WAYCAV Chapter 40

Only after Shen Nianjing sent that message did he realize what he’d been struggling with all along.

He liked Su Zhiyan!!

“?!” Shen Nianjing took a deep breath and buried his head under the covers.

His face burned hot and his heart pounded wildly.

That line from the forum that had flooded the screens earlier popped back into his mind.

Damn… netizens these days all had sharp eyes.

Something he’d been struggling to figure out for so long, they had seen through after just reading a few paragraphs of his story.

Did liking someone really make your words and actions that obvious?

The air under the blanket was thin and stuffy, but Shen Nianjing didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.

He lay there thinking.

If complete strangers online could pick up on the key information right away, could Su Zhiyan too?

If Su Zhiyan found out he liked him…

Shen Nianjing’s face heated up as he silently gripped the blanket tighter.

But just recently Su Zhiyan had explained their relationship to him, saying they were just ordinary friends.

And he’d been so nervous then, speaking cautiously as if afraid Shen Nianjing might get angry. He was completely different from his usual self who never cared about other people’s emotions.

Shen Nianjing slowly smiled.

So what if they were just ordinary friends?

Su Zhiyan had always kept some distance with all his friends, except for that guy Wen Bei who was closer to him. He’d always done things his own way, only looking at solutions when problems came up, only caring about efficiency when doing things. He never cared about other people’s emotions and feelings, or maybe he just couldn’t see or understand other people’s emotions.

But this same Su Zhiyan had actually felt scared and nervous when explaining the misunderstanding to him.

Worried that he’d get angry.

Shen Nianjing threw off the blanket and took big gulps of the cool, fresh air in the room. The night’s coolness drove away the stuffiness from being under the covers, and he felt completely refreshed.

Blood rushed through his body, pumping to every part of him with each heartbeat.

Shen Nianjing kept taking deep breaths, trying to calm himself down, but he still couldn’t control the racing thoughts in his head.

Su Zhiyan really was different with him than with other people.

Su Zhiyan cared about his emotions!

Su Zhiyan cared about him!

Shen Nianjing laughed silently, proud of his perfectly reasonable conclusion.

As long as he had this one thing, he had hope of breaking through the “ordinary friends” barrier.

Maybe it was because he’d just figured out his own feelings and his brain was excited, or maybe it was because he’d discovered he had a tiny bit of hope and felt thrilled. Either way, Shen Nianjing didn’t sleep at all the rest of the night. Instead, he scrolled through everything he could find about Su Zhiyan on his phone.

He clicked on that cute little bear avatar.

Such cute lines and brushstrokes, and the color combination was adorable too, hehe.

Whether or not those were the right technical terms, it was just so cute anyway!

He clicked into Su Zhiyan’s WeChat Moments.

When they first added each other as friends, he didn’t want too much contact with Su Zhiyan, so he never actively tried to learn about his life. And Su Zhiyan rarely posted to his Moments either. In the month and a bit that Shen Nianjing had known him, he’d never seen him post anything.

Su Zhiyan’s Moments background was a piano sheet music score with no title. Shen Nianjing couldn’t read it.

Tsk.

He frowned, annoyed that he had no musical talent and had never learned about piano, so he couldn’t tell which piece this was at all.

He racked his brains thinking for a while, going through all his friends and classmates but couldn’t think of anyone who’d learned piano.

This was such a common instrument that you saw every day, and it felt like lots of people learned it, but how come when he actually needed someone, there wasn’t a single person!

In the end Shen Nianjing gave up on immediately exploring this sheet music and reluctantly took a screenshot.

Looking down further, Su Zhiyan’s Moments signature was “Nice Day.”

Mm, so simple and direct.

This really was a very nice day.

Shen Nianjing grinned at the screen, and once he started smiling he couldn’t stop.

Su Zhiyan’s latest post was from New Year’s Eve, showing a table full of delicious food and the Spring Festival Gala playing on TV, plus a photo of Su Zhiyao wearing a bright red knitted hat embroidered with a “dragon” pattern.

The hat was adorable, with two fluffy white pom-poms hanging from either side.

