Chapter 8

As far as she can remember, Jingan had only met Shen Xihuai once during his college years.

　　The University of R's School of Economics is one of the best in China, and Jing'an entered the experimental class jointly formed by the School of Economics and the School of Mathematics through a second selection process, studying both economics and mathematics.

　　In her sophomore year, Jingan applied to transfer to the School of Arts with the support of her family, and studied drama, film and literature instead. In order to keep up with her progress, Jingan spent her entire sophomore year extremely busy. In her junior year, she participated in a creative writing competition and was unexpectedly awarded the gold medal for her script debut, and soon entered the rehearsal stage after receiving sponsorship money.

　　The division of labor was not clear for a group of students putting together a haystack, and although Jingan was the scriptwriter, she also did the work of a director. Recruiting actors, determining costumes, designing the stage, and constantly revising the script during the rehearsal process ... However, these are not the most important.

　　"If it takes a hundred minutes to complete a play, the crew will only take thirty minutes to rehearse the scene and spend the rest on dealing with people."

　　Jing An was disappointed with this conclusion she came to, but as long as there are people, it is inseparable from socializing. Whether it's a play or a movie, it's ultimately a team effort, and one can't do without the other. Jing An thought all she could do was to reduce ineffective communication time, learn to express herself efficiently, and do her best to read the subtext of others.

　　Zheng Muxiao reassured her on the phone, "Your personality looks soft, but in fact, you say one thing and have a lot of courage. The way you look at me make me feel if I don't take it, your fist will greet me in the face the next moment. Theoretically you are lending me money, the action is more like asking me for a debt."

　　At that time, Zheng Muxiao was studying in the Department of Computer Science at Q University, and he had just gone to Austin, USA, as a member of Q University's supercomputing team to participate in the International Student Supercomputing Competition, and won the overall championship in one fell swoop.

　　Jing An has always wanted to invite him to dinner, but both of them were too busy to get away until the end of the semester, when Jing An's play was auditioned in the theater and Zheng Muxiao appeared in the audience with a bouquet of flowers.

　　The team went to a roadside barbecue after the show, and the two walked at the end.

　　"This is a lot of money, right?"

　　Zheng Muxiao lost his smile, "with the bonus to buy, the family debt is almost paid off, it is time for me to buy you dinner."

　　Zheng Muxiao could have gone to MIT, but the tuition fees abroad are too expensive, the family can not afford, he also want to take advantage of the undergraduate period to earn money to pay off debts, and then save money to go abroad to graduate school.

　　"Don't be too desperate either." Jing An advised him.

　　"I see you are similar, for me, I have a little love of money, and you are completely out of love."

　　Jing An smiled, "Eh, recently I was thinking about PlaybackTheatre, I don't know if I can write it."

　　Her eyes were glowing when she was scientifically speaking terminology, Zheng Muxiao was clearly very close to her, but at this moment she felt too far away.

　　He said, "I was going to invite you to play after the exam, but it was determined to go to Qianji internship."

　　Qianji as a domestic emerging game company, the last two years with an online game later rise to the top, and Qianji boss's only daughter, it happens to be Jing An and Zheng Muxia's high school classmates.

　　Zheng Muxiao will go to the class reunion, is also in the way of this classmate's face. In high school, he was only responsible for studying hard, not familiar with the class, so the phone call to Jing An.

　　Jing'an was not far from him, but happened to be free, so he went with him.

　　When she arrived at the ground and went upstairs, she bumped into someone coming down, and Jing An was accidentally bumped, and when Zheng Muxia shielded her behind her, she looked up and met several pairs of eyes, one of which came from Shen Xihuai.

　　The one who hit her was the guitarist of the band Yellow Poplar, who was scolded by the lead singer's girlfriend next to him after the bump. The two were not students in the experimental class, but because of the other two band members, they would often come to the class to visit, and belonged to the supernumerary members of the experimental class.

　　The two men were in the same room, and the two men were in the same room. The one standing next to him wearing a white mask, a face almost invisible, but no doubt the drummer of the band, but also Shen Xihuai's rumored girlfriend.

　　Jing An had seen the publicity photo in the news not long ago, the tear mole was her trademark, and her name was also very special, consisting of the abbreviations of three provinces.

　　The news that Su Jinwan was chosen by the famous director as the lead actress of the new film spread on the Internet long ago, previously people only sought confirmation in the class group, this time to see the real person, the topic around the film is more endless.

