My name is Chen Mo, and just like my name suggests, I only want to quietly get through college without making a name for myself.
Then one day, in the morning light of the library, Shen Qingge, the campus belle upperclassman hailed as "the ideal woman," sat down across from me of her own accord.
"Hey, underclassman, can you help me look at this bit of code?"
She smiled warmly, but there was a meaning in her eyes I couldn't understand.
From then on, my peaceful life completely fell apart:
She casually sat beside me in the cafeteria, drank only the water I handed her at sports meets, and sent me technical problems late at night that only I could understand...
Every guy on campus saw me as a public enemy who didn't know what was good for him. The forum's trending posts updated my "crimes" every day, and some even threatened to make me "disappear."
But they didn't know this:
Shen Qingge would lean on my shoulder on the deserted rooftop and say, "I'm so tired."
After drinking too much, she'd ask me with red-rimmed eyes, "Would you leave me too?"
When everyone laughed at me, she'd say, word by word:
"Chen Mo, you're brighter than all of them put together."
When the malice spread from the internet into real life, and my locker filled with anonymous threat letters,
I clutched those filthy insults and finally asked her the question I'd kept buried in my heart:
"Senior, why did you choose me?"
"Was this conquest all just a carefully planned joke?"
After a long silence, she opened her phone...
On the screen was a photo from a campus news story three years ago, long since forgotten.
In the corner of the picture was a blurry figure of a boy crouching on the ground, fixing a computer.
"I'm not trying to win you over."
She spoke softly, and for the first time, tears fell from her eyes.
