After My Secret Identity Was Revealed, My Crush Said He’s My Biggest Fan - Chapter 9

Stumbling accidentally and falling into the arms of someone you like—that seems like the kind of cliché plotline reserved for cheesy romance dramas from years ago.

Yet, it had just happened to Lin Yu out of nowhere, catching him off guard for a full second of complete brain freeze. He had no idea what he had stepped on before his entire body toppled sideways, tumbling straight into a scorching chest.

On the podium of Classroom 3108, Xia Chenxuan had appeared at his side at some point, catching Lin Yu, whose footing was unsteady, in a firm grip. Lin Yu managed to avoid a clumsy fall to the floor, but his body still rocked backward from the momentum, crashing almost directly into Xia Chenxuan’s chest.

As his back felt the presence of another person, Lin Yu had the untimely thought that Xia Chenxuan’s body temperature was really high.

Warm and scalding, like a northern sun.

Xia Chenxuan’s arms and shoulders were layered with a handsome, athletic thin muscle, but his frame had not yet fully matured, meaning he couldn’t quite withstand the solid impact from a peer of the same build. Lin Yu could feel his whole body tense up the moment he caught him, and the two of them staggered back a few steps together before Lin Yu quickly pulled away.

He remembered that Xia Chenxuan seemed to dislike physical intimacy with others, so he didn’t want to step on any landmines.

“Classmate, are you alright!”

Just as the class monitor’s worried voice rang out, Lin Yu instinctively turned back to look at Xia Chenxuan. The latter was still frozen in the posture of having just caught him, a momentary daze passing over his face as if he had been suddenly paralyzed by some emotion.

However, Lin Yu didn’t have much time to closely observe Xia Chenxuan because Wenyue hurried over from the podium, checking him up and down to see if he was hurt. Lin Yu immediately addressed the flustered counselor first:

“I’m fine, didn’t my roommate just catch me? But was there something on the podium just now? I feel like I might have stepped on something.”

Hearing that the student was unhurt, Wenyue let out a long sigh of relief. But the very next second, the class monitor’s words made her heart leap back into her throat:

“Advisor, there seem to be a few glass marbles here. They look super slippery. I don’t know when someone left them up here.”

At these words, everyone on the platform instantly fell silent. Lin Yu’s expression darkened in an instant, his lips pressing into a tight line as he stared at the crystal-clear little beads in the monitor’s hand.

How could glass marbles end up on the podium of Classroom 3108? Was it a prank by some tourist kid?

Or could it be that Yu Linhuan and his pack of shameless lackeys had followed him all the way to university just to mess with him, intentionally pulling a stunt here?

The moment the latter possibility flashed through his mind, Lin Yu felt his entire heart skip a terrifying beat. He swayed a couple of times before barely managing to suppress a severe stress response, then walked down toward the audience with Xia Chenxuan walking shoulder-to-shoulder beside him.

Things like this had certainly happened back at Mengze No. 1 High School.

The ice-breaking class meeting continued, and the accidental embrace with Xia Chenxuan had indeed made his heart beat wildly for a few moments. But the moment the high school shadows loomed up again, he suddenly felt as though everything around him had turned blank once more.

The ice-breaking class meeting didn’t last long, and since quite a few classmates wanted to go find their high school senior mentors for dinner on the first day of school, Room 401 casually split up after winning the champion title.

Pushing open the door to Room A and walking in alone, Xia Chenxuan gently placed the prize distributed by Wenyue onto his desk. It was a little bear about ten centimeters tall, wearing blue Qingda merchandise clothing, looking rather block-headed and cute.

By now, it was close to six o’clock, but Xia Chenxuan had no appetite. He simply took advantage of his roommate’s absence to tidy up the items in the dorm once more. As he placed the books he received from his high school seniors onto the bookshelf, his mind focused intensely on what had happened during the class meeting earlier.

More accurately, he was thinking about Lin Yu.

From the very first moment he saw Lin Yu, Xia Chenxuan felt that this person looked somewhat familiar. Later, when Lin Yu mentioned he was from Mengze City, it made his entire heart involuntarily tremble. Somehow, a subconscious instinct told him that Lin Yu was the person he had been searching for.

Yet, not long after they first met, Lin Yu had told the entire dorm that the school he attended was “Mengze No. 1 High School.”

He clearly remembered that the most important person to him back then attended “Mengze Shenfeng High School,” an institution on par with Shengao nationwide, whereas Lin Yu didn’t even seem very clear on the concept of the “Big Dipper Joint Schools.” Furthermore, the school Lin Yu currently attended wasn’t Hongda, which that person had promised to go to together with him in the future, and with tens of thousands of 2024 high school graduates in Mengze City, rationally speaking, the probability of these two individuals overlapping was nearly zero.

Thinking of this, Xia Chenxuan suddenly felt a hollow ache in his chest.

How strange. Clearly, he had only formally known Lin Yu for two days, yet he felt as though he had spent a long time eagerly hoping that Lin Yu would turn out to be that person. Xia Chenxuan instinctively shook his head, unable to comprehend what on earth he was thinking.

Right at that moment, his phone resting on the desk suddenly rang. Xia Chenxuan glanced sideways, and the screen prominently displayed the word “Dad.”

Seeing the call from Xia Zhijie, Xia Chenxuan’s first reaction was resistance. Yet, as the ringtone echoed through the empty dorm for a long time, he still didn’t dare to actually leave it unanswered.

Thus, Xia Zhijie’s deep, middle-aged male voice rang in his ear:

“Chenxuan, how did your English exam go this afternoon?”

“It was difficult, but I knew how to do quite a bit of it.”

“Good, that makes your continuous IELTS studying right after the college entrance exam worth it. By the way, how are things going at Qingda these past couple of days?”

