Chapter 14

Chapter 14

It took Chen Hansheng about fifteen minutes to walk from the student activity center to the male dormitory. Chen Hansheng never stopped looking around along the way.

There were too many beautiful female college students.

High school girls might have been easy to pick up, but they were too engrossed in their studies. Plus, school uniforms never flattered anyone, unless they looked like Xiao Rongyu.

At the other end of the spectrum, women in the workplace might be better dressed, but they’re too good at accommodating themselves to their environment to fit in and survive.

University girls were like goldilocks – fashionable and lively. Their only downside was that they still believed in love.

Although the School of Finance and Economics was not at par with Donghai University, the former’s female students were better looking. No wonder the male students of Donghai University came over to fish.

For example, Xu Zhixi would be considered the campus belle at Donghai University, but only a class belle at Chen Hansheng’s school. The more he thought about it, the angrier Chen Hansheng felt.

Of course, Xiao Rongyu was at a different level. She would be the campus belle of both universities.

Chen Hansheng grinned and winked at several senior female students. Unfortunately, they were still ‘blinded’. With his current appearance, he would not be able to attract much of their attention.

Even though Chen Hansheng was ignored, he did not let it get to him. He was looking forward to seeing the school’s female gymnastics team.

Chen Hansheng started to feel hungry as he walked to his dorm. So he decided to go to the cafeteria to have dinner.

He charged his card, took his meal, and found a seat. It was a smooth process.

After sitting down, Chen Hansheng found that all university cafeterias were similar – the patterns in student dynamics were always the same wherever he went.

In a corner were a few pairs of university students snuggling intimately while feeding each other their meals.

A group of guys, usually jocks, sat near the TV. If the channel played a five-ball game in the NBA, there would always be someone who would stand up and shout, “Awesome!”

Then there were the more studious ones, reading or studying while having their meal. The library must have run out of seats because it wasn’t easy to concentrate in such an environment.

Chen Hansheng started to eat and scooped a spoon of rice into his mouth. But it tasted a little raw. He decided to drink some of the soup and found it a little too salty. At least the meat on the drumstick was tender.

“Yeah, the food still tastes as awful as before.”

In the end, he combined all his dishes into one and finished his dinner. The food might not be the best but he wasn’t a pretentious or wasteful person.

It was almost six o’clock by the time he was done with his meal. The sky was starting to turn dark and the campus lights had turned on. The vibe from the radio station playing through the loudspeakers also changed to a more relaxed tone.

Rather than heading straight for the dorms, Chen Hansheng took another detour and headed to the water room. It wasn’t to take water but to have a look at the blackboard.

University students were careless by nature. At any moment of the day, someone would lose something and someone else would find it. The blackboard was where people would report the lost and found.

[Jiang Peipei from the law department, how shameless of you to steal my boyfriend!]

[I finally passed College English Tests (CET) 4 and 6! The learning methods of this university are really trustworthy!]

[Luo Qing of the accounting department, you’ve been secretly wearing your dad’s clothes, don’t think I don’t know.]

[The internet cafes’ internet speeds have been upgraded and are now extremely fast. Check them out now!]

…

Whatever was written on the board could only stay up for twenty-four hours. Everyone agreed that there should be new notifications every day. Otherwise, people would get bored looking at it.

But Chen Hansheng was not looking at the blackboard to learn the latest gossips. Instead, he was looking at the list of available part-time jobs.

[Recruiting mobile carrier agents on campus.]

Chen Hansheng shook his head, passing that ad.

[Looking for an English tutor who has passed at least CET 8.]

Pass again.

“Recruiting someone to hand out flyers for Yiwu’s small enterprises, thirty yuan a day, meals included.”

Chen Hansheng shook his head again.

After rejecting several flyers in a row, he finally saw a thin flyer next to the big blackboard.

“Shentong Delivery Express Company is recruiting a campus agent. We would like to invite you to contact us at 159XXXXXXX.”

Chen Hansheng looked at it for a long time before he finally tore off the piece of paper and folded it as he putt it into his pocket.

…

After receiving the quilt and mattress from the dormitory management office, Chen Hansheng walked up to Room 602 by himself.

The male dormitory of the school had six-person rooms. Chen Hansheng pushed the door open and saw that the other five roommates had already arrived. The moment Chen Hansheng walked in, they stopped minding their business and looked up at him.

“Seems like I’m the last to arrive.” Chen Hansheng walked in with a smile.

Each of his roommates reacted differently. Some stood up to help carry his luggage in, some just shyly said hello, and some only took a glance indifferently.

Dorms in high schools and universities were different. High school dorms usually consisted of people who speak the same dialect and ate the same kinds of food. Their parents might even know each other. If there were conflicts, they would usually be easy to resolve.

University dorms, on the other hand, house students from all over. People from different cultures who spoke different languages could be roommates. Rather than a community, it’s almost like an every-man-for-himself situation in a university dorm.

Simply put, living in a university dorm was a person’s first step to being independent of their parents and the comforts of their previous lives. It was their first step into the real world.

Chen Hansheng put down his luggage and one of his roommates curiously asked, “Why didn’t your parents come with you?”

“I didn’t want them to. I could just do it myself,” said Chen Hansheng with a laugh.

It was a different response to the one he had given earlier to the girls at Donghai University.

And as expected, his response got his roommates to look at him differently. How brave of a high school graduate to travel with a few thousand yuan to register for university.

They carefully looked at Chen Hansheng again. He was quite tall and strong. Although he spoke very amiably, he had a wild and unruly smile. People would usually get this kind of impression from students with the lowest scores, so his roommates didn’t know how Chen Hansheng got into the school.

While his roommates were observing him, Chen Hansheng was also doing the same to them. These were people with whom he would need to get along day in and day out.

But in fact, Chen Hansheng already knew them. After all, it was his thirty-five-year-old mind in his eighteen-year-old body. He had been roommates with them before. He knew their personalities and even their future. But that was all in the ‘past’.

A butterfly flapping its wings could set off huge waves. After Chen Hansheng was reborn, he would not only change his fate but also that of the people around him. Chen Hansheng didn’t want to look at his roommates through his old lens.

‘Let those impressions stay in the past. There’s no point in learning from them now.’ Chen Hansheng reminded himself.

If there were conflicts in the past, he would try his best to avoid them. He did not want to make enemies now.

Wouldn’t it be better to be friends with everyone?

This should be how one tackles a second chance. If he lingered on the negatives of his past, wouldn’t he just be letting a great opportunity slide past?