Chapter 2: A Ghostly Shadow, Spying on the Illicit Tryst (1/3)

At night, around 10 pm or so, the teaching building was dark and silent, only the streetlamps on the playground were still lit, the gymnasium and the canteen were closed and locked, only a few rooms in the faculty administration building had their lights on, and even the commercial street on campus had gradually gone from brightly lit to sparse and dim. The brightest place now was the student dormitory. Though the rooms weren't big, each one had its own different drama playing out. There was a girl who was a socially-recruited student—today was her first day enrolling, and she'd been assigned to Room 437 with her classmates. She was busy until quite late before finally returning to her room to rest. The moment she opened the door, she saw her three roommates gathered together watching a variety show. The three of them instinctively looked up at the sound, and she instinctively greeted them: "Hello, hi everyone."

The one in the middle paused the video, turned around, and looked her over, asking, "Are you the new one?"

"Yes."

"Which class are you in?"

"Class 3 of Art Design, 2020 grade. Same class as you. My name is Su Shengcheng—Su as in Su Shi, Sheng as in victory, Cheng as in journey." She gave a polite smile and said, "Good evening, from now on we'll be classmates and roommates, please take care of me."

"Good evening, I'm Song Jialei."

"I'm Zhou Yingying."

The other two girls responded to her one after the other, and the one in the middle asked, "You're a socially-recruited student, right? All the regularly-admitted students were enrolled before military training even started."

"That's right," Su Shengcheng blinked and said, "My aunt recommended me here. She's a leader at this university, and also a secretary."

"Your aunt? My dad's secretary also has the surname Su, I think. What's her name again... I can't remember."

"Your father?"

"Yeah, my dad is the president and chairman of the board of this university. I heard the admission score line here is pretty high, but luckily I didn't have to test in—I could just come straight in."

"Oh," Su Shengcheng of course understood the implication, but still asked, "So, classmate, what's your name? I feel like calling you 'the president's precious daughter' would be a bit much."

"No need to call me that. My name is Dong Qian—Dong as in board chairman (dongshizhang), Qian as in Nie Xiaoqian."

"Then let me ask again, should I call you Dong Qian, or Miss Dong?"

"Just call me Dong Qian. No need to be so showy."

"Alright, then let's get to sleep early, Dong Qian. It's getting late, and we have class tomorrow."

"Got it."

Su Shengcheng said nothing more. She washed up, changed clothes, and climbed into bed to sleep. Just then, Dong Qian's phone rang again. She picked it up and said, "Hello? You're waiting for me outside the school? Where? Okay, what did you prepare? Mm, I'll come now, wait a bit for me."

Soon she hung up the phone, took out her makeup and touched up her already heavy makeup with some powder, drew her eyebrows, applied lipstick, put on a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes, grabbed a Gucci waist bag, and left.

Before she went out, Song Jialei asked her, "It's this late, where are you going?"

"I'm going out to have fun, someone's waiting for me."

"Is it your boyfriend? But it's so late, isn't the school gate closed?"

"It's fine, the security guard knows me, he'll open it for me."

"Oh, are you coming back tonight?"

"Not sure. You guys go to sleep, I'm off."

Dong Qian said this and left. Su Shengcheng lay in bed and heard every word clearly. Song Jialei and Zhou Yingying also went to wash up one after the other, making intermittent noises that also kept her from sleeping. After they finished, the two of them, as if by some unspoken agreement, came to Su Shengcheng's bed and called out to her.

"What is it?" Su Shengcheng turned over, propping herself up on the pillow to ask.

"We just wanted to give you a heads up about something," Song Jialei said. "You already know Dong Qian is the president's daughter, and just by looking at her you can tell she's not someone to be trifled with. If you want to get through college peacefully, try your best not to provoke her. It'd be best to become friends with her—otherwise, if you accidentally upset her, she might just get her dad to expel you."

"Yeah," Zhou Yingying also said. "Like the two of us—we just barely made the admission score line, and tuition is almost twenty thousand a year. If we got expelled, not only would we not get the tuition back, we wouldn't even have the qualification to attend university anymore. Even though we usually behave ourselves, well, who told us we'd run into someone like her? We didn't want this either. There's no other way, we just have to be her friend. Look at her, she's not exactly the settled type—who knows, maybe one day she'll go move in with some guy off-campus, and then we'll finally have some peace."

Su Shengcheng just smiled and said nothing.