The dorm building assigned to Lin Xie was sleek, secure, and whispered of status. Located at the heart of the Senzhou Imperial University campus, it was the kind of place most students only dreamed of stepping foot in—unless you were a foreign diplomat's child, the heir to a conglomerate, or, in Lin Xie's case, a living academic anomaly.
Room 501.
Top floor. Direct sunlight. Personal biometric lock.
Naturally, the entire corridor was buzzing.
The girl who broke the AI-graded entrance exam?
Moving in today.
Everyone had already memorized her name. Everyone already had questions.
Lin Xie scanned her fingerprint, stepped inside, and was immediately met with the lingering scent of new furniture, lavender diffusers, and… tension.
Three girls already occupied the space.
Two looked up eagerly the moment she entered.
"Oh my god," gasped the one with a braid and round glasses. "You're Lin Xie."
The other, dressed in layered beige and sipping bubble tea, blinked before practically throwing the cup aside. "We watched your press conference. You corrected the university head on his own formula. You're terrifying."
"I'm Ai Wen," the first said, stepping forward like Lin Xie might disappear. "Architecture major. This is Fei Yue—computer science. We didn't think they'd actually put you with normal people."
Lin Xie nodded once. "Hello. I'll be quiet. My schedule is optimized. I won't interfere."
"Interfere?! Please interfere. Destroy my study plan. Rewrite my code," Fei Yue pleaded dramatically. "You're allowed to replace my pillow with a thesis. I won't mind."
Ai Wen added quickly, "You can have the fridge. Or the whole kitchen. Or the closet. We'll sleep in the hallway."
Lin Xie, unimpressed: "Unnecessary."
She moved toward the unclaimed bed and began unpacking with robotic precision—no wasted motion, no small talk, no noise.
Then the door opened.
And in walked their fourth roommate.
Silky blow-dried waves. Lip gloss. Designer earrings. And an expression that screamed I smell something poor.
The girl stopped short when she saw Lin Xie.
"Oh," she said. "You."
Lin Xie didn't even lift her head.
Ai Wen and Fei Yue visibly tensed.
The girl strutted across the room like it was a runway and threw her bag onto the last bed with a thud. "You know, I specifically requested a solo dorm. But apparently, bribery only gets you so far if you're not the university's pet genius."
Lin Xie calmly unpacked a sock.
"I'm Lu Xinyi," she said loudly, as if the name would spark fear. "Zhang Min is my sister. You might've heard of her. She's part of Senzhou's inner circle. So, don't get too comfortable."
Fei Yue winced. Ai Wen mouthed, oh no.
Zhang Min. One of the Six Heiresses.
This girl was her younger sister.
The room dropped several degrees.
"I didn't ask," Lin Xie said flatly.
Lu Xinyi blinked. "Excuse me?"
"I didn't ask for your name, your sister, or your implied threats. If you plan to cause problems, be efficient."
Fei Yue choked.
Ai Wen turned and busied herself rearranging pencils to hide her grin.
Lu Xinyi sneered. "You're really full of yourself for someone who just got lucky on an exam. You might've fooled the university heads, but you're not better than everyone else."
Lin Xie finally turned to look at her.
A slow, clinical once-over. Not judgemental—just cold, observational, like a robot scanning a particularly underwhelming data sample.
"I didn't get lucky. I got answers correct. You're confusing accuracy with arrogance."
"Oh, please," Lu Xinyi snapped, flipping her hair. "Let's see how long you last. People like you burn out fast."
Lin Xie raised a brow. "Statistically, people like you peak at graduation. I'll last."
"You think I'm scared of some emotionless calculator girl—?"
"Yes," Lin Xie said simply, cutting her off. "And you should be."
Ai Wen turned and walked into the bathroom to laugh in peace. Fei Yue ducked behind her laptop, shoulders shaking.
Lu Xinyi looked like she'd swallowed her perfume bottle.
"I am Zhang Min's sister—!"
"And I am uninterested in legacy nepotism," Lin Xie said, returning to her unpacking. "If you wish to compete, I suggest a standardized metric."
Lu Xinyi narrowed her eyes. "What does that even mean?"
