweat dripping from their elbows onto the ground would rapidly melt and evaporate.

This batch of medical students officially entered university life after finishing their military training. Ordinarily, anatomy was a course scheduled for the second semester of freshman year, but their professor did the exact opposite, having them study this subject ahead of schedule.

Today was only their second anatomy lesson, yet the professor had already left them with an assignment: working in pairs to dissect a toad and record its neural reactions.

As recruits tackling this for the first time, the laboratory was in a state of utter chaos and panic.

"Damn it, Big Sister, hold it down!" a male student said with an irritated expression, "Don't let it run away again."

"Wuwuwu no, I don't dare, I'm terrified just looking at it," the female student's voice trembled.

Working as a pair, the girl didn't dare reach out to touch it yet accidentally brushed against the toad, resulting in this green creature directly facing the boy and spraying him with a stream of urine all over.

The air came to a dead stop, immediately followed by an outburst of roaring laughter. A male student at the neighboring lab bench shook with laughter as he said, "Bro, what a auspicious opening day."

With experiments failing repeatedly, students at other groups were even more exaggerated. Before their hands had even touched the toad, just seeing its outward appearance sent them running to the restroom to vomit multiple times.

Meanwhile, on the other side, several people surrounded a female student to watch her anatomy experiment. The girl had a slender figure, her hair tied back to expose a section of a white, delicate neck. She wore a white lab coat, and a pair of eyes beneath protective goggles looked calm and clean.

She was seen grabbing the toad without a trace of fear, securing it firmly, and holding a steel needle in her hand to pierce through the back of its head. Without any hesitation, she directly extracted the mashed contents, severed the spinal cord, and used scissors with her other hand to cut open the neck area before clamping its tongue with tweezers to observe.

The entire process was completed in one smooth motion, clean and fluid, drawing a small ripple of applause from the surrounding crowd. A male student praised, "I admire you, Xu Sui. Judging by your looks, I thought you'd be the very obedient, timid type who wouldn't dare do much. Who knew that when it comes to dissecting, you'd be so bold and decisive."

The girl beside her widened her eyes in shock: "Xu Sui, you're so amazing. Aren't you scared?"

Xu Sui's dark eyelashes drooped, blooming into a shallow curve as she smiled calmly: "Not scared."

"Your operation just now was so gorgeous. Can you teach me?" The girl who spoke was Liang Shuang, Xu Sui's classmate.

"Okay." Xu Sui nodded.

Under Xu Sui's guidance, Liang Shuang grasped the essentials. Having finally overcome her psychological barrier, she picked up the large steel needle and was about to jab it into the toad's head.

Just then, the roof gave a gentle jolt, followed immediately by a considerable roar of an airplane engine. The continuous buzzing sound refused to stop, startling Liang Shuang so badly that her steel needle skewed, stabbing directly into the toad's thigh and causing blood to spurt out.

Another failure.

Liang Shuang grew furious and began to complain: "I really don't understand why the president who founded this medical university had to move the campus right next to an aerospace university. Separated by just a single street, those pilots practice at the airfield, making a racket morning and night. It's genuinely driving me crazy."

Hearing Liang Shuang's complaint, another female student teased: "Hey, Liang Shuang, didn't you say when you first arrived that you wanted to find a pilot for a boyfriend? How did you change your heart so fast?"

Hearing the word "pilot," Xu Sui's heart tightened, but she immediately returned to her lab bench to observe the data as if nothing had happened.

Liang Shuang replied: "That's two different things. It's not like I've found one yet, is it?"

Xu Sui returned to her lab bench to continue the experiment. A female student in her group named Bai Yuyue contributed nothing to their group assignment throughout the entire process except for handing over tools like tweezers and steel needles.

This was because Bai Yuyue kept checking her phone every few minutes; her mind wasn't on the anatomy at all. Suddenly, her phone resting on the side emitted a "ding" notification sound. Bai Yuyue clicked it open, revealing a sweet smile.

Xu Sui was leaning over to observe the toad's brain neural reactions on the computer when Bai Yuyue called out to her: "Xu Sui, I have somewhere to be and need to step out. Do me a favor and handle the rest of this together, will you?"

