The pencil case in Zhang Shu’s hand fell to the floor with a smack. Fan Yue let out a “Holy shit,” while Tang Yuan, looking utterly dejected, picked up his teacup and drank to drown his sorrows. The three of them looked at Xiao Yan with unmistakable resentment.
Xiao Yan: “……”
The classroom was noisy, with everyone thinking they were whispering when, in reality, they absolutely were not.
“? It’s almost time for evening self-study, and your class is still this lively?” Luo Zhiyu was a little envious of Class 3’s energetic atmosphere. “The atmosphere is so good. It’s honestly pretty enviable. What are you guys talking about? Mind if I join?”
Everyone in Class 3 stopped talking.
The classroom became completely silent.
Luo Zhiyu: “?”
Were they really this unwelcoming?
Xiao Yan went around from the front door to where Luo Zhiyu was standing at the back.
“Luo Zhiyu, what happened to you?”
It had only been a short while since he last saw him, and the person who had been darting around the cafeteria earlier was already limping.
“Why is your class acting so weird?” Luo Zhiyu hopped over two steps and leaned close to Xiao Yan’s ear to whisper, “It’s only second year and you guys have already studied yourselves stupid?”
His foot still hurt, and he was having trouble standing steadily. Xiao Yan reached out to support him, deliberately avoiding the gauze wrapped around his palms and wrist and giving Luo Zhiyu a place to lean on.
The thoughtfulness was visible to the naked eye.
Several more people in the classroom sucked in sharp breaths.
Luo Zhiyu: “? Does your class have an exhaust fan or something?”
“They might……” Xiao Yan didn’t know how to describe it. “Be a little shocked.”
Luo Zhiyu frowned. “Are second-years really this fragile?”
Xiao Yan also had no idea how to explain it to him.
“I’m not looking for you.” Luo Zhiyu waved him away. “I’m looking for your roommate.”
“Me?” Fan Yue pointed at himself.
More than twenty pairs of eyes turned toward Fan Yue instead, frightening him into breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Yes, you.” Luo Zhiyu followed the voice and found Fan Yue. “I’m here to pick up the Student Union application form after approval. I have to go through the interview process tonight.”
“Oh, okay.” Fan Yue finally remembered that this was happening tonight. “You came just to find me?”
“Who else would I be looking for? My approved application form is with you.” Luo Zhiyu asked, “It’s not like I specifically hopped all the way up here to find Xiao Yan, right? How much could I possibly love him if I came hopping over here twice in one day?”
Class 3: “Huh?”
The warning bell for evening self-study had already rung.
Teacher Li, who was coming to supervise Class 3’s evening self-study, saw Xiao Yan at the classroom door, along with Luo Zhiyu from the class downstairs.
“Xiao Luo, what happened to you? Did you two get into another fight? What happened?”
“Huh? We didn’t fight today.” Luo Zhiyu said, “Today, I was the one who provoked him. He didn’t even have time to hit back.”
Teacher Li: “……Then what happened to all these injuries?”
Because he had provoked Xiao Yan, he was afraid Xiao Yan would chase him down to retaliate, so he had taken an old, dilapidated path.
Because he took that path, he stepped on a sewer cover and fell until he saw stars.
The logic behind it was not something he could explain to outsiders.
“Retribution.” Luo Zhiyu held the application form Fan Yue had handed him. “I brought it on myself. It has nothing to do with him. I’m leaving. Goodbye, Teacher.”
After saying that, he supported himself against the windowsill and, just like when he had arrived, slowly made his way toward the west staircase.
A whole classroom full of students looked at Xiao Yan with nothing but guilt.
“Anyway, I have to go to the Student Union assessment tonight too. I’ll go with him and help him along the way.”
Xiao Yan left that sentence behind and followed after him.
“Go ahead.” A good student like Xiao Yan really only needed one hint to understand. Teaching him was completely effortless, and Teacher Li was very pleased. “You’re all schoolmates, so you should get along well. You’re a year older than him, so give him some leeway.”
“I’ll try.” Xiao Yan said.
“See? Even a zero-percent match can get along harmoniously. Don’t look at them through colored glasses.”
Teacher Li walked into Class 3 and said, “I’ve been teaching for so many years. I’ve encountered all kinds of students, and every kind of student can be taught.”
“At our No. 1 High School, we teach academics, but we also teach people how to conduct themselves.”
Teacher Li seized every opportunity to carry out moral education.
“Don’t assume everyone is that bad. Read more books and raise your level of thinking. Look at things from the positive side. Nothing is absolute. You have to believe that miracles exist.”
Everyone in Class 3 except Xiao Yan lowered their heads in shame.
