CH 5

A small disturbance sound created by a crowd of people could be heard in her ears, and Yun Li was most afraid of such a situation. She panickly raised her eyes in haste, caught his gaze, therefore she subconsciously raised her hand to touch the corresponding seat.

She suddenly understood, but she also was not very sure.

But from the look in her eyes, Yun Li could sense that he had no other thoughts in his mind.

Yun Li shifted her body as she probed out and moved her body leaning to one side towards his.

The man moved closer at the same time, stopping about three centimeters from her ear. His breath was unsteady and his voice was low: “When the Bodhisattva practices deep Prajna (highest wisdom) Paramita, he sees the emptiness of the five skandhas, and he cures all suffering.”

“……”

Perhaps it was because he wanted her to hear him clearly, his speech was neither too fast nor too slow.

Yet failing that good intention.

Yun Li didn’t understand a word at all.

So to put it more seriously,

Yun Li felt that the current situation was no different from being deaf.

What kind of child’s play is this?!!!

Is it a sutra?

Yun Li was confused in the same place.

The man waiting for the message next to him couldn’t hold back his laughter: “What’s that look on your face?”

She didn’t answer nor did she dare to delay any further. Before her memory faded, Yun Li half guessed, half recited from her memory, put together out a sentence that barely made sense.

She had a confused look on her face but her heart had calmed down.

That she shouldn’t be a hindrance either.

Only after the tension had passed did Yun Li have the mind to watch the others play the game. It was only then she realized that some people also listened with their right ear. Because using this side of direction, listening to other people talking, her face did not have to face the crowd.

Yun Li cared so much that she would think that listening with her right ear seemed deliberate. But for people who didn’t care about this, they didn’t pay attention to which ear other people were listening with.

Just like she didn’t pay attention to which foot someone used to walk on first.

With this in mind, Yun Li gave the man a quiet look.

So when she played the virtual ‘commit suicide by jumping from a building machine’ project today, he already noticed that she was deaf in her left ear?

But at that time, he had given her the benefit of the doubt and did not expose her directly.

The man didn’t notice her line of sight, he was playing a one-handed game with his head down to pass the time with a lack of interest.

It was a single-player game called 2048.

The maximum number has now been synthesized to 1024.

By this time, the words have also been passed to the end.

The last person was He Jia Meng. While everyone was watching she confidently reported her answer, “Guanyin Bodhisattva wants to eat the jackfruit.”

“…”

The box was quiet for a moment and then burst into uproarious laughter.

He Jia Meng scratched her head, “What’s wrong? Isn’t that right?”

“Of course not, Xiao He, what’s wrong with you? You gave such a sacred sentence to pass like this.” Fei Shui was happy, “But I’m kinda surprised, how come the front is passing so fast? It made me think of chángduǎnjù [长短句: long and short verse (a pre-Tang verse form consisting chiefly of seven-character lines interspersed with shorter or longer ones / ci, a poetry written to certain tunes with strict tonal patterns and rhyme schemes, in fixed numbers of lines and words, originating in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and fully developed in the Song Dynasty (960-1279)], I was baffled when I heard it.”

Xu Qing Song let out a low laugh, ashamed as he apologized: “Sorry, I just couldn’t remember the direct transmission of the first paragraph of the Heart Sutra, what I can recite, I recite it.”

The few people after him also held their laughter for half a day, “Plus one.”

The sequence stopped at the men.

The target was set and the conversation didn’t last long. Everyone just assumed he had a wide range of knowledge. Besides, the Heart Sutra is not very long, so it was no surprise that he had memorized the first paragraph. Shortly afterwards, the opposite table also finished passing the word, narrowly winning by a single word.

After a few words of banter, the crowd began to pack up their things and prepare to leave.

Yun Li was torn again and again before she plucked up the courage to talk to the man, “That…”

The man paused and raised his eyes.

His eyelashes were thin and long, his eye sockets deep. His double eyelids were thin and the ends of the eyes were naturally upturned, outlining a cold and stern profile. When unemotional, they carry an elusive awe.

“You just told me to come closer…” Yun Li regretted it a little yet she couldn’t help but continue, “Was aware…?”

——was aware that my left ear couldn’t hear?

To carry on meant the same as announcing the answer, she stopped in time as he looked at him.

The man didn’t answer.

Yun Li faltered in speech, “Why don’t you say anything?”

The man looked at her and said calmly, “You didn’t finish your words.”

“…”

Yun Li changed her question, “It’s just that, just now why did you ask me to come closer?”

Four eyes locked.

There was a blurry shadow of people around them, noisy and seemingly silent. Just as Yun Li felt he was about to point it out in the next second, the man put his phone back in his pocket and said casually, “Rules, you can’t let the third person hear.”

There happened to be a KTV nearby.

Xu Qing Song seemed to be a VIP here, and there was no need to book in advance, so he went in and was taken by the waiter to a party room. The space was huge, with three steps dividing it into two split levels, more than enough to accommodate ten more people.

Drinks and snacks and fruit plates were served one after another.

A few of the more relaxed ones have already started singing with their mics and the platform was occupied one after another. The rest of the group was divided into several piles, either playing cards or liar’s dice (dice game).

