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DSYOM Chapter 12

Ay, sir, where lies that?

A week passed, and the group meeting came around again. The smart and handsome bastard still had not made any contact. The WeChat contacts, text messages, and phone calls remained silent. Wen Di could only endure the torment from his advisor in a life filled with unrelieved loneliness.

The group meeting was held in the conference room of the Humanities Building. Each person made a simple PPT, summarizing the progress of the week’s work and reporting on the abstracts of the papers they had read. Then it was time for the advisor’s routine critique session.

Perhaps because he failed in the senior professor evaluation, Old Liu was agitated by something outside and came back to take it out on his students. His aggression was particularly strong today. He started to find faults from the literature review of Wen Di, first criticizing the lack of innovation, then disapproving of his inability to package his ideas, and finally lamenting his lack of planning. “You’re already in your fourth year of your PhD, and you still haven’t published a single C Journal paper. ”

“But,” Old Liu looked at him and said, “I reckon that’s about as good as you’re going to get.”

For the thousand and first time since starting his PhD, Wen Di wanted to give up on his academic career.

He thought that after four years of hardening, he had become impervious to such things and that he wouldn’t care about his advisor’s habitual ridicule, but he still found himself suffocating under the pressure.

The desperate suffocation felt like sinking into the deep sea. He forced himself to take deep breaths, recalling comforting memories, and his mother’s soothing words. After struggling, he finally broke through to the surface, barely catching a breath, when his junior sister appeared on the big screen and began her presentation.

He was instantly pulled back under.

His junior sister was researching the dynamics of gender and power in Shakespearean plays and the evolution of female characters. Her latest paper. ‘Single Women in Shakespeare’s Plays: Faith, Doubt, and Bodily Exploration’ had been published in the top journal of the field, Shakespeare Quarterly.

This was the disparity in the world.

It was rare for Old Liu to show admiration in his eyes. Wen Di had thought that not even Shakespeare himself, reincarnated and writing papers on his own works, could satisfy him.

Wen Di absentmindedly rubbed the keyboard with his thumb, staring blankly at the campus outside the window. Maybe he really wasn’t cut out for literary research. But he was already deep into his PhD, the years had passed, and it was too late to turn back now.

After the meeting, except for the junior sister who had contributed a top-journal paper for the advisor, all the students were crestfallen, their ears drooping, surrounded by an aura of gloomy despair. Wen Di walked down the stairs with a second-year PhD student, as usual, starting to gripe about their advisor. Last year, they had co-written a monograph for Old Liu, enduring three months of exploitation together, and since then, they had become inseparable comrades. The junior brother was the lead for the group that did all the odd jobs, and he and Wen Di, as brothers in arms, criticized their advisor after group meetings, an essential outlet in their daily lives.

However, today, his brother didn’t join Wen Di in their usual shared resentment. Instead, he opened his mouth to drop shocking news: “Senior, I’m leaving.”

Wen Di was stunned. “What?”

“I’ve submitted my withdrawal application,” the junior brother said. “This week was my last group meeting.”

“Then… where are you going?”

“I contacted a professor at the University of Zurich, and he agreed to take me in.”

It takes a lot of courage to drop out of school and start over. Not only does one have to battle with the advisor to let them go, but they also need to find a new advisor. It was also difficult to find a group willing to accept you in the same field where professors know each other. Moreover, switching advisors might mean starting from the first year of the PhD again, and all the time spent before would be wasted.

“I just consider it as having worked a year for free. Senior, you should think about it too. If you can’t find a new advisor in the country, then go abroad,” the junior brother said. “Here, besides listening to him spout nonsense, we learn nothing. And he keeps finding faults with us. How many times has the logic in his own monograph been criticized by editors?”

Wen Di sighed. “I don’t have the money to go abroad.”

His parents had indeed saved some money, but that was from their hard work, and they also had to support the elderly. He couldn’t add this unnecessary pressure to his family: “And you’ve only been here a little over a year. I’ve been at this for almost four years. How can I just give up?”

Others started earning money right after their undergraduate degrees, while he had to study until he was 27 years old, which was already outrageous. But to even drop out and start over?

If he made a mistake, he would admit it. And even if he made a mistake, he would keep going forward.

He said ‘Congratulations’ to his junior brother, but inside dark clouds were gathering. With the worker gone, the amount of dirty and tiring work would remain unchanged, and the exploitation would only become more severe. Then he thought of the professor he hadn’t contacted for a week, and a few lightning bolts struck in the dark clouds and raindrops began to fall.

