Xiao Yan smiled calmly, while Luo Zhiyu guiltily lowered his head.
Luo Zhiyu’s guilty conscience was mistaken for modesty, earning him another round of praise from the teachers on the spot.
[Cicada]: Why do I suddenly feel a little ashamed?
[Tangerine]: Believe in yourself. We really didn’t do anything.
[Cicada]: …
[Cicada]: That’s too much. You’re lying through your teeth with your eyes wide open.
[Cicada]: Punch.jpg
[Cicada]: [Screenshot] I changed your contact name back.
Last night, Luo Zhiyu had experienced what it meant to deal with an unripe tangerine. There were still faint red marks around his ankles from the pajama ties. Because they had kissed, their temporary mark had kicked in again, making him unconsciously gravitate toward Xiao Yan throughout the night. When he woke up that morning, he was still clutching Xiao Yan’s collar, his head buried against Xiao Yan’s neck. He looked every bit like a little hooligan.
Pheromones didn’t count as evidence. The people involved knew perfectly well what was going on in their hearts: the two of them were not innocent in the slightest.
Besides, the previous night had been nothing like the harmonious scene their teachers imagined. In the middle of the night, Luo Zhiyu had kicked the quilt off the bed, and the two of them had been woken by the air conditioner, which had been set to a low temperature. Xiao Yan got out of bed to retrieve the quilt, only to discover that Luo Zhiyu had taken advantage of being awake to post a new update on his social media feed.
03:15:09
[Cicada]: Good night, sweet dreams. I’m extremely satisfied with today’s double room. [Room photo] [Location]
At three in the morning, nobody had seen Luo Zhiyu’s post. By morning, however, things had gotten lively.
[Luo Sixue] commented: You get such a big room all to yourself? So jealous.
[Cicada] replied to [Luo Sixue]: Not by myself. Two people to a room.
[Tangyuan Hides from Cats] commented: You stole that photo! It’s the one Brother Yan posted yesterday.
[Cicada] replied to [Tangyuan Hides from Cats]: ? I took that photo myself. Who stole anything?
[Tangyuan Hides from Cats]: ??
[Fan Yue] commented: Were you two in the same room last night?
[Cicada] replied to [Fan Yue]: Yep.
[Fan Yue]: Did Xiao Yan insist on it? Xiao Yan has no shame!
[Cicada] replied to [Fan Yue]: ? The teacher accompanying us requested it. Apparently, there’s scientific evidence for it.
[Fan Yue] deleted two comments.
Luo Zhiyu and Xiao Yan had arrived late the previous day, so they had checked in as quickly as possible. That morning, the competition organizers were conducting check-ins and registering the participating students at the hotel. As a result, Luo Zhiyu and Xiao Yan got to see all kinds of school uniforms from the other schools.
“Brother, brother, brother.” Luo Zhiyu called for Xiao Yan to look up. “Look over there. That’s what I call unlucky.”
Xiao Yan’s hand shook as he was signing in, and he added an extra stroke to the character. He ruined the character 彥 in his own name.
The teacher organizing registration: “…”
Two representatives from a certain school walked past them with their heads held high, dressed in bright, tender green uniforms from head to toe. Having overheard Luo Zhiyu’s remark, one of them shot him an extremely displeased glare.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Xiao Yan hurriedly told Luo Zhiyu in a low voice.
“Huh?” Luo Zhiyu looked confused. “Weren’t those your words?”
Xiao Yan was forcibly added to the other school’s list of enemies. The competition hadn’t even started, yet the air was already growing thick with hostility.
Students from every school were wearing their own uniforms. After completing registration, Luo Zhiyu and Xiao Yan didn’t leave. Instead, they found a sofa on the first floor and began admiring the uniforms from the other schools.
As it turned out, every school had its own ideas. Compared with the others, the sportswear from No. 1 High really wasn’t that ugly. In fact, Xiao Yan and Luo Zhiyu somehow managed to make it look good.
“That black-and-white uniform is pretty interesting.” Luo Zhiyu casually shared a few photos taken by the organizers with Jing Ximing. “And one school has pink uniforms. I think your roommate Tangyuan might like those, Brother Yan.”
Xiao Yan: “…Why would you think Tang Yuan likes pink?”
