Lu Ping quickly finished writing his account of the conflict with Wang Bin and handed it to the homeroom teacher.
When he submitted it, Wu Yingxia already had a thick stack of materials from the other “victims” in her hands. One classmate had even written a full ten pages!
Lu Ping glanced at his own flimsy five-hundred-word statement: “…”
…Should he be grateful that Wang Bin had gone easy on him?
After handing in the statement, Lu Ping turned to leave, but Wu Yingxia called him back.
Wu Yingxia asked, “Shen Yuze has been in our class for over a week now, Lu Ping. How have you two been getting along?”
“…Pretty good.” In reality, Lu Ping and he had only exchanged about ten sentences total, and five of those were from the day they moved desks.
Wu Yingxia continued, “Shen Classmate comes from the Capital, where the textbooks and teaching pace are different from ours here in Jiao River. If he needs any help with his studies, I hope you’ll lend a hand without hesitation. And it’s best if you can help him integrate into the group and participate in group activities.”
Lu Ping was baffled. He couldn’t even integrate into the group himself—how was he supposed to help Shen Yuze do it?
How on earth was he supposed to do that?
Lu Ping left the teachers’ office like a lost soul.
This period was PE class. By the time he reached the sports field, students from three classes were already lining up. For PE lineups, they sorted by height: boys in front, girls in back; tall ones on the right, short ones on the left.
Originally, Wang Bin had been at the front of the boys’ line. After Wang Bin was gone, Shen Yuze became the new head of the line…and his proportions were even better, his height even greater.
After the teacher called “Eyes front!”, some girls still reluctantly kept their gazes fixed on him.
Once warm-ups ended, the teacher let everyone disperse freely. There weren’t many boys in the liberal arts class to begin with—half went to play soccer, the other half monopolized the basketball court.
One boy came running up to Shen Yuze with a basketball and enthusiastically invited him: “Shen Yuze, we’re short one for 5v5—wanna play?”
Before he could finish, a soccer ball suddenly dropped from the sky and landed between them. It bounced heavily after hitting the ground, nearly clipping the basketball boy.
“You got no sportsmanship! We agreed on fair competition!” The soccer boy hurried over, shoved the basketball boy aside, and turned to Shen Yuze. “Come play ball with us instead! They suck at basketball—always getting crushed by the science class.”
The boys from both sides argued fiercely over snagging Shen Yuze. Come on, with those long legs and tall stature, he looked like a total athlete! Who wouldn’t want such an ace addition to their team? Plus, having a handsome guy on the team was great advertising—it was bound to draw a crowd of girls to watch!
From the shade of a nearby tree, Lu Ping watched as the two groups fought over Shen Yuze, and a sour lemony feeling bubbled up inside him again: Heh, the teacher’s worries were for nothing. Shen Yuze is so popular—why would he need to integrate into the group? The group is practically begging for him!
The boys bickered for ages, the basketballers accusing the soccer players of stinky feet, the soccer players mocking the basketballers for always getting blocked… Class camaraderie completely forgotten.
Finally, they all turned to Shen Yuze at once and asked in unison, “Shen Yuze, who do you pick?”
Shen Yuze had been standing in the sun for so long that he felt irritated by the heat. He swept his gaze over the two annoying guys, frowning slightly. “I don’t pick either.”
“Huh?” “Huh?”
“Didn’t hear me? I said I’m not interested in soccer or basketball.”
With that, Shen Yuze pushed the two aside and walked off without looking back… toward the nearby tree shade.
Lu Ping, standing in the shade: “???”
Lu Ping stared dumbly as Shen Yuze drew closer and finally stopped right beside him.
There was a row of low steps in the shade. Lu Ping wasn’t picky about dirt—he’d just pat them off and sit. But Shen Yuze had germaphobia, so naturally he wouldn’t sit there. He leaned against the tree instead, lost in thought.
Lu Ping couldn’t hold back anymore. He asked, “Why didn’t you go play ball with them?”
“Why should I?” Shen Yuze said expressionlessly. “The school doesn’t have showers. I don’t want to go back to class covered in sweat.”
It was still late summer. After every PE class, the boys were always drenched in sweat. Their liberal arts class was okay since there weren’t many boys, but rumor had it the science class smelled like a biochemical weapon—once even making some girls puke.
If that was the reason, it made sense.
Lu Ping: “If it weren’t summer, would you play with them?”
“No.” Shen Yuze stated flatly. “I don’t like sports.”
“?????” Lu Ping was shocked and couldn’t help raising his voice. “You don’t like sports? But don’t you like horseback riding?”
Shen Yuze raised an eyebrow. “The horse does the moving in horseback riding. Not me.”
It felt off somewhere, but also airtight.
