BTO CH18

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2. Xu Sheng [3,807 votes].

The fact that Xu Sheng could crack the top one hundred on the server of a blockbuster tactical shooter owed something to his frequent class-skipping and sheer hours logged, but the rest came down to pure, unadulterated competitive drive.

If you played a game without wanting to win, what was the damn point?

What kind of garbage contest was this anyway? It had been fine before he clicked the link, but after seeing it, there was simply no holding back.

Second place? How could he possibly be sitting in second?

The two days of the weekend blew past in a blur.

During that stretch, Hou Jun and the others had dropped by to ask about homework problems. Luckily, Shao Zhan had already completed those assignments well in advance, so all Xu Sheng had to do was toss the completed stack straight at them: “The answers are all here. Figure it out yourselves.”

Hou Jun gave a huge thumbs-up: “Thanks, Zhan-ge! Zhan-ge is simply incredible—finishing this much homework in half a day.”

Boarders were kept pinned to their desks over the weekend to grind out problems, so academic enthusiasm was naturally in the gutter. With homework available to copy, they just kept their heads down and scribbled away; practically nobody gave a damn whether they actually understood the questions or not.

Having finished copying, Hou Jun asked another question: “I came knocking on your dorm door this morning, you know. A new breakfast joint opened outside the gate, and their savory tofu pudding is amazing. I banged on the door forever, but no one answered.”

At the mention of that morning’s incident, both Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan fell into simultaneous silence.

On the first morning Hou Jun knocked, Xu Sheng had managed to drag himself out of bed normally, but by the second day, he was completely out for the count.

Just in case of emergencies, the two had already exchanged spare dorm keys.

Shao Zhan had knocked repeatedly without getting any response from inside. Squeezing out the last shred of his patience, he warned: “I’ll say this one last time: open the door.”

Xu Sheng occasionally suffered from morning grogginess. In his half-asleep stupor, his brain refused to boot up; without caring whether the guy outside could hear or not, he gifted him a single syllable: “Scram.”

Shao Zhan: “If you don’t open up, I’m coming in.”

Xu Sheng merely burrowed deeper under the duvet, pulling it right over his head, ignoring him completely.

Shao Zhan unlocked the door and stepped inside, originally intending only to pull him out of bed. Yet the moment his fingers caught the edge of the blanket, Xu Sheng—evidently pushed to his limit—flung the covers aside himself, squinting as his arms flailed blindly. He tried to vault upright, only to grab Shao Zhan’s wrist before the other could pull back. In the scuffle, they lost their balance.

When the back of Xu Sheng’s head slammed against the pillow, his mind blanked for a beat.

Cracking his eyes open, he found himself staring straight into an enlarged version of his own face, which snapped him wide awake: “Fuck.”

Shao Zhan propped one hand beside his ear, barely maintaining a few centimeters of clearance. Even so, the proximity was suffocatingly close. The scab at the corner of Shao Zhan’s mouth had already healed over nicely, leaving barely a trace behind.

Just as Xu Sheng was about to say “Get off me,” another rap sounded on the door.

It was Hou Jun’s voice: “Weird, Zhan-ge isn’t in. I think Xu Sheng lives right across the hall, right? Let me try knocking. We gotta help him integrate into the Class 7 collective.”

Xu Sheng screamed internally: There’s really no need to integrate that hard! Stop trying so damn much!

Because they hadn’t swapped dorms—and because he and Shao Zhan were currently tangled on the bed in a posture that defied any rational explanation—the door, in the end, remained firmly shut.

Aside from attending classroom self-study, for two straight days Xu Sheng had treated Zhang Feng with an aloof “I’m not interested, I don’t give a single shit, anyone who follows this crap is an idiot” attitude.

Zhang Feng was exhausted just trying to beg for a single vote: You have no heart! Xu Sheng, you are completely heartless! Would casting one vote for me kill you?!

Little did Zhang Feng know what was actually going through Xu Sheng’s head: There’s only one vote per day. If I give that vote to you, what the hell happens to me?!