“I’ll be selecting courses over the next day or two, and classes should officially start next week.”

“Ah, you must choose your classes carefully. If you’re unsure, send them back for your mom and me to vet. I see the parents’ chat group talking every day about how some teachers at your school grade leniently. That’s no good. Let me tell you, Dad, going to university means you still have to work hard to learn real knowledge. Choosing stricter teachers is better for your future, you understand?”

Hearing Xia Zhijie abruptly bring up the “parents’ chat group” and start lecturing again, Xia Chenxuan couldn’t help frowning. He parted his lips as if to say something, but remembering his father’s style back in Yanchun, he choked the words back down.

Saying these useless things to parents was pointless, and saying them to Xia Zhijie was especially useless. He knew clearly that Xia Zhijie had always raised him like an uncomplaining study machine, a trend that only became more pronounced after he messed up the college entrance exam.

So, he exchanged a few casual, polite remarks with Xia Zhijie and then hung up the phone with a smile. The moment the call ended, he braced his hands against the dorm desk and began to breathe heavily.

He was sick of hearing Xia Zhijie lecture him about his studies, sick of having his parents try to control him while he was away at school, and even more sick of his family using an “old hand” posture to smugly and contentedly bring up that painful spring and summer of 2024.

“Classmate Xia, didn’t you submit your registration form? We don’t have your info in our system?”

“Xia Chenxuan, what do you mean? Are you planning to break ties with the whole Shengao Hongqing Class?”

“Chenxuan, the college entrance exam isn’t the end. You have to work hard even after entering university. Stop always thinking about playing around, take the IELTS first, and then go study for your strong base program.”

For some reason, a scattering of fragmented voices suddenly popped into his mind. In an instant, Xia Chenxuan felt the world go dark before his eyes. The suffocating feeling he had experienced countless times back at Shengao came rolling back, making his whole body feel miserable.

The light near sunset poured in through the dorm window, casting a lonely shadow over Xia Chenxuan’s youthful frame.

Just like countless times before, at the moment the oppressive feeling washed over him, he reached out and swiped Xia Zhijie’s call interface into the background, then tapped on the pink Bilibili app icon on his phone. The voices inside his head were still roaring in his ears, and when he finally managed to open his following list, he only saw a cold, gray profile picture inside:

“User has deactivated account”

Right. That Mengze Shenfeng UP creator who had supported him through his senior year of high school had deleted his account a few weeks ago.

All of a sudden, Xia Chenxuan lost all his strength, collapsing pathetically into the desk chair he had just pulled back. Unprecedented pain and oppression wrapped around his heart like thorns, as if trying to strangle him to death in this night.

He had no idea where he was supposed to go.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a notification popping up at the very top of his phone, which had been left lingering on the edge of the desk:

“31: Is anyone in the dorm?”

“31: Forgot my keys today”

Miraculously, these two messages sent in the large dormitory group chat seemed to exert a sort of magical effect. Xia Chenxuan felt a renewed burst of strength surge through him. When he snapped back to his senses, he stood up and walked toward the door.

Opening the door to look at the dim, fading light in the public area, Lin Yu’s pretty face suddenly surfaced in Xia Chenxuan’s mind. That accidental embrace from the afternoon was mentally outlined by his consciousness, vividly presented before him.

This was also strange because Xia Chenxuan had a quirk: ever since he was a child, he intensely disliked physical intimacy with others. He didn’t even like teammates touching him when he was sweating on the volleyball court, let alone participating in such a boring activity with zero athletic difficulty.

Yet today, when Lin Yu crashed right into his arms, he hadn’t experienced that subconscious aversion.

Was it because he had only known two people from Mengze from high school up until now, causing him to project a sense of familiarity onto Lin Yu in this unfamiliar place?

While thinking, he had already reached out and pulled open the door of Room 401. The person he had just been thinking of appeared right before him. Seeing that it was him who opened the door, Lin Yu seemed slightly startled as well, before his lips curved upward in a hint of delighted surprise:

“It’s you. Have you eaten?”

Xia Chenxuan told a reassuring lie: “Just got back from the North Canteen.”

“That’s great, Qingda’s cafeterias are pretty good. Oh, by the way, have you finished your first round of course selection?”

The dusk light spilled across the dim public space of Room 401, where a lean Lin Yu stood at the entrance of Room B with his single-strap backpack, questioning him. The orange-gray light seemed to blur his pretty yet somewhat cold facial contours, making his peach-blossom eyes look exceptionally gentle.

Watching him turn back, Xia Chenxuan inexplicably felt his heart skip a beat, then said:

“It’s about done, though I’m not sure if I can successfully roll into the classes.”

Lin Yu seemed to have only asked out of routine politeness. Upon receiving the reply, he opened the door to Room B, ready to head inside. Right as he stepped through the door, he casually complained:

“Pretty much. I’m still hesitating over what PE class to choose; I really don’t want that class dragging down my GPA.”

Driven by some unnameable impulse, Xia Chenxuan suddenly didn’t want Lin Yu to leave. Those terrible voices were still echoing in his head, yet at the moment Lin Yu was about to close the door, he forcibly chased away those dark clouds and put back on his most habitual sunny expression:

“By the way, Lin Yu.”

“Hmm?”

“My senior took a volleyball class before, and he said that teacher is great both in terms of course intensity and grading.”

The public area of the dorm was still completely undecorated at this point, with a table set against an old water dispenser sitting right in the middle, collecting an unknown amount of dust. Xia Chenxuan’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he looked at Lin Yu’s puzzled expression, and after a moment’s thought, he issued an invitation:

“When I looked just now, that class still had some openings. If you’re interested, you can come take it with me.”