BTO CH51

Shao Zhan didn’t know much about his classmates’ personal information, but he often helped teachers of various subjects grade assignments and tally scores. He remembered almost every name he came across. If he remembered correctly, there shouldn’t be anyone named Kang Kai in the entire sophomore grade.

Besides, if it were someone from school, they wouldn’t say “come over right away.”

That left only one possibility: the person listed as “Kang Kai” in Xu Sheng’s contacts was from outside the school.

Probably a friend.

In the chat window, the phrase ‘typing…’ next to the contact name flashed intermittently.

Kang Kai: If you don’t come soon, I’m really going to die.

Kang Kai: Anyway, tomorrow is Saturday, so coming out for a bit is fine. Bro, I’m hanging on by my last breath waiting for you!

Kang Kai: Giving you one hour. If you don’t show up before six, you can collect my corpse.

Shao Zhan: “…”

Meanwhile, inside the teachers’ office.

“Shao Zhan,” Zhou Yuan finished assigning the problems and reached over to grab his water mug nearby, “copy these ten problems down first.”

“Oh,” Xu Sheng stood to the side with his head hanging down, taking two seconds to react before lifting his head, “…Copy?”

Xu Sheng was currently Shao Zhan, and no matter what Shao Zhan said, teachers would automatically give him an out. Zhou Yuan said, “Unless you can memorize them? You have a good memory, so if you can memorize them, that’s fine too.”

Sorry.

Can’t memorize it.

Xu Sheng could only bite the bullet and pick up the pen beside him. Watched intently by Zhou Yuan, his hand couldn’t help but tremble slightly.

It had been a while since he practiced with that stack of copybooks Shao Zhan bought him before.

Persistence was hard, but giving up was easy. Once he gave up, Xu Sheng’s handwriting quickly reverted to its old ways.

Perhaps because he had felt too restricted during that period, his handwriting…

…was even messier and wilder than before.

Under Zhou Yuan’s burning gaze, Xu Sheng casually grabbed a sheet of A4 paper from the side, pressed his pinky against the paper, and tried his best to write down three words neatly: “Problem 1.”

Fortunately, Zhou Yuan only took that single glance before the telephone beside him rang. Zhou Yuan reached out to pick up the receiver: “Hello, Director Gu? Ah, please speak.”

Xu Sheng let out a sigh of relief, speeding up his hand movements, trying to copy all the problems down before Zhou Yuan hung up the phone so he could quickly leave this office.

If he stayed in this office any longer, he feared he wouldn’t make it out alive.

Although Xu Sheng didn’t hand in homework most of the time, or just wrote “Solution:” when he did, throughout his junior high and high school career there were always a few teachers with fierce tempers. Unable to withstand those teachers constantly calling him in for talks over homework, he would sometimes copy homework from classmates.

His handwriting was naturally cursive to the point where letterforms couldn’t be distinguished, making his homework-copying speed astonishingly fast.

He hadn’t expected this skill to be used for copying test problems now.

Xu Sheng quickly reached the final question.

Zhou Yuan sounded like he was about to wrap up the call: “Starting implementation today, right? Alright, I understand then.”

Xu Sheng picked up his speed, stringing the last few words together as he finished copying, the tip of the gel pen touching down at the end of the sentence with a period.

Click.

Zhou Yuan hung up the landline, sat back down, and pinched the bridge of his nose, saying to Xu Sheng: “Here’s the deal, Director Gu just told me…” Right as he said this, he happened to catch sight of that exceptionally suave period, his words cutting off mid-sentence.

Fast as Xu Sheng’s hands were, he was still one beat too slow in the end.

Xu Sheng thought to himself, Shao Zhan, I tried my best.

Zhou Yuan opened his mouth: “Your… your handwriting…”

“Teacher,” Xu Sheng set down the pen, frantically searching his brain for key information in an attempt to survive: “…Actually, I’ve still been practicing wild cursive script lately.”

