Chapter 1

Qiao Fei

It was April, and the national exams for French majors had just ended; we were all waiting for the results.

The sunshine was warm, heralding a bright spring.

Looking out of the library's large, luminous windows, one could see the distant azure sea water, the rising waves in the spring breeze, and the seagulls spreading their wings, tempting one to slack off.

I sat in the library, tired from reciting my textbooks, idly flipping through a dictionary—an old habit of mine. I came across the word fatalité—a feminine noun, meaning fate, destiny, doom.

Someone tapped my shoulder; it was Xiaodan, the sister who bunked above me. I followed her out of the reading room. Xiaodan said to me, "Why are you still sitting here? The report meeting is about to start; hurry and pack up and come with me."

I was startled and then remembered that there was an important report meeting this afternoon in our department, led by an alumnus who had returned from studying abroad at one of the top three interpretation institutes in Paris. The afternoon sun must have made me dizzy; I had actually forgotten such an important event. I quickly packed up my books and ran with Xiaodan towards the French department's lecture hall.

The presenter, Cheng Jiayang, had a renowned name even in our top-ranked foreign language college. His illustrious parents had started their careers as high-level translators from the same school, his father in French, his mother in English, and Cheng Jiayang grew up in a trilingual environment. In the legends about Cheng Jiayang, apart from these enviable circumstances, his intelligence, diligence, modesty, and hard work were also cited. Unfortunately, by the time we enrolled, he had already gone to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. Whenever the teachers mentioned him in class, the girls would prop their cheeks in deep thought while the boys, unconvinced, would say, "Teacher, those are old stories. Look at the heroes of today."

When Xiaodan and I arrived, the lecture hall was already surrounded by people, three layers inside and three layers outside. What infuriated me was that there weren't even enough seats for our French department students, and yet many students from other departments were there. The girls from the English department who lived opposite us had even all bunked over. I had every reason to believe that their intentions weren't purely academic—those groupies!

I heard faint voices calling out mine and Xiaodan's names, and through the crowd, I saw our roommate Bobo calling us from the other side of the lecture hall. Good buddy, she had endured the people's scorn and awkward glances to save seats for us. But the area was as densely packed as dumpling filling; how would we get through?

The report had not yet started, and caring little for decorum, I grabbed Xiaodan and climbed up onto a row of tables, forcing our way through from above. Others expressed their disdain with "Ah," "Hiss," "Tsk," "Hmph..." and various other sounds. As a language student, I knew that the richness of language depends on our great country's expansive territories and that the language elites from all over the country brought with them the essence of their hometowns' dialects.

The passage was difficult and quite long; midway, the noise died down, it became quiet, very quiet, and then applause erupted—I knew what had happened: the star of the report, the highly anticipated Cheng Jiayang, had arrived. Yet, in this amphitheater-style lecture hall, Xiaodan and I, at a notably attention-grabbing height, were ducking and hunching over, nearly crawling.

We hurried along and all but flung ourselves onto the silently waiting Bobo. I quickly sat down, smoothed my hair, straightened my clothes, stabilized my spirit, and then, filled with fervor, opened my eyes to watch the star.

(End of Chapter)

This book is first published by Xiaoxiang Academy, please do not reproduce!