BTO CH52

After speaking, without waiting for “Xu Sheng” to answer, Kang Kai very consciously shoved the paintbrush into Shao Zhan’s hand: “Bro, please.”

Shao Zhan: “…”

Xu Sheng had said he used to take interest classes; it seemed to be true.

Shao Zhan fell silent as he faced the church landscape painting before him.

Although Shao Zhan was the pride of Linjiang Sixth High, and although he was hailed by many as a genius youth, sometimes even geniuses weren’t omnipotent. Geniuses had blind spots in their knowledge too… Not every genius possessed the capacity for art appreciation.

If a stack of test papers were placed before him right now, he wouldn’t even blink an eye.

Shao Zhan set the paintbrush down to avoid being caught holding it incorrectly.

Kang Kai tilted his head at him: “Why aren’t you drawing?”

Shao Zhan: “I’m brewing my thoughts.”

Kang Kai: “…Oh.”

Having known each other since childhood, Kang Kai’s level of understanding toward Xu Sheng might be slightly deeper than Xu Sheng himself realized. Today, from the moment “Xu Sheng” appeared at the studio door, he felt something was off. “Xu Sheng” walked with his back considerably straighter, no longer slouching lazily, and his naturally smiling eyes contained only a chilling coldness that sent shivers down one’s spine.

It was hard to put into words, an aura that made people hesitant to approach.

Kang Kai: “Are you feeling unwell today? Or in a bad mood?”

Shao Zhan said expressionlessly, “In a bad mood.”

That made sense.

Kang Kai said, “Whatever happened, cheer up. There’s no hurdle you can’t get past.”

Shao Zhan didn’t want to talk too much, as speaking more made it easier to make mistakes. He found an excuse to send him away: “Got anything to drink?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kang Kai stood up. “Do you want mineral water or juice?”

Shao Zhan: “Mineral water is fine.”

Kang Kai walked out of the partition, the sound of his footsteps indicating he went upstairs.

Shao Zhan unlocked his phone, lowering his head to type.

• Hurry up.
• He asked you to look at his drawing.
• Are you done over there yet?

Done?

This competition meeting showed zero sign of ending. Director Gu spent over ten full minutes just delivering his speech before finally handing out test papers.

Xu Sheng was surrounded by competition students. He couldn’t understand a single problem on the test paper. Twirling his pen, he sat in the back row as the entire meeting room exuded a dense academic atmosphere.

When had an academic slacker like him ever witnessed such a scene?

• Probably still a while, you have to hold out.

Xu Sheng typed back, then thought for a moment, coming up with an idea for Shao Zhan while Director Gu wasn’t looking: Fuck, how about you… make him think independently?

Independent thinking.

What a brilliant four words.

Shao Zhan: “…”

Kang Kai took water from the fridge, came downstairs, pushed open the door, and said, “Here.”

Shao Zhan took it.

Kang Kai eagerly returned to the original question: “I’m worried to death. Take a look, is my color tone okay this time?”

The swirling air came to a complete standstill in an instant.

If Shao Zhan could have anticipated the current scene earlier, he would have told his ten-years-younger self to remember to sign up for an art interest class.

Perhaps influenced by Xu Sheng, Shao Zhan naturally wondered how Xu Sheng would bullshit his way through if he were standing here.

Once this thought surfaced, his mind naturally drifted onto Xu Sheng.

The thoughts interrupted by that thunderclap from two days ago reconnected once more.

He thought of the teenager’s slightly upturned peach-blossom eyes, his voice with its rising tone at the end, and the way he unreservedly slouched over his desk to sleep.

…

Shao Zhan realized that as long as he thought about these things, even his body temperature seemed to rise by a few degrees unnaturally.

“Bro,” Kang Kai urged, “hurry up.”

Shao Zhan snapped back to reality. Cracking his knuckles, an answer formed in his heart: “Redraw it.”

“Oh, redraw…” Since Art God Xu Sheng was right no matter what he said, Kang Kai unconsciously nodded and repeated, only to freeze halfway through, “Redraw?!”

What else could Shao Zhan do? Helping him modify it was out of the question, so he could only stall for time by telling him to redraw it: “Rather than thinking about how to correct it, it’s better to start fresh. Abandon this one and keep brainstorming, you might come up with a better idea.”

This… actually seemed to make a bit of sense?

Kang Kai’s filter for Xu Sheng was too thick. If there was any disagreement between the two regarding art, Xu Sheng was definitely the right one.

This blind worship led to Kang Kai genuinely being bluffed by those words for a moment.

“What you said actually makes sense,” Kang Kai said. “A person must dare to return to square one, throw everything aside, and start anew.”

As long as you believe it.

Shao Zhan checked the time; nearly an hour and a half had passed since school ended.

• How are things on your end?

Only after a few minutes did Xu Sheng reply.

• A mere competition meeting, as if it could stump me? Already handled.
• Wait for me, I just reached the bus station.

Sitting in front of Xu Sheng was the perennial runner-up… no, the grade’s rank one in this monthly exam.

After sitting bored in the back row for over half an hour, Xu Sheng came up with an ingenious idea. He intended to take the runner-up’s test paper under the guise of “give me your test paper, I’ll help check how you did,” even though the runner-up didn’t seem particularly fond of him.

The runner-up: “What do you want my test paper for?”

Xu Sheng said, “I’ll take a look for you. Sometimes when people write exam papers, the spectator sees more clearly. You need to step back and look at it from time to time.”

It was the first time the runner-up had heard of such a unique learning method.

After a moment, he handed the test paper over to “Shao Zhan.”

Although he had mustered the courage to block Shao Zhan outside the teacher’s office last time and said those words to him, his feelings toward Shao Zhan remained slightly complex. He genuinely couldn’t comprehend why his strongest rival had performed like this in the monthly exam.

