SWTHTC - 29

Chapter 29: “Are You There?”

The National Day holiday finally arrived, but for senior year students, the break wasn’t meant for rest—it was meant for relentless studying.

This was especially true for top-tier students like Yan Lin.

For someone of his caliber, attending school every day didn’t serve much purpose. He had already mastered the foundational content, and the things teachers repeatedly emphasized were old news to him.

What he needed was targeted training for his weak areas.

Many students relied on tutoring centers to identify their knowledge gaps, but Yan Lin didn’t have the means to attend one. Thus, he could only rely on endlessly solving problems to detect his own blind spots and then figure out how to fill them himself.

In the sweltering heat, there was no air conditioning in his home—the neighborhood’s water and electricity had been cut off to pressure residents into moving quickly due to impending demolition. Wearing nothing but a sleeveless undershirt, drenched in sweat, Yan Lin sat at his desk, studying with unwavering focus.

Yan Lin was a disciplined person who pushed himself ruthlessly. Even in such an environment, he managed to stay calm and focused. He woke up at 6:30 AM to start his homework, switching to practice tests around 9 AM. From beginning to end, he worked without a single break.

Around 10:30, a continuous roar of machinery echoed outside his house.

His father, Yan Hai, had been sound asleep until the noise jolted him awake. Hastily throwing on some clothes, he rushed out the door to investigate. Through the window, Yan Lin saw a massive excavator looming toward their dilapidated little house. Its mechanical arms seemed capable of reducing everything to rubble with a single swipe.

Under the shadow of the towering machine stood a group of workers wearing hard hats and several well-dressed officials. Yan Hai ran toward them, disheveled and barefoot, his movements awkward and comical. Unaware of how ridiculous he looked, he continued running, shouting and questioning the officials, resembling nothing more than a frantic monkey hopping around.

Yan Lin didn’t want to watch anymore.

He felt restless, his once-calm mind now a tangled mess. The source of this agitation was something he found difficult to articulate.

He knew… he despised his parents.

This was wrong—they had raised him, and without them, he wouldn’t exist. Yet, he couldn’t shake off this disdain. At times, it even escalated into revulsion, especially when he witnessed their greed, pettiness, and selfishness. These feelings grew stronger with each confrontation.

But what right did he have to complain? Their relentless efforts to squeeze more compensation from the developers were ultimately for his benefit—to give him more capital to live a better life in the future.

As the beneficiary, he had no grounds to criticize or complain.

All he could do was suppress these grievances while berating himself for being so “ungrateful.”

Yan Lin took a deep breath and forced himself to return to his studies.

However, the geometry problem that had seemed easy just minutes ago now felt unfamiliar. He’d forgotten where to draw the auxiliary line he had planned earlier, adding to his frustration.

Ping.

His phone lit up. Glancing at it, he saw a message from Mi Lan.

Unlocking his phone, he opened the chat to find a short video she had sent. It showed several completed assignments.

Yan Lin raised an eyebrow and replied with a simple “?”

Mi Lan responded immediately.

Yan Lin’s Girlfriend #90: This is all the work I’ve done this morning. I didn’t do anything else—I just studied.

Top Universities Want Me: Oh.

Yan Lin wasn’t particularly interested and set the phone aside. But after a few moments, something struck him as odd, so he picked it up again.

Top Universities Want Me: Why are you working so hard?

The amount of work shown in the video would take at least two hours to complete, meaning she must have started studying by 8:30 AM. Based on his understanding of Mi Lan, unless there was a special reason, she would never wake up early to study.

Something was off.

As it turned out, Yan Lin really did know Mi Lan well.

Yan Lin’s Girlfriend #90: Isn’t that obvious?

Yan Lin’s Girlfriend #90: How can I get into the top 30 and become your girlfriend if I don’t work hard?

Top Universities Want Me: ???

Yan Lin hadn’t expected the agreement they made before the first mock exam to still apply to the second mock exam. Confused, he quickly replied.

Top Universities Want Me: That was then, this is now. How can we lump them together?

Come on… Mi Lan had ranked 46th last time, which meant she might actually make it into the top-tier testing room for arts students this time.

Yan Lin’s Girlfriend #90: Why can’t we count them together?! You never mentioned a time limit back then!

After a string of complaints, she sent over a series of angry memes featuring a silly goose.

Yan Lin felt mentally exhausted, but the bouncing goose emojis made him chuckle. One meme even depicted the goose clutching someone’s leg, pitifully pleading, “Please!”

…It was kind of cute.

Yan Lin smirked and replied: Fine, aim for rank 25 this time.

Yan Lin’s Girlfriend #90: ? Why another five ranks?! Don’t you know it gets harder to climb higher?!

Yan Lin’s Girlfriend #90: And my rank of 46 last time was pure luck, okay!

Top Universities Want Me: Then why bother? Just give up.

Yan Lin’s Girlfriend #90: Screw you.

Yan Lin’s Girlfriend #90: I’m going for it! Wait for me!!!

