Chapter Three: Stand Beneath the National Flag
1489 Words
"Yaxuan, Yaxuan!"
The long‑haired girl beside her, Lin Wanying, gave a stealthy tug at the corner of her jacket.
The motion dragged her out of her dreams. Blinking blearily, Nian Yaxuan turned to her friend.
"What is it?"
Lin Wanying pointed surreptitiously toward the lectern. Following the direction of her finger, Nian Yaxuan met Professor Dou Mingzhi’s gaze—blazing with fury and fixed squarely on her.
The sleepy haze in her head cleared at once. Like the rest of the class, she straightened in her seat, spine ramrod‑stiff.
Professor Dou Mingzhi was the most eccentric and difficult man in the entire faculty, bar none. And she had actually been caught sleeping in his class. She was as good as doomed.
Awkwardly, Nian Yaxuan flipped open her book, then shot a fierce glare at the classmates still staring at her.
Startled, everyone hastily dropped their eyes back to their textbooks or glued them to the professor’s face.
Nian Yaxuan’s background was not only mysterious; anyone who had ever shared a class with her knew she was a little hellion.
Fights, drinking, skipping class, climbing over walls—if there was trouble to be found, she had tried it.
Yuecheng University of Economics and Management prided itself on its strict academic discipline. Students were not allowed to dye their hair, paint their nails loud colors, or wear ostentatious accessories.
And yet there she sat, with her long hair dyed a soft lavender and tied back in a high ponytail, and her nails a glossy wine‑red. No one could do a thing about it.
The only reason she had not been expelled since the start of term was that her family background was powerful enough to shield her.
"Nian Yaxuan, why don’t you explain to us what ‘finance’ is?"
Professor Dou fixed the student who gave all the faculty headaches with a steely stare.
He knew perfectly well who stood behind her. Not only did he have connections with Zhong Haicheng, Huo Lingchen’s assistant—Huo Lingchen himself had once been his student. But that did not mean he would let the girl run wild in his class.
Slowly, Nian Yaxuan rose to her feet. Before standing up, she did not forget to give the chair in front of her a discreet kick—the seat occupied by the model student, class monitor, and her sworn brother, Shu Zenan.
He understood at once. Quickly he flipped his textbook to the correct page, propped it upright, and nudged it a little to the left so she could see.
The printed lines appeared before her eyes, crisp and clear. A satisfied smile curved Nian Yaxuan’s lips.
That smile was enough to set several male classmates sneaking glances in her direction again.
Her oval face was pale and flawless, her large eyes bright and expressive, her nose straight and fine, and her cherry‑red lips full and soft.
Her figure was neither too thin nor too plump—perfectly proportioned.
If not for her abysmal grades, the title of campus beauty would have been hers without contest.
Nian Yaxuan fluttered her lashes once, then began dutifully reading from Shu Zenan’s book.
"Finance refers to credit activities of various forms, with banks as the core, as well as the—"
"That’s enough!"
Watching her recite straight from the page, Professor Dou worked himself into such a rage that his beard practically bristled, and he cut her off with a bark.
Several hearts in the classroom gave an involuntary shudder.
Facing the professor’s glare, Nian Yaxuan gave a sheepish little grin.
"Did I get it wrong, Professor?"
Professor Dou’s face was stormy as he clasped his hands behind his back and paced across the platform several times, his anger yet to subside.
"Don’t be angry, Professor. I’ll have it memorized before class is over," Nian Yaxuan muttered, shrinking her neck.
She knew better than anyone that Professor Dou had ties to that long‑absent Young Master Huo of hers. He was not someone she could afford to truly offend.
At those words, some of his temper drained away.
This girl was wonderfully bright, but she detested studying.
Fine—if she wanted to fail all her other subjects, so be it. But in his finance course, he would never allow it.
"If you ever fall asleep in my class again," he declared, "then your classmates Han Huiming, Lin Wanying, and Zheng Xiaoke will all go and stand beneath the national flag."
