"Hello?" she answered.

The person on the other end said, "Xu Zhinan, where have you been?"

Xu Zhinan didn't react right away, blinking her eyes. "What?"

"Didn't I tell you my flight was today? You didn't even come to pick me up. I'm all alone at the Yan City airport right now, damn it!"

"I know you're back today." Xu Zhinan glanced back at Lin Qingye and lowered her voice. "But you didn't ask me to pick you up from the airport."

"I really give up on you, my lady. How can you be so heartless? When your big brother was in the country, didn't I take you with me everywhere I went?"

Xu Zhinan didn't argue with the Young Master Gu. "So what are you going to do now? Is no one picking you up from the airport?"

"I'll get back myself!" Young Master Gu said angrily, then added, "I'll go find you at the shop," before hanging up.

Xu Zhinan put her phone back in her pocket and walked back to Lin Qingye. "Brother Qingye."

His expression remained unchanged, but his aura was inexplicably oppressive at the moment. A hint of cold severity spread across his features. He said faintly, "Mm."

After the recent commotion, even though Lin Qingye had said she was his girlfriend, his attitude was clearly perfunctory and deceptive. Xu Zhinan felt a flush of embarrassment because of it and didn't want to stay any longer.

"I'll be heading back first," Xu Zhinan said softly.

Gu Congwang was a childhood friend of hers; they had grown up together.

But the gap between their two families was immense. Xu Zhinan's father was a policeman and her mother was a teacher—an ordinary family. The Gu family, on the other hand, was a prestigious and influential family in Yan City. Gu Congwang was a heaven-blessed child, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the little prince of the Gu family, utterly doted on.

She hesitated, wondering how to refer to Gu Congwang to Lin Qingye.

Then she heard him say, "Fine."

Xu Zhinan opened her mouth, then closed it again. She silently walked out of the bedroom, picked up her schoolbag, changed back into her shoes, and left.

The studio door slammed shut with a loud bang.

Lin Qingye came in with a grim face. The rest of the band was there.

"Captain," Guan Chi called out hesitantly. "Is everything alright?"

He didn't say a word, just grabbed his guitar and went straight into his room.

Leaving the three of them in the living room, staring at each other in bewilderment. What was wrong?

Guan Chi: "What's the situation? It's been a long time since I've seen the captain with that expression."

Ji Yan frowned and said, "Did the captain go home and fight with his mom again?"

"Doesn't seem like it. He hasn't been back in a long time, right?"

Ji Yan shot a sideways glance. "Who else could possibly make our captain angry?"

Shi Si: "Didn't that show, Here for the Song, release an audio clip today? Could it be because he saw the negative comments below?"

After saying that, he also felt his guess was completely unlikely. "No, that can't be right. The captain doesn't seem like someone who would pay attention to these things."

After leaving Lin Qingye's apartment, Xu Zhinan took the subway directly back to the tattoo shop.

His apartment was in the city center, and it was rush hour, so the subway station was bustling and extremely crowded.

Gu Congwang took a taxi straight from the airport. Xu Zhinan had just walked out of the Pingchuan University station when she received his call saying he had already arrived.

"I'm almost there too," Xu Zhinan said. "Five minutes, just got out of the subway station."

"I thought you were already at the shop. You've been busy lately, huh?"

"It's been okay." Xu Zhinan quickened her pace and looked across the street. "I see you."

Gu Congwang was standing at the shop entrance, dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt and jeans, looking very fresh.

He was in a 2+2 program for university, so he went to study in the UK in his junior year. He had just finished the semester's courses and returned to the country.

As soon as Gu Congwang saw Xu Zhinan crossing the crosswalk, he smiled, raised his arm, waved vigorously, and shouted, "Ah Nan!"

Xu Zhinan had a gentle personality and a naturally soft voice, so she didn't speak loudly. She just smiled and waved back at him.

She walked across the crosswalk and asked, "How were your exams?"

Young Master Gu waved his hand dismissively. "You really have a way of bringing up things I don't want to talk about the moment you open your mouth."

Xu Zhinan smiled, took the keys out of her schoolbag, and opened the shop door. "It's hot outside, come on in."

"Where were you just now? You even came by subway."

Xu Zhinan paused. Before she could answer, Gu Congwang asked again, "Have you eaten?"

"I've eaten," she replied, only answering his second question.

"Damn, you have no rapport at all. Not only did you not pick me up from the airport, but now you're going to make me eat dinner alone?"

Xu Zhinan took out her phone. "Then let me order some takeout for you."

"Get the expensive stuff."

"Okay." Xu Zhinan changed the filter to "Price Per Person: High to Low."

"Forget it, I'll order it myself. How's your business doing?"

