"Matter is an objective reality, consciousness is a reflection of objective reality, matter determines consciousness, and consciousness has a dynamic counter-effect on matter..."
Chu Ge’s voice echoed through the dorm room, laced with a listless frustration.
Chu Ge was holding a thick, rolled-up copy of *Basic Principles of Marxism*, perched ungracefully on the ladder to Wang Dayong’s bunk.
He was shirtless, his back against the metal rail, his brow furrowed into a knot. He stared intently at the print on the page, muttering to himself.
After less than two minutes of studying, he slapped the book against his thigh in frustration, making a dull THWACK.
"I can’t memorize this anymore. Is this stuff even meant for humans to remember?"
Chu Ge wiped the sweat from his forehead and heaved a long sigh, his body slumping as if his bones had been removed.
"You think that old guy who teaches politics is specifically targeting me?"
Chu Ge’s face was a mask of despair as he complained to the person across the aisle.
"All I did was sleep a few times in the back row during class and skip a couple of sessions to go play games in the computer lab. Did he really have to fail me for the final?"
Wang Dayong was sitting at the desk below his bunk.
An old newspaper was spread across his desk, and on it lay a piece of air-dried sausage from his hometown. He held a small paring knife, methodically slicing the sausage into thin pieces.
The warmth of the room drew out the fat in the sausage, making it glisten with a layer of oil and release a rich, meaty aroma.
Hearing Chu Ge’s wail, Wang Dayong stopped his knife, picked up a slice of sausage, and tossed it into his mouth. He started chuckling as he chewed.
"You call that skipping a couple of classes?"
Wang Dayong pointed at him with the tip of his knife, mercilessly calling him out.
"The politics teacher didn’t see you in the classroom for half the semester. And on the exam, you left the last two short-answer questions completely blank. If he doesn’t fail you, who would he fail?"
Chu Ge was left speechless and ran a hand through his messy hair in frustration.
"Failing politics is one thing, but how did I fail Mathematical Analysis too?"
Chu Ge draped himself over the railing of the ladder, the picture of utter despair.
"I honestly didn’t have a clue for the last two big problems. I just wrote down every formula I could think of, filling up half a page, but the grader didn’t even give me a single pity point. Just two big X’s."
"You should count yourself lucky. Failing two classes won’t get you expelled. Worst case, you just take the make-up exams."
Wang Dayong put away his knife, grabbed a tissue to hastily wipe his hands, and pulled his chair around to face Chu Ge.
"You think life is any easier for those of us who didn’t fail?"
Wang Dayong pouted, his tone shifting to one of complaint.
"A couple days ago, Professor Liu from the Physics Department, the one who teaches electromagnetism, insisted that because I have a large frame, I look like promising material for lab work. He called me over to help with his research group."
Chu Ge’s interest was piqued. He sat up straight and asked,
"And then what? What did he have you do? Did you get to work with some cutting-edge national technology?"
"Cutting-edge my ass."
Wang Dayong rolled his eyes dramatically and pounded his lower back, his face a mask of grievance.
"Old Liu’s lab is moving, so I’ve been doing manual labor for him the past two days. I had to move those old oscilloscopes with the huge CRT monitors—they’re heavy as hell. And dozens of boxes of dusty old floppy disks, all junk left over from the eighties. I wasn’t there as a researcher; I was just free labor, a mover."
The dorm room filled with Chu Ge’s heartless laughter.
Chen Zhuo sat at his own desk, his back to them.
He didn’t join their mutual complaint session, quietly organizing a few documents scattered on his desk instead.
They were wind tunnel test data sheets that Su Wei had helped him print out over the last couple of days, now covered in lines and annotations Chen Zhuo had made with a red ballpoint pen.
"Hey, Dayong, at least moving all that equipment counts as a workout."
Chu Ge hopped down from the ladder, walked brazenly over to Wang Dayong’s desk, and grabbed a slice of sausage. He stuffed it into his mouth, his words muffled as he spoke.
"Let me tell you something. About our dorm. A little gossip."
"What’s wrong with our dorm?"
Wang Dayong protectively pulled the newspaper closer to him.
Chu Ge pulled over a plastic stool, sat down, and lowered his voice, looking all mysterious.
"I’m telling you guys, something’s definitely off with Lu Jia lately. His head is completely in the clouds."
Chu Ge began to describe the scene vividly, gesticulating as he spoke.
"The afternoon before last, I saw him with my own eyes. He bought a can of hair gel from the little shop by the school gate—it had this apple scent when he opened it. After he got back to the dorm, he stood in front of the small mirror on the back of his locker door and slicked his hair down with a crappy old comb until it looked like it had been licked by a dog."
"And that’s not all."
Chu Ge picked up the glass of cool water from Wang Dayong’s desk and took a sip to wet his throat.
"Last night after lights-out, I happened to glance down and saw him sitting at his desk below. He didn’t even have a flashlight on, just staring at an old notebook in a daze, using only the faint light from the streetlamps outside. After a while, he let out this long, random sigh, like some grieving widow. A sound like that out of nowhere in the middle of the night nearly scared me to death."
Wang Dayong was stunned by the story.
"What’s gotten into him? It’s not like he bombed his exams."
"See, that’s what you don’t get."