This meant she would do the assignment alone, but the final completion names would belong to both of them.

Seeing that the experiment was already more than half finished, Xu Sui nodded with little emotion. She didn't care much about this sort of thing because she was lazy.

Bai Yuyue left looking quite pleased. Since Xu Sui was working alone, finishing the experiment naturally took a bit longer than usual. When she finally wrapped up, she discovered that Liang Shuang was still waiting for her.

"You haven't left yet?" Xu Sui peeled off her disposable gloves.

"Of course I was waiting for you." Liang Shuang reached over and pinched her cheek, clicking her tongue—not bad, the texture was quite nice.

After Xu Sui changed her clothes, Liang Shuang dragged her in a mad dash down the stairs, muttering nonstop: "Hurry up, my potato-braised ribs are going to run out."

Inside the first cafeteria, the two of them finally managed to grab their food and sit down. A bespectacled male student walked over with his dining tray and asked hesitatingly if they could sit together.

Donning an obedient, soft, and harmless face, Xu Sui rejected his request without a shred of mercy.

Sitting across from her, Liang Shuang appraised Xu Sui: a palm-sized face, fair skin with a flush of pink, brimming almond eyes, two dimples when she smiled, and her hair neatly tied back with stray wisps falling from her forehead.

It was the typical appearance of someone from the South—water-fresh and delicate no matter how you looked at it.

Liang Shuang took a bite of a rib and sighed: "Tsk tsk, how many has it been this month? Suisui, do you know that our department forum is running a department belle vote, and you're right there on the list of candidates?"

Xu Sui didn't display much of a reaction to this matter. She poked a straw into her milk carton, puffed out her cheeks, and said: "But I was really quite ordinary in high school."

The kind of existence that would get swallowed up and lost in a crowd.

If Liang Shuang had seen photos of her from high school, she never would have said such words. Back in high school, due to frequent illnesses and long-term consumption of traditional Chinese medicine, her figure was bloated, her complexion overly pale, and she wore monotonous, oversized school uniforms year-round—a very ordinary girl.

Fortunately, after her health improved and she lost twenty pounds upon entering university, combined with her fair skin and delicate, compact facial features, it felt as though she had truly shed her old skin and transformed overnight, drawing a lot more attention from everyone.

It was also genuinely because university was different from high school; aesthetics were diverse here, and every type of personality was accepted, which was why she began to attract notice.

"Hey, who wasn't looking dusty and disheveled in high school? It was all for the sake of studying," Liang Shuang picked up a piece of meat and placed it in her bowl, asking, "Still, I've noticed you've rejected quite a few guys. What kind of person do you actually like?"

Biting her straw, Xu Sui didn't move. A face belonging to someone who toyed with the world flashed through her mind, but she quickly suppressed it and shook her head: "I don't know either."

"It's fine, there's still plenty of time," Liang Shuang poked her vegetables with her chopsticks. Realizing something a moment later after ordering spinach, she made a bitter face and said, "Damn, I can't take it. Now whenever I see green, I want to vomit. It's too disgusting."

"I'll eat it for you, I'm not scared," Xu Sui said with a beaming smile, then transferred the spinach into her own bowl.

At five in the afternoon, Xu Sui stood on the rooftop of the university's ideological and political building to catch the breeze. The evening wind whipped her test papers spread out on the railing into a rustling frenzy, like white doves flapping their wings to fly.

Xu Sui plugged her earphones into her phone, standing on the rooftop to do a listening test. Scarcely anyone ever came up here; it was quiet and offered a great view. She frequently came here—it was a wonderful place to relax.

If she grew tired of studying, Xu Sui would press her test paper down with her elbows and gaze into the distance to relax her eyes. At times like these, she would fixedly look in one direction: the northeast corner of the campus, pointing straight toward the playground of Jingbei Aerospace University.

Every single day, students from the flight academy drilled there day in and day out. Viewed from the rooftop, all that could be seen was a surging sea of human heads beneath a sea of green.

Nothing could be seen clearly, and she didn't even know what she was expecting.

As Xu Sui was zoning out, her held phone vibrated—it was a call from her mother. Xu Sui pressed answer, and after her mother inquired about her studies and daily life, she shifted the topic to the weather.

