After military training ended, college life officially began.

To be honest, Shu Yuxin felt that it wasn’t all that different from before.

Although she had enrolled in the software engineering major, freshmen at Nanhu College didn’t have many specialized courses. There were barely any foundational theory classes related to the major either, and none of them had started yet. As a result, the beginning of the semester could be said to be the most relaxed period of the entire college experience.

In the past few days, no one had confessed to her anymore. Perhaps after military training ended, the freshmen had calmed down as well. There were still some inexplicable gazes lingering on her, but she had more or less gotten used to them. As long as those people didn’t come up to bother her, she didn’t care.

Peng Xiaoxiao, whenever she had free time, would run to the e-sports entertainment club. Recently she had become addicted to racing games, to the point where she practically ate and drank in the activity room. There were only two places where Shu Yuxin could see her—the classroom and the activity room.

Shu Yuxin herself wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about going to the activity room. She would only follow along when Jiang Zixuan also had time to go. She didn’t like environments where she didn’t know anyone; they made her feel very constrained. So, in a sense… Jiang Zixuan played the role of a dose of courage for her.

During this time, Shu Yuxin and Jiang Zixuan also joined a club chat group. The entire group had around three hundred people. However, after Yan Zhikai explained it, they learned that many of them were “peripheral members” who hadn’t actually joined the club yet. And although the group looked large, only a handful of people were active in the chat.

Among those “peripheral members” who hadn’t joined the club, some genuinely wanted to join but were temporarily unable to for various reasons, while others had simply joined the group to lurk for fun. Very few of this latter group would come to the activity room to hang out with them—perhaps because they were shy or for other reasons—but in any case, it had little to do with them. As for the hundred-plus actual club members, not all of them came to the activity room either. On the contrary, there usually weren’t many people there each day. The reasons were varied, but in Yan Zhikai’s opinion, the biggest reason boiled down to a single word—laziness.

For Shu Yuxin, this was a good thing. With fewer regulars in the activity room, it greatly reduced the energy and time she needed to integrate into the group. More importantly, it eased her sense of constraint.

After spending these few days together, most of the regulars in the activity room still didn’t know Shu Yuxin very well. But at least the two club leaders, Zhang Houlin and Yan Zhikai, had formed a preliminary impression of her—they realized that Shu Yuxin wasn’t cold and aloof, but rather quite introverted.

In the days following military training, it rained several times, finally dispersing the lingering summer heat. As the temperature dropped suddenly, the campus also gained a hint of autumn.

With National Day approaching, light rain still fell from time to time. On a rare afternoon with no classes, Shu Yuxin planned to go home and comfortably play games for half a day.

But before that, she needed to pick up a package.

The package pickup spot was one or two hundred meters inside from the West Area dormitories. It was a patch of wasteland. Although it was fenced in by the school, there was basically nothing there. It was said that the school originally planned to build a swimming pool there, but for unknown reasons the project was shelved. Up until now, the only structures there were a row of low, flat buildings that didn’t even have exterior wall tiles. These buildings had originally been abandoned along with the swimming pool plan, but were later repurposed into a small street. At first, people sold daily necessities and stationery there, but they soon realized the place was too remote and no students were willing to come. After some thought, they came up with a better idea—and so this place became the centralized pickup point for all campus deliveries at Nanhu College. Any package sent to Nanhu College could be collected here by students.

Sometimes, this place was even busier than the cafeteria.

This was Shu Yuxin’s first time coming here to pick up a package. She could have filled in the address as Wyaers, which would have allowed home delivery, but unfortunately she had forgotten. This place was most crowded during meal times—according to rumors, the lines could stretch dozens of meters. Outside of meal times, however, it was fairly quiet.

On the paths through the wasteland, one could occasionally see small groups of students carrying packages back, or on their way to pick them up. From time to time, students on shared bicycles would dash through the drizzle toward the small street, looking like they were racing on a track.

Picking up a package during off-peak hours only took a few minutes. Shu Yuxin also got hers smoothly. At the moment, she was holding a small box, carrying a little umbrella, and strolling slowly along the roadside. She had a small habit—when walking alone, she liked to let her mind wander, paying only the bare minimum attention to the outside world so as not to get into trouble. This habit could be dangerous at times, but she clearly hadn’t considered that yet. She enjoyed the feeling of letting her thoughts drift, and doing so made her feel like she was walking faster.

This time, however, before she even left the path, something from the outside world interrupted her state.

It was a series of “whimpering” sounds coming from not far away. Shu Yuxin was very familiar with them—it was the sound of a dog.

She stopped, turned her head, and began looking for the source. Among the many trees that were still thinner than an arm, finding a dog wasn’t difficult. Shu Yuxin quickly spotted it—a small, yellowish-brown puppy hiding in a corner, staring blankly at her without moving.

The scene made Shu Yuxin momentarily lose herself.

In her memory, when she was very young, it had been just like this—on a rainy day, in a patch of wild grass, she had found an abandoned puppy. That dog’s fur had also been yellowish-brown, and it had looked at her just as pitifully.

Back then, overcome with sympathy, she brought the dog home. It stayed with her for a long time. Even after she went to middle school and could only return home once every ten days or so, the dog would always run a long distance to greet her whenever she came back, wagging its tail and circling around her.

That dog left her during the first semester of her second year of high school. When she returned to her rural hometown that time, she didn’t see it coming to greet her. After asking her grandmother, she learned that it had been bitten by a rabid dog from who knows where. It held on for a few days, then began acting strangely, even refusing to come home. The two elderly people at home, worried that it might have been infected with rabies, sold it to a dog buyer the day before Shu Yuxin returned.

That was the first time Shu Yuxin experienced that kind of painful feeling. Not being able to see it one last time became a regret she hid deep in her heart.

In a situation like this, it was hard not to think of the dog that had accompanied her for so many years.

After staring at the puppy for a while, Shu Yuxin stepped off the stone path, onto the slightly soft ground, and slowly walked toward the little dog.