Lu Ping: “…”
Lu Ping: “…………”
Lu Ping: “………………”
In just those few exchanges, another chunk of Shen Yuze’s male god aura crumbled in Lu Ping’s eyes.
Before, when Shen Yuze had been far away in the Capital, Lu Ping could only piece together his personality, hobbies, and life from the scraps revealed on the wonderland account, imagining him in his mind. But now that Shen Yuze was right there beside him, Lu Ping realized he was far from the perfection he’d envisioned.
Shen Yuze’s personality was aloof young noble at best, curt and rude at worst; his grades—who knew until the monthly exam—but he never paid attention in class, so he might rank dead last; and the athlete trait that came standard with male gods? He couldn’t care less…
Shen Yuze wasn’t some flawless gem—he never had been. Lu Ping had just thought he was.
Sitting on the cool steps, Lu Ping looked up at the boy beside him, who was both familiar and strange, and murmured softly, “Shen Yuze, why are you so different from what I imagined?”
Shen Yuze hadn’t heard him, so of course he couldn’t respond.
…
After every PE class, no one could focus in the next lesson. So the school scheduled PE for Friday afternoons, followed immediately by self-study, so they could do worksheets and calm down.
With weekend cramming no longer allowed, teachers compensated by handing out extra worksheets, squeezing every last second out of the students.
During self-study, everyone buried their heads in homework—do a bit more now, less over the weekend! The bolder ones formed an underground “mutual aid society”: you’d do the math sheet, I’d do English, then swap—mutual reference could hardly be called cheating, right?
The class monitor dragged his chair up to the podium, scribbling worksheets while keeping an eye on discipline. He always turned a blind eye to the flying papers—as long as it didn’t get out of hand, he wasn’t about to snitch to the homeroom teacher!
The politics textbook said it: from the masses, to the masses—stay “closely united” with the people.
While everyone else was busy “mutual aiding,” Lu Ping in the back row scratched his head over an English worksheet.
His English scores were always near the bottom of the class. He could rattle off vocab fluently, but put them in sentences and he was lost. Cloze passages especially—fifteen questions, he’d miss ten. Whenever he asked the good English students, they’d just say, “Go with your feel for the language.”
What was “language feel”? Edible?
Later he realized they weren’t brushing him off. Almost everyone in his class had recited the alphabet before they could walk properly, sung English nursery rhymes in kindergarten. But his rural elementary school didn’t offer English until third grade… Talk about losing at the starting line.
Lu Ping could only grit his teeth and grind away, hoping to close the gap.
But whether due to IQ, IQ, or IQ… his English never improved much.
In the first monthly exam of freshman year, out of 120 for English, he got 72—just passing. Sophomore year, he hit 90, but now it was out of 150—still just passing.
In short, Lu Ping’s English was consistently stable—stably just passing!
Now, he scowled at another cloze passage.
“…This one’s C.” Suddenly, Shen Yuze’s voice came from beside him.
Lu Ping jolted and whipped his head around. “Were you peeking at my paper?”
As he spoke, he hurriedly shielded his finished questions with his elbow, like a little mouse hiding its winter stash.
Seeing his thief-warding move, Shen Yuze was equal parts exasperated and amused. “You’ve been at it this long and only got eight out of ten wrong. What’s worth peeking at?”
Lu Ping was even more shocked. “So you were peeking!”
Shen Yuze: “…”
“Since you peeked at mine, that’s you being unfair—so I have no choice but to be unfair too!” Lu Ping declared righteously, then boldly yanked over Shen Yuze’s worksheet and copied his English answers from top to bottom (of course tweaking a few to fix the “errors”).
Shen Yuze: “…”
He had never seen such a shameless person.
Shen Yuze deliberately said, “I never listen in English class. Aren’t you afraid I just made it all up?”
“Nope.” Lu Ping kept his head down, scribbling abcds, and replied casually, “Didn’t you have several foreign tutors? Even if you’re bad at other subjects, English can’t be.”
The words slipped out without thinking. As soon as they did, Lu Ping felt the air chill by a couple degrees—and at the same time, Shen Yuze’s hand reached over and slammed down on the paper.
Lu Ping stared at that hand: Shen Yuze’s fingers were long and slender, knuckles defined, veins clear on the back. Especially when holding a riding crop—it looked like a Greek sculpture.
Now, that hand’s index finger crooked slightly, tapping the desk with crisp tap-tap sounds.
Following that hand upward, Shen Yuze leaned forward across the desk divider, eyes locked on Lu Ping’s like a predator sizing up prey.
“Lu Ping,” his voice wasn’t loud, but it carried menace, “—how did you know I had several foreign tutors?”
Cold sweat broke out on Lu Ping all at once.
How did he know? From the wonderland account, of course!!!
Right now, Lu Ping was like a freshly wrapped giant glutinous cake, stuffed full of secrets—with a little tear in the side. He was exposed!