"Frost's Descent is coming right up. Once Frost's Descent passes, the weather is going to turn chilly. Remember to buy an extra cotton quilt," her mother nagged.

Xu Sui laughed in spite of herself, her tone brisk: "Mom, where and when is that happening? It's still very hot here. Besides, it's not like I've never spent time in the North."

Hearing this, Xu Sui's mother let out a sigh. Xu Sui had grown up in a single-parent family in the South, raised in a small town in Zhejiang and Jiangsu called Liying. Her mother was an ordinary junior high school Chinese teacher. When Xu Sui was in high school, worried that the educational resources in a small place weren't great, she planned to send her out to study.

As it happened, Xu Sui's uncle was doing business in Jingbei City and suggested she come study here. For the sake of her child's education, Xu Sui's mother gritted her teeth and sent her over.

Xu Sui transferred to Tianhua No. 1 High School in the second semester of her freshman year of high school, staying in the North for two and a half years straight.

By the time the college entrance examination application rolled around, her mother and Xu Sui had already discussed it—she could pick any university in the South. Who would have guessed that she would set her mind entirely on applying to this medical university in Jingbei.

Thinking of this, Xu Sui's mother complained softly: "You're already in university, yet you're still so far away from me, and there's no one to take care of you. Whenever winter comes, your hands and feet get ice-cold, and you're terribly sensitive to the cold. I really don't know why you insisted on going all the way over there."

Xu Sui had no choice but to change the subject, coaxing her mother for a few moments before finally hanging up.

Standing on the rooftop in a daze, Xu Sui couldn't help asking herself: Why did she insist on coming here?

She must have gone crazy.

Just as she was spacing out, a moan of stirred passion rang out from a corner not far away, accompanied by a coquettish tone. Xu Sui traced the source of the sound.

Two people stood against the wall by the corner. The girl was tall with a bewitching appearance, pressing her entire body against him in an ambiguous posture. The male leaned against the wall, his clothes hanging loosely over his frame.

Xu Sui was separated from them by an abandoned iron rack covered in mottled red rust. Through the small frame, her field of vision gradually narrowed, yet the pair's movements appeared even more distinct.

The male made no major moves, but the girl pressed extremely close, her fingers sliding downward instinctively to hook onto the waistband of the male's black pants with an obvious suggestive intent.

When she tried to close the distance further, the male raised a hand and effortlessly clamped down on her knuckles, rendering her unable to move as he looked at her with a half-smile.

Her face flushed hot under his gaze, and she seized the opportunity to confess outright: "I really, really like you."

The male showed little reaction to this, his bones steeped in a lazy vibe as he attached a low chuckle: "How much do you like me?"

With that, the male's slender fingers wound around the red ribbon on her chest. His clean fingertips grazed her skin by a hair's breadth, hesitating whether to untie it or not, radiating a sense of absolute control. The girl's chest began to heave up and down, growing short of breath.

An implicit expectation surged within her heart. When she lifted her gaze to meet the male's teasing eyes, her face flared crimson red, and she simply buried her entire face against his broad chest, whining softly: "You're so annoying."

The wind stopped. The evening glow of the sunset was warm, brilliant, and bright. Feeling that it was getting a bit too glaring, hot, and stuffy, Xu Sui felt she couldn't stay here much longer.

Orange-red, fish-scale-like clouds drifted across the horizon, and the light grew clear in that exact instant. The male suddenly turned his head to look over, their gazes colliding mid-air.

The male's hair was extremely short, revealing dark stubble, his eyelid folds were shallow, and his pupils were pitch-black and nonchalant. His jawline had a smooth arc, and his protruding Adam's apple, tilted slightly upward, rolled up and down slowly.

His eyes lingered on her without much emotion.

A fierce evening gale swept past, rushing down her throat and leaving it too parched to utter a single word. Xu Sui fled in panic, the conversation between the girl and the male drifting clearly into her ears carried by the wind.

She heard Bai Yuyue ask softly: "What are you spacing out for? Did you run into someone you know?"

The male's voice carried a chilling, metallic texture as three syllables rolled from his throat: "Don't know them."