Other people like Yun Li, sat around chatting and listening to songs.

There were seven or eight people sitting at this table, several of whom Yun Li could not name. In the middle was Xu Qing Song, smiling and clinking glasses with others. The man who had just come with him was nowhere to be seen.

She looked down at her mobile phone and swept around again, intentionally or unintentionally.

At this moment, a woman half-joked: “Mr Xu, where is that handsome man you just brought with you? Why didn’t he come over to pay the bill after losing?”

Yun Li’s attention was diverted.

Xu Qing Song was helpless: “He is not feeling well, let him go.”

The woman’s name was Du Ge Fei who according to He Jia Meng, was a female news anchor of a platform and had asked for the WeChat of almost all the men present today. She held her cheeks and continued to pry: “Is it your girlfriend checking up on you?”

Xu Qing Song declined to comment.

Du Ge Fei: “Didn’t have time to ask for WeChat yet.”

As if he didn’t understand the implication, Xu Qing Song sighed with regret: “That’s such a pity.”

“…”

Du Ge Fei was obviously frozen.

Someone at the table snorted a laugh.

Yun Li pressed the corners of her lips together, wanting to laugh a little too. But afterwards, her mood for no reason, fell flat again.

It came out of nowhere, like a mimosa in the sun, with its head hanging—dejected and losing its spirit.

It was also like a coin that had been dropped into a wishing pool had come to nothing.

After a while, He Jia Meng came up next to her and asked in a whisper, “Miss Xiao Yun, do you want to go to the toilet? I don’t really want to use the toilet in the private room.”

Yun Li looked back, “A bit, I’ll go with you ba.”

When they came out of the private room, the corridor was dimly lit and the lights seemed to be glued with a layer of cloth.

Within a few steps there was a public toilet and as you entered, the cloth was lifted.

After settling, Yun Li came out to wash his hands.

He Jia Meng was already outside and suddenly asked, “Why are your ears so red?”

Hearing that, Yun Li looked at the mirror.

He Jia Meng surveyed it for a moment and added, “And it’s only the right side that is red.”

“….” Yun Li also just noticed, “I didn’t know that.”

“Wasn’t,” He Jia Meng laughed ha ha, “that handsome guy just passed the word too close to you?”

Yun Li was busy denying, “No.”

He Jia Meng didn’t believe it at all and continued, “That handsome guy is like an iceberg, see, others can’t even get a few words out of him, but I never thought he would take the initiative to flirt with a girl.”

Yun Li couldn’t resist and had to change the subject, “Don’t you know him?”

“No, I don’t know him, probably because I’ve been at headquarters before and haven’t come over here much.” He Jia Meng said, “I just heard from a colleague that I saw him in the shop this morning too.”

“Hn?”

“It seems that he’s a friend of the boss. He came over to help out a few days ago and will be working at EAW afterwards too.” He Jia Meng was bouncing with joy as she said, “I’m fortunate to see something beautiful, I saw him with his mask off and my boss sitting next to me, I was in a trance and thought I was in heaven.”

“…”

“But to be honest, I’m a bit worried again.”

“What?”

“Don’t you think this handsome guy looks pretty hard to get along with? This kind of ‘with special connection’ guy, basically couldn’t work well either.” He Jia Meng added, “Besides that, he’s quite gloomy and a bit intimidating.”

Yun Li unconsciously spoke for him, “Didn’t Mr Xu say he wasn’t feeling well? Maybe he just doesn’t want to talk too much.”

He Jia Meng: “Right oh, I forgot.”

…

Most people’s flights were booked for tomorrow, so this second one didn’t last long.

Back at the hotel, it was just after twelve o’clock when Yun Li got out of the shower. She lay down wearily on the bed, content to cuddle up under the quilt as she just wanted to sleep until it was dark all around.

It was true that she still felt tired of social interaction.

She didn’t know why she had gone to the karaoke too.

After a long time, Yun Li opened her eyes, stared at the white ceiling and suddenly raised her hand to touch her right ear.

It wasn’t hot anymore.

The next day, Yun Li woke up and told He Jia Meng that he would not be returning to Nanwu for a short period of time, so that she did not need to book a flight.

He Jia Meng said he understood, and then gave her a room renewal for a week.

Yun Li had nothing to do today, so she dawdled out in bed and wanted to order a takeaway. After thinking about it, she sent a message to Deng Chuqi, asking her when she was free to have dinner together with her.

The next second, Deng Chuqi called: “I’m having dinner right now and since I’m too lazy to type so I call you directly. What day are you coming back to Xifu?”

“I shouldn’t go back.”

“Ah? Why?” Deng Chuqi was stupefied, “Don’t you report at the end of the month?”

The word ‘run away from home’ was really embarrassing and Yun Li was too embarrassed to say it, “I don’t have anything to do even when I go back there anyway, so I might as well come here and get familiar with the environment first.”

“Oh oh, do you want to come over and stay with me then?” Deng Chuqi said, “My roommate is very nice, it’s just that my room is a bit small.”

