Nan Xiuxiu!
Jiang Ran’s right hand clamped down on the corner of the table.
In the span of just two short hours, he had run into this girl twice, and both times in such spine-chilling circumstances… Was this girl part ghost?
“Why are you here?”
Jiang Ran was on guard.
“Were you following me?”
“What do you mean, following? That sounds awful!” Nan Xiuxiu was very displeased, her hands on her hips.
Jiang Ran said nothing.
He did not believe her at all.
If she wasn’t following him, how could she have crossed two districts of Donghai and tracked him here with such precision?
It was far too bizarre.
And she had even stood silently at the doorway, peeking in. Suspicious to the extreme.
“I came because I was worried about you!” Nan Xiuxiu emphasized.
“How did you know I was here?” Jiang Ran pressed on.
He had not answered Nan Xiuxiu’s calls, nor had he told anyone he was coming to Donghai University’s Film Society. Without precise location tracking, there was no way she could have found him.
“The romance app!”
Nan Xiuxiu waved her phone.
“Did you forget? In the romance app we’re bound together on, we can check each other’s location and movements.”
“…”
This touched upon Jiang Ran’s blind spot.
There were apps like that?
So he opened his phone, and sure enough, on the second page of the menu, he saw the app. Its name was simply “Romance,” and its icon was two hearts stuck together.
He tapped it open.
The home page displayed in huge characters: [We’ve Been in Love for 4 Days!] On the left and right were headshots of Jiang Ran and Nan Xiuxiu respectively.
Dear God…
His scalp went numb.
Was this really him?
Jiang Ran sank into deep doubt.
He truly wished he could look in a mirror immediately and see whether the worldline had jumped into chaos and sent him drifting into someone else’s body.
At the bottom of the app, there was indeed a movement log.
He opened it, and his trajectory for the day was laid out clearly at a glance.
It was not just his current location… It was detailed down to every single route, including the entire path he had taken after crawling through the hole into Donghai University, all clearly marked on the map.
Likewise, he could see Nan Xiuxiu’s tracks.
Like him, she had taken a taxi from the villa district, then come to Donghai University, following his exact previous route all the way to the club activity building.
“What kind of perverted software is this?”
Jiang Ran frowned and immediately wanted to remove this damn thing from his phone.
It was suffocating.
Was this how dating worked? There wasn’t even the tiniest bit of privacy.
“What’s perverted about it?”
Nan Xiuxiu snorted.
“This is a record of our love~”
Click.
Jiang Ran locked his phone screen and stared at her.
“What did you come here for?”
“To apologize.” Nan Xiuxiu blinked.
?
An unexpected answer.
“Apologize for what?” Jiang Ran asked.
“After you left, I called Wang Hao and asked him. Only then did I find out you had a childhood sweetheart named Cheng Mengxue…”
Nan Xiuxiu said seriously,
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to joke about it.”
She pressed her palms together.
“I didn’t have any ill intent. Mainly, none of you had ever mentioned her before, and I didn’t know she had passed away… In short, I said the wrong thing. I hope you don’t mind.”
…
Jiang Ran looked at her quietly.
Such a sincere and straightforward apology was quite different from her arrogant and domineering appearance. The contrast was rather striking.
The joke Nan Xiuxiu was referring to should have been that line: “Cheng Mengxue—she wouldn’t happen to be your ex-girlfriend, would she?” … At the time, she had just come out of the bathroom and heard him calling that name while talking to Wang Hao on the phone, so she had come out to ask.
To be honest, Jiang Ran did not actually feel offended by that remark.
Because, first of all, he did not believe Cheng Mengxue was truly dead. With the positron cannon and the space-time text messages in existence, Cheng Mengxue could only be considered “temporarily” dead.
Second, he did not believe, nor did he accept, that Nan Xiuxiu was his girlfriend, so no matter how much of a fuss she made, Jiang Ran simply did not care.
“It’s nothing.”
Jiang Ran said casually,
“I didn’t take it to heart.”
“Hehe~”
Nan Xiuxiu immediately broke into a mischievous smile again, her lively, eccentric manner returning.
“You guys really don’t have to hide this kind of thing from me. Although I’m your girlfriend, I’m not that petty.”
“Besides, even if… even if you really did have an ex-girlfriend, it wouldn’t matter. We only met in university. I won’t fuss over things from before.”
“But next time, don’t run off because of something like this. I was really worried about you in the middle of the night, and you wouldn’t answer your phone…”
“Enough, enough.”
Jiang Ran interrupted her.
“Let’s get out of here. The patrol will be here soon.”
He had indeed seen the flashlights of the school patrol from afar and did not want to cause trouble.
But more importantly, he did not want to share these secrets with Nan Xiuxiu.
The Film Society, the worldline jump, the positron cannon, the space-time text messages… all of it. He did not want her to know any of it.
So they needed to leave quickly.
The two of them left the activity room. Jiang Ran carefully locked the door, then put the spare key back under the flowerpot before leading Nan Xiuxiu out of the club activity building.
After they exited the building, the patrol’s flashlight was already not far away.
The two hurriedly bent low, quietly took a detour, and eventually reached the small woods near the west gate without incident.
“Hey, you still haven’t told me.”
Nan Xiuxiu poked Jiang Ran.
“Fine, you ran out in the middle of the night, but why did you come here? What kind of club was that? It was all shabby and run-down.”
“The Film Society.”
Jiang Ran made up an excuse to brush her off.
“It’s a club for people who like film cameras. I have a friend here. Last time I came here to hang out with him, I might have left something behind, so I dropped by to look for it.”
The excuse was flimsy, but he could not think of anything more suitable at the moment, so he could only stubbornly stick to it.
“Oh.”
Nan Xiuxiu did not think too deeply about it.
“How come I never heard you mention it before?”
“Heh.”
Jiang Ran chuckled.
“Miss, we’ve only been dating for [4 days]. I can’t exactly give you my entire family genealogy, can I?”
“That’s true.” Nan Xiuxiu curled her lips.
Jiang Ran glanced at his watch.
“It’s getting late. Let’s go back to the dorm.”
After all this, it was already four in the morning. He might as well go straight back to the dormitory and sleep.
As he spoke, Jiang Ran started walking toward the dormitory buildings, while Nan Xiuxiu turned and headed toward the school’s west gate.
?
?
The two turned around at the same time, question marks practically hovering above their heads as they stared at each other.
“Where are you going?”
“Where are you going?”
Jiang Ran pointed south.
“The dorm buildings are this way.”
Pfft—
Nan Xiuxiu burst out laughing.
“Bro! You’re still out of it! This is Donghai University!”
“Yeah, so what?”
Jiang Ran did not understand.
He was a student of Donghai University. If he did not go to Donghai University’s dormitory, where else would he go?
“Enough, enough, stop messing around.”
Nan Xiuxiu grabbed Jiang Ran by the arm and quickly walked toward the west gate, then pushed him out through the broken hole in the railing.
“Where are we going?”
Jiang Ran asked, but received no answer.
Clearly, Nan Xiuxiu no longer felt like humoring him on this topic.
Nan Xiuxiu walked over to a taxi, pulled open the rear door, and shoved Jiang Ran inside.
Then she got in as well and closed the door.
“Driver, to Donghai Vocational College of International Economics and Trade.”
???
Jiang Ran’s neck stiffened.
“Why are we going there?”
Nan Xiuxiu looked at him as if he were an idiot.
“Back to our school.”
Our school?
Jiang Ran froze completely.
Donghai Vocational College of International Economics and Trade.
Vocational college?
He sucked in a breath of cold air.
“A junior college!?”