My name is Jiang Feng. In the autumn of 2023, I dragged a worn-out suitcase and squeezed myself into an unremarkable provincial polytechnic university.
If life could be described by color, my 18th year was definitely a dead, silent gray. 175cm, a scrawny, deathly pale physique, black-rimmed glasses welded to my face, and a plain appearance. Before university, aside from the lady selling breakfast at the school gate, I had spoken fewer than ten sentences to the opposite sex. I rarely even communicated with my mother, to the point where my parents had grown accustomed to my reclusiveness—yet, right before I left, they asked with a glimmer of desperate hope: "Xiao Feng, at university... could you find a normal girl to date?"
I’ve longed for that, too.
My best friend Liu Zhenyu (Big Fatty) is 185cm tall with a body of lean, black-skinned muscle. He and his girlfriend, Chen Meng, had been dating since their freshman year of high school. As soon as the college entrance exams ended, he started crazily dumping the dog food known as "normie life" in front of me. Watching Chen Meng act like a little accessory, acting spoiled and clingy toward Big Fatty with a lively smile, I imagined countless times in the dark corners—if only there were a cute, clingy girl like that to light up my faded life.
But I was wrong. It’s never darkness that truly drags a person into the abyss, but light that is far too dazzling.
In the first class of university, the door to the lecture hall was pushed open. She walked in.
Her name is Yu Ge.
Our names together complete that poem: Jiang Feng Yu Huo Dui Chou Mian (Maples by the river, fireflies on the boats, facing sorrowful sleep). I don't know if this foreshadowed our fate.
