On the next day, Yu Zhan sent Liu Man back to school early. In the day, private cars could not enter the campus, so he could only drop Liu Man off at the north gates.

“Send me the practice room location in the evening, and I’ll come to pick you up,” Yu Zhan said.

Liu Man nodded and bent down to urge the man in the car, “You should go to the clinic now before you miss a customer.”

Yu Zhan smiled, reached out his hand, and touched the top of Liu Man’s head again. Liu Man did not dodge and let him continue. She did not consider Yu Zhan as a lecher, but she liked being so close to him. This feeling was magical, and she had experienced it once before at the Hong Kong hotel. It was her second time.

The texture of her hair was thin and soft, and it felt very good.

Yu Zhan reluctantly put down his hands when he had enough of touching her hair and looked at her as he exhorted, “Focus on your classes and your rehearsal. Make sure to avoid any direct conflict with your roommate, and wait for me to pick you up at night.”

“I understand,” Liu Man did not want to see Wang Nina anyway.

She couldn’t offend or argue against Wang Nina, but she could hide, right?

Yu Zhan drove away from the university after he watched Liu Man walk into the school and disappear among the crowd of students.

She had double periods of Chamber Music Ensemble today. Because of Zhu Xiyang’s strange examination rules, nobody dared to skip his classes.

Because of the traffic jam during the morning rush hour, Liu Man was late. Although the class bell hadn’t ringed yet, Zhu Xiyang was already standing on the podium. Liu Man quietly entered through the back door.

She did not notice Zhu Xiyang’s sneaky glances at her.

Unless the teacher told her not to, Li Xiaoru always sat on the last row, and both seats beside her were empty. Liu Man successfully sat down beside her.

Li Xiaoru whispered, “You are too brave for your own good. Everyone both fears and loves this Professor Zhu, and we are all early to show respect. You are probably the last one here,” She gestured towards the front with her mouth, “Wang Nina is sitting in the first row again, and everyone knows what she wants.”

Wang Nina said before that in university, anyone who still rushes to sit in the front row was either a nerd or retarded.

As a result, she was face-slapping herself now.

Every time, during Zhu Xiyang’s chamber music ensemble class, Wang Nina would sit in the first row. Sometimes, Zhu Xiyang would teach in the music classroom. He would personally play the piano to give demonstrations to the students, and Wang Nina would always sit at the spot closest to the piano.

Zhu Xiyang was a man. If a girl kept on staring at him with an admiring look, would he not feel it?

What was even more exaggerated was that Wang Nina often found some questions with obvious answers to ask Zhu Xiyang. She pretended to be sincere and eager to learn. She has successfully added Zhu Xiyang on WeChat and had successfully made Zhu Xiyang know her.

Li Xiaoru didn’t know if she was delusional, but she always felt that Wang Nina and Zhu Xiyang had been flirting with each other.

They officially started class. Zhu Xiyang opened his PowerPoint,

“Are there any other students who have not reported their piece yet? Please report them to me as soon as possible. This PowerPoint shows the pieces that have been reported so far. Take a look first, and if there are any omissions or errors, please tell me now, and I will modify them on the spot. “

The PowerPoint showed the piece of each group in the form of a list.

There was a total of 132 students in the piano major, divided into four classes.

For this performance, the piano majors got into either a group of one, two, or three, and they would cooperate with students from other majors. Liu Man checked the numbers. There were already 53 pieces that were going to be performed by piano students alone, not to mention other groups without piano majors. This concert was unprecedented.

The piece that Liu Man, Li Xiaoru, and Wen Fangfei were going to perform also included.

Group number 14, sextet, “Reminiscences of Florence”: Wang Nina and Zihan from the piano major; Passerby A and Passerby B from the violin major; Passerby C from the cello major; Passerby D from the clarinet major.

Group number 52, trio, “Butterfly Lovers”: Li Xiaoru and Liu Man from the piano major; Wen Fangfei from the Guzheng major.

“The serial numbers here are just for me to record more conveniently. The smaller the number is, the more the number of ensemble players there are in the group. The bigger the number is, the fewer people. It is not the order of your performance.”

Maybe it was because everyone agreed that the more people were in a group, the more courageous they would be. Maybe it was because other majors were eager to cooperate with the piano majors. As a result, almost everyone was doing quintets or sextets, while there were only two trio groups, including Liu Man’s.

Several students raised their hands and pointed out the mistakes on the list, and Zhu Xiyang made corrections on the laptop on the spot, “Are there any other questions? If not, we will use the list as the standard. This is what we will use to draw sticks on next Tuesday to decide the order of the performance.”

When the class was over, Liu Man saw Wang Nina walking to the podium. She helped Zhu Xiyang remove the data cable from the projection and sorted out the files, all while acting skillfully and naturally as if she was his assistant.

Li Xiaoru was surprised, “I even think Wang Nina is impressive since she is good at pursuing after a man. Does she like Professor Zhu that much?”

“She doesn’t necessarily like him. Professor Zhu has made the Chamber Music Ensemble concert influential. It shows that the school considers him very important. Didn’t you say that he is also a very outstanding pianist?

At the end of this year, the school is going to hold a large-scale music concert for its 80th anniversary. It should be easy for such an influential teacher like Professor Zhu to recommend an outstanding student to perform solo on stage. “

Liu Man’s words reminded Li Xiaoru, “You’re right. Everyone has been spreading this news recently. I also heard that this anniversary celebration concert does not invite well-known alumni to participate in the performance like in previous years but the students who are currently at school and students within two years of graduation. They will select the most top-notch performances to create more opportunities for young people to show their talents in such a competitive music circle. Aiya, after such an analysis, I finally realize how manipulative Wang Nina is. I haven’t even thought about the anniversary concert, and she has started thinking about things that will not happen until after half a year?”

Half a year was nothing. Liu Man remembered the group of women in the palace she knew. Some of them, from birth, was taught to devote their lives to the emperor and the royal power. They lived all their lives for men and their families.

In the cast, Liu Man had heard some gossip about actresses, such as Feng Qingyu’s. The makeup artist assistants said that Feng Qingyu also depended on a powerful man to achieve her current status.

Two thousand years later, the feudal dynasty had changed into an equal society, science and technology had developed rapidly, and people had multiplied generation after generation. But the system still worked the same.

Liu Man didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. She told Li Xiaoru, “All we need to do right now is to prepare for the performance. Just ignore her.”

Translated by: Sydney