Would Su Zhiyan wear a hat like that for New Year?

Shen Nianjing thought back. Su Zhiyan’s room was as simple as his Moments, with light blue wallpaper, a cream-colored desk, solid wood bed and bookshelf, and blue bedding to match.

His usual clothes were simple too, focused on comfort.

Shen Nianjing sighed, feeling very unwilling and regretful.

If only Su Zhiyan would wear some cute clothes and accessories too.

He already looked so well-behaved naturally, he’d definitely look great wearing that hat.

In this age when most people set their Moments to show only the past six months or even just three days, Su Zhiyan’s was completely open.

Shen Nianjing wasn’t sure if he didn’t know WeChat had privacy settings or if he was just too lazy to bother with them, thinking they were unnecessary.

He guessed it was probably the latter.

Because Su Zhiyan posted so rarely to his Moments.

In ten years, he’d only posted fifteen times.

Ten of those were about New Year, two were about Su Zhiyao, and one was a group photo with his high school homeroom teacher and grade supervisor.

There was one very special post, his oldest Moments entry.

No text, just a simple picture.

The image showed the sunrise just peeking out in the early morning. You could tell the room was dark, which made the sunrise outside the window look especially bright.

It was posted on December 8th, 2014.

Su Zhiyan was only eleven then…

Shen Nianjing smiled widely and couldn’t help saving that picture.

Classmate Xiao Su had gotten up super early to capture the sunrise when he was still in elementary school.

After finishing Su Zhiyan’s “barren” Moments, Shen Nianjing went to the school forum to search for various posts about Su Zhiyan.

Even though the school forum was a gossip hub, there really weren’t many posts that openly used people’s real full names. After all, what normal person would put their face out there to chat about gossip?

After much searching, he only found some scholarship recipient lists published by the college and announcements about outstanding students in competitions and research papers.

These proper “official posts” all used the same formal language with a heavy “academic article” feel. They were usually just reskinned versions of each other with boring, similar content.

But Shen Nianjing still read through every single one with great interest.

He just couldn’t stop.

Some posts even had “treasures” – photos the college had taken of Su Zhiyan.

Shen Nianjing stared at the clean-looking boy in the white shirt and light sweater in the photos, then clicked “search replies” in the search bar.

A bunch of posts popped up with titles like “Checking Out the Typical Hotties from Each College,” “A University’s High-Value Humans Collection,” and “OMG, no matter how good-looking a monkey is, they’re still a monkey[mfn]吗喽 (mǎ lóu): A slang term meaning “monkey,” originating from the Cantonese word “马骝” (maa4 lau1). The term itself is ancient, with roots in practices meant to protect horses from disease (linking it to the mythical Monkey King’s title, “Bimawen”), as per Baidu Baike. Its modern meaning, however, comes from a 2023 internet meme featuring a tired, scrawny monkey, which became a symbol for the exhausted and overworked youth. To call someone a 吗喽 is to say they are a “burned-out grind,” a “drudge,” or an “overachieving cog in the machine”—someone who works themselves to exhaustion, often with a sense of resignation about their place in a competitive system. It’s primarily used with self-deprecating humor to express fatigue and无奈 (wúnài, helplessness). You can check out some of the memes here.[/mfn].”

Shen Nianjing: “…” What monkey?

He clicked on that “monkey” post, which was from early this year. It was basically saying their college had some study machine who wrote a complete research paper during the holidays and successfully submitted it to a journal, then signed up for competitions right after the semester started.

Everyone in the thread mentioned Su Zhiyan’s name and called him the most suitable workhorse for research.

“…”

Shen Nianjing raised an eyebrow disapprovingly.

More like fierce and awesome!

Besides, Su Zhiyan genuinely enjoyed studying and research. That was completely different from being forced to work like a beast.

But the next second he frowned deeply.

Su Zhiyan’s intense study schedule was basically like having no days off all year. No wonder his health was so poor. He’d already gotten sick several times just this semester.

He remembered Su Zhiyan’s expression and tone when he’d told him he needed a good night’s sleep that day.