She followed up with another meme of a goose charging forward.

Yan Lin turned off his phone. The black screen reflected his face, and he realized… he was smiling.

The realization startled him so much that his brows furrowed. He stared at the dark screen, double-checking to ensure he wasn’t smiling before setting the phone down.

He returned to the geometry problem.

Oh, he knew how to solve it now.

________________________________________

Just like Yan Lin, Zhou Leqi was also putting in tremendous effort.

She was a meticulous person in everything she did. For instance, when helping Yu Qing chop vegetables, she insisted on cutting each tiny carrot cube perfectly uniform. Yu Qing often teased her for being too rigid, but Zhou Leqi knew it was a manifestation of her obsessive-compulsive tendencies—anxiety manifesting as perfectionism.

This same intensity carried over into her studies. Despite having already mastered the material inside and out, she still forced herself to repeatedly review and practice, pushing herself as hard as Yan Lin during his first round of senior year revision.

Yu Qing had always worried about her overworking herself. After all, enduring the high-pressure life of a senior year student for three consecutive years would wear anyone down. Zhou Leqi hadn’t paid much heed to her advice in the past, but recently, there had been a shift. On National Day, she even asked Yu Qing where her old phone had been stored.

Zhou Leqi did own a phone—a smartphone her father, Zhou Lei, had bought her two years ago before their divorce. It was considered high-end at the time, even featured in TV dramas.

However, after failing her college entrance exams, Zhou Leqi gradually stopped using it to avoid awkward interactions with her former classmates. Yu Qing had put it away for her, and she hadn’t touched it in nearly two years.

She retrieved the phone during the day but didn’t turn it on immediately. Staring at the dark screen, she felt a pang of fear, as though opening it would reveal traces of her past. To delay the inevitable, she charged it first. Only after calming herself in the evening did she muster the courage to power it on.

It was 9:30 PM. Alone in the living room, she hesitated for a long time before pressing the power button.

The screen lit up, and familiar yet distant icons filled her vision. She stared at the QQ icon silently for a while, her finger hovering over it multiple times before finally mustering the courage to tap it open.

She needed to log in, but she had long forgotten her password. After resetting it through identity verification, she finally gained access.

An avalanche of unread messages flooded her screen—countless red notification dots everywhere, especially in their old class group chat, which had reached the dreaded “999+” unread messages.

Zhou Leqi turned off the phone, leaned back on the small sofa, and closed her eyes for a moment to steady her racing emotions. When she reopened the app, she navigated to the class group chat.

Though the app displayed only “999+,” the actual number of unread messages was in the thousands—two years’ worth of conversations among her classmates. She scrolled to the earliest messages from the summer of 2012, right after their college entrance exams. Back then, everyone was discussing vacation plans, sharing photos from trips, and posting pictures from reunion dinners. Everyone looked so happy. Later, as university began, they exchanged updates about their new lives, complaining about how college wasn’t as good as high school and how they struggled to adapt—all worlds unknown to Zhou Leqi. Over time, as holidays rolled around, people returned to City A for reunions, sharing invitations and photos from gatherings.

This lively interaction lasted for about a year before gradually tapering off. The intervals between messages grew longer, and eventually, the group became inactive—a dead chat.

It was inevitable, perhaps. After all, everyone had moved on to new lives.

Zhou Leqi skimmed through the messages for about fifteen minutes, getting a rough sense of what she had missed. Suddenly, her phone vibrated. Someone was messaging her.

Exiting the group chat, she saw it was Pei Qiming.

The class monitor of the Class of ‘09, currently studying at Tsinghua University.

His QQ nickname was an obscure English word, arbitrary, and his profile picture showed a backlit figure standing in front of the Tsinghua gate—perhaps taken during his freshman year. Now, he was likely a sophomore.

Arbitrary: Leqi? Is that you?

Zhou Leqi suddenly realized she hadn’t set her status to invisible upon logging in, so her online presence had been detected.

Without fully understanding what she was avoiding, she immediately clicked “offline” the moment Pei Qiming’s message arrived and hastily exited the app.

It felt like she had just escaped a massive chase. Her palms were slightly sweaty, and she stared blankly at her now-dark phone screen for a long, long time.

She felt suffocated and weighed down, unable to pinpoint the source of this overwhelming emotion. All she knew was that it had surfaced while browsing the group chat, and Pei Qiming’s appearance had amplified it tenfold.

Suddenly, she wanted to hide—anywhere, as long as she wouldn’t be seen by anyone from her past. She would trade anything for that.

Zhou Leqi curled up on the small sofa, hugging her legs tightly and burying her face in her knees.

Once again, she was consumed by paralyzing loneliness.

Ping.

Her phone lit up again.

A text message appeared—not from QQ, but an old-fashioned SMS, almost obsolete in this day and age.

It came from an unfamiliar number.

Just two words:

“Are you there?”

________________________________________

Author’s Note:

Little Pei makes an appearance.

Little Hou: A kind of plant.