Life really was a mix of both blessings and misfortunes. He could not hope to do both his studies and his relationship well, and there wasn’t even one thing that could relieve his stress. It had been a week since he gave out his number. During that week, he had received three harassing calls from people trying to sell real estate, loans, and tutoring services, plus one wrong number and one scam call.

Every new number was a burst bubble.

Wen Di sighed, said goodbye to his junior brother, and watched as he set sail towards freedom while he stayed behind, drenched to the bone.

He had always been plagued by bad luck. He failed to get his preferred major, encountered difficulties in the autumn recruitment, made a bad choice in choosing the advisor, and a first love that turned out to be a scoundrel. After twenty-six years of bad luck, couldn’t there be a bit of sunshine to give him some relief?

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and walked dejectedly under the shade of the tree. On a Saturday afternoon, the campus was not as rushed as during the school days. Young faces streamed out of the library, dispersing at the intersection towards different cafeterias.

Among the intersecting figures, a familiar profile flashed by. Wen Di stood there in a daze for a moment, making sure that he was not mistaken. After hesitating for a moment, he resolutely ran towards the person.

Life had already humiliated him to this extent. If he wanted to dig out some happiness, didn’t he have to fight for it on his own?

The low pressure around him, filled with resentment, turned into hot blood and rushed to his head, making him inexplicably angry. He pushed through the crowd, made a semicircle, and stopped in front of the person. “Professor,” he demanded sternly, “why didn’t you come to me to collect your debt?”

Bian Cheng was not surprised to see him, but the people next to Bian Cheng showed a playful expression. The person next to him squinted slightly, examining Wen Di, as if he had never seen a debtor coming to his door with such confidence.

Wen Di thought the man looked familiar, so he dug into his memory and soon remembered that this was the same dramatic friend who had splashed water at Bian Cheng that day.

Oops, he was so angry that he didn’t notice there was someone next to the professor.

Wen Di awkwardly touched his nose. Confronting the professor was one thing; having onlookers was another. A PhD student from the Department of Foreign Languages looking for a mathematics professor did not look like a normal academic exchange.

He had no intention of announcing his feat of pursuing the professor across departments to the world.

Just as he was about to find an excuse to leave, the dramatic friend didn’t give him that opportunity. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” The dramatic friend looked at Bian Cheng with a smile.

Bian Cheng seemed to think it unnecessary but still fulfilled his role as an intermediary: “This is Wen Di, two years junior to you, a PhD student in the Department of Foreign Languages.”

“A foreign language junior, a rare breed,” the man said with a smile, extending his hand to Wen Di. Without waiting for Bian Cheng to introduce himself, he introduced himself: “Song Yuchi, from the Thermal Energy Engineering Class Four.”

Wen Di shook hands with him passively, not knowing how to react.

Song Yuchi looked at him, his tone kind and with a hint of compassion: “How is your heart?”

Wen Di was puzzled by this concern from a senior he had never met before: “It’s okay.”

“What about the liver and lungs? Are you hot-tempered?”

“A little?”

Song Yuchi glanced at Bian Cheng and withdrew his hand. “That would be troublesome, then.”

Wen Di’s mind was filled with question marks, but Song Yuchi didn’t stay in the bizarre scene for long. He checked his watch and waved to Bian Cheng, saying, “I have a double recruitment fair this afternoon. I need to prepare my resume. See you later.”

Then he smiled at Wen Di again—mysteriously, teasingly, and meaningfully, and then left this series of puzzles behind and ran away.

Wen Di looked at his back, confusion brewing in his mind, pushing aside the anger and gloom from earlier.

The feeling of a hundred claws scratching his heart was too much to bear, so he shook his head and circled back to the point, lifting his face and questioning Bian Cheng, who had wandered away from the scene, with his eyes.

Bian Cheng stared at him for a long time, so long that he thought there was a memory glitch and that the conversation that night never happened. Then Bian Cheng took out his phone, pulled up his contacts, and flipped the screen to show to him: “The number you gave is an empty number.”

“How could that be…” Wen Di braked his tongue in mid-sentence.

In the glaring sunlight, the phone’s brightness was turned up to maximum, clearly revealing his mistake: he had written the fifth and sixth digits of the phone number incorrectly.

A common trap when typing with both hands.

Wen Di closed his eyes in despair, wanting to go back to that night and push his dizzy with beauty head into the sewer.

What a stupid mistake, just like the countless times he wrote an open interval as a closed interval. It could make him transfer from engineering to liberal arts, and it could make him lose the chance to reconnect with someone he had a crush on.