His heart clenched, followed by intense self-disgust.

It was just one dream he’d had once. Did he really need to avoid Su Zhiyan for a whole month without caring about the reasons?

And he’d made him work so hard to corner him, even ending up in the hospital during the modeling competition.

Tsk.

He shook his head.

What an asshole.

He kept scrolling down and his gaze froze. After staring for a few seconds, he slowly clicked on a hot post with over 300 replies – [Gossip Post | Early morning at the market, what’s going on with these two?]

A friend had forwarded this post to him ages ago, but he’d never clicked to read it.

Now that he looked, he realized there were so many photos of the two of them together.

Too bad Su Zhiyan was wearing a baseball cap, so he couldn’t see those delicate, handsome eyes.

He remembered how Su Zhiyan had come at him with such force that day, full of murderous energy. It was after that incident that he’d become so afraid of Su Zhiyan, terrified that he might upset him at some moment and get stabbed to death.

Sigh, ridiculous, so ridiculous.

How could someone with such beautiful eyes ever kill anyone?

Shen Nianjing saved photo after photo of them together with great interest. As he scrolled down, his gaze suddenly froze.

–

At noon on Saturday, Su Zhiyan sat by the window in the restaurant and sent Shen Nianjing a message.

[Classmate Xiao Su: I’m here, how much longer will you be?]

Shen Nianjing looked down at his phone and smiled as he sent back a “puppy holding cheeks” emoji. The next second he pushed through the door. His eyes landed on Su Zhiyan sitting in the corner, and widened slightly.

Su Zhiyan was dressed very differently from usual today. He wore a long-sleeved striped shirt with a shawl, paired with a dark blue beret, and refined gold-rimmed glasses perched on his elegant nose.

Even though his face still had that faint, expressionless look, his well-behaved features combined with this outfit gave him a very studious, youthful vibe.

The kind that made you want to desperately study hard so you could stand on the winner’s podium together with someone like him.

Shen Nianjing’s Adam’s apple bobbed as his gaze fixed directly on Su Zhiyan.

This was the first time he’d seen Su Zhiyan wear anything other than loose, casual clothes.

As if sensing his stare, Su Zhiyan looked up and their eyes met.

Then he waved at him.

“Sorry, did you wait long?” He walked over and instinctively apologized first.

But Su Zhiyan frowned. “Why have you been so polite lately?”

“?” Shen Nianjing met his gaze. “Have I?”

He froze, looking at Su Zhiyan with some nervousness.

Su Zhiyan raised an eyebrow slightly, somewhat surprised that the person in question hadn’t noticed at all.

“You were practically treating me like a formal acquaintance the past few days,” he said.

Shen Nianjing was stunned and gave an awkward laugh.

Those few days he’d been struggling with how to interact with Su Zhiyan, so naturally he hadn’t dared make any bold moves. He didn’t expect Su Zhiyan to notice right away.

Thinking about this, Shen Nianjing felt a hint of hope.

If Su Zhiyan could notice that, could he also tell Shen Nianjing liked him?

And if he did… What would happen if he found out?

“I thought you were still mad at me, but turns out you didn’t even realize it yourself.”

Su Zhiyan didn’t wait for his explanation before adding another comment, his tone very surprised and with a trace of barely noticeable grievance.

The corners of Shen Nianjing’s mouth curved up slightly, and his heart felt a little itchy.

Su Zhiyan’s tone just now was so cute.

“What are you smiling about?”

Su Zhiyan saw his expression like he was trying not to laugh and really couldn’t figure out what was funny about what he’d just said.

“Nothing, I promise I won’t do it again!”

Shen Nianjing’s expression became completely serious.

Su Zhiyan tilted his head slightly and unconsciously smiled.

This bastard was always making promises and swearing oaths in front of him.

The autumn noon sun was just right, bright but not overly intense. Sunlight filtered through the roadside leaves and fell in dappled patterns on Su Zhiyan’s smile, dazzling Shen Nianjing for a moment.

He suddenly spaced out.

Sunlight and Su Zhiyan are such a perfect match.

He thought to himself.

---

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