Zhou Yuan: “?”

Xu Sheng straightened up, holding the copied questions while taking a step back: “Last time in the office, didn’t Teacher Meng ask about it? Asking what happened to my handwriting.”

Zhou Yuan remembered. There indeed had been such an incident, back when Shao Zhan failed the exam and the handwriting on the test paper looked extremely floaty: “You’re still practicing?”

Xu Sheng said: “I’ve thought it over. I can’t choose to give up just because this handwriting style doesn’t suit me. Giving up is easy, but I choose to persevere.”

Zhou Yuan: “…”

Xu Sheng: “I will keep practicing.”

That really isn’t necessary.

He originally wrote so neatly; why practice wild cursive script for no reason?

But Zhou Yuan didn’t know what to say. He fell silent for two seconds, deciding to skip over the topic: “Here’s the situation. Director Gu called just now to say that all competition students need to go to Meeting Room 3 for a meeting after school today. Since you’re right here, I won’t notify you separately. Go on over right now.”

After speaking, Zhou Yuan took another sip of tea, looked up, and found “Shao Zhan” still standing right in front of him, unmoving: “What are you standing there for? Director Gu and the others have already arrived at the meeting room.”

Xu Sheng felt the surrounding air become extraordinarily thin, so thin it almost made it impossible for him to breathe.

Comp-what students?

Competition?

Catching his breath, Xu Sheng finally remembered that Shao Zhan had this layer of identity as well.

He did know that Shao Zhan had participated in many academic competitions before. His name filled the school’s Wall of Honor, with more certificates than could be posted, hailed as the Light of Linjiang Sixth High.

Xu Sheng had actually passed by that Wall of Honor countless times. In the past, he didn’t just hop the back wall; during a period when the camera near the front gate was broken back in freshman year, he would even hop the front wall right under King of Hell Gu’s nose.

Leaping down from the high wall, he faced the Wall of Honor directly.

He hadn’t looked closely at the names, but he had seen the rows of medals glittering under the blazing sun, and had passed by the person whose name was on those medals countless times.

Xu Sheng took a deep breath: “I understand.”

Only after Xu Sheng left the office did he see the message sent by “himself.”

Ten minutes ago.

S: I’m waiting for you in the classroom.

Students scattered fastest after school on Fridays. Crowds surged outward, though quite a few lingered nearby, gathering along the commercial street outside the school to hang out. The bustling crowds near the school gates made the campus itself feel exceptionally quiet and deserted by contrast.

When Xu Sheng returned to the classroom, Shao Zhan was sitting on a desk with his back to the podium, long legs bent and resting on the floor. A draft blew in through the wide-open back door, gently fluttering the boy’s T-shirt.

As expected of the former Nanping school tyrant, Shao Zhan sitting there casually possessed a far stronger presence than what Xu Sheng usually exuded.

A student emerging from the neighboring class after packing up passed by Class 7’s door and couldn’t help casting a few extra glances inside at “Xu Sheng.”

Only after Xu Sheng arrived did Shao Zhan look up.

The two spoke simultaneously.

—”Your friend is looking for you.”

—”Competition students have to go to the meeting room for a meeting.”

After speaking.

Both fell silent.

For a moment, it was hard to tell whose predicament was worse.

Xu Sheng scratched his hair: “Which friend of mine? Tell him to go hang out somewhere else, I don’t have time for him.”

Shao Zhan unlocked the phone screen, flipped the phone around, and held the chat window out toward him: “This guy named Kang. He said if you don’t respond to him soon, you’ll have to collect his corpse.”

On the phone screen.

Kang Kai: I beg you, save me.

Kang Kai: Didn’t you promise you’d help me?

…

“…” Xu Sheng skimmed it, remembering that night he casually promised to be Kang Kai’s mentor. “…Fuck.”

Thinking of Kang Kai’s dramatics when he went wild—crying, throwing fits, threatening to hang himself—Xu Sheng said with a headache, “You have to go.”

