Xia Wanqing · Conversa

When the smart band of the "Eden System" on my wrist flared with a piercing red light, announcing that Xia Wanqing—the dream girl of every guy on campus—and I were now legal partners, the entire lecture hall fell into dead silence. Her aloof, gorgeous face was filled with incredulous humiliation, while the dashing student council president from a prominent family sitting right next to her, her boyfriend Lu Xingye, shot to his feet in an attempt to use his laughable privilege to protest this absurd state assignment. I calmly pushed up my black-framed glasses, paying no mind to the frenzied, jealous glares around me. In an era where resisting a match meant being thrown into a penal prison, the state had handed me the sharpest blade. Watching Xia Wanqing's slightly trembling shoulders, an uninhibited smirk curled at the corner of my lips—from this day forward, she could only be mine.