Kissing the Snow-Color - Chapter 4

Awkward.

Lin Shuxue realized that all of her awkward moments recently were inextricably linked to the person in front of her.

Jiang Zong’s lips curled into a playful smile, his eyes shimmering with fragmented light. Even under such harsh overhead lighting, his face remained flawlessly handsome. He actually had some acquaintance with the owner of the voice and vaguely recognized it.

“Guan Zhiyu?” Jiang Zong raised an eyebrow.

Lin Shuxue nodded. She brushed her hair back unnaturally, wanting to explain on behalf of her senior.

“Senior Guan wanted to invite me to join the Publicity Department of the Student Union.”

Jiang Zong had no intention of being gracious: “So you decided to smear me behind my back?”

Lin Shuxue was choked by his words, momentarily speechless.

Seeing her flustered, Jiang Zong pressed his advantage and leaned in closer: “Do you mind if I use your phone?”

Lin Shuxue was stunned, not understanding what Jiang Zong was planning. She shook her head: “N-no, I don’t mind.”

Jiang Zong took the liberty of directing her to unlock the interface and open her chat with Guan Zhiyu. The offending voice message hung conspicuously at the very top. She felt her ears burn; she wished she could find a crack in the ground to hide in.

Jiang Zong pressed the voice button: “What kind of skill is backstabbing? Let’s compete fairly—”

As his fingertip lifted, the voice message was successfully sent.

He left Lin Shuxue standing there in a daze, blinking her eyes slowly and forcefully.

Jiang Zong was likely amused by the girl’s rigid posture, and a few soft chuckles spilled from his throat.

“What are you looking at, Junior?”

“Do I need to use my good looks to seduce you into joining our Art Department?”

His tone remained as insouciant as ever while he leaned sideways, his awkward posture appearing strangely harmonious due to his broad shoulders and narrow waist. It felt as if he could get hired at some disreputable establishment with just a bit of hair gel.

However, Lin Shuxue’s gaze remained fixed on his beautiful peach-blossom eyes, noticing a faint scar at the junction where his eyebrow tail met his forehead.

Seeing Lin Shuxue lost in thought, Jiang Zong deliberately softened his tone again: “Think about it…”

If Pei Tianyang had been on the scene and seen Jiang Zong go to such lengths for department recruitment, he surely would have burst into tears and sung a song.

Lin Shuxue looked at the man’s innocent, pleading expression as he leaned over and suddenly forgot how to speak. After a long while, she finished her internal struggle and murmured:

“I… I will consider it.”

Her eyes were expressive, filled with sincerity.

The restaurant’s air conditioning wasn’t working well. Jiang Zong noticed beads of sweat forming on her fair, clean cheeks, and her ears turned a light red. He couldn’t tell if it was from shame or the heat.

She was a hundred times more vivid than in her photo.

This earnest demeanor sparked a desire in Jiang Zong to tease her. He laughed, his eyes curving, his tone tinged with mischief: “Does that count as you being successfully seduced by my looks?”

Lin Shuxue mouthed the word “Ah,” stunned, without making a sound. Her eyelashes fluttered, not knowing how to respond.

Jiang Zong stopped while he was ahead, shoved the phone back to her, and didn’t forget to leave one last remark: “Remember next time, don’t just hand your phone to anyone.”

“I’ll be waiting for you at the Art Department recruitment booth.”

As soon as Lin Shuxue returned to the dormitory, she was pinned in place by two pairs of bright, curious eyes.

“Senior Guan told us everything! Come clean!” Meng Shuyin put her hands on her hips, interrogating her with great momentum: “What exactly happened between you and Jiang Zong?”

Her gaze was burning, with an attitude that she wouldn’t let it go until she got a clear answer.

Lin Shuxue tried to cast a look of appeal toward her other roommate, He Xicun, but the other girl blinked and looked away with a guilty conscience. Clearly, she was going to stand on Meng Shuyin’s side.

Lin Shuxue had no choice but to surrender and summarize the detailed process of meeting Jiang Zong in the restaurant restroom.

Meng Shuyin keenly sensed that something was wrong. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, narrowed her eyes slightly, and used a coaxing tone.

“How did Senior Jiang Zong recognize you?”

Reminded by her, He Xicun also realized the loophole and chimed in: “Withholding information and hiding details is an even worse crime, Lin Shuxue!”

Lin Shuxue was helpless and had to tell them about going to the wrong teaching building this morning and meeting Jiang Zong.

Of course, she left out the part where he rejected a confession.

“No wonder you arrived so late!”

Connecting the cause and effect, Meng Shuyin realized.

“However, are you saying you met Jiang Zong at the Mingxue Building?” Meng Shuyin asked again.

Lin Shuxue didn’t know why she was asking this suddenly, but she still nodded.

Meng Shuyin slapped her thigh hard, startling He Xicun.

“It seems what the Confession Wall says is true!”

“What is true?” He Xicun didn’t understand Meng Shuyin’s riddle and asked.

Meng Shuyin smiled enigmatically: “Someone on the Confession Wall said they saw Wen Keyun confess to Jiang Zong at the Mingxue Building and get rejected by him!”

He Xicun frowned, puzzled: “The Confession Wall… handles this?”

Lin Shuxue couldn’t help but see the back of that girl again, her heart stunned. So that was her name, Wen Keyun.

Meng Shuyin poked He Xicun’s head with her finger, sounding frustrated: “Did you not read the freshman guide I sent you?”

“This Confession Wall isn’t like the old high school QQ groups; it’s a mini-program developed by seniors in the School of Computer Science. It just uses the ‘Confession Wall’ name—in reality, it’s an anonymous forum. Someone like Jiang Zong, whose every move attracts attention, has always been the central topic of the wall.”

