Chapter 92

Chapter 92

“Nan Mu… Nan Mu?”

Nan Mu felt someone calling him. He opened his eyes blearily-and found himself looking at Wang Zheng.

“How did you fall asleep here? The basketball game is over. If you’re that tired, just go back to the dorm and sleep, okay?”

“Basketball game?”

Nan Mu sat up in a daze. In the floor-to-ceiling mirror across from him, he saw himself dressed in a basketball uniform. Shocked, he touched his own face. He felt as if he shouldn’t be here, but he couldn’t say what exactly was wrong.

Wang Zheng handed him a bottle of water. “Drink some water. Wake yourself up.”

Nan Mu took the bottled water from Wang Zheng on instinct. Only then did he realize he was actually in the lounge beside the basketball court. Outside the door, three boys walked in with their arms slung around one another’s shoulders, still loudly chattering.

“The Department of Materials Science is seriously insane. Someone like that is basically a genius, right?”

“No kidding. How old is she? And she’s already won the Highest National Physics Award.”

“The main thing is, she discovered new element No. 178… Do you have any idea how many people go their whole lives without discovering a single element?”

“Man, too bad she’s already taken… If I’d known, I should’ve made a move years ago.”

“Hey! Are you trying to kill me with laughter? That’s Wen Miao we’re talking about. Even if you’d tried ten years earlier, she still might not have looked twice at you.”

“Exactly… At the very least, someone would need to be my height to have a chance…”

“Stop talking. Shut up, now!”

“What? …Holy crap! Nan Mu!”

“We just said all that right in front of the boyfriend…”

Nan Mu found it a little strange. He didn’t understand why the three boys panicked the moment they saw him and fled like they were running for their lives.

“What’s with them?” Nan Mu asked, turning back to Wang Zheng with the water bottle in his hand.

Wang Zheng only laughed. “Obviously because they were coveting your girlfriend, and then you caught them. They’re afraid you’ll beat them up.”

Nan Mu’s pupils suddenly dilated. “My… girlfriend?”

Wang Zheng gave a casual mm-hm, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Awake now? If you are, let’s head back to the dorm.”

Still dazed, Nan Mu followed Wang Zheng out of the gymnasium.

…

On the way back to the dorm, they saw one of the school’s counselors excitedly holding a photo of Wen Miao. He picked a prime spot on the bulletin board and hung her picture there, while the written introduction on the right was also extremely detailed.

“Should we get an advertising company to design it? This layout feels kind of cheap.”

The counselor frowned at the bulletin board.

A teacher from the Department of Materials Science looked it over from the side. “It’s fine. Let’s make do with this for now.”

Then he smiled and said to the others, “I’m not bragging, but this student from our department could very well be competing for the title of the youngest Nobel Prize winner in a few years. Who knows? You might have to revise this profile for her again someday.”

Hearing this, Wang Zheng joked with Nan Mu, “Your girlfriend has already reached heights that make other people shrink back in awe. If you don’t work harder, don’t come crying when you get dumped someday.”

Nan Mu asked in confusion, “Why… do you keep saying she’s my girlfriend?”

Wang Zheng laughed at his question. “Isn’t Wen Miao your girlfriend?”

Nan Mu shook his head. “Wen Miao… isn’t my girlfriend.”

Wang Zheng raised a hand and thumped him on the chest. As if he couldn’t see Nan Mu’s bewilderment at all, he went on talking to himself. “All right, that’s enough. We all know your girlfriend is amazing. Stop acting mysterious… Oh, speak of the devil.”

Nan Mu looked in the direction Wang Zheng indicated and saw Wen Miao sprinting toward him. Without slowing down at all, she threw herself straight at him.

Nan Mu instinctively opened his arms and caught her. The moment she crashed into his embrace, a sudden, dull pain bloomed in his chest. He closed his eyes on instinct. When he opened them again, everything before him had turned pitch-black-except for the slender, fair neck he saw when he lowered his gaze, graceful as a swan’s.
He could feel the warmth of Wen Miao’s chin resting on his shoulder, and his own heartbeat-suddenly racing, surging anxiously like a symphony.

It was as if all five of his senses had failed. Aside from the woman in his arms, he could see no one else, hear no other sounds, not even feel the sunlight beating down on him.

He felt as though he had opened his mouth and asked an incredibly stupid question.

“Wen Miao, are you mine?”

The woman in front of him held him, then leaned back a little, revealing her delicate face. Her bewitching almond eyes seemed veiled in a layer of mist as she tilted her head and asked, “What did you say?”

Nan Mu didn’t know where he found such courage. He actually reached out and cupped Wen Miao’s fair little face, even brushing his fingers over it twice.

“They all say you’re mine… So, are you mine?”

He saw surprise flicker through Wen Miao’s beautiful eyes. In those bright pupils, it was as though a pool of shattered stars had sunk to the bottom. She looked down at Nan Mu in silence, as if she could see through his skin and into the depths of his soul.

Nan Mu felt as if everything before his eyes had been covered in a veil of fog. Her figure faded inch by inch, yet her clear voice rang beside his ear with perfect clarity.

“Yes. I’m yours. So you have to hold on tight. You absolutely… can’t let go!”

Nan Mu wanted to answer her. He would never let go.

But for some reason, his mouth felt as though it had been sewn shut with needle and thread. He couldn’t open it.

He struggled with all his might, only to find himself trapped in an endless dark night, his body falling into a boundless, heaving sea, drifting with the waves.

In his haze, he once again heard someone calling beside his ear.

“President Nan, President Nan… wake up!”

That voice seemed to break some kind of seal. His eyes flew open, and the first thing he saw was the sunrise slowly lifting at the end of the coastline, strands of red clouds rippling over the glittering waves.

“President Nan, hold on a little longer. The rescue team will be here soon.”

Nan Mu turned his head and saw Xu Yang, whose lips had gone purple from the cold, gripping him tightly. The upper halves of both their bodies were draped over a broken piece of deck floating on the surface of the sea.

Nan Mu looked dazed. “How… did I end up here?”

After soaking in the seawater for most of the night, Xu Yang felt as if his whole body had frozen stiff, brain included.

“You don’t remember? The cruise ship sank.”

Chaotic memories rushed back one after another. Nan Mu remembered the screams aboard the cruise ship just before it went down, and remembered making a split-second decision to grab Xu Yang and jump into the sea, swimming away. But after that…

Nan Mu turned his head. “Did you save me?”

Xu Yang was shivering violently from the cold. “How could that count as me saving you? It’s not like you don’t know-I can’t even swim… It was thanks to you, President Nan, that I got onto the deck… All I did was grab you just now when you nearly slipped off… If we’re really keeping score, you’re definitely the one who saved me.”

“I… got you onto the deck?”

Nan Mu froze.

“Yeah.”

The piece of deck was a little small. The two of them could only lie on it from the waist up, their legs still submerged in the seawater. If not for the life jackets they were wearing, the buoyancy would have been nowhere near enough.

Xu Yang couldn’t swim. When they jumped into the sea, Nan Mu had repeatedly told him to relax his body and keep himself floating on the surface. But in reality, because he had been too panicked, he had nearly sunk several times. Nan Mu had been the one dragging him outward the entire time. Otherwise, he would have been pulled down long ago by the whirlpool created by the sinking cruise ship.

After that, he had choked on several mouthfuls of seawater and lost consciousness… When he woke up again, the two of them were already lying on the deck.

He couldn’t swim. Other than Nan Mu, who else would have saved him?