On the eve of the National Day holiday, Wen Di completed his advisor’s application materials, arranged the scholarship defense, organized his materials for the recommended student program, and revised his thesis.
He fell into a deep sleep and crawled back from the Naihe Bridge.1’Bridge of Helplessness’, a bridge every soul has to cross before being reincarnated. Basically meaning as if he had returned from the brink of death. This devilish National Day holiday had cost him half his life. He weighed himself and found he had lost another three pounds.
He rolled out of bed, walked to the living room, and collapsed onto the sofa, leaning against the pillow. He opened his phone and saw no new messages. What a relief.
Remembering something, he switched to his alternate account and saw that there was no activity from his neighbor either.
After sending the curse, he had expected the neighbor to retaliate passionately and immediately, but he didn’t expect that he would be quiet during the holidays.
When he returned in the evening, even the deadly violin had stopped.
Could it be that Shakespeare’s spirit in heaven was protecting him and the curse had really worked?
He was worthy of being his soul guide.
The more Wen Di thought about it, the more he felt those three sentences were a stroke of genius—vulgar but not crude, sophisticated but not lacking in power. The curse was majestic and mighty.
Even the curse was so tasteful. What could that ignorant fool next door understand?
Wen Di went to the fridge, took a bottle of juice and then collapsed back onto the sofa. He sipped it contentedly, enjoying a moment of peace.
After a while, footsteps sounded in the hallway. Wen Di glanced at the time, it should be Yu Jingyi coming home from work.
She worked at an overseas study agency, doing one-on-one IELTS tutoring. Her holidays were the opposite of regular people’s and she was especially busy during the National Day holiday. She was also preparing for the civil service exam, working almost around the clock. Seeing Wen Di squinting drowsily, she actually felt a bit envious. After putting her keys in the bowl by the door, she walked to the living room and sat down across from Wen Di. “Alive?”
Wen Di nodded.
“Haven’t bumped into the neighbor in the last few days?”
Wen Di nodded again. He was timid and didn’t dare face the neighbor after cursing them. These past few days, whenever he went out, he would press his ear against the door to make sure there was no movement in the hallway before carefully turning the doorknob. It was his own home, yet going out felt like being a thief, which made him furious whenever he thought about it.
Yu Jingyi asked, “Can you rest for a couple of days? What are you planning to do?”
Wen Di calculated the dates and sat up straight. “I’ll ask a high school classmate about some advanced geometry problems, see if I can understand a bit more this time. After the class, I’ll ask a question so I can start a conversation.”
Yu Jingyi looked at him as if he were a terminally ill patient. After a long pause, she sighed: “Here you go again.”
Wen Di was dissatisfied: “What do you mean?”
“Whenever you like someone, even if they haven’t shown any interest, you’re ready to pour out your heart and soul and devote yourself to them.” Yu Jingyi said. “You really need to change this love brain problem.”
“That was in high school and college. I’ve matured now.” Wen Di raised two fingers and swore.
“You didn’t buy ‘Introduction to Complex Geometry’?”
“The second-hand book was 30% off.”
“You didn’t sit in on the class at the Third Teaching Building?”
“He teaches two classes, I only attended one!” Wen Di defended himself. “The other class is Algebraic Geometry, which is his research focus, but my classmate said Algebraic Geometry is too difficult.”
“You can understand Complex Geometry?”
“I was pretty good at science in high school…””
Yu Jingyi sighed: “Since you like this person so much, why don’t you be more direct and go up and talk to him when you see him? Taking such a roundabout way, who knows when you’ll become familiar with him?”
“I also want to!” Wen Di was filled with grief and anger, “But I’m not from the Math Department, what would I say to him? What if he realizes I’m trying to chat him up?”
The professor might not be gay. The attitude towards homosexuality among the straight male students in the Science and Engineering Departments at T University was a mystery. Some accepted it calmly, some were indifferent, and some kept a respectful distance. If it weren’t for his roommate in the Ph.D. dormitory who was homophobic, always giving him dirty looks and making sarcastic comments, Wen Di wouldn’t have moved out. The dorm was so much cheaper.
If the professor turned out to be the third type and if he rushed out, wouldn’t the looks in his eyes pierce several holes in his heart.
It was better and safer to use the excuse of asking questions.