"It's pretty good. This is a university town, so there are a lot of young people, and many are curious about tattoos. It's just that not many of them actually decide to get one in the end. It's mostly regular clients."

Gu Congwang lay down on the sofa and ordered a sushi platter for himself. "So, do you usually earn enough to get by?"

"It's enough." Xu Zhinan smiled, revealing her small white teeth. "My rates aren't low."

Tattoo shops are mainly divided into three types.

Large shops have a high reputation, a considerable client base, and strong promotional efforts. They also have many resident tattoo artists with seven or eight years of experience or more. Their skills are excellent, they have a large clientele, and they charge two to three thousand per hour.

Small shops, on the other hand, have average skills and a weak sense of design. They are run by the most common type of tattoo artists, charge low prices, and mostly target clients with poor financial conditions but an interest in getting tattoos.

Xu Zhinan's tattoo shop was somewhere in the middle.

When she first opened the shop, there was a difficult period. It couldn't compare to the reputation of the large shops, nor could it compete with the prices of the small ones.

Fortunately, during her freshman year, her photos went viral on the Pingchuan University campus forum. People gradually started asking about her and learned that she had opened a tattoo shop outside the school.

This area was also a university town. After Xu Zhinan was hailed as the "Light of Pingchuan," many people came, drawn by her reputation, and gradually it created a promotional effect.

Tattoos also have four main classic styles: Traditional, School, Realism, and Totem.

Among them, Realism tattoos pursue likeness and extreme detail, requiring a very strong foundation in drawing to do well.

There weren't many tattoo artists in Yan City who could do this style well. Xu Zhinan was one of them. Her skills were indeed good, which helped retain clients, and she charged around five hundred per hour for unique, original tattoo designs.

"Pretty impressive." Gu Congwang gave her a thumbs-up. "I was originally thinking of sponsoring you by letting you do business on this precious body of this young master."

Xu Zhinan sat down. "If you want a tattoo, I'll do it for you for free."

Gu Congwang: "No way, it's too painful."

It was currently the evening rush hour, which was also the peak time for takeout orders. They waited quite a while before Gu Congwang's food was delivered. Besides the sushi platter, he had also ordered a bottle of sake.

Xu Zhinan had been practicing ink wash tattoos recently. She drew a few draft designs in her sketchbook, took a picture, and posted it on her Moments.

She didn't like posting about her daily life on Moments, but because she owned a tattoo shop, she often posted new works.

Soon, regular clients began to inquire. Compared to common tattoo styles, ink wash tattoos were relatively rare, had a stronger Chinese element, and were considered special.

As she replied, she glanced at Gu Congwang. "Why are you eating sushi right after coming back to the country? Don't they all say that international students miss Chinese food the most?"

Young Master Gu would never mistreat himself. "I often ate at the Zhongxi Tulanya Restaurant over there too. The owner is Chinese, so the taste is no different from back home."

Gu Congwang took two glasses from her cabinet and raised the bottle in his hand. "Want some?"

Xu Zhinan didn't like to drink, and she drank even less after that ridiculous incident when she was drunk. It was just that when she thought back to the scene when she left Lin Qingye's apartment, she felt inexplicably sullen.

So she nodded. "Just a little bit is fine."

Gu Congwang only poured her less than half a glass. "Why are you drinking today? Are you in a bad mood?"

"It's hard to say."

Xu Zhinan took a small sip of the sake, leaned back in her chair, and turned her head to look at the Buddhist sutra on the bookshelf beside her. She said slowly, "I just feel like I'm doing something wrong."

Gu Congwang was taken aback. "What wrong thing?"

She and Gu Congwang were indeed on good terms, too good, in fact. Gu Congwang even knew her mother, so she didn't dare mention a single thing about Lin Qingye to him.

She shook her head and murmured, "All conditioned phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, like dew or a flash of lightning; thus should you view them."

Gu Congwang got a headache whenever he heard her say things like this. "What kind of gibberish are you spouting now?"

...

Xu Zhinan gave him a sullen glare and corrected him seriously, "It's not gibberish."

Gu Congwang laughed. "Alright, then translate it for me."

"Things that arise from causes and conditions are not real and cannot last long."

Even though she had translated it into plain language, Gu Congwang still felt it was gibberish and didn't quite understand. After a moment, he asked, "Don't tell me you had your heart broken?"

...

Her throat moved, and a mouthful of sake slid straight down, causing her to choke for a while. "Of course not!"

"Then what is it?" Gu Congwang narrowed his eyes, sizing her up and down. "I really can't imagine someone like you doing anything wrong."

That's right. No matter how you looked at it, she didn't seem like the kind of person who would get involved with Lin Qingye.

