Luo Zhiyu looked left and right, feeling that the atmosphere was strange. He moved another seat to the right, leaving two seats between himself and Xiao Yan. The surrounding whispers grew even louder.
Xiao Yan stood up. Under everyone’s watchful eyes, he sat down beside Luo Zhiyu, took off one of his earbuds, and put it on Luo Zhiyu.
Luo Zhiyu: “?”
“What’s going on?” Fan Yue turned on his mic. “Brother Yan, are you still out of it after just finishing the exam?”
“Nothing.” The respawn countdown on his phone seemed exceptionally long. Talking was prohibited in the hospital, so Xiao Yan’s voice through the headset was very low. “I’m at the hospital with Zhile. Hurry up and fight.”
“Oh, okay.” Fan Yue commanded the others to regroup while asking Xiao Yan, “How are you guys testing? Still using pheromone test strips?”
“Blood draw.” Xiao Yan continued playing.
“Damn?” Fan Yue blurted out a curse. “Isn’t that a premarital examination procedure?”
His voice was so loud that Luo Zhiyu, wearing the earbud, jumped.
“If it weren’t absolutely necessary, who would come to a premarital examination with him?” Luo Zhiyu threw the sentence into the microphone.
Xiao Yan: “???”
“Luo Zhiyu, Xiao Yan? Are you here?” A nurse pushed open the door and immediately spotted the two high school students who stood out among everyone waiting in line.
“Here.” Xiao Yan cut off the voice chat and went offline. “You guys play. I’m not playing for now.”
“You’ll get reported for doing that, and then you’ll lose points. Do it a few more times and you’ll be finished.” Luo Zhiyu had been secretly peeking at Xiao Yan’s phone screen and kindly reminded him. “My account got banned last week for exactly that.”
“It’s fine. We’re about to win.” Xiao Yan pushed Luo Zhiyu into the room inside. “Don’t worry about them. We all know each other.”
“Which one of you is going first?” the nurse asked. “The director gave us advance notice. You’re here for a recheck of your pheromone compatibility, right?”
“I’ll go first.” Luo Zhiyu was very proactive. He took off his school uniform jacket, rolled up his sleeve, and plopped down into the chair. He glanced at the things in the nurse’s hands and immediately chickened out.
Luo Zhiyu: “Hey, you. Help cover my eyes.”
The person in question: “……”
For an alpha and omega, covering someone’s eyes was already considered relatively intimate contact. Luo Zhiyu’s biology lessons might as well have been fed to the dogs, but Xiao Yan still understood this.
The nurse gestured for him to hurry. “It’s fine. You’re just helping him out. Besides, your compatibility isn’t very high.”
Xiao Yan stepped forward and gently covered Luo Zhiyu’s eyes with both hands.
Luo Zhiyu really was afraid of needles. When the needle pierced his skin, although he didn’t say anything, Xiao Yan could feel his eyelashes trembling slightly, and even his breathing became very light.
“All done. Open your eyes. It’s over.” Xiao Yan draped Luo Zhiyu’s school uniform jacket over him and had him sit to the side and wait.
“Handsome boy, looking at you two, your relationship isn’t that bad. It can’t really be 0%, right? The director and the others are worrying too much.” The nurse joked with Xiao Yan. “There should be at least a little bit of compatibility.”
“I think so too.” Xiao Yan said, “There should be at least a little.”
Half an hour later, Luo Zhiyu, who had been dozing against the chair, was shaken awake by Xiao Yan.
“? Where am I?” Luo Zhiyu hadn’t fully woken up.
“At the hospital. We came for a recheck.” Xiao Yan held the newly issued test report and waved it in front of Luo Zhiyu. “Congratulations. The two of us are now key subjects for the city’s social harmony program.”
“0%?” Luo Zhiyu wasn’t very surprised. “I told you there was no need for a second test.”
“0.001%.”
Approximately zero.
Luo Zhiyu: “???”
“0.001? What is that supposed to mean?” Luo Zhiyu felt that this was even more painful than zero compatibility. “A tiny bit of compatibility?”
The hospital was extremely shocked. In all its years of experience, it had never encountered a situation like this.
“I don’t know what this counts as either. The data has already been uploaded.” Xiao Yan patted Luo Zhiyu on the shoulder, seeming a little disappointed, and gestured for him to stand. “Let’s go. There’s nothing else for us to do. We’re going back to school. Teacher Li wants us to see him.”
Unlike the city-center hospital, Teacher Li, the homeroom teacher of Class 3, Grade 11, gave the 0.001% an extremely high evaluation.
“What is hope? This is hope.” Teacher Li slapped the test report. “This proves that the two of you can turn hostility into friendship. We’ve gone from having no possibility at all to having a tiny bit of possibility. As long as you seize that tiny possibility, you can build a precious friendship.”
Xiao Yan: “Oh.”
Luo Zhiyu: “Oh.”