“Alright,” Yu Jingyi said, “but if you get dumped this time, don’t make it as dramatic as last time, killing eighty enemies and losing a thousand to yourself.”2basically means harming himself a thousand times over just to deal a blow to the other.
Wen Di showed a pained expression, “Don’t curse me.”
Yu Jingyi shook her head and sighed, then left, leaving Wen Di sitting where he was, enjoying a moment of rest. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. Not long after he let his mind wander, a new message popped up. It was from Old Liu: “There are many changes needed for tomorrow’s lecture PPT. I’ve made notes and sent it to you. Get it to me by tomorrow morning.”
Then another message came through: “There are several papers that need to be reviewed. I’ve forwarded them to you. Return them to me by next week.”
Wen Di’s dormant volcano instantly erupted. He jumped up and shouted, “Damn it!”
He hadn’t even rested for two hours. Even a workhorse wasn’t driven this hard!
Grinding his teeth for a while, Wen Di finally swore under his breath and took out his laptop.
Toads, beetles, bats.
Every week, the school hosted various academic lectures, inviting professors from inside and outside the university to introduce their research and broaden students’ horizons. Old Liu had scheduled a lecture on ‘The Theatrical Environment in the Era of Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu,’ which had been advertised on the bulletin boards along the school road for three weeks, but not many had signed up.
Wen Di sighed as he typed. Initially, he only needed to revise the content, but then he found the layout unsatisfactory, so he adjusted the font size and reduced the number of words per slide. Later, he felt the background was unattractive, and the image resolution was too low, which might be uncomfortable for the audience. So he replaced the template and the image sources.
After working on it until midnight, Wen Di fell asleep with hatred for his advisor.
When he woke up, Wen Di reviewed the references one more time and sent them to Old Liu. He thought the torment would end there, but who would have thought, as the lecture approached, Old Liu suddenly sent several more messages. The gist was that he was stuck in traffic and asked Wen Di to go to the classroom, upload the PPT, and start with a video introduction to medieval theater to buy him some time.
Wen Di really wanted to wring his neck. In the past two years, there had been frequent incidents of PhD students jumping off buildings and overdosing at T University which wasn’t without reason. If not for his family’s optimistic outlook, resilience, and his own steely will, he wouldn’t have survived this long.
Toads, beetles, bats.
Looking at the time and realizing that the lecture was about to start, Wen Di wished for a natural disaster to fall on his tutor’s house while jumping up, grabbing his school bag and rushing out the door. He sprinted to the classroom where the lecture was to be held, pulled out his USB drive, and explained the traffic situation to the audience while preparing to upload the PPT.
Then, he suddenly discovered something.
There was already a USB drive plugged into the computer, probably left behind by the previous lecturer.
Wen Di pulled out the USB drive and noticed a sticky note attached to it that read: “Mathematics Department, Bian Cheng.”
He froze for a moment, then joy suddenly washed over him like a biblical flood.
This is God’s will! He had painstakingly searched for an opportunity to strike up a conversation, and here it was!
After such a long streak of bad luck, it seemed that the heavens finally took pity on him and decided to offer some compensation!
Wen Di’s inner chant of ‘toad, beetle, bat’ came to a halt.
He uploaded the PPT and started the video. Old Liu, to his credit, maintained the dignity of a lecturer, rushed in and arrived just before the video ended.
Wen Di, clutching his prize, retreated triumphantly, feeling a temporary—just temporary!—sense of gratitude toward his advisor.
After returning home, he took out the USB flash drive and looked at it carefully, then gleefully opened his laptop, and hummed a tune as he composed an email:
“Professor Bian, Hello. I am a PhD student from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. I found a USB drive in the Third Teaching Building and noticed it belongs to you. I found your email on the Department of Mathematics website and wanted to return it to you. When would be a convenient time for you?”
He nervously clicked send, feeling just as anxious as when he submitted his first manuscript to a C Journal.
Holding the phone up and shaking his leg, a new email alert popped up after half an hour.
So fast!
Considering the professor’s inbox was likely flooded with emails from journal editors, students, and departments, this response was incredibly swift.
Wen Di stood up—he was excited.
Clicking on the email, there were just a few sentences written in it, politely and elegantly worded.
