Chapter 155: Donghai University’s Campus Beauty

Chapter 155: Donghai University’s Campus Beauty

The mysteriously dressed girl with the single ponytail froze when Wu Chen sat down and addressed her outright. It took her a moment to catch up.

Out of habit she glanced around before tugging the black mask down a little. She did not take it off; she left it hanging under her chin.

Which meant the upper and lower portions of her face were still partly hidden by cap and mask, only the middle exposed. Her beauty was obvious enough even so—but with that much covered, it was not quite world-stopping.

“You recognized me even like this?” the girl asked, her voice sweet and soft.

Song Xuan.

“You’re the only person in the café who looks afraid of being looked at. Who wears a mask to drink coffee?” Wu Chen smiled. “Was it really so difficult?”

“Wow. Senior, you’re so clever.” Song Xuan smiled, half joking. Then she looked him over again, still smiling, brows drawing together slightly. “Senior, you… I feel like I’ve seen you before.”

He looked familiar to her.

Which was hardly strange.

Wu Chen was not handsome past the bounds of reality, but neither was he plain. By most women’s standards he was decidedly good-looking.

Without a face like that, Liu Caixiu would never have called him a pretty boy.

Before July 7 of this year, Wu Chen had never been in a relationship. In a computer science department where the men outnumbered the women many times over, finding a girlfriend was not easy.

Still, good-looking people drew more attention, and were easier to remember.

“We probably crossed paths at Cafeteria No. 2,” Wu Chen said, offhand, smiling.

In truth, over his years at Donghai University, he had seen Song Xuan far too many times.

Every time he saw her, he remembered.

When she saw him, she did not.

Song Xuan had only enrolled at Donghai University two years ago and had just finished her second year—she would be a junior when term started again—but from the day she arrived she had been the most talked-about, most famous, most dazzling female student on campus.

Not only because of her family.

Also because of that extraordinary face.

Before Song Xuan enrolled, Donghai University had had several girls commonly called campus beauties. Those young women really were lovely. By Wu Chen’s strict scoring, every one of them approached nine, all above 8.5.

Every university in the world had a few exceptionally beautiful female students.

No exceptions.

Donghai University had more than most, because it housed a dance school, a music school, and programs in broadcasting and hosting.

In the past, the question of who was Donghai University’s number-one campus beauty had always been contested. Different people gave different answers. Beauty came down to taste; there was no right or wrong in it.

Until Song Xuan enrolled.

She erased every argument and every doubt in a single stroke, and unified the opinion of every male student on campus—and the female students besides.

Song Xuan was Donghai University’s undisputed campus beauty.

And its only one.

However beautiful the other girls were, they stood at least a full tier below her.

Not long after she enrolled, a bizarre saying even took hold on campus: telling a girl You’re prettier than Song Xuan amounted to an insult.

It was like saying to a man, Fine! You’re rich, you’re magnificent, you’re richer than the richest man in the world, happy now?

Sarcasm of the highest order.

Song Xuan’s beauty truly was beyond dispute.

Wu Chen scored her a 9.5.

But her style was nothing like Su Qingying’s.

Su Qingying had an ethereal quality, something of the immortal maiden about her.

Song Xuan was gentle and graceful, with the softness of a delicate young woman.

Which was why Song Xuan only half remembered Wu Chen, while he remembered seeing her without number. Back then he had been an ordinary student who happened to be handsome. She had been the campus beauty who drew every eye in the room wherever she went.

And because she was too beautiful, Song Xuan had formed the habit years ago of wearing a mask outdoors.

She was no celebrity.

Yet wherever she went, people stared.

Sit her down in a café and the man at the next table would sneak looks at her with his own girlfriend beside him.

Some people even photographed her on the sly.

It caused her real distress.

“Did you go to Cafeteria No. 2 a lot too, Senior?”

“Yeah. Not much in the last few months before graduation, though. They changed the cook. The food wasn’t as good.”

“Exactly. Everyone says so. The student union even took it to the university. They said they’d change it back, and they still haven’t.”

Two casual exchanges, and the distance between them visibly shrank.

They were senior and junior from the same university, after all.

On campus that relationship meant nothing much. Off campus it suddenly felt like something.

“Senior, we haven’t introduced ourselves properly. Song Xuan…” She smiled and put out her hand.

She was a girl who loved to smile. There was almost always a smile on her face.

“Wu Chen.” He smiled and shook it.

“Did you bring it, Senior? Is it on a USB drive, or handwritten…?” she asked.

“Hmm…” Wu Chen considered, then smiled. “Did you bring paper and a pen?”

“I did. Why?” As she asked, her hand went unconsciously to steady the bags on the chair beside her.

A laptop case and a designer handbag. She had brought her computer and everything a girl normally carried.

“What else would I do with them? Write it out for you,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“Write it out—now?” Her expression changed.

“It’s all in here.” He tapped his head.

“Senior, you didn’t come here just to have a bit of fun with me, did you? People end up disliking you for that sort of thing~” Song Xuan said, teasing.

Even as she said it she lifted her handbag and dug out paper and a pen.

She wrote songs herself. Inspiration came when it came, so she always carried something to write with.

The “paper” she handed him was a thick notebook. Roughly half of it was filled with lyrics of her own. At a glance the contents looked chaotic: stray lines, disconnected fragments, passages that resembled modern poetry, because lyrics had to answer to rhyme and rhythm.

Wu Chen did not look closely. He had seen it far too many times in the loop.

He turned to a blank page near the back and began at once on the lyrics.

The first thing he wrote, naturally, was the title.

“Antidote for the Soul.”

Song Xuan leaned forward a little to look, and murmured, “Antidote for the Soul…”

He wrote extremely fast, without a single pause.

In a little over ten minutes, several hundred characters of lyrics were done.

And still he did not stop.

In the gaps he had deliberately left between the lines, he began writing numbered musical notation for each section.

Lyrics and melody both.

The notation took even less time—only a few minutes.

And still he did not stop.

He began writing the arrangement, and marking which instruments to use.

Song Xuan watched the whole time.

Her expression grew stranger and stranger.

He was writing it out on the spot, yes, but he had told her it was stored in his head. At first she had assumed he had simply memorized some lyrics. Their meeting had been arranged in a hurry, and he happened to be nearby rather than at home, so perhaps he had come without the original manuscript and had no choice but to write it out again.

But Wu Chen was not merely producing long stretches of lyrics.

He was producing the melody as well.

And more frighteningly, he had gone on to the arrangement, specifying instruments as he went.

Arrangement was highly specialized work, distinct from writing lyrics or melody. Ordinarily it could only be settled once a song had gone into production, often late in the process, after repeated experiment, adjustment, and countless takes.

Wu Chen was simply writing it down.

Like that.

If he were a professional music producer who had lost the original materials, perhaps he might reconstruct everything from memory.

But the crux of it was this—

Nobody could write it this fast without stopping.

The arrangement above all. It was too complex.

Nobody could hold every small detail that clearly in mind. Normally you had to experiment your way back to it.

Yet Wu Chen never paused.

Not once.

Which left Song Xuan with a distinct impression.

Was this senior called Wu Chen having her on?

Had he picked up a little music somewhere and come here to play a joke?