Shao Zhan: “Address.”

Xu Sheng: “I’ll send you the address in a bit.”

Given the current situation, swapping back their phones and WeChat accounts was even less feasible, or Aunt Kang and the others might easily notice. So Xu Sheng added, “We’ll talk about swapping phones back once you return.”

“What’s the deal with your competition thing?”

Meng Guowei had started talking to Shao Zhan about the competition back at Lüzhou Base.

But back then he had only asked about Shao Zhan’s intentions, without giving an exact time or details about the process.

Shao Zhan: “It should just be a simple meeting. I haven’t received any competition notices yet. Competition students aren’t all in the same class, so sometimes they organize training sessions.”

If it was just a simple meeting, that was better.

Xu Sheng felt relieved.

The most urgent issue right now was Shao Zhan going to meet Kang Kai. Shao Zhan was a STEM student; what on earth could he offer guidance on to Kang Kai?

Before Xu Sheng could bring it up, Shao Zhan actually took the initiative to ask. Stepping down from the desk, he stood straight and thrust the chat window in front of Xu Sheng again: “Explain. Who is he?”

As for the art studio, it wasn’t convenient for Xu Sheng to say too much, nor did he know how to explain it. The main issue was that under current circumstances, he still had to attend the competition student meeting as “Shao Zhan,” so time was pressing.

In the end, Xu Sheng simply said: “Kang Kai… he’s a friend I met at an art studio. I took an art… interest class when I was little.”

The situation was indeed roughly like that.

Shao Zhan raised an eyebrow, asking again: “And?”

Xu Sheng didn’t know where the focus of his question lay: “What else?”

The coldness in Shao Zhan’s eyes deepened along with his tone. As he leaned in close, Xu Sheng felt the other person’s breath very near to him, so close he could clearly see the reflection mirrored in his pupils, mingled with tiny specks of light: “No other relationship?”

After the students on duty finished cleaning the classroom, the ceiling fans stopped.

Only the breeze sweeping through the corridor remained.

Xu Sheng offered tentatively: “He occasionally kneels down and calls me Daddy, does that count?”

Shao Zhan: “…” Never mind.

In the end, the two agreed that Shao Zhan would go over first and stall Kang Kai as best he could, while Xu Sheng would look for a chance to slip away from the competition meeting.

The competition meeting turned out to be much as Shao Zhan had described, a routine gathering where everyone sat together to discuss problems.

Director Gu declared passionately from the stage: “It’s that delightful competition training time again—”

Xu Sheng kept his head down the entire time below the stage, fiddling with his phone.

—Did you get off the bus yet?

Meanwhile, on the other side.

Shao Zhan followed the address Xu Sheng gave him into the residential compound. Through the crack in the door, he could see drawings pinned to the walls inside and easels scattered around.

—Arrived.

Right as he finished replying to Xu Sheng’s message, someone walked out from inside the door. Not very tall, holding a blue water bucket in hand. Heading out with his head down, he only looked up when he realized someone was blocking his path.

The water in Kang Kai’s bucket sloshed: “Sheng-ge?”

Shao Zhan didn’t know him at all, let alone feel close to him. Stepping back to create distance, he let out a reluctant “Mhm.”

Still holding a lining pen in his hand, Kang Kai said excitedly, “Wait a sec, I’ll go change the water. You go wait for me inside first.”

Shao Zhan’s gaze swept roughly across the rows of easels in the studio, none of which bore signs of recent painting. After eliminating those, only the partition on the right remained. The lights inside the partition were on, and at the first station near the entrance, an un-dried paint palette sat on the table without a water bucket in sight. The brushes scattered across the palette matched the colors held by the guy who had just stepped out.

Shao Zhan pulled up an empty chair beside that station and sat down.

Sure enough, before long, Kang Kai returned carrying the water bucket. Pointing to the easel in front of him, his very first words were: “Take a look at this drawing for me.”