Love Affairs in Melbourne-Chapter 103 - 100: Shadow

During the years when class leader Qi Yi mysteriously disappeared, Class 4 of Grade 12 at Wenzhou High School still remained tightly knit.

Class reunions were held as scheduled, and gatherings took place without disruption.

Without the class leader in their final year of high school, after the college entrance exams, Chu Ying became the unanimously agreed-upon "shadow class leader."

Chu Ying was popular as well but had a completely different style from Qi Yi.

He was the typical "girls’ friend," getting along well with most of the girls in the class.

A so-called "girls’ friend" must primarily provide a sense of security to the girls.

Chu Ying was neither handsome nor ugly.

He had the kind of appearance that wouldn’t leave a particularly deep impression.

Aside from his looks, there really wasn’t anything particularly memorable about Chu Ying during his high school years.

Chu Ying, true to his name, was like a shadow, the kind of person who might not be noticed without paying close attention. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

But a shadow, though not conspicuous, always accompanies you.

Even when Qi Yi was the class leader, many of the class activities were actually organized by Chu Ying.

It was just that, with the presence of Qi Yi, not many people could directly notice Chu Ying’s organizational skills.

After the college entrance exams, Qi Yi suddenly vanished.

But it was then, when organizing class activities was most needed.

The shadow slowly came into everyone’s view after graduation.

The female classmates were fine; the male classmates were astonished at how they had never noticed the shadow before.

Although the official class leader, Qi Yi, rejoined the class group this year, the "shadow class leader" had become irreplaceable.

During high school, everyone used to call Chu Ying by his full name; after graduation, they simply called him "shadow," which was both intimate and fitting.

Chu Ying liked the outdoors, traveling, and solving problems for girls.

But resolved as they were, Chu Ying had no inappropriate intentions towards the girls in the class.

Instead, before a girl would confess her feelings, Chu Ying would straightforwardly tell her that he had a girlfriend, who just wasn’t from their class.

It was hard to discover the good in Chu Ying initially; it had to be the kind of affection that developed over time.

Before graduation, Chu Ying was just a "girls’ friend" for some of the female students.

Chu Ying knew many of the girls’ secrets and had even bought menstrual products for several of them.

After graduation, the once shadow-like "girls’ friend" couldn’t quite explain how he suddenly became the linchpin and hub of information for the class.

Though he knew a lot, Chu Ying was tight-lipped and never gossiped.

The more discreet Chu Ying was, the more people were willing to confide in him.

In college, Chu Ying further developed his skill as a "girls’ friend," quickly accumulating a group of "sisters" at school.

In a girl’s circle of friends, there usually needs to be a man they can talk to about anything.

This person is either gay or a trustworthy, safe straight man like the shadow.

Furthermore, this person should ideally be good at taking photos, capable of making faces look slim and legs long.

Chu Ying didn’t lack any of these qualities.

In college, Chu Ying once traveled with four female classmates; he treated the girls as sisters, and the girls treated him as a confidant.

Sometimes Chu Ying wondered why he had such good rapport with women.

Chu Ying was both typically and atypically a Gemini.

Typically, despite having many friends, Chu Ying always felt true understanding was hard to find, the more friends he had, the harder it seemed.

Atypically, though Chu Ying appeared to be a flirtatious Gemini on the surface, with countless female friends, he was actually not flirtatious at all.

Chu Ying’s girlfriend from his high school years didn’t attend the same university, but even so, they didn’t break up.

In short, Chu Ying was good at organizing events, had great people skills, and was enormously popular among his female classmates as the "best confidant."

In high school, everyone focused mainly on studying, so classmates’ hobbies didn’t get much attention.

Many people’s true personalities only emerged in college.

Chu Ying was slightly ahead of others; he found his niche during the summer vacation after graduating from Grade 12.

Right after graduation, many classmates were puzzled as to why they had never noticed Chu Ying’s omnipresence before.

Even if they looked through the class album, they could hardly see Chu Ying in the photos.

Whenever photos were taken, Chu Ying was always the one behind the camera.

Chu Ying captured everyone well except himself.

Classmate is a peculiar concept.

Some classmates and some classes, once they graduate, go their separate ways and hardly gather again.

But others might reunite several times a year.

This really depends on whether someone organizes such events and how effectively they do it.

After the college entrance exams, Qi Yi’s disappearance had always troubled Chu Ying.

Chu Ying was bothered not because he had to do lots of work as the acting class leader or because he had a particularly close relationship with Qi Yi, but because of the numbers.

Class 4 originally had 44 students; without Qi Yi, the class QQ group that Chu Ying created had only 43 members.

Chu Ying didn’t feel that "no one should be left behind" but sincerely thought the number 44 looked much nicer than 43.

Chu Ying was obsessed with numbers; he could compromise on many things, but when it came to numbers, he was particularly stubborn.

For Chu Ying, there were no people he disliked, only numbers that looked unpleasant.

So when Yan Yan added Qi Yi back into the class group, the most troubled person needing to "carry the pot" was Yan Yan, while the happiest was Chu Ying, finally able to see a pleasing number of people.

After the college entrance exams, the classmates from Wenzhou High School went off to universities all over the country, from Harbin Institute of Technology in the far north to Xiamen University in the far south.

Furthermore, many students went on exchange programs at foreign universities after starting college.

Apart from Qi Yi in the United States and Yan Yan in Australia, three other classmates who attended Zhejiang University went on exchange to the National University of Singapore.

The wedding of Liu Siyan and Lu Ying required immense organizational and rallying skills to gather all the classmates.

No one was more suited or capable of handling this task than Chu Ying.

Liu Siyan and Lu Ying were getting married in August; Chu Ying, having graduated and returned to Wenzhou to work in early July, started to confirm every classmate’s itinerary, especially when the overseas students could return.

The "shadow class leader" was also planning whether to hold an official class reunion after the wedding.