The almond eyes glanced guiltily at the cafeteria in the distance. Seeing that he didn’t respond, Bian Cheng asked, “Didn’t you ask me to collect the debt? Not going to pay it back?”

Wen Di took a deep breath, took the phone from Bian Cheng’s hand, re-entered the number, double-checked it, and handed it back.

Bian Cheng glanced at the screen and put the phone to his ear.

The phone in Wen Di’s hand vibrated and he hurriedly answered the call.

“Looks like this time it’s correct,” Bian Cheng said.

Wen Di wanted to rush into the ancient tomb in the cultural relics center five hundred meters away and lie down, never to wake up again. His face flushed with embarrassment, and before he could say anything, Bian Cheng hung up the phone.

Wen Di silently put away his phone, took a deep breath, and reminded himself that the key to pursuing someone was to be thick-skinned—no, to be brave: “The agreed time has passed. Professor, are you free tomorrow?”

Bian Cheng answered quickly: “Yes.”

“Then see you tomorrow at 12 noon?” To get a positive answer, it was important not to leave any choice.

“Okay.”

Wen Di let out a long sigh and turned to leave. Bian Cheng called out to him: “Where should we meet?”

Without stopping, he raised his phone and tapped the screen with his finger: “I’ll let you know on WeChat.”

This chance encounter on campus changed his mood. With the weather clear and the cold wind less piercing, riding past the withered trees, the winter scenery in Beijing seemed much more pleasant to the eyes.

The dinner was not easy to come by, so Wen Di decided to choose a place carefully—good environment, pleasant atmosphere, close distance, easy to grab seats on weekends, and the price should not be too high. It was such a tricky requirement that resources had to be invested in research.

He was making a list in his head while spinning the key ring on his finger. When he reached the third floor corridor, he suddenly felt something was wrong.

Yes, something good had just happened.

According to the universal law of things, if good things had happened, then what would inevitably follow would be…

He suddenly raised his head and looked at the corner above the neighbor’s door. On the grayish-white wall, there was something new. Black, small, rotating, with a continuously glowing red dot on the side.

His pupils suddenly contracted and he immediately turned around, covering his face with his hands, then took out his key and quickly unlocked the door—using too much force, the key left several white marks on the lock—then rushed into his apartment, slamming the door shut with a bang.

After leaning against the door and taking a few breaths, Wen Di took out his phone and opened WeChat. His fingers were shaking with anger and panic, and he inexplicably switched between several input methods, almost sending a message in pinyin.

He hoped the punctuation would convey his anger to his neighbor.

Wen Di: [When did you install the surveillance camera at my door??!]

He had worked hard and endured humiliation to keep his identity hidden until today. But this man had no moral principles and used high-tech weapons against him directly? This was too much!

After a while, his neighbor’s reply popped up, as annoying as ever: [Why do you care? It’s not illegal to install a camera at the doorstep.]

Wen Di: [You’re invading my privacy!]

Neighbor: [I adjusted the angle so it doesn’t capture your doorstep.]

Wen Di: [What’s the difference? You can still see it when I come back every day!

Neighbor: [Is there anything I can’t watch? ]

Wen Di’s gaze seemed like it could burn through the screen. What do you mean ‘I can’t watch?’ I just don’t want you to see it!

Couldn’t he just feel guilty because he resided there illegally?

Wen Di: [Daily comings and goings at the door are personal movements. Your private recording is also an infringement on citizen privacy rights. And the place where you installed the camera is a public space, so you should have my consent. Just like I don’t leave garbage at the door, you shouldn’t install a camera in the corner of the wall!]

The other side was slow to respond, and according to Wen Di’s understanding, they were probably preparing for a counterattack. He took advantage of the free time to look up cases of related disputes online, stock up on ammunition, and wait for the enemy to return and defeat them in one fell swoop.

A few minutes later, the screen lit up. Wen Di was about to express his passion, but when he saw the reply, he was stunned.

Neighbor: [Then I’ll take it down ba.]

Wen Di stared at the screen in disbelief. What? That was it? No verbal attacks, no personal attacks?

It was just like the army was preparing to march on the border, with smoke rising everywhere, but suddenly the troops were called back. Wen Di felt as if he had stepped on empty air.

So easy?

When did this guy start paying attention to public order and neighborhood harmony?

 


T/N: The literal translation for title would be ‘Sir, where is your conscience?’. This is from The Tempest Act 2, Scene 1. Anyway there’ll be another chapter tomorrow


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