1 Don't Crash Your Spaceship!

Liu Fen was a lot of things, but a slacker wasn't one of them. He'd given his body and soul for intergalactic engineering in a way that one could call him a 'fucking nerd' and spit on his face when at high school.

But that was in the past. Liu Fen's life gave the greatest twist it ever did yet and he ended up in a renowned university with a dog and living out of the uni dorms, in an apartment complex that was… uh, not great.  To top it off, his dog was a shameless corgi which he suspected was a shapeshifter, and almost killed Liu Fen a thousand times running around with a knife, not mentioning the times Liu Fen almost peed himself from an endless fit of laughter after he saw him trying to jump on the hovering couch with his short legs. 

The last few years had been hell, but the good kind of hell. He'd pulled up-all-nighters more times than hours of sleep and accumulated a couple of frenemies along the way, but nothing so extreme, people just didn't seem to like when Liu Fen ditched them for the premiere of his favorite TV show, but were instantly on talking terms when it came to group projects. Regardless, his grades and reputation remained the same: on top. Until the real hell happened.

Tao Yong crept on his present like he did with his heart in the past, only that this time the beginning was nothing like flowers and rainbows for Liu Fen. As soon as Tao Yong was transferred to his university, Liu Fen lost everything he'd worked on since freshman year, including his life-long project of launching his first spaceship and the highest grades in the class. It was ridiculous. Tao Yong had never mentioned once his interest for spacecraft when Liu Fen excitedly babbled about his newest accomplishment on a task when they dated in high school. So, reasonably, Liu Fen thought he'd suddenly taken a liking to sabotage Liu Fen's dreams.

He hadn't tried to make conversation with Tao Yong since he joined his Advanced Engineering class, and Tao Yong hadn't tried either, not even to explain why he was crushing Liu Fen's goals, so Liu Fen could say confidently that they were freshly made nemesis. Especially when the Dean had granted permission to Tao Yong's spaceship launching before Liu Fen's, even when Liu Fen had requested it first, and probably worked harder and way more passionately to achieve it.

No, he wasn't jealous. He respected the Dean, though he didn't respect his decisions (like not giving him the chance he deserved), all he could do was to wait until the chance came. And Liu Fen would grab it with everything he had and rub it in Tao Yong's face. But he wasn't jealous at all.

And in his senior year, Liu Fen's supervisor proclaimed he could finally allow his team to test his project. As Liu Fen was the leader and the oldest of his team, he was the chosen one for piloting it. He would have rubbed it on Tao Yong's face, if the latter hadn't also proclaimed to his followers on BlueBird that he was ready to take off later this afternoon. It would be his third year rocket launching, and Liu Fen couldn't take it. He was about to burst his phone on the ground when he received the notification (not like he had his notification on for Tao Yong's account, BlueBird was just always glitching), but then with what device he would record his adventures in space?

It took him only a couple of hours before departure to know both of them were assigned the same mission: to land on the nearest ally planet. What meant that they should go to the closest planet where they had the same branch as the university. The university had a universal reputation that resembled a fast food chain, with almost every planet around the galaxy adopting its learning method, which was nothing special in Liu Fen's perspective, not what people try to make him believe with all those advertisements. It was all an exaggeration, although it did help out with your professional life and curriculum if you have a diploma proving you graduated from them.

As everyone knew — everyone who bothered to check out his blog —, Liu Fen was more than fixated on intergalactic engineering. So, understandably, it would be a shock to realize Liu Fen was losing control of the spaceship, and consequently finding the way to his own (academical) death when he found himself flying over EA-202, the planet he should be landing.

Going light speed, Liu Fen found himself violating around 40 space laws and screeching his lungs out, all the while wondering if the pilot's seat belt would manage to also hold his limbs, that felt inclined to detach from his body and cede to the rapid speed.

Any thought left his mind at the sight of Tao Yong's spaceship coming closer enough to crash with his own, setting the engines on fire, exploding around Liu Fen like a freaking bubble gum advertisement, sending his body ricocheting around the ship and banging his head unconscious.