The Fading Away of Our Youth (So Young)

To Our Youth That is Fading Away: Chapter 2

Zheng Wei held the phone, as she thought to herself. This had been her third phone call to Lin Jing’s dormitory. The first time, no one answered.

The next two times, a different dorm mate answered, saying the same thing, “Who are you looking for… Oh, I’m sorry, Lin Jing is not here right now, he went out… I don’t know where to…”

“What time will he come back?”

“I can’t say for certain… Who is calling… Okay, I have written down your phone number, when he comes back I will call you back.”

Her dorm mate, Zhu Xiaobei walked over, tapping Zheng Wei’s back, “Fellow classmate, are you using your phone or not? Could I borrow it just for a second, I need to call home.”

Annoyed, Zheng Wei put the phone into Xiao Bei’s hand, “Call then, call for as long as you want.” She purposely pretended that she couldn’t see her other roommate, He Luya, who exchanged helpless expressions with Zhuo Mei, on the opposite bed, who was eating sunflower seeds. Zheng Wei looked back at her mosquito net, daydreaming.

School had already started for a week or so now, and she still hadn’t seen Lin Jing yet. When she called his dorm he was always out, and when she left her phone number with his dorm mates, they never called her back, what had happened? She had clearly called him before, and he had always laughed and told her that he would wait for her in G-City.

When she came, he promised he would definitely bring her around the city and bring her to some great restaurants. Even now, she hadn’t forgotten the promises between the two of them and Lin Jing seemed to have disappeared. Could it be that she had called the wrong number? No, this was impossible, she had memorized it so thoroughly she could even say it backwards.

Plus, the dorm mate she kept calling seemed to know Lin Jing, and only said that he was not present. Always not around, and he claimed he was a good student? She didn’t know what kind of bad places he was hanging around but when she saw him she would definitely scold him to no end, Zheng Wei thought angrily.

“What are you doing? Zheng Wei, have you still not reached your Lin gege [1] yet?” Another one of her roommates, Li Wei Juan, who had been reading in bed for a while, smiling teased her.

[1] gege– Older brother, akin to oppa

“Ugh!” Zheng Wei said as she turned and faced the other way.

Because their first week of learning had gone by, all the girls in 402 were basically already accustomed to the environment. They were all new students of the same year, but they weren’t in the same department or classes.

The person who was on the phone currently was named Xiao Bei, and she was from Northeast China, and was majoring in mechanical engineering. Her hair was shorter than most boys and she spoke common Mandarin. She never wore dresses. She was a very careless person and her attitude fitted closely with Zheng Wei’s own attitude.

The person in the bed across from Zheng Wei was named Zhuo Mei. She was a city girl who was majoring in computer science. Her only hobby was eating and sleeping. Her only aims were to live like a pig; in Zheng Wei’s perspective, she was already very close to her goal.

Above Zhuo Mei was Li Weijuan, and she was the person who had just talked. She was from Kaifeng, Henan, and was in the school of management. G-University had just begun to offer economic discipline, history, and literature classes, after all it wasn’t mainstream. There weren’t a lot of recruiters anyways, so Li Weijuan was the only one among them that was going into management. She was more of an orderly person and usually said things in sets. Zheng Wei didn’t really like her because she seemed like a prudish person and their personalities were so different. But Li Weijuan really liked Zheng Wei and always tried to strike up conversations with her and laugh with her, even if she had nothing important to say.