Yun Li: “No, my hotel room is not due for another week and I’m going to rent a flat first. I’ve been looking at the rental website for the past two days and there’s one that seems pretty good. Will you go with me to take a look then?”

Deng Chuqi: “Sure ah! Can you do it on the weekend? I have nothing to do on weekends.”

Yun Li curled her lips, “Sure.”

Deng Chuqi asked again, “But you’re not staying?”

Yun Li: “I stay, but I occasionally have to shoot videos and have to find a place, otherwise it will affect my roommates.”

The two of them chatted for a while and after hanging up the phone, Yun Li watched an old drama while eating takeaway.

Time passed and it was already afternoon. The sun had just set when Yun Li received a message from He Jia Meng. It said that the video corresponding to the item she had tried yesterday had been sent to her email address.

Yun Li replied with a “Yes”.

If she was going to rent an apartment, she would be quite busy the next time.

Yun Li wanted to cut short the video first. She pulled out the SD card from the camera and connected it to the computer. She skimmed through the footage she had shot earlier and stopped the video when she saw the VR bungee jumping section.

At the end of the project, Yun Li had left her camera on the tripod there and only remembered it halfway through the walk.

The video also included a scene after she had left——

Du Ge Fei came over to talk to her, “I want to try this game too, how do I play it?”

The man didn’t even bother with perfunctory business this time, staring at the VR in his hand and saying without a ripple, “Find the staff.”

Then it was Yun Li who came back to get the camera, and Du Ge Fei didn’t say much anymore and directly went away.

“…”

This did correspond to what He Jia Meng had said, that people with special connections basically didn’t work properly.

For some reason, Yun Li pulled forward and watched the part where the man tied the safety rope for her all over again. Although she knew the man should be out of patience, she somehow still had the feeling of being treated specially.

Only then did she open her mailbox, pretending to be calm and unconcerned, and download the zip file that He Jia Meng had sent her.

After waiting for some time, she extracted data from a compressed file and opened it.

Each of these clips was also marked with the name of the project, so that she could easily post it to the corresponding video. Glancing at the thumbnail of one of the videos, Yun Li paused for a moment.

She didn’t know if He Jia Meng had put it in with a shaky hand, but it wasn’t a clip of the project she was playing.

Instead, it was the face of the man she had just been staring at for a long time.

The one without the mask.

Yun Li licked her lower lips and clicked away.

He seemed to have accidentally pressed the record button without looking at the camera. With the remote control in his hand, it looked like he was debugging it and playing with it carelessly.

The picture went up and down.

One moment it traveled several meters high, close to the ceiling, so that you could clearly see the game items around you; another moment it dropped to the bottom, so that you could only see the grain of the floor.

Yun Li suddenly reacted.

This seemed to be the drone the club had seen today.

At the end of the video, it seemed that someone next to him called out to him and the man suddenly stopped moving. A few seconds later, the view descended from mid-air back to the ground. This was also where the clip ends.

Because of this action, the man’s appearance became more and more familiar, and the impression in her mind became even clearer.

Thinking back to a certain flashing point, Yun Li opened up the E site and flipped to a video he had bookmarked a long time ago.

It was first posted in the exchange post on E website, but was later moved to the video section.

It was from a previous National University Robotics Competition.

The video was edited and extracted footage.

The youngman is handsome, tall and thin, wearing a black team uniform with a moon badge fastened to his sleeve. On the back is the emblem of the West Voltaic University of Science and Technology and the team name: Unique.

He holds a remote control in his hand, concentrating on the robot in front of him.

Several people next to him jumped up and cheered when the victory was announced.

The young man is extremely well-built, but he did not smile and stood stoically by. His temperament is warm and clear, not as gloomy as it is now and then one of them grabbed him hard. He frowned and struggled a few times before finally laughing uncontrollably.

He was at an age where he was wildly enthusiastic and did not need to hide his emotions.

It overlapped with the man in the video just now.

It was the same man.

Moreover, it didn’t look like the same person.

The video was a minor internet sensation at first. Later, it was also revealed that the youngster had skipped a grade to go to university and was only fifteen years old when he entered the competition.

Unbelievably good life.

There were various comments under the video at the time. One of the hottest was a joke that extended from the moon badge worn by the teenager – so there is even a moon on earth.

When she saw the video, Yun Li was still fifteen years old and had just started her first year of high school.

At that time, she was an average student, but she accidentally got into the best high school in Xi Fu (West Volta). Introvert and reticent, hardworking yet limited in her abilities, she was overwhelmed by the excellence of her classmates.

She also aspired to be gifted and fell short to be out of the ordinary.

The teenager entered into a lens at this time.

He became the existence she had briefly admired and desperately wanted to be when she was young.

After all these years, the internet fever was short-lived yet the traces still remain.

Tapping this information into the search box, Yun Li could still find the interview the teenager gave back when the results of the college entrance exams came out, it was accompanied by a photo taken at random.

The young man looked into the camera with a youthful brow. He had the spirit of a man who couldn’t be defeated by the mundane world.

Below it was marked with a bunch of text——

The top student in the science examinations of Nanwu City in 2008, Fu Shi Ze.