How could Shao Zhan’s… attitude toward studying shift like this?!

When Xu Sheng handed the test paper back, the runner-up clutched the paper and stared unblinkingly at him, making Xu Sheng feel a shiver down his spine.

The runner-up opened his mouth slowly: “What on earth happened to you? Do you not love studying anymore? The old you wasn’t like this.”

Xu Sheng: “?”

• What’s up with the runner-up?
• Did you offend him?
• He’s talking so weirdly, I can’t understand him at all.

Shao Zhan typed back: He found out you weren’t actually feeling unwell during the monthly exam.

Xu Sheng: “…” He really cared about “Shao Zhan.”

The runner-up took on a posture of refusing to turn around unless he received an answer.

Xu Sheng was in a hurry to hand in the paper and leave, lacking the time to tangle with him further. Picking up his test paper, he stood up and said, “I feel now that life can’t just be about studying. I was young and ignorant before, but now I understand. I should look up at the world more; there are many things in this world far more interesting than studying. Let’s talk in detail another day, I have an urgent matter, so I’m heading off first.”

Once finished, the test paper just had to be left on the table for a teacher to collect later.

Xu Sheng looked around, noticing Director Gu sitting by the podium reading a book, while the other students still had their heads down working on problems.

The seat he occupied happened to be next to the back window, which was wide open. Pressed for time, and having been in Shao Zhan’s body for a while, Xu Sheng no longer remembered every second that he was supposed to be Shao Zhan. No matter how one tried to disguise human nature, it couldn’t be completely hidden. Xu Sheng stepped onto the desk, propped one hand against the window sill, and crossed his long legs straight out.

His movements were swift; only a student sitting nearby noticed the motion, looking up just in time to see the trailing corner of a wildly uninhibited school uniform jacket.

Seeing the classmate look over, the teenager paused his steps right before leaving, raising an index finger to his lips to make a silent “shh” gesture, then sauntered lazily toward the stairwell under the classmate’s dumbfounded gaze.

That classmate was unable to recover for a long while.

…Study God?

Was this the Study God he knew?

The Study God actually hopped out of a window?

After getting off the bus, Xu Sheng ran all the way to the art studio, where Kang Kai was scratching his head in frustration in front of a brand-new blank piece of drawing paper.

Kang Kai felt miserable: “I feel like even after giving up, I don’t seem to have any better ideas.”

Shao Zhan’s voice held zero inflection: “Keep thinking.”

Kang Kai: “Alright.”

Right as Kang Kai finished speaking, he heard some noise from the outer studio. There were no classes scheduled today, so logically no one should be coming at this hour. Just as Kang Kai was wondering, a teenager wearing a school uniform pushed open the partition door directly.

As their eyes met.

“Hey handsome,” Kang Kai blinked, confirming he had never seen this person before and that he wasn’t a student from their art studio—if someone were this handsome, he would definitely remember. “Who are you?”

Having his childhood friend ask him such a question, Xu Sheng felt complex inside.

“I’m Xu Sheng’s… desk mate.”

Shao Zhan closed a copy of Introduction to Art he had casually grabbed to pass the time: “I called him over.”

Xu Sheng: “Yeah, we usually board at school and stay locked inside all day, so today we just… came out to hang around.”

Kang Kai looked at one, then looked at the other.

During occasional chats, Xu Sheng had mentioned having a Study God classmate. The image of a Study God in Kang Kai’s mind was a nerd whose glasses lenses were thick enough to rival beer bottle caps, studying all day long. Xu Sheng had never told him his Study God desk mate looked like this.

A brother’s friend was his, Kang Kai’s, friend. Kang Kai extended a hand: “Hello, hello, I’m Kang Kai.”

Xu Sheng: “I’m Shao Zhan.”

Xu Sheng arrived quite in time. Glancing at the drawing Kang Kai had torn off earlier, he had a general idea of how to modify it, but with Kang Kai here, he definitely couldn’t get hands-on.

Xu Sheng shot a glance at Shao Zhan: Find an excuse to get rid of him.

What excuse to find was a problem.

Before arriving, Shao Zhan had noticed that convenience stores and supermarkets were close by around the residential compound, but a pharmacy was separated by several streets.

In the end, Shao Zhan used “my stomach feels a bit uncomfortable” as an excuse to send Kang Kai away.

Xu Sheng sat down with his legs bent, taping the drawing back onto the easel with paper tape. Mixing the colors, he raced against the clock to fill in the canvas.

Shao Zhan leaned against the nearby shelf, looking down at him.

Sitting on the easel stool with a paintbrush in hand right now, this Xu Sheng was slightly different from the one who had dominated all his thoughts and hovered continuously in his mind over the past few days.

He was no longer carrying that indifferent, nonchalant tone where nothing mattered.

Xu Sheng’s painting style was bold and striking, his strokes daring, and his choice of colors refreshing—not afraid in the slightest of changing Kang Kai’s drawing beyond recognition. After making simple adjustments in a few minutes, he finally set the paintbrush down: “Alright, sit here in a bit.”

Calculating the time, Xu Sheng figured Kang Kai was about due to return after buying the medicine.

Xu Sheng yielded the seat, shoving the brush into Shao Zhan’s hand. Looking at the drawing from another angle, he noticed he had forgotten to sweep in the ambient color for one of the objects.

Worried that Kang Kai might suddenly burst in, and since it only needed a single stroke anyway, switching places again was inconvenient—so Xu Sheng simply leaned down.

Wrapping his hand around Shao Zhan’s side, he grabbed the hand Shao Zhan used to hold the paintbrush, covering it directly, their fingers interlacing.