BTO CH29

“RUMBLE!”

“Let me copy your answers!” The final moment before papers were collected was always the most active time for the examinees in the last testing room. Seizing the chaos, they could scramble to copy a few more questions. “Hurry up… The answer to this one is C? Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure either; I just guessed blindly.”

“What about this one?”

“I’m even less sure about this one.”

“…”

Following Xu Sheng’s advice, after referring to Second-to-Last’s answers, Shao Zhan laid his head on the desk and closed his eyes to rest.

Yet, a sudden peal of thunder echoed inexplicably in his ears. Accompanying the thunder, his consciousness gradually sank into chaos. His body felt exceptionally heavy, yet another part of his awareness slowly floated upward.

After several claps of thunder, the originally tranquil sky began displaying anomalies invisible to everyone else—dazzling, blinding light flashed across the heavens, turning the endless canopy above into a gigantic lightbulb.

“Student…”

“Student, time to hand in your paper.”

Xu Sheng felt as though he had been sleeping for a long time. In his ear was the kindly voice of an invigilator, urging him to hurry up and hand in his exam… Wait a minute. Kindly? Wasn’t the head invigilator for Testing Room 1 a female teacher? The combined average age of the two invigilators couldn’t have exceeded thirty.

Where did kindly come from?

However, his rationality told him it was indeed an elderly, kindly voice. After urging him for a while, the voice grew slightly impatient, speaking heavily: “What’s going on with you, sleeping during exam time…”

Faintly sensing something was wrong, Xu Sheng twitched his fingers, finally shaking off the chaotic haze. He opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a school desk. Propping himself up, Xu Sheng realized he had a splitting headache. Then, he noticed the test paper pinned beneath his arm, covered in messy handwriting. The writing clearly wasn’t his, because even though it was messy, it was much better-looking than his own scrawl.

Testing Room 1 wasn’t this noisy either. Someone was even shouting loudly, as if assuming the invigilator was deaf: “How do you do the last question?! Don’t move yet, let me copy as many steps as I can! Save a brother!”

The invigilator had no time to deal with them. The examinee in front of him—who was sleeping as if no one else was in the room and couldn’t be woken up—was simply too arrogant. Glaring furiously, he scolded: “If you love sleeping so much, go home and sleep properly! Why even bother coming to take an exam?!”

With that, the invigilator snatched Xu Sheng’s paper away.

In the gap as the invigilator pulled the paper away, Xu Sheng caught a glimpse of the two characters glaringly written in the candidate name slot: Xu Sheng.

This was his own paper?

Xu Sheng was stunned for a moment before belatedly looking down. He was wearing a black T-shirt.

After the exam paper was collected, only a nearly blank sheet of scratch paper remained on the desk.

He finally noticed four words left in the center of the scratch paper: Don’t leave after the exam.

It was Shao Zhan’s handwriting; rushed, it looked even messier than usual.

A student nearby finished handing in his paper and, brimming with enthusiasm, packed up his things to welcome a happy weekend. Passing by his desk, he called out: “Sheng-ge!”

“Ah,” Xu Sheng tugged at his collar, having not heard that title in a long time. He responded two seconds later: “Do you need something?”

“As expected of you, sleeping until now. The invigilator’s face was totally green,” Wang Qiang, a classmate of Xu Sheng’s from freshman year, said. “Got any plans for tonight? It’s been a long time since we hit the internet cafe together.”

Xu Sheng didn’t speak.

His mind was completely consumed by one thought: Did we swap back? Where’s Shao Zhan? Has he gone back?

“Some other day,” Xu Sheng grabbed his pen, stood up, and walked out of the testing room. “I have something to take care of.”

Testing Room 1 collected papers relatively quickly. By the time Xu Sheng rushed over, most people had already left. Pushing through the crowded exam hall to the back door, he bumped right into Shao Zhan walking out.

In the corridor, a few people were whispering: “I heard the Study God fell asleep during the exam?”

“Yeah, the invigilator had to call him for a long time before he woke up.”

“How could he fall asleep? The Study God is always so serious during exams.”

“Maybe this exam was just too easy for the Study God. After checking his answers, he had nothing else to do.” The students readily found excuses for Shao Zhan in a massive display of double standards. “But still, falling asleep during an exam is so cool!”

The central figure of the gossip—the handsome guy who fell asleep during the exam—walked out of Testing Room 1 holding a piece of scratch paper, one hand tucked into the pocket of his school uniform pants. He looked much like he did the first time Xu Sheng saw him: wearing a proper uniform, radiating an icy aura.

However, that chilling aura—which seemed to cost nothing—couldn’t penetrate Xu Sheng right now: “Desk mate, exchange a secret code?”

Shao Zhan: “What code?”

“Aren’t there often ghost stories like this,” Xu Sheng said. “Like, one day, someone around you disappears, and often the person who comes back isn’t actually the original person anymore…”

Shao Zhan handed him the scratch paper, which was covered in messy calculations: “If you have time to read those random stories, you’d be better off memorizing a few more formulas. Not a single fill-in-the-blank question was right.”

“…” It seemed the person inside the body hadn’t swapped incorrectly.

Shao Zhan had only managed to glance at the answer sheet, and it was a complete disaster. He had only seen one fill-in-the-blank question, and a quick skim confirmed not a single answer was correct. He didn’t dare imagine how Xu Sheng had answered the other subjects.

“Does this mean we’ve swapped back? …Why did it have to be right after the monthly exams ended?” Recalling that inexplicable clap of thunder, Xu Sheng asked, “Did you hear the thunder?”