The moment he finished, the three students he had named let out a silent collective wail.
Why was it that when Nian Yaxuan slept, they were the ones sentenced to stand in front of the flagpole and lose face?
Professor Dou had his reasons. He knew that Nian Yaxuan valued loyalty and friendship above almost anything else. She would rather suffer herself than drag others down with her. That, at least, was one of her few redeeming qualities.
Sure enough, she shot the professor a furious glare. No one touched her friends.
"Got it, Professor. I won’t sleep."
She dropped back into her seat, snatched up the pen on her desk, and bent her head as though taking notes in earnest—though her mind was clearly wandering far beyond the classroom walls.
When the bell rang to signal the end of class, the entire campus seemed to erupt into life.
Professor Dou tucked his textbook under his arm and strode out of the finance lecture hall.
Within moments, several students had clustered around Nian Yaxuan, who was still staring vacantly into space, and launched into a chorus of complaints.
"Brother Nian, what’s with this Dou Mingzhi? What kind of twisted move was that?"
Han Huiming, in his brown jacket and broom‑like hairstyle, scowled, his dark face full of indignation. It was obvious the professor had no way to deal with Nian Yaxuan directly, so he was taking it out on them.
At two meters and one in height, he was the tallest boy in the class—a fiercely loyal friend and one of Nian Yaxuan’s closest brothers‑in‑arms.
"Yaxuan, I’m begging you, please don’t fall asleep in class again," Lin Wanying pleaded, her long wavy hair spilling over her shoulders as she clung half‑coquettishly to Nian Yaxuan’s arm.
Beside her, Zheng Xiaoke wore a face as sour as bitter gourd.
"Little Xuanxuan, your big sister here is the one and only beauty of Dorm 3301. You can’t let me lose face in front of the entire school."
The "one and only beauty" of 3301 was the title the girls in their dorm had given their resident flower—Zheng Xiaoke herself.
But Nian Yaxuan’s mind was already a tangled mess, knotted with the impending divorce and that impulsive kiss with Huo Lingchen.
The constant chirping around her only made her more irritable. She shoved her textbook into her bag with a snap and swept a cool gaze over the friends in front of her and the few classmates loitering nearby to watch the show.
Every line of her face said clearly: I do not want to talk about this.
Sensing her impatience, Zheng Xiaoke hurried to change the subject.
"All right, all right, everyone. Shangyang International is having a big promotion today. The discounts put Double Eleven on Taobao to shame. Who’s coming?"
"Of course I’m going!"
At the mention of the sale, especially the memory of a lipstick shade she had been coveting, the gloom in Nian Yaxuan’s eyes vanished. She leapt to her feet and slung an arm around Zheng Xiaoke’s neck with a sweep of heroic enthusiasm.
Zheng Xiaoke had known exactly which button to push.
Nian Yaxuan was a curious creature. In daily life she dressed in a lazy, casual style and usually went out bare‑faced, at most patting on some primer or cushion foundation. Yet her one true passion was collecting lipsticks.
Shangyang International Shopping Plaza
Shangyang International was Nian Yaxuan’s favorite place to shop. Unlike other malls, it possessed a distinct aura all its own.
Everyone in Yuecheng knew that Shangyang Shopping Center was composed of seven main towers, each named after a star in the Big Dipper:
Tianshu, Tianxuan, Tianji, Tianquan, Yuheng, Kaiyang, and Yaoguang.
What made it truly unique was the seven great beacons crowning those towers. A fortune had been poured into their creation. When night fell and the lights were lit, they traced, from afar, the outline of the Big Dipper against the sky, mirroring the constellation above.
Shangyang had even commissioned the country’s most renowned lighting designer to craft a special illumination plan.
When all the lights blazed to life at night, standing within the plaza felt like drifting in a sea of stars.
For that reason, Shangyang had long since become the dream dating spot in the hearts of countless young people.
- Writer
