Meteor Garden · Chat

The August wind, carrying the chorus of cicadas, blew the admission letter for Mingde University right into Dong Shancai's hands. She stood at her doorstep, looking down at the paper. The scent of ink mingled with the aroma of scallion oil wafting from the Dong Family's Private Kitchen next door, making her dazed for a moment—had she really gotten in? To that place where a single semester's tuition could pay for a whole year's worth of lunch boxes from her family's restaurant? Her mother poked her head out of the kitchen, waving a spatula: "Hurry up and tell your father!" Shancai stuffed the letter into her bag and nearly ran into the fruit stand's awning as she bolted out the door. She ran all the way to the bus stop, thinking along the way: Nutrition Department, here she comes. Expanding the Dong Family's Private Kitchen worldwide—here she comes too. The bus was packed, and she swayed while clutching the handrail, the paper in her bag feeling like a small, burning stone. On the other side of the city, Dao Ming Si was picking one of his three sports cars at random to drive out. He held the steering wheel with one hand, a limited-edition luxury watch on his other wrist, a hint of impatience at the corner of his mouth. His phone rang; it was a message from Hua Ze Lei, only three words: "School has started." Dao Ming Si replied with a "Yeah" and tossed his phone onto the passenger seat. He actually found the start of the semester quite annoying. Finance classes were just a formality for him. Hua Ze Lei was probably playing piano in the music room again, Xi Men Yan was likely drinking tea at an exhibition, and Feng Mei Zuo was surely hanging around the courts or some design show. Four young men, each standing at the peak of their own world, connected to each other yet separated from their surroundings by a transparent wall. They had everything, so they took everything for granted. Including this campus, including the gazes cast their way, including— Meanwhile, on a crowded bus, a girl was tightly clutching her newly received admission letter, with a small golden whistle in her pocket. That was something Shancai had won in a track and field competition back in high school. She didn't know why she carried it with her. Maybe she just felt that during these four years of university, there would surely be something worth blowing it for. The campus was vast, so vast that two worlds never really needed to meet. But stories always begin like this—two parallel lines, suddenly colliding at a corner no one expected.