The two people who had only a tiny bit of possibility listened to a long lecture on interpersonal relationships for middle and high school students. Looking utterly dejected, they left Teacher Li’s office, only to discover that it was raining outside—and raining heavily.
“Wait a moment.” Hearing the rain outside, Teacher Li rummaged through his office drawers and found only a pink sun umbrella. He handed it to Xiao Yan. “Tang Yuan lost this on Friday. You two are roommates, so take it back to him.”
Tang Yuan’s taste in rugged alpha aesthetics was extremely niche. The little pink umbrella was obviously unsuitable for two people, both in color and size. But Xiao Yan and Luo Zhiyu had no choice. They could only squeeze beneath the same umbrella and slowly make their way toward the dormitories.
Outside the tiny umbrella, the rain poured down.
Because of the weather and the late hour, they could barely see anyone else along the way.
“Move over here a little.” As they passed the field, Xiao Yan pulled Luo Zhiyu toward his side. “It’ll collect water over there.”
“You’re very familiar with First High School?”
“After you’ve studied here for a year, you’ll be very familiar with it too.” The umbrella in Xiao Yan’s hand unconsciously tilted more toward Luo Zhiyu. “Every blade of grass and every tree will be etched into your heart.”
As they passed the field, Luo Zhiyu remembered what Jing Ximing had said. He pointed toward the alpha dormitory area.
“Your dormitory is over there.”
“I know.” Xiao Yan didn’t stop walking, indicating for Luo Zhiyu to keep going. “It’s all the same. We can both get there.”
This was the last torrential downpour of late summer and early autumn. The falling rain gradually blurred the outlines of the buildings and lights, separating the world outside the umbrella.
Xiao Yan sat in the dormitory, using a towel to dry his drenched hair. Every so often, he stopped to reply to messages on his phone.
“Brother Yan, you might as well go take a shower.” Zhang Shu couldn’t stand watching anymore. “You’re dripping all over.”
“I’ll go in a minute.” Xiao Yan agreed. “Let me reply to this message first.”
[Zhile]: Are you back at the dorm?
[Gunpowder and Smoke]: I’m here, I’m here. So concerned about me? Evil grin.jpg
[Zhile]: Brother Yan.
[Gunpowder and Smoke]: Such a sweet mouth?
[Zhile]: Can I borrow your account to play? I guarantee I’ll rank up.
[Gunpowder and Smoke]: ……Take it, take it.
[Zhile]: Thanks, bro.
[Zhile]: I guarantee I’ll seize that 0.001% possibility and get along peacefully with you without fighting.
“I need to confess something to you.” Fan Yue had tied the two brooms and a mop from the dormitory to his back with a jump rope. He walked toward Xiao Yan with great difficulty, then cupped his hands and dropped to one knee before him.
Xiao Yan put down his phone. He hadn’t even had time to hide the smile at the corner of his mouth.
“……Are you here to beg forgiveness?”
“So, this afternoon, after the opening exams ended…” Fan Yue said rather sheepishly.
Xiao Yan: “Hm?”
“I called about a dozen brothers to play games.”
Xiao Yan: “Hm.”
“In the Class 3 classroom, because the teachers don’t care after the exams.”
“Then another dozen or so brothers came to watch us play.”
Xiao Yan: “……”
“And then……well, they all know now that you two went for a premarital examination.”
Xiao Yan: “???”
“But don’t worry. I explained it for you.”
“They all believed me.”
“We all know that you two are absolutely pure.”
Meanwhile, Luo Zhiyu and Jing Ximing sat cross-legged on the floor, staring blankly at the extra pot that had appeared in their dormitory.
“So, here’s what happened.” Jing Ximing started. “Tomorrow’s morning assembly has been canceled.”
Luo Zhiyu: “Then what about the pot?”
“The pot is only coming to our dormitory for a one-day trip. We have to return it tomorrow night.” Jing Ximing shattered Luo Zhiyu’s beautiful dream. “We still have to read our self-criticism aloud. No one is getting out of it.”
“Old Wu came up with a method. Each of the dormitories that broke the rules has to reflect on their violations while facing the prohibited appliance, record a short video, and send it to the school’s parent group before midnight.” Jing Ximing tapped the pot with his chopsticks. “That’s the situation.”
Luo Zhiyu: “……”
“Our credits have already been deducted. There’s no way we’re actually going to reflect. We might as well have some fun with it.” Jing Ximing said, “I asked around. The dorm with the electric blanket filmed a yoga routine. The guys with the refrigerator are planning to use the mini-fridge to make a dormitory version of the Black Funeral Coffin meme. The dorm next door that had their curling iron confiscated is doing wota-style dancing. Think about what we should do.”
“We……” On Luo Zhiyu’s desk was a bag of oranges he’d just bought yesterday, with a box of markers beside it.
A glint flashed through his eyes.
“Let’s do a stewed-orange-in-an-iron-pot.”
Draw some meme expressions on them, matching someone’s current profile picture.
“I’ll reflect properly.”