　　Jing An studies film and is quite interested in the topic. She followed the others' eyes and settled on one spot. Su Jinwan had an air of melancholy about her, but it didn't affect the spirituality of her whole face or the devotion she put into playing the drums.

　　"The movie is set in England? Oh, I don't know, England. ..."

　　The crowd was up in arms, Jing An did not understand, around Zheng Muxiao see her confusion, whispered in her ear to explain: "Shen Xihuai sophomore transferred to the United Kingdom, in the London School of Economics and Political Science."

　　Jing An was a little surprised, many students in the class went abroad for undergraduate studies, but she always remembered clearly, the top two on the honor roll stayed in China, one was Zheng Muxiao, the other was Shen Xihuai.

　　Three years ago, the doubts were now solved by the flirtation of classmates, "You two are to be envied, You're here to show your love today, right?You stay in the country for Su Jinwan, now well, you go abroad, Su Jinwan and run to your place to shoot, let us this group of single dogs live?"

　　"Just a coincidence, you can also make up such a big paragraph?"

　　Shen Xihuai's voice was not loud, and he spoke with a smile on his face, but the shocking power was evident.

　　However, the momentum of the uproar only increased, "Is it a real coincidence or a fake coincidence?"

　　Once someone started, there were others who followed suit.

　　Jing An has never been interested in gossip, just a sip of drink, Zheng Muxiao and close to say: "In fact, I originally wanted to go to the touch internship, but was rejected by his family, gathering point I also filled out an application, and now no news."

　　Jing An sniffed and looked across at Shen Xihuai, who was smiling just now, and then only looked down and ate his food, an indifferent look.

　　Before he could withdraw his eyes, Su Jinwan, who had just successfully changed the subject, looked at her, "Tao Jing'an, what about you? Planning to go abroad?"

　　Jingan was stunned for two seconds, next to Zheng Muxiao reacted quickly and answered for her, "She may go to Berkeley."

　　As soon as the words came out, the girl on her left grabbed Jing'an: "Are you going to Berkeley? What a coincidence, I'm planning to go too!"

　　This girl is Cheng Yan, the future computer god who was poached back by Zheng Muxiao with a high salary.

　　Cheng Yan looked at Zheng Muxia again, "What about you, Zheng Muxia? Also to go abroad, right? I also want to do technical research with you! Come on, let's apply to Berkeley together! Tao Jing'an is going, and you're still not going?"

　　Jing'an sat between the two and answered for Zheng Muxiao in a smooth manner, "He hasn't decided yet."

　　"That's also one of the top four computer schools, right? You go to the East Coast might as well come to the West Coast, out of the door is the Silicon Valley, but also save you graduate fly over."

　　Zheng Muxiao asked Cheng Yan: "Have you watched CTF this year?"

　　Defcon is the world's top hacker conference in the field of security, known as the Oscars of the security world and the World Cup, and CTF Capture the Flag is the core competition of Defcon, where teams battle around the clock to obtain network root services in order to defeat their opponents.

　　"Looked ah, the winner or ppp, they even finished the questions an hour early, simply changed . The state ... you want to go to CMU ah?"

　　The ppp team is from CMU, and Zheng Muxiao did end up going to Carnegie Mellon University.

　　Jing An later carefully recalled the day Shen Xihuai, time passed too long, and she hardly paid attention to him, really can not remember other details, the only impression is that this person is colder, and his scandalous object is not as intimate as the rumors.

　　Jingan, who read Joan Didion before going to California, says, "Those who say California is hedonistic have obviously never spent Christmas in Sacramento."

　　Jing's graduate school years were even busier than her undergraduate years; while others dressed up for parties, Jing spent all night in the library working on her thesis; while others marched through Sather Gate, Jing caught up on sleep on the bus back to her residence; while others swung at BigC, Jing listened to Berkeley's hottest introductory computer class in a classroom that held more than 1,000 students. JavaScript was fairly easy; the back end was She asked Cheng Yan for help.

　　She asked Cheng Yan for help, and Cheng Yan told her to meet her at Memorial Lawn. Jing'an went to BobaGuys to buy some milk teas, but realized that there were quite a lot of people there, and there was still a shortage of milk teas.

　　Cheng Yan sucked on the matcha latte, "Oops, your son does not drink milk tea."