Shao Zhan: “I heard it.”

Could thunder be the key?

This time they hadn’t jumped off a wall; they had even swapped back without any physical contact whatsoever.

But what did that have to do with the monthly exams?

However, no matter how much they pondered, they couldn’t find an answer.

In Class 7’s classroom.

Hou Jun and a few others were gathered around the classroom computer, picking songs: “Classmates, let’s listen to some music to relax the atmosphere. The class monitor is here to wish everyone a happy weekend! Enjoy the final happy moments before the scores come out.”

Saying this, Hou Jun caught sight of Shao Zhan and Xu Sheng walking in. His eyes lit up: “Zhan-ge! How did you do on the exam? Do you want to request a song? What do you want to listen to?”

In the past, Shao Zhan had always kept to himself. After Hou Jun finished speaking, it took Shao Zhan two seconds to realize he was talking to him: “You guys go ahead.”

Hou Jun didn’t get a song request from Zhan-ge, but the school tyrant following closely behind Shao Zhan spoke up: “Play a song for me. ‘Heart as Dead as Ashes’.”

“Ah?”

Xu Sheng pulled out his chair and, after sitting down, said: “Or ‘Disheartened’, ‘Nothing is More Sorrowful Than a Dead Heart’, anything works.”

Xu Sheng spoke with such familiarity that Hou Jun wondered when exactly he had gotten so close to the school tyrant: “Student Xu Sheng, you… seem to be in a good mood today?”

Remembering his current persona, Xu Sheng quickly patched up his act. He rubbed his nose: “Well, haven’t I always wanted to integrate into the class collective?”

“I’m just a bit slow to warm up,” Xu Sheng said with utter seriousness. “I was just too shy before.”

Hou Jun wore an expression of sudden realization.

“…” Shao Zhan said in a low voice, “Stop messing around.”

Xu Sheng fell silent.

Hou Jun still felt something was strange, but before he could dwell on it, Meng Guowei entered the classroom to assign homework, taking the opportunity to remind everyone to be safe on their way home for the weekend: “The monthly exams are over! You don’t need to worry about our class’s scores—in my heart, you’re all the best! Be careful of traffic on your way back.”

Xu Sheng didn’t have a habit of writing down homework. Having just swapped back, he still felt a bit strange, like something was off. It was an indescribable eeriness. It was clearly his own body…

“Don’t you feel weird?” Xu Sheng leaned his upper body over his desk and turned his head to look at Shao Zhan. “Why does it feel a bit more comfortable being in your body?”

Having finished writing down the homework, Shao Zhan dropped his pen and met Xu Sheng’s eyes. Now that they had swapped back, his naturally aggressive features fully exerted their impact. The teenager had a high-bridged nose and eyes as cold as frost. Lowering his gaze, he said coldly, “I don’t want to enter your body ever again.”

Both of them had spoken casually, but after the words landed, they fell silent in unison.

What kind of conversation was this?!

Enter your body… That sounds way too…

Shao Zhan looked away.

The tips of Xu Sheng’s ears burned with a sudden heat.

He feigned a cough, then pulled out his phone. Aimlessly opening WeChat in an attempt to distract himself, he forgot that he and Shao Zhan had swapped accounts—he was logged into Shao Zhan’s WeChat.

There were a few unread messages. Unable to stop his hand in time, and with his hand reacting faster than his brain, Xu Sheng tapped right in.

Then he discovered that this contact’s profile picture was even more exaggerated than those punks at the internet cafe. Judging by the outfit, it was a stereotypical street delinquent: a close-up photo of someone lighting a cigarette. Just from that thumbnail-sized avatar, the intense aura of a delinquent practically spilled out of the screen.

And it was the kind who would swagger down the street calling the shots, with eighty underlings trailing behind him.

This delinquent’s WeChat name was also very distinctive: Society’s Wolf Bro.

Society’s Wolf Bro: Big Bro.

Fuck.

Big Bro?

What kind of information overload was this?

Was his Study God desk mate’s interpersonal network really that complicated?

Xu Sheng didn’t dare read the rest of the message. He swiftly swiped the chat window to the right, returning to the contact list.

“Switch your account,” Xu Sheng handed the phone over, “and… I accidentally clicked on one of them.”

Shao Zhan took the phone. After an almost imperceptible pause, he logged out of the account.

Before he could speak, Xu Sheng naturally changed the subject. He had already sat up, leaning his upper body back and tipping the front legs of his chair off the ground, saying carelessly: “Which bus are you taking back? Maybe we’re heading the same way.”

“We’re not.”

Xu Sheng was about to speak.

“Nanping,” Shao Zhan tugged at his collar, letting go and saying, “Try heading that way and see.”

Xu Sheng almost immediately linked this ‘Nanping’ with the ‘Nanping’ he had seen in Shao Zhan’s WeChat the first time they swapped phones. Nanping was several districts away, truly remote; there was no way they were heading the same direction.

Xu Sheng had only asked to ease the awkwardness, so the other party wouldn’t feel forced to come up with a solid excuse for being called “Big Bro.” He didn’t press further, logging into his own WeChat account.

Three unread messages.

Zhang Feng: Wanna play ball after the exams? Playing ball is fine, right? You can’t reject me again.

Zhang Feng: Boss, no matter how much you love studying, you gotta exercise your body too! That way you can sustain your academic career long-term, learn better, and fly higher!

Xu Sheng replied: Fuck, what time.

The other message was from “Mom.”

Mom: Come back this weekend. Mom will cook and wait for you.