He Xicun widened her eyes: “I was wondering how you know everything about the school! So you’ve been surfing the web intensely!”

Meng Shuyin dragged out an “Mm” with a proud tone, and didn’t forget to add: “Besides, I’ve already snuck into their internal group chat; I get all the news first-hand.”

While He Xicun was urging Meng Shuyin to share the entry to the mini-program, Lin Shuxue was lost in thought. She tried her best to recall the details of the morning, but she hadn’t noticed anyone else in that place…

Jiang Zong wouldn’t think she was the one who posted it on the wall, would he?

Lin Shuxue had a headache. If he questioned her, how could she explain it to make him believe her?

He Xicun was quick; she searched by keyword and found the post Meng Shuyin was talking about, browsing it with great interest.

A prominent comment interrupted her scrolling.

[Have you all forgotten about Jiang Zong beating up his roommate in his freshman year? That a woman would still throw herself at such a sociopath—are all women nowadays blind?]

She read the comment out loud clearly and couldn’t help but sigh: “As expected of the top-tier influencer on the Confession Wall, this comment posted forty minutes ago already has 99+ replies in the thread.”

Meng Shuyin peeled off a facial mask leisurely, curious: “What are the replies saying?”

He Xicun curled her lips: “Two groups of people are arguing about whether it’s true or false!”

“So what exactly happened with that incident?”

Meng Shuyin replied: “Didn’t Senior Guan say it already? The beating of the roommate is true. As for what exactly happened, none of us have met Jiang Zong who knows?”

She stuck the mask onto her face, suddenly remembered something, and said vaguely: “Didn’t Lin see Jiang Zong? Do you think he looks like that kind of person?”

The center of the topic shifted back to Lin Shuxue again. She pulled back her drifting thoughts and frowned slightly.

Suddenly, the image of him in the sunlight that morning, with his roguish smile and unrestrained brows, appeared before her.

After a long while, she lowered her eyes and spoke softly: “I don’t think so.”

Meng Shuyin was just asking casually; she had expected Lin Shuxue’s personality to just let it pass, but she hadn’t expected such a serious answer, and she became interested.

“How can you tell?”

This question stumped Lin Shuxue. She couldn’t very well say that Jiang Zong had asked her to keep the rejection of Wen Keyun’s confession secret, which should have been done to protect the girl’s reputation.

Hesitating for a moment without success, she pretended to be replying to a message to hide her guilty conscience, and tried to brush it off: “Just, a journalist’s intuition, I guess. My intuition is that he should be a pretty good person.”

…Right? She added the last word silently in her heart.

Fortunately, Meng Shuxin only stared at Lin Shuxue’s face for a while. Whether she believed her or not, she didn’t pursue it.

Lin Shuxue breathed a sigh of relief.

The clock on the wall moved to “12,” and she could vaguely hear the sounds of brushing teeth in the dormitory next door.

He Xicun took her toothbrush cup to the sink, not forgetting to remind someone: “Don’t secretly stay up late in your bed scrolling through the Confession Wall tonight. Tomorrow we have to greet the first 8:00 AM class of our university life.”

Meng Shuyin, who had been singled out, made a face and rolled over on the bed to set her alarm.

7:40 AM.

Lin Shuxue, shouldering the earnest expectations of her two roommates who had failed to get up, successfully arrived at the Modern History classroom.

Clearly, this time was still early for college students. There were only a few scattered people in the classroom, and Lin Shuxue successfully saved a seat in the back for her roommates.

With nothing to do, thinking of her roommates’ topic from last night, Lin Shuxue was filled with a rare curiosity. She opened the mini-program and searched for the keyword [Jiang Zong].

Sure enough, just as her roommates had said, Jiang Zong really was a “top-tier influencer”; posts were popping up everywhere.

Lin Shuxue found a post titled [Beating up a roommate in class, does such a person even deserve to join the Student Union?], and clicked into it.

Perhaps relying on the protection of anonymity, the comments below had no sense of propriety. In a trance, Lin Shuxue thought she had accidentally clicked into a fan war on an entertainment forum.

She was so absorbed that she didn’t notice the slightly hoarse male voice behind her.

“Classmate, excuse me.”

Lin Shuxue turned around in a panic.

The protagonist of the post was standing in front of her, squinting his sleepy eyes.

His hair was messy, his shirt collar was collapsed, revealing a section of his collarbone. He looked dazed, slowly and heavily lifting his eyelids to meet Lin Shuxue’s gaze.

Jiang Zong was surprised. His muddled head cleared by a third, and he raised his eyebrows: “What a coincidence.”

Lin Shuxue pretended to inadvertently turn off her phone screen and forced a smile: “Why are you here?”

As she spoke, she tucked her phone under her elbow, unable to hide her guilt.

Jiang Zong raised an eyebrow, taking in the girl’s furtive actions.

“Retaking a failed course.”

He laughed softly. His low, slightly hoarse voice was a gift from heaven tender yet evocative.

Lin Shuxue was slightly startled. She didn’t understand why someone who had just been sleepy and exhausted was suddenly smiling so…

Playfully.

Jiang Zong naturally didn’t miss her micro-expressions. She had been so absorbed that she hadn’t noticed he had been there for a while; he had seen exactly what she was trying to hide long ago.

Briefly imagining in his mind the expressions the girl would reveal later, Jiang Zong felt inexplicably cheerful, even dulling his unhappiness about having to attend an 8:00 AM class.

He pressed his tongue against his jaw, let out two low chuckles from his throat, curled his knuckles, tapped the desk twice slowly, and leaned over in a low voice, like a whisper.

“It’s the very course written on your phone, the one where I supposedly beat up my roommate.”