Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Huang Shaoze took a cold shower, shivering from the chill. Though Kanbei City was in the south, autumn had arrived in September, and the icy water bit to the bone. He didn’t dare make a fuss, trembling as he washed his underwear and socks, trying to keep the water flow steady while minimizing the noise.

Qi Yuanhan waited for Huang Shaoze to finish showering and washing his clothes, leaning against the desk by Bed 1 and smoking a cigarette. After eyeing the guy in Bed 3 for a long while, he finally cursed and jumped down: "Damn you, Sleepyhead! Hurry up! I can’t hold it anymore!"

Qi Yuanhan’s showers were always chaotic. He used to bellow in the shower until someone—whether from upstairs or downstairs—complained to the counselor, forcing him to stop his ear-splitting performances.

Huang Shaoze towel-dried his hair and glanced back at Bed 3 as he passed. The Crown Prince clearly needed catching up on a lifetime of lost sleep—probably making up for all the sleep he missed as a kid. He went to hang his underwear and undershirt to dry.

The next morning, the alarm blared over a dozen times before the two in their beds finally stirred. Qi Yuanhan and Huang Shaoze jostled for the bathroom and hurriedly got dressed, scrambling to style their hair. As they passed Bed 3, they noticed the occupant still dead asleep, no longer in the same position as the night before.

Qi Yuanhan couldn’t resist mocking: "What kind of Crown Prince sleeps till the sun’s high?"

They assumed that by the time they finished washing up and left around 7:20 AM, the Crown Prince would be up and rushing to make it to the first lecture.

But even as they headed out, he was still deep in slumber. He had good looks, but who knew he’d be such a heavy sleeper?

Huang Shaoze, ever the good-natured one, called out kindly, "You’re going to be late. Get up." The guy only mumbled a soft refusal.

"That’s just how the Crown Prince is," Qi Yuanhan muttered under his breath, chuckling under his breath.

True to form, the Crown Prince didn’t show up for the first lecture.

Since Gu Jinglan had texted asking them to bring his textbooks, the three ended up sitting together.

Slight dark circles undercut Gu Jinglan’s handsome face, but they did nothing to diminish his appeal. He glanced at the empty seat among the four he’d reserved. "Where is he?"

"Wouldn’t get up if his life depended on it. Acted like he needed an entourage to wake him. His loss for skipping class." Qi Yuanhan exaggerated. Huang Shaoze had only called once before they bolted out of the dorm, sprinted to the nearest cafeteria for breakfast, then raced to the distant Building 8 for class.

"You got it done last night?" Qi Yuanhan asked, remembering Gu Jinglan had stayed in the lab all night. He handed over breakfast.

"Yeah, submitted it before 7 AM."

"Deadline was…?"

"7 this morning."

"Insane."

"Who screwed you over?" Qi Yuanhan smirked meaningfully. "Normally, you’d be cursing up a storm."

Just some girl—not worth the drama. Gu Jinglan brushed it off. "Quit exaggerating. When do I ever curse?"

Even Huang Shaoze, listening intently, caught the implication: Was Gu Jinglan seeing someone? The topic ended, and the trio threw themselves into the morning lecture, where knowledge fought against their sleepiness.

If Qi Yuanhan weren’t 100% heterosexual, he might’ve fallen for Gu Jinglan.

He’d never met anyone who could swear while smiling. What stuck with him about Gu Jinglan wasn’t just his face—it was also an incident during their sophomore organic chemistry lab. They’d been synthesizing benzoic acid using potassium permanganate and toluene. When someone skipped pH testing during hydrochloric acid neutralization, fumes filled the lab, sending everyone into coughing fits. Luckily, they evacuated fast, avoiding serious exposure to the carcinogenic compounds.

An upperclassman reported them for unauthorized lab access, but Gu Jinglan confronted him, arguing so fiercely he even exposed the real culprit—another upperclassman.

Later, Gu Jinglan mentioned he’d interned at hospitals since his teens—his father owned a network handling over 30,000 outpatients a year.

By the second and third lectures, Qi Yanyu still hadn’t shown. When the third lecture ended at 12:15, the trio made their way to the cafeteria.

"Aren’t you going back to catch up on sleep?" Qi Yuanhan asked.

"I'll just get some food and head back," Gu Jinglan said, knowing he could only catch about 15-20 minutes of extra sleep.

Back in the dorm, that guy had just woken up and was dragging through his morning routine.

"Just woke up?"

The bathroom door was left ajar, the faint sound of running water trickling as the guy washed his face. No idea if he even responded.

Gu Jinglan opened his lunchbox and started eating. The noon campus broadcast usually played music, and though their dorm was supposed to be far from the main paths students took to class, the broadcast's melodies still drifted in from the balcony.

The guy got dressed and headed downstairs, presumably to the cafeteria for lunch.

Didn’t even say a word.

During the first main lecture in the afternoon, when Qi Yanyu arrived at the classroom, he noticed the front rows were mostly empty. He casually took a seat and spotted a book on the desk next to him.

This was a classroom that could seat eighty people, yet the first three or four rows were completely vacant, while the back rows were jam-packed. Some squeezed in with spare stools.

A commotion broke out in the back, especially from Qi Yuanhan, who had squeezed himself as far back as possible: "Check out this fool—"

Huang Shaoze couldn’t bring himself to look, afraid the sight of his new roommate being tormented by the professor would be too much to bear.

For the first class in the afternoon, they didn’t need to save a seat for Gu Jinglan because he always sat right at the front—no one competed with him for those spots. All they had to do was toss his book onto the third row, right in the middle.

As Qi Yanyu sat down, he glanced at the book beside him: *Biochemistry and Molecular Biology*.