“Oh, right! I almost forgot!” Luo Zhiyu found Tang Yuan’s WeChat account in his contacts and forwarded him a contact card.
[Cicada]: [Contact card shared] No need to thank me.
[Tangyuan Hides from Cats]: What did you send me? Aren’t you at the competition?
[Cicada]: I ran into an omega near the washrooms in the corridor just now. His pheromones smell like dog food, so I took the opportunity to flirt a little.
[Cicada]: I told him there’s an alpha at No. 1 High whose pheromones smell like catnip. He was very interested and really wanted to meet you.
[Tangyuan Hides from Cats]: …
[Cicada]: No need to thank me. You two can chat. He smells pretty high-class.
[Tangyuan Hides from Cats]: A super-masculine alpha doesn’t need friends.
[Tangyuan Hides from Cats]: I’ll go ask him about it.
Xiao Yan had witnessed the entire conversation between Luo Zhiyu and his roommate. He couldn’t praise Luo Zhiyu’s thoughtful consideration enough.
“What’s yours is mine,” the former local kingpin of No. 19 High declared magnanimously. “Your friends are my friends.”
“Then can my homework be yours?” The sofa on the first floor of the hotel wasn’t very big, but the two of them insisted on squeezing onto the same one.
“Not a chance,” Luo Zhiyu refused.
“You still owe me an IOU.” Xiao Yan gently pinched Luo Zhiyu’s cheek. “One day, you’ll have to do my homework for me.”
“I’ll leave it on credit for now.” Luo Zhiyu hadn’t taken that IOU seriously in the first place. He didn’t think Xiao Yan would actually ask someone a year below him to do his homework.
“There are plenty of other sofas over there. Do the two of you really have to squeeze onto one?” Director Wu asked Xiao Yan as he passed by.
“We’re exchanging pre-competition insights,” Xiao Yan said without blinking.
They were both outstanding students from No. 1 High. As long as they didn’t get physical with each other, the teachers wouldn’t interfere. They simply assumed the two youngsters were engaging in harmless horseplay.
[Fence-Sitter]: Ding ding ding.
[Cicada]: Ding ding ding. What is it?
[Fence-Sitter]: Teacher Xu wants you to help with something.
[Fence-Sitter]: There’s an extra class in this year’s first-year cohort, so Teacher Xu can’t get through all the assignments for the physiology class. He wants your help.
[Fence-Sitter]: Do you have time?
[Cicada]: Sure. Once I’m back next week, I’ll finish drawing the university entrance exam countdown upstairs, then I can go help.
[Fence-Sitter]: Teacher Xu asked me to check whether Xiao Yan is busy. He’s in his final year of high school, after all, and Teacher Xu is worried about affecting his studies.
[Cicada]: Let me check.
Xiao Yan was browsing No. 1 High’s campus forum. The previous week, an unlucky couple had been caught by the school while sneaking around on a path. They’d received an official disciplinary notice and the dreaded parent-summoning package. This week, they were still writing their self-criticisms.
[Someone’s Been Caught Again. We Told You to Avoid That Path, So Why Won’t You Listen?]
1L: Teacher Song camps out in the bushes at the same time every day. Can you people please learn from your mistakes?
2L: …Absolutely incredible.
3L: Seriously, as long as your parents aren’t summoned, everything else is manageable.
4L: Exactly. If you dare to date secretly, don’t be afraid of getting caught.
5L ([Gunpowder Everywhere]): Jealous.
6L: ? Is this some kind of advanced sarcasm? Aren’t you supposed to be at a competition?
7L ([Gunpowder Everywhere]): You don’t understand me.
[Cicada]: He’s busy my ass. He’s practically bought property on the forum.
[Cicada]: I’ll bring him along when the time comes. He knows a lot.
[Fence-Sitter]: Great! Good luck at the competition, you two.
Luo Zhiyu also wanted an official disciplinary notice, so that everyone at school would know that he and Xiao Yan were together openly and legitimately.
The weekend competition schedule was packed. The two students who had “made enemies” with Luo Zhiyu kept shooting hostile glares in No. 1 High’s direction whenever they had a break between events. Luo Zhiyu had offended countless people over the years, so this tiny bit of resentment barely registered with him. Xiao Yan, however, remembered them.