At the west staircase, Luo Zhiyu, who was preparing to head downstairs, realized that his sprained ankle might be more serious than he had imagined.
He had used up quite a bit of energy hopping all the way upstairs just now. Now he still had to go down the stairs, and it was becoming rather difficult for him.
Luo Zhiyu wanted to sit at the stairwell for a while.
The moment he sat down, someone sat down beside him.
The bell for evening self-study had already rung once. The classrooms of every class had fallen silent. Two people wearing different-colored school uniforms sat on the stairs without any rush and with absolutely no concern for their image.
Inside the classrooms, time flowed beneath the students’ rapidly moving pen tips as they worked through problems and calculations.
But the stretch of time at the stairwell seemed to have been put on pause.
“Where did you fall?” Xiao Yan had already guessed most of what happened from Luo Zhiyu’s words, “Retribution.”
“The little path on the west side of the teaching building with the really nice view.”
Luo Zhiyu was looking at his Student Union application form. In the section for Student Union comments, the four words “Approval Passed” were especially familiar.
“You approved it?”
“I did. With your qualifications, anyone who reviewed it would have approved it.” Xiao Yan pushed Luo Zhiyu’s hand aside and saw the completely spotless school uniform on him. “Luo Zhiyu, are you stupid?”
Luo Zhiyu: “? Weren’t you the one who said your uniform was easy to borrow and return? If I accidentally tore it when I fell, wouldn’t you have nagged me about it again?”
It was ridiculous that even at the very last moment before tripping, the thing he had thought about was Xiao Yan’s school uniform.
He was just about to argue back when Xiao Yan pushed a cool segment of something into his mouth.
Without thinking, he bit down.
Cool, refreshing tangerine juice spread between his lips and teeth, immediately followed by an indescribable sourness—
The sour tangerine he had used to hit Xiao Yan had been returned to its rightful owner.
“I already lent you the uniform, so just mess around with it however you want. I’m not that petty.”
Xiao Yan’s attempt to feed him a second segment of tangerine failed when Luo Zhiyu bit him.
“……You really are incapable of changing your nature.”
“It’s so sour.”
Luo Zhiyu slapped Xiao Yan’s hand away.
“Take it away! I’m not eating it!”
“Come on. I’m going to the Student Union office too.”
Xiao Yan stood up and tossed the tangerine segment into his own mouth.
“Stop hopping around. I’ll carry you downstairs.”
“Really?”
Luo Zhiyu suspiciously swallowed the tangerine and reminded him, “You still haven’t gotten revenge for me hitting you in the head with that tangerine.”
“I went to your class to catch you, but you weren’t there.” Xiao Yan bent down. “I’ve decided to try a different approach.”
Luo Zhiyu’s foot hurt, and if someone volunteered to carry him, he was more than happy to accept.
Luo Zhiyu wrapped both arms around Xiao Yan’s neck and lay against his back.
“What different approach?”
He was leaning rather close, his head resting against Xiao Yan’s shoulder. He was close enough to smell the faint tangerine-scented pheromones on Xiao Yan’s clothes.
It completely outclassed that cheap tangerine from earlier by eighteen streets.
“Luo Zhiyu, listen.”
Xiao Yan adjusted Luo Zhiyu securely on his back and reached behind himself to support him.
“I need to salvage my dangerously damaged reputation right now.”
Luo Zhiyu: “?”
Luo Zhiyu: “What does your reputation have to do with me?”
“It does. You’re the root of the problem.”
“To prevent my reputation from being ruined again, I’ve decided to completely reform myself and treat you better.”
“From now on, I won’t bully you anymore. I’ll only treat you well.”
Luo Zhiyu waved his gauze-wrapped hand in front of Xiao Yan’s eyes.
“Yan-ge, did I make you stupid by hitting you with that tangerine?”
“How are you planning to treat me well?”
The instinct for fighting that Luo Zhiyu had developed from countless brawls with Xiao Yan since childhood made him twice as vigilant.
Grade 2, Class 3 was on the third floor, while the Student Union office was on the first floor. It would only take a minute to walk down the stairs, but—
Xiao Yan took the long way around.
Instead of going directly down the west staircase, he chose to walk through the teaching building’s corridors, passing Classes 1 through 7 of Grade 2 before going downstairs from the east side.
Luo Zhiyu: “……”
Ignoring his objections, Xiao Yan carried him along an S-shaped route, passing the windows of more than a dozen Grade 1 and Grade 2 classrooms.
He let two-thirds of the teachers and students in the entire school witness this earth-shaking friendship between two people with zero-percent compatibility, making the image of them as united and friendly good classmates deeply ingrained in everyone’s minds that night.