“Brothers, you’ve already been surrounded by me, Henry Sullivan, the Grand Marshal! Hurry up and set off firecrackers to welcome me!” A burly man carrying luggage suddenly appeared at the door, his face beaming with a bright, sunny smile, looking goofy and silly. Seeing his three roommates staring at him in silence, the big guy tossed his luggage onto the only empty bed and immediately started handing out cigarettes, not forgetting to introduce himself with a lame joke: “My surname is Sullivan, my given name is Henry, Henry Sullivan’s Sullivan, Henry Sullivan’s Henry, a true Northeasterner, haha! From now on, we’re all allies in the same trench, so let’s look out for each other.”

A bit wild, David Clark actually admired this guy—so bold and uninhibited, not the least bit shy, as if he’d already treated the three of them as comrades who’d once visited brothels together. The three of them each introduced themselves. As soon as Henry Sullivan saw Max Taylor’s laptop, his eyes lit up. He didn’t even bother unpacking, just dragged a chair over to watch Max Taylor’s skillful gaming, muttering to himself, “In high school, I was a main player on the basketball team, almost made it to the provincial team, but it fell through. In my second year, I played goalie in the school soccer league—totally unstoppable, didn’t let in a single goal, a real guardian of the net. I think I’ll just join the soccer team in college. Do you guys know if our department’s soccer team is any good?”

“A crappy school—how good could it be?” Max Taylor replied offhandedly while playing his game.

Henry Sullivan was stunned, then got anxious, but intimidated by Max Taylor’s imposing presence, he could only hold his tongue, his face flushing slightly.

David Clark went back to reading the Economic Observer, forming a general impression of Henry Sullivan: he seemed thick-skinned, but was actually quite sensitive. In future interactions, he definitely couldn’t treat him as just a blunt guy, or unnecessary conflicts would arise. It seemed that for this Northeasterner to get into this university wasn’t easy. In fact, David Clark himself wasn’t the type to treat the college entrance exam as a game. With math and Chinese each worth 150 points, and the science comprehensive worth 300, he did his best to perform at his normal level. In fact, his math and science scores were about what he expected, only Chinese was about 5 points lower than he’d hoped. As for English, that subject had always been a non-existent pain in the ass for David Clark.

Sure enough, after Max Taylor’s parents used their connections to settle things with the counselor and school leaders, the conversation naturally turned to college entrance exam scores. The four guys in the dorm were evenly split between arts and sciences: David Clark and Frank Thompson were science, Max Taylor and Henry Sullivan were arts. But since they were from different provinces, the difficulty and standards of the exams varied. For example, Zhejiang and Heilongjiang had their own tests. After chatting for a while, what stuck in Max Taylor’s parents’ minds was that Frank Thompson scored 139 in math, and Henry Sullivan got 239 in the arts comprehensive. If their other subjects were at that level, there’s no way they’d have “ended up” at this finance college. As for David Clark’s 570, it was just decent, nothing much to analyze. Plus, Frank Thompson kept bragging about how awesome someone from his school was, so no one really paid attention to the well-behaved, rule-abiding David Clark.

At noon, the whole dorm was taken by Max Taylor’s parents to a private room on the third floor of the cafeteria for lunch. Also present was a newly assigned PhD student counselor, a young guy who didn’t look much more mature than the already world-weary Max Taylor. The heavyweights were a standing deputy secretary in charge of the school party committee’s organizational work, and another school leader responsible for assessment and performance evaluation—two portly, scholarly old gentlemen. The atmosphere at the table was warm and lively. Max Taylor’s parents were clearly seasoned businesspeople, skillfully setting the tone, mainly to pave the way for their precious son who’d paid big money to get in, but also making sure David Clark and the others got familiar faces. The inexperienced Frank Thompson and Henry Sullivan were naturally nervous and honored, eating the meal on edge, while David Clark sat quietly in the corner, eating slowly—no reason not to eat more of the free feast.

After the meal, as an outsider, David Clark sensibly returned to the dorm. On the way, Frank Thompson sighed, “Max Taylor really is something else. First day here and he can summon two school bigwigs. Looks like skipping class won’t be a problem for him.”

“College is a key period of transformation in life. Skipping class is shameful,” Henry Sullivan frowned.

“If you don’t skip class or fail a course in college, it’s like not falling in love or losing your virginity in high school—an incomplete life,” Frank Thompson laughed, not forgetting to check out the pretty girls around.

“Nonsense,” Henry Sullivan rolled his eyes.

“There’s a group party at the college at 7 tonight, but that’s probably boring. The real fun is the freshman ceremony and welcome party in a couple of days. I heard from upperclassmen that there are still some beauties among the juniors and seniors, and the girls at our school are generally above average in the Yangpu University Town. Every year a few real stunners show up—let’s wait and see.” Behind his glasses, Frank Thompson’s gaze was sharp as ever. Clearly, his whole life revolved around women.

“Hardly any college romances end well. It’s a waste of time and money. Better to focus on something worthwhile,” muttered Cliff Sullivan.