Chu Ge took on the air of a seasoned veteran, slapping his thigh with conviction.
"These are the classic symptoms. He’s definitely got a crush on some girl, but he’s too scared to confess, so he’s just pining away."
"For real?"
Wang Dayong was skeptical.
"Are you sure you’re talking about Lu Jia?"
"How could it be fake? I tried asking him indirectly several times, but he absolutely refused to say anything. He just blushed."
Chu Ge spread his hands helplessly.
"Anyway, he’s just completely out of it right now. Today, right after lunch, he changed into his cleanest shirt, put on that hair gel again, and snuck out. Didn’t even take his afternoon nap."
After hearing Chu Ge’s gossip, Wang Dayong just shook his head.
He looked down at the half-plate of sausage he had just sliced and suddenly felt that matters of the heart were truly incomprehensible.
He picked up the thickest, fattiest slice with the tip of his knife, tossed it into his mouth, and sighed as he chewed.
"If what you’re saying is true, then unrequited love is worse than actual torture. To think it can torment a living person like that."
Wang Dayong pouted, looking as if he had seen through the vanity of the mortal world.
"Compared to that, I’m suddenly thinking being free labor for Old Liu isn’t so bad after all."
Wang Dayong patted his own thigh, consoling himself.
"At least the work is straightforward. How much you sweat and how tired you get—it’s all clear as day. It doesn’t mess with your head."
Chen Zhuo, still in his chair, folded the last document in half and tucked it into a dark, hardcover notebook.
Listening to Wang Dayong’s grand epiphany, Chen Zhuo turned around, leaning his back against the edge of his desk.
"In that case, Professor Liu was really spot-on when he asked you to move those oscilloscopes."
Chen Zhuo said with a smile, looking at Wang Dayong.
"He probably saw that you have a good appetite and a sturdy build. The kind of guy whose hands won’t shake when carrying a CRT monitor."
Wang Dayong had just popped a slice of sausage into his mouth. Hearing this, he was caught between chewing and spitting it out, and could only swallow it down with a pained expression.
"Xiaozhuo, you’ve really mastered the art of insulting people without using a single dirty word."
Wang Dayong pointed at him.
"If I’d known, I wouldn’t have shared my mom’s beef chili sauce with you."
Chu Ge chortled with schadenfreude from the side.
Chen Zhuo didn’t argue, just grinned, turned to pull over his backpack, and put the notebook with the documents inside.
Seeing Chen Zhuo packing up, Chu Ge stopped laughing and asked casually,
"Xiaozhuo, are you heading over to the Physics Building again?"
Chu Ge knew that Chen Zhuo had been going to a key laboratory every day for the past half-month.
"Yeah."
Chen Zhuo zipped up his backpack.
"The research group has a meeting this afternoon. I have to go."
"Is it easy to get by in Vice Director Fang’s lab?"
Chu Ge asked curiously.
"They don’t make you do manual labor like Dayong, sweeping floors and moving things, do they?"
Chen Zhuo slung the backpack over his shoulder and walked to the door.
An image of Zhang Yuan’s face, with its huge, dark circles, flashed through his mind, along with the blackboards in the lab covered in partial differential equations.
"We don’t have to move things."
Chen Zhuo gripped the doorknob, his tone casual, with a barely perceptible lightness.
"The senior students are all pretty friendly. It’s just that their fluid model is a bit demanding on the computers. It’s a little finicky."
Chu Ge didn’t catch the nuance, assuming Chen Zhuo just meant the computers were old and needed frequent reboots, so he waved a dismissive hand.
"Alright, go on then. Come back early after the meeting."
"I’m off."
Chen Zhuo pushed open the dorm room door and walked out.
The moment the door closed, it shut away the sounds of Chu Ge resuming his mumbled recitation of politics and Wang Dayong slicing his sausage.
Stepping out from the cool hallway, he was hit by a wave of heat thick with the stuffiness of summer.
The sun at two in the afternoon was at its most vicious.
The leaves on the trees lining the campus roads were curled from the sun, and deep within the branches, cicadas shrieked endlessly.
Chen Zhuo walked along the edge of the tree shade, trying to keep his steps within the shadows cast by the leaves.
Students could be seen on the path in twos and threes.
There were girls listening to English on their personal cassette players, and boys riding old-fashioned bicycles with stacks of books clamped to the back rack.
As he passed the campus broadcast station, a pop song with a gentle melody played from the large loudspeakers. The sound was slightly distorted, but it carried the unique vibrancy and life of that era.
Everything was bright, bustling, and filled with the youthful energy of a university campus.
Until Chen Zhuo entered the Physics Building, climbed to the third floor, and reached the end of the hallway.
A wooden plaque hung above the door: Key Laboratory of Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics.
He pushed open the door.
The conference room, which wasn’t particularly large, was unlit. Only two windows were open for ventilation.
The air was thick with the smell of tobacco, so heavy it was almost choking.
No one was speaking.
There was no sound of typing, no rustle of turning pages.
Only a week had passed since Chen Zhuo had last sat here, auditing the meeting.
Last week, though the atmosphere had been oppressive, there had still been arguments, with people turning red in the face as they debated adaptive mesh refinement parameters at the blackboard.
But today, the atmosphere on both sides of the long conference table was as heavy and still as a pool of stagnant water.

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