Hello fellow student. Thank you for contacting me. There are many important files on the USB drive, so I was worried after I lost it. I didn’t expect the news to come out so soon. I have a class at 11:30 AM tomorrow in Third Building. Can we meet at the entrance then? I don’t know if it’s convenient for you. Alternatively, you can also send me a convenient time, and we’ll make another appointment.
Wen Di read it from beginning to end three times and automatically substituted the professor’s voice during class.
He was so used to Old Liu’s self-centered communication style that he didn’t know that there were still professors in the world who were willing to discuss with students. After being shocked, he felt deep envy in his heart—being Bian Cheng’s PhD student must be a stroke of immense luck!
Intelligent, cultured, and polite—how could there be a man who fits his ideal type so perfectly? What’s wrong with having a little love brain!
He immediately replied, agreeing to the proposed time and place, roaring with excitement in his heart.
From this point onward, he upgraded from a faceless passerby to the ‘student who returned the USB drive.’
He hummed as he pulled up the paper Old Liu had sent him for review. Professors would often be peer reviewers for academic journals. After the journal editor conducted an initial review of a submission, the papers that pass the preliminary review would be sent to the reviewers for them to write their comments. These reviewers typically delegated the task to their students. Reviewing papers for his advisor was part of Wen Di’s daily routine. He opened a paper related to Brecht’s research and began the arduous task of reviewing it.
As he read, he highlighted sections and internally criticized various aspects of the paper.
The scope of the research was too broad to allow for in-depth discussion.
This logic was too jumpy, where was the connection between these arguments?
The secondary sources were too large and subjective, where were the primary and historical documents?
The references were too outdated and couldn’t reflect current academic understanding and evaluations of Brecht’s works.
After finishing his critique, Wen Di passionately typed up his review comments while reflecting on how easy it was to criticize others’ papers but how difficult it was to write even a poor one himself.
As he typed a few lines, an ominous feeling crept up on him.
This hidden worry floated around in the subconscious mind, falling short of reality, and keeping people on their toes.
What was it?
Just as his fingers pressed the Enter key, like pressing the play button, the violin started playing from the next door again.
Wen Di let out a ‘Damn it’, raising his hands to cover his ears. After finally getting a few days of peace, here it was again! It seemed the curse wasn’t potent enough!
He picked up his phone and angrily typed: [Are you ever going to stop? Playing the violin in broad daylight on a Wednesday, don’t you have a job? Is there nothing meaningful in your life?]
Neighbor: [Staying home in broad daylight on a Wednesday, you seem quite free too.]
Wen Di: [I didn’t even take a break during the National Day. I finally took a breather, but you’re driving me crazy again! Stop punishing others with your incompetence in music!]
Neighbor: [Do you have to be a genius to play music? 】
Neighbor: [Learning anything is a step-by-step process. How can you draw the bow well from the beginning?]
Wen Di: [And you expect me to wait for you to proceed step by step? You’re a musical plague; I’m getting nerve-wracked while you’re sawing wood! Let me tell you, talent is something you are born with. If you don’t have it, give up as soon as possible and don’t harm others and yourself.]
As he typed this, Wen Di felt a sharp pain in his heart. He always felt he had no talent in academics, and his advisor said so too. Yet, having chosen this path, he had no choice but to continue. It was a mix of helplessness and regret.
Neighbor: [It must have been easy for you to study since you were a child].
Wen Di: [What nonsense are you talking about?]
Neighbor: [I’ve seen a lot of people who are so proud of their education and deny the efforts of others, especially at T University.]
Wen Di choked. This person not only insulted him but also smeared his fellow alumni!
The anger inside him surged uncontrollably. He quickly clicked on the upper right corner and blocked the person with one click. He never wanted to see this person again, online or offline. Let him rot!
Kicking the offender into his blocklist wasn’t enough to calm him. Wen Di stood up and paced around the room. When he was to explode, pop-up notification brought him back to his senses.
The new email prompted that the professor had written back to him: Okay, see you tomorrow.
These simple five words were like cool spring water under the scorching sun, washing away the irritability in Wen Di’s heart.
He held his mobile phone and sighed at the gap between people.
If only everyone in the world could be as courteous and refined.
T/N: Apparently the title is from Richard II but I cannot find the corresponding original line so here’s the literal translation of the title