As luck would have it, Xiao Yan drew the other school for the discussion round. He deliberately, or perhaps not so deliberately, threw difficult questions their way, elevating the social issues presented by the prompts to the level of philosophy.
The teacher from the opposing school was practically on the verge of tears. “You’ve made the topic so profound! How are our students supposed to answer? They don’t even know the vocabulary that well!”
“No,” Director Wu said solemnly, firmly defending his school’s student. “He hasn’t made the topic any more profound. This is his normal level. This is the depth of thought a high school student should have.”
“We’d get the same level of performance if we sent up a different student,” Director Xu added with a straight face.
The Green-Skinned Tangerine was a formidable opponent indeed. Luo Zhiyu propped his chin on his hand and watched with great delight.
That evening, after the competition ended, there was a lakeside picnic. The teachers weren’t willing to stay up late and returned to the hotel first. Under the organizers’ guidance, the students pitched numerous tents along the lake.
Luo Zhiyu opened the tent flap and sat outside with Xiao Yan, looking up at the stars.
His phone kept vibrating. Teachers and classmates from school were sending them congratulatory messages. No. 1 High had won several awards in the competition, and the teachers were delighted.
“I have an idea.” Luo Zhiyu was about to put this idea into practice. “I’m going to find an opportunity to praise you in front of my parents and raise my boyfriend’s standing in their eyes.”
Xiao Yan: “? Are you sure that’ll work?”
“It’ll work.” Luo Zhiyu nodded firmly. “I’ll livestream it for you when the time comes. You’ll see that I can speak like a normal person when I want to.”
Two days later, Luo Zhiyu and Xiao Yan arrived at Teacher Xu’s office right on time, red pens in hand.
“Thank goodness you two are here to help.” Teacher Xu was relieved. “There are so many questions on the beginning-of-term test this year that I simply can’t keep up.”
“Has the textbook been revised?” Luo Zhiyu casually flipped through one of the beginning-of-term test papers. Some of the questions looked unfamiliar to him. “I don’t remember seeing multiple-select questions before.”
“They’ve switched to the latest textbooks this year. There are no longer separate versions for alphas, betas, and omegas. The textbooks are now the same for all students,” Teacher Xu explained. “It’s all the same. The key concepts haven’t changed; it’s just a different presentation. I’ve printed two copies of the answer key, so you can refer to them as you mark the papers.”
“Okay.” Luo Zhiyu spread out the first test paper. “Let’s go through the answer key once first and memorize the answers. That’ll make marking the rest much faster.”
“We don’t need to look,” Xiao Yan said. “Teacher Xu, you added several extra lessons for our class last year. We’re so familiar with the material that we should be able to mark the papers directly without making mistakes.”
“I’ll leave it to you two.” Teacher Xu had taught both of them, so he trusted them reasonably well.
The new standardized test papers no longer contained the familiar little red and blue figures Luo Zhiyu remembered. Instead, there were simple descriptions, making the meaning of each question immediately obvious.
[Multiple-select question: Mark the answers you believe are correct in the parentheses before each question number.]
1\. How should an omega student deal with their heat?
A. Get an injection.
B. Go to the hospital.
C. Ignore it completely.
D. Receive a temporary mark.
Luo Zhiyu guiltily glanced at Xiao Yan.
2\. How should an alpha student deal with their rut?
A. Get an injection.
B. Go to the hospital.
C. Ignore it completely.
D. Receive a temporary mark.
Xiao Yan guiltily glanced at Luo Zhiyu.
3\. How should an alpha student and an omega student make up after an argument?
A. Understand each other.
B. Go their separate ways.
C. Get into a full-blown fight.
D. Receive a temporary mark.
Luo Zhiyu and Xiao Yan exchanged guilty glances.
4\. Which of the following are normal ways for alpha students and omega students to interact?
A. Asking for help with homework.
B. Helping each other sweep the floor.
C. Having a long, friendly conversation.
D. Receiving a temporary mark.
Luo Zhiyu and Xiao Yan guiltily glanced at Teacher Xu at the exact same time.
Teacher Xu: “?”
Teacher Xu wiped away his sweat. “What’s wrong? Is there something wrong with my questions?”