Part 2: Reunion and Undercurrents
Freshman year flew by in a blur of novelty and deadlines. As the cicadas began to buzz again across campus, the three residents of Dorm 302 had shed their early awkwardness and were now facing their first college summer break.
Lu Zhao didn't return home. Instead, through a school referral, he landed an internship at a small local tech company. It was his first real exposure to a commercial project—equal parts thrilling and nerve-wracking. He was assigned to a mobile app team, handling basic UI testing and compiling user feedback.
The company moved fast. His mentor, a stern middle-aged man, was notoriously strict. Lu Zhao often stayed late into the night, running tests repeatedly for a single elusive bug. By the time he returned to his rented room, he would collapse into bed, too exhausted to think. The gap between theory and practice hit him hard, but so did the growth that came from constant correction and iteration.
Sometimes, after a long night, he'd stand outside the convenience store near the office, sipping iced coffee under the neon lights. In those moments, he found himself missing his dorm bed—narrow but familiar—and his two very different roommates. Was Gu Xun still buried in those thick original-language textbooks? Jiang Jin was probably sweating it out on some basketball court. Lu Zhao chuckled to himself, thinking he sounded old already—nostalgic for the simplicity of student life.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Gu Xun was strolling beneath the trees of a Silicon Valley tech campus. He was participating in a summer research program arranged by the university, immersed in cutting-edge technologies and ideas. The environment was open, vibrant, and filled with peers who were either hardcore tech geeks or aspiring world-changers. Gu Xun thrived. He soaked up lectures and seminars, exchanged ideas with brilliant minds from around the world, and felt his perspective expanding by the day.
He still didn't talk much, but here, his silence was interpreted as focus and composure rather than aloofness. Occasionally, he would think of his dorm—of Jiang Jin's booming voice and Lu Zhao's earnest, slightly clueless gaze. Compared to the sharp, driven people around him, those two seemed almost… childish. And yet, there was something about that "childishness"—a kind of unfiltered sincerity—that felt increasingly rare in his current world. He called his parents once, but never dialed the familiar dorm number.
As for Jiang Jin, he had returned to his hometown—a small city he knew like the back of his hand. His summer had one theme: basketball. He joined a local amateur league and spent nearly every day in the gym, burning off his endless energy through intense training and games. Sweat, collisions, wins and losses—these simple, visceral things grounded him.
But on certain evenings, after practice, he'd bike through familiar streets and find himself pulling out his phone, scrolling to a chat thread that had barely seen any replies. The last message was the one he'd sent before leaving campus: "Gu Xun, let's keep in touch over break 😁"
No response.
He'd hesitated more than once—wanting to send a photo of the sunset over the court, or ask what Gu Xun was up to—but his finger would hover over the send button, then retreat.
He'd lock his screen, pedal harder, and let the wind fill his shirt, as if it could blow away the strange, quiet ache in his chest.
Sophomore year began. The three of them returned to Dorm 302, dragging their luggage behind them. When they met again, there was a subtle sense of unfamiliarity—as if the two months apart had drawn a faint line between them.
"Hey! Miss me, bros?" Jiang Jin was still the most enthusiastic. His skin was darker now, and he pulled Lu Zhao into a firm hug before reaching out to slap Gu Xun's shoulder.
Gu Xun, quicker than before, sidestepped the bronze hand with practiced ease. He simply nodded. "Back."
Lu Zhao looked at Gu Xun and felt something had changed. He couldn't quite put his finger on it—Gu Xun was still lean and poised, but his gaze seemed calmer, deeper. The quiet aura around him had grown stronger. Jiang Jin, on the other hand, seemed exactly the same—except for the tan.