In reality, he had left medicine for business. He had rigorously studied a five-year clinical medicine program, and due to his connections, he didn’t need much internship training before working in a hospital. Later, due to health issues, he started a pharmaceutical-related company.

Lowering his gaze, he wondered if the book next to him was placed there to reserve a seat. Did it even need reserving? The front rows were so wide and empty.

Talk of the devil. Gu Jinglan entered the classroom, glanced at where his book was placed, and sat down, leaving two or three seats between himself and Qi Yanyu.

The vast expanse of the front rows held only the two of them, isolated as ghosts.

It was beautiful, but brutally so.

What was the hardest subject for medical students? Undoubtedly, biochemistry, immunology, internal medicine, and the like. If ranked, biochemistry would easily make the top three. Not only were the terms convoluted and eerily similar, but they also had to memorize organic reaction formulas longer than their medical lifespans and calculate how many ATPs were consumed.

mRNA, rRNA, tRNA—tested in every possible variation. And molecular biology was its own cryptic art, amusing only until the words "synthesis, regulation, modification, expression, signal transduction" lulled one into dreamland.

The professor for this course was notoriously strict and sadistic, crafting exam questions that were brutally tricky. The big problems on tests were never found in textbooks, designed purely to torment students.

One of his favorite pastimes was picking on the front-row students.

Sure enough, as soon as the professor arrived and spotted an unfamiliar, fresh face in the usually vacant front rows, he smiled, equal parts pleased and curious.

The professor had this unfamiliar student explain, one after another: "yeast two-hybrid assay, Pribnow box, P:O ratio, hnRNA, JAK family."

Then he asked: "What is the precursor of GABA?" "At what wavelength is protein concentration measured?" "Common nucleic acid gel dyes and their mechanisms."

Finally, he threw out the three big problems that always appeared at the end of exams.

The back rows ate it up, especially those from dorms 413, 5, and 6: "The Prince’s pain is our gain."

Yet the professor deliberately skipped Gu Jinglan, singling out Qi Yanyu for a grilling. Qi Yanyu had only completed his five-year program before switching to business. If not for his later company’s ties to biochemistry, he would’ve forgotten much of it.

He gave short answers where he could and admitted ignorance for the rest. Of the three big problems, he only solved one—not wanting to encourage the professor.

He wondered why the professor didn’t call on Gu Jinglan. Thinking that Gu Jinglan must have gone through the same phase, Qi Yanyu felt somewhat more at ease.

There must have been others who suffered before him—he definitely wasn’t the first.

Imagining Gu Jinglan bombarded with unfamiliar, baffling terms, he figured the guy couldn’t have handled it any better than he, who at least had some academic background and experience.

The thought inexplicably lifted his mood.

By the end of the lecture, the professor had thrown nearly thirty or forty questions at him, most of which were things one could grasp with a solid understanding of undergraduate biochemistry.

Qi Yanyu had finished half his water bottle by the time class ended.

And what was Gu Jinglan doing beside him? Seemingly attentive, he was actually sending voice and text messages, seemingly chatting with someone. In the last hour before dismissal, he ditched his phone like he was done with it and didn’t touch it again.

After class, there was still some time before dinner.

Dorms 413, 415, and 416 had come in excited but left deflated: "The crown prince* isn’t actually useless?"

"When would the crown prince even have time to study?"

"Your Brother Gu must’ve been whispering answers," Du Fengping declared confidently.

Qi Yuanhan swore, "My Brother Gu would never do that! If he did—I’d go steal his girlfriend." All talk.

"He has a girlfriend?"

"With his caliber, how could he not?" Qi Yuanhan boomed. "Probably keeping it under wraps."

After class, a little past four, Qi Yanyu went to 7-Eleven for a rice ball. Last time, while strolling the campus with Qi Muyao, he’d discovered this great spot along the sycamore-lined path. Behind Building 13, under the shade of the sycamores, it was quiet and cool—unlike the scorching hot playground after a day in the sun.

So he took a couple of bites of the rice ball and started doing a light jog under the sycamores.

He wanted to improve his physical fitness. Having just "escaped" from home, he worried the plot was moving too slowly—what if he didn’t die outright but ended up left half-dead? That’d be worse.

But less than ten minutes into his jog, he was already gasping for air.

Doubling over, hands on knees, he slowed to a stop. He had bronchitis and mild asthma. If he pushed too hard, he’d trigger an asthma attack before seeing any fitness gains—that'd be just great.

Catching his breath, he adjusted until it steadied, then walked at a leisurely pace instead. At least he wouldn’t collapse.

The ground was strewn with dry, crackling sycamore leaves. Each step, accompanied by the rustling breeze, felt like the trees’ last waltz.

As he walked, he came across a drama.

About ten meters ahead, a sobbing girl was firing off accusations at a man.

She wept as she hurled accusations, but with each rebuttal, her tears only fell harder. It wasn’t yet the end of the school day, and Building 13 was an older classroom block, usually empty—no one would stick their head out a window to gawk.

Qi Yanyu thought he’d walked into some soap opera breakup.

Slowing his steps, he took a closer look. The girl slapped the man—though it looked like it barely connected—before running off. The man remained, looking either thoughtful or annoyed.

It was the only way out of the sycamore grove. After a brief hesitation, Qi Yanyu decided to pretend he hadn’t seen anything. Hand on his still-pounding chest, he walked past with a straight face.

He turned his head slightly, quickening his pace. But the guy had to go and stare right at him.

Gu Jinglan’s voice was icy, much like when he’d told him to go to the hospital: "Get an eyeful? How much longer do you need?"

Hah. Qi Yanyu lifted his chin slightly. As he passed Gu Jinglan, he replied calmly, "How’d you make a girl cry? Real classy move." Then he walked away without another word.

*Note: "Crown prince" is likely a sarcastic nickname for someone perceived as privileged or entitled.