The girl next to her gaped in shock. “Samuel Clark, you’re amazing! Aren’t you scared?”

Samuel Clark’s dark lashes lowered, curving slightly as she smiled calmly. “Not at all.”

“Your technique just now was incredible. Can you teach me?” The girl speaking was Grace Lee, a classmate of Samuel Clark.

“Sure.” Samuel Clark nodded.

With Samuel Clark’s guidance, Grace Lee grasped the essentials and finally managed to overcome her mental block. She was just about to jab the large needle into the toad’s brain.

Suddenly, the roof began to shake lightly, followed by a loud roar of airplane engines. The buzzing continued nonstop. Startled, Grace Lee’s hand slipped, and the needle stabbed the toad’s thigh instead, causing blood to spurt out.

Another failure.

Grace Lee was annoyed and started complaining. “I really don’t get it. Why did the president who built this medical university decide to put it right next to an aeronautics university? There’s only a street between us, and those pilots are always practicing at the airfield, making noise morning and night. It’s driving me crazy.”

A girl overheard Grace Lee’s grumbling and teased, “Hey, Grace Lee, I remember when you first got here, didn’t you say you wanted to find a pilot boyfriend? How come you’ve changed your mind so quickly?”

At the mention of “pilot,” Samuel Clark’s heart tightened, but she quickly acted nonchalant and returned to the lab bench to observe the data.

Grace Lee replied, “That’s different. I just haven’t found one yet.”

Samuel Clark went back to the lab bench to continue the experiment. One of her groupmates, a girl named Evelyn Baker, contributed nothing to the group work except for occasionally handing over tweezers, needles, and other tools.

That was because Evelyn Baker kept checking her phone every so often, her mind clearly not on the dissection. Suddenly, her phone, which was lying to the side, chimed with a message. Evelyn Baker checked it and broke into a sweet smile.

Samuel Clark was bent over, observing the toad’s neural responses on the computer, when Evelyn Baker called out, “Samuel Clark, I have something to take care of, so I need to step out. Can you help me finish the rest?”

In other words, she wanted Samuel Clark to do the work alone, but both their names would go on the finished assignment.

Samuel Clark saw that most of the experiment was already done and nodded indifferently. She didn’t care much about things like this, mostly out of laziness.

Evelyn Baker left happily. Since Samuel Clark was working alone, she finished later than most people. When she was done, she found Grace Lee still waiting for her.

“You haven’t left yet?” Samuel Clark took off her disposable gloves.

“Of course I’m waiting for you.” Grace Lee reached out and pinched her cheek. Tsk, it felt pretty nice.

After Samuel Clark changed her clothes, Grace Lee dragged her down the stairs at a run, muttering nonstop, “Hurry up, or my braised pork with potatoes will be gone.”

In the first cafeteria, the two finally managed to get their food and sit down. A bespectacled boy approached with his tray, stammering as he asked if he could sit with them.

Samuel Clark wore an innocent, gentle face, but mercilessly turned him down.

Sitting across from her, Grace Lee studied Samuel Clark: a small, delicate face, fair skin with a hint of pink, bright almond-shaped eyes, two dimples when she smiled, and neatly tied hair with a few stray bangs falling over her forehead.

A classic southern beauty—no matter how you looked at her, she seemed fresh and lively.

Grace Lee took a bite of pork rib and sighed, “Tsk tsk, how many is that this month? Suisui, did you know our department forum is running a campus belle poll, and you’re on the candidate list?”

Samuel Clark didn’t react much to this. She poked a straw into her milk carton, puffed out her cheeks, and said, “But I was really just an ordinary girl in high school.”

The kind of person who would disappear in a crowd.

If Grace Lee had seen her high school photos, she wouldn’t have said that. Back then, Samuel Clark was often sick, drank Chinese medicine for years, had a puffy figure, a pale complexion, and always wore loose, drab uniforms—just a very average girl.

Fortunately, after her health improved, she lost twenty pounds in college. With her fair skin and delicate features, it was like she’d been completely transformed, and people started to notice her.

It was also true that college was really different from high school. Here, beauty standards were diverse, and every kind of personality was accepted, which was why she got more attention.

“Hey, who wasn’t a mess in high school? We were all just focused on studying,” Grace Lee said, putting a piece of meat in Samuel Clark’s bowl. “But I’ve seen you turn down several guys. What kind do you actually like?”

Samuel Clark bit her straw without answering, a playful face flashing through her mind before she quickly pushed the thought away and shook her head. “I don’t know, either.”

“That’s fine, there’s still plenty of time,” Grace Lee said, poking at her food with her chopsticks. After a while, she realized something and pulled a face. “Ugh, I can’t do this. I got spinach, and now just seeing anything green makes me want to puke. It’s disgusting.”

“I’ll eat it for you, I don’t mind.” Samuel Clark said with a smile, then picked up the spinach and put it in her own bowl.

At five in the afternoon, Samuel Clark stood on the rooftop of the school’s ideological and political building, letting the evening breeze blow through her hair. The wind rustled the test papers she’d spread out on the railing, making them sound like white doves about to take flight.