　　Jing An looked awkwardly at Shen Xihuai sitting on the lawn, his long legs flexed, squinting in the sunlight, after a while walked over and said, "a little thirsty, take me to buy water."

　　He said it with a straight face, Jing An was slightly stunned, and finally silently led the way for him.

　　There were a lot of students coming and going, passing a bronze-colored seal on the ground, and Jingan turned back to look at Shen Xihuai, sideways to see him about to step on it, reaching out to tug him, but in the end it was not appropriate, and snapped his hand away.

　　A passing student joked at Shen Xihuai: "You're not goingtogeta4.0!"

　　Seeing Shen Xihuai look over, Jing An explained, "They say that if you step on this seal, your average GPA won't reach 4.0."

　　Shen Xihuai smiled in disbelief, but still asked, "So what now?"

　　It was the first time Jing An looked at this old classmate so close, his eyebrows were clear, but he smiled with some gangliness. His T-shirt is particularly white, the logo on it shows that the price is not expensive, the hem is tied in the waist, the belt that just came out not long ago is enough to pay her a month's rent.

　　In contrast, Jingan's $100 white T-shirt just verifies the flirtation of Berkeley students with other schools, who are generally not dressed up, not trim, and are jokingly called BerkeleyGoggles.

　　The "nobleman" in front of him is really expensive.

　　The smile on his face is also particularly eye-catching.

　　Jing An was in a hurry, but took a detour near the clock tower and brought Shen Xihuai to a stone ball.

　　"You touch it, touch it and you might get 4.0."

　　Shen Xihuai's results have always been very good, Jingan did not think he would believe this, the next moment but really see him touch his hand to that 4.0 ball.

　　Jing An was a little surprised, the sunlight overhead is very harsh, she used her hand to block in front of her forehead, see Shen Xihuai slender clean fingers.

　　The two of them went down the slope and Jing An asked, "Have you found your I-20?"

　　The I-20 is somehow equivalent to a pass for international students, and losing it can be tricky and may even lead to deportation.

　　Shen Xihuai often has dinner dates in the group, and the people in the group have different affinities with him, but he is used to asking them one by one. Jing An seldom looks at the group, pointing in mostly because he was named, and then back to a sentence to catch up on homework. The last time she looked twice, she saw him saying that he didn't know where he had lost his I-20.

　　Shen Xihuai asked, "You didn't seem to come to the last dinner together?"

　　Probably he had explained at the dinner table that time, but Jingan didn't go. That day she was busy going off-campus to cut her bangs, and was scared back by the $60 price tag, and did it herself instead, cutting it to a stump, and it's still not growing well.

　　"Well, there's too much homework."

　　This is not a lie, homework is indeed a lot, just that day she finished early, did not go to dinner because with Zheng Muxiao about online video, she is not good to often find Cheng Yan ask programming questions, occasionally will turn to her high school table.

　　Shen Xihuai did not seem to hear her words, but said, "I-20 is back."

　　Jingan nodded and didn't say anything more.

　　At the foot of the mountain, Jingan bought Shen Xihuai a glass of guacamole, ordered Greek yogurt for herself, and bought a bag of bread crumbs for dinner.

　　To pay, Shen Xihuai swiped his card first.

　　He didn't give Jingan a chance to speak, turned around and waited for her two steps ahead, quickly changing the subject: "Next week's football game, Cheng Yan asked me to pick you up, don't be late then."

　　The love-hate relationship between Berkeley and Stanford dates back to the last century, when the two schools would jointly hold a "BigGame" football tournament every fall to battle it out. This year, the home field was Stanford.

　　Jing An is not too interested, "Cheng Yan and the girls will go, I will not go."

　　She still spent the time watching the football game studying, and soon after Cheng Yan asked her to go to Napa to visit the winery, she went in Cheng Yan's car and came back in Shen Xihuai's Rolls Royce.

　　She was tired of walking and drowsy in the car when she vaguely heard the female student in the front row chatting with Shen Xihuai.

　　Stanford is isolated, and study is all that matters to students. If you want to socialize, you can go to CardinalNights, which has a lot of activities on weekends and occasionally gives out free movie tickets and tickets to ball games, and if you qualify, you can join a fraternity or sorority. Other than that there doesn't seem to be anything special.

　　Jingan learned these messages from Shen Xihuai, and was hazily thinking that Shen Xihuai's voice seemed like a good one to listen to while sleeping.