Xu Zhinan didn't bring it up again. A few more customers inquired about ink wash tattoos, and she lowered her head to focus on replying.

From that day on, Xu Zhinan had no further contact with Lin Qingye.

Two days later, the official Weibo account of "Here for the Song" officially announced all the contestants participating in the show. Lin Qingye was among them, and along with the announcement, his fans, who had been quiet for a long time, all became active at once.

The school forum of Pingchuan University was also extremely lively. The trending posts on the front page were all about Lin Qingye.

One of the posts was a collection of photos of Lin Qingye taken by everyone over the past four years. There were pictures of him singing in a bar, attending classes at school, and on the basketball court.

[Is our Pingchuan University campus hunk about to lead Pingchuan University out of the college circle and into the entertainment industry?]

[Hahahahahaha for real, a lot of the posts on our forum get reposted by fans to his Super Topic.]

[I'm seriously impressed by his ability to retain fans. As soon as the show was announced, his Super Topic ranking shot straight into the top ten!]

[TBH, even though Lin Qingye's previous scandal about hitting someone was real, his face is truly out of this world.]

[When it comes to looks, probably no university can beat Pingchuan University, right? We have Lin Qingye for the guys and Xu Zhinan for the girls, our two top visuals.]

[By the way, are there any pictures of Lin Qingye and Xu Zhinan in the same frame? That could be a pictorial!! Let me see!]

[I want to see too, but unfortunately, it seems like no one has ever seen them in the same frame. Such a pity.]

[Fourth-year senior here. I remember back when Xu Zhinan was most popular right after she enrolled, people were even betting on whether the Pingchuan University campus hunk and campus belle would spark a romance!]

...

Zhao Qian leaned back in her chair, holding her phone and looking at the forum, laughing nonstop.

Today was the Modern History exam. Xu Zhinan had pulled an all-nighter, memorizing the entire stack of materials. While packing her things for the exam, she asked, "What are you laughing about? Be careful not to be late for the exam."

Zhao Qian couldn't stop laughing. "They're talking about you and Lin Qingye on the forum."

Xu Zhinan turned her head. "What?"

Zhao Qian showed her the phone.

"..." After reading it, Xu Zhinan returned the phone to her without commenting. "Let's go, let's go. The exam room is in the Second Teaching Building, it's quite far."

The Modern History class didn't assign specific exam numbers for the test; the only requirement was to leave one empty seat between two people.

Everyone was very casual about this type of class, whispering to each other and plotting the upcoming "mutual aid" session.

By the time they arrived, the prime spots in the last few rows had already been taken, so they could only choose seats in a corner at the front.

Zhao Qian sat in the innermost seat by the window and leaned close to Xu Zhinan's ear, whispering, "Ah Nan, if you finish quickly later, remember to slide your paper a little closer to me. I just need the multiple-choice questions."

"Okay." Xu Zhinan glanced at the proctor at the front and added a reminder, "Be careful."

Zhao Qian made an OK sign. "I'm a professional."

"Alright! Quiet down!" the proctor shouted. "Everyone check if your dorm mates have all arrived. We're about to hand out the exam papers."

Xu Zhinan paused and glanced around the classroom, but she didn't see Lin Qingye.

'He didn't forget today was the exam, did he...'

Just as she was hesitating about whether to send Lin Qingye a text to remind him, the front door of the exam room opened, and Lin Qingye stood at the entrance.

The young man was tall with long legs. He was probably still sleepy, his brows furrowed, looking somewhat impatient.

A buzz of discussion immediately broke out below.

Lin Qingye hadn't attended this class at all this semester, and the Modern History professor didn't have the habit of taking attendance, so many people had no idea that Lin Qingye was actually their classmate.

Everyone else had their heads up, only Xu Zhinan had her head lowered, making her easy to spot.

Lin Qingye scanned the room and walked straight over.

A pair of shoes appeared in Xu Zhinan's peripheral vision. She held her breath, her heart beating a little fast.

Her departure from his apartment last time had been strange, and she couldn't figure out if they had ended on bad terms, but it was true that they hadn't been in contact for days.

Lin Qingye hadn't brought anything with him except for a black pen, which he tossed onto the desk, making a faint sound. Then, he calmly sat down next to Xu Zhinan.

Zhao Qian, sitting on her other side, leaned over completely and nudged her elbow with her own.

Xu Zhinan buried her head lower and lower.

She could only hear Zhao Qian's exclamation next to her, her voice filled with suppressed excitement.

"Holy crap, they're actually! Really! In the same frame!"

The author has something to say:

Lin Qingye: What's so exciting about being in the same frame?

Brother Qingye, who is jealous and isn't being coaxed by Ah Nan, makes trouble-making noises.