"It means try keeping up," Lin Xie replied without looking.
The room went silent—aside from Fei Yue quietly wheezing into her hoodie.
Lu Xinyi stomped toward her bed, muttering under her breath. "Whatever. Just wait. No one likes a soulless ice cube."
Lin Xie activated her white noise app.
"Muted."
Fei Yue practically fell off her chair. Ai Wen returned from the bathroom clutching tissues.
Lu Xinyi fumed all night, making pointed comments about "show-off scholarships" and "fake prodigies."
Lin Xie didn't respond once.
Didn't even blink.
She organized her desk.
Set five alarms spaced by two-minute intervals.
Input her schedule into a custom-coded calendar she made herself.
And then calmly went to sleep.
Lu Xinyi tried to play music loudly.
Lin Xie said, "Decibel limit exceeded. You will be fined."
And she turned the music off without getting up.
By morning, Ai Wen and Fei Yue had silently voted her Dorm President in their group chat.
Lu Xinyi, meanwhile, was having a crisis.
Because no matter how loud she got—
Lin Xie treated her like what she truly was.
Air.
---
Lu Xinyi didn't sleep much that night.
Not because she wasn't tired—she was exhausted.
But because every time she tried to close her eyes, she heard Lin Xie's voice on loop.
"Muted."
"Try keeping up."
"Statistically, people like you peak at graduation."
Who says that?! Like she's a spreadsheet with legs!
Lu Xinyi tossed and turned until sunrise, muttering in her pillow about "emotionless nerds," "weird robots," and "stupid perfect cheekbones."
At 6:00 a.m. sharp, Lin Xie's five alarms went off in sequence—each with a one-second vibration buffer and programmed to automatically shut off after two rings. Precision.
Lu Xinyi groaned into her mattress. "You have five alarms?"
"I like redundancy," Lin Xie replied, already brushing her teeth.
"She doesn't even make bathroom noises," Fei Yue whispered later, half-terrified, half-impressed. "It's like she doesn't breathe."
"She's like a ghost that aced particle physics," Ai Wen added.
By 7:00 a.m., Lin Xie had showered, changed, and rewritten half her schedule to include dual attendance slots for overlapping lectures.
"Are you auditing three majors?" Fei Yue asked.
Lin Xie: "Four. Not including electives."
Lu Xinyi, who barely survived physics in prep school, choked on her tea.
"Wait—you're taking four majors?"
"Yes."
"As in… concurrently?"
Lin Xie blinked. "Did you think I scored 1000 for aesthetic reasons?"
Ai Wen walked into a wall.
Fei Yue dropped her phone.
Lu Xinyi crossed her arms, lifting her chin. "Well, Zhang Min said some geniuses lack real-world instinct. Book-smart doesn't mean capable."
Lin Xie replied without pausing: "Zhang Min also miscalculated the Shanghai finance model in her thesis draft last fall. It was corrected by her assistant editor before submission. If I lack instinct, she lacks decimal control."
Dead silence.
Ai Wen's jaw hit the floor.
Fei Yue threw a towel over her head to scream into it.
Lu Xinyi's ears turned red. "She's my cousin!"
"I didn't say she was your sibling," Lin Xie replied calmly. "But if you're her academic proxy, I can continue providing citations."
Ai Wen whispered, "Oh my god. She came with receipts."
Fei Yue added, "She didn't just mute her. She debugged her soul."
Lu Xinyi gritted her teeth, seething, and stormed out—muttering something about "swapping dorms before she gets radiation poisoning."
As the door slammed behind her, Ai Wen turned to Lin Xie, wide-eyed.
"…Do you have a USB port?"
Lin Xie: "I don't disclose hardware specs."
Fei Yue cackled.
Later that day, word spread like wildfire across campus: the top scorer genius had verbally executed Zhang Min's cousin within 36 hours of enrollment.
Some students claimed Lin Xie was a government prototype.
Others said she once tutored an AI into gaining consciousness and then beat it in debate.
None of it was true.
Except the part where she said Lu Xinyi was "air."
That part was already screen-printed on t-shirts in the student forum.
---