Every night after wrapping up his calligraphy practice, Xu Sheng took a look before bed, then—his soul putting up immense resistance while his body obeyed with total honesty—obediently cast a vote for himself.

This year’s heartthrob selection was proving fiercer than ever before. Xu Sheng’s engagement was strictly limited to that single daily self-vote, yet even so, he noticed the pageant had steadily warped into a straight-up duel between him and Shao Zhan, blowing up bigger by the hour.

The vote gap between them refused to widen.

When Xu Sheng logged in on the second day, his tally was already on the verge of overtaking first place.

In response, the faction backing number one pulled an all-nighter to rally, stretching the lead once more. By the time both front-runners broke past ten thousand votes each, the reality became glaringly obvious: the school didn’t even have that many students to begin with. These people were genuinely firing on all cylinders, cranking out alt accounts without hesitation to fight for the crown.

It ultimately devolved into a brutal war of attrition.

Both camps openly struck up hostile stances.

Floor 501: Study God!! Take a look at our Study God! Is the Study God not handsome enough? Has the Study God not collected enough awards? Why vote for Xu Sheng? Xu Sheng sleeps through class every day, goes out picking fights, and refuses to study. People like that have no future!

Floor 502: The floor above speaks the absolute truth!

Floor 503: Listen to the bullshit above. Our school tyrant has the brains (his self-reflections are genuinely top-tier) and the brawn (taking on five solo), plus solid public speaking chops (the way he reads those reflections out loud). Investing in him is never a loss!

Xu Sheng: “…”

The multi-talented contender capable in both scholarly and martial arts—and boasting solid oratorical chops—muttered under his breath: “…What kind of garbage is this.”

A gentle breeze drifted in through the window. Lying in bed, Xu Sheng scrolled through the thread until floor five hundred before closing it out.

Right before he exited, a fresh notification popped up on his screen.

[Mom]: While cleaning your room yesterday, I found the diary you kept as a little kid.

Following that was an image showing crooked, clumsy handwriting—clearly written by someone who had only just learned to write, childish yet earnest, where the first two characters “Today” were faintly distinguishable.

[Mom]: Are you coming home next weekend?

After a week of dead silence, this sentence paired with the photo served as a silent olive branch, taking the initiative to break the stalemate.

Xu Sheng stayed frozen for a long while. Only as the screen was on the verge of timing out did he sigh and send a reply: We’ll see.

Things having reached this stage, neither of them harbored any illusions about waking up from a night’s sleep to find themselves swapped back.

Forget swapping back—after all these days, they hadn’t even pinned down a single shred of a pattern.

At the exact same time, the identical thought occupied Shao Zhan’s mind. He mused to himself: Frequency, trigger conditions, underlying mechanics—all completely unknown, with zero basis for deduction.

The new week thus kicked off against the backdrop of the white-hot campus heartthrob contest.

Because the competition had escalated out of hand, with frenzied alt-account voting raging for two straight nights, plenty of people were whispering about it in private.

The class monitor and sports rep were on duty today. When Xu Sheng walked through the door, Tan Kai happened to be carrying a mop back from the restroom: “Morning, Zhan-ge.”

Xu Sheng paused and shifted sideways to let him pass first: “Morning.”

Tan Kai’s sentiment toward the Study God was currently nothing short of utter reverence. Before stepping inside, he said, “Rest easy, don’t sweat it. I’ve got your back. Monkey Bro and I created ten alts to vote for you last night! The other side was fighting way too hard; we almost got overpowered.”

At this point, Tan Kai remembered a crucial detail. Lowering his voice, he whispered, “Whatever you do, don’t tell Xu Sheng about this… It’s not that we have anything against him.”

Xu Sheng: “?”

Only after Tan Kai dragged the mop into the room did Xu Sheng realize what that voting talk was about.

Why was this bunch joining the circus?

And more importantly, why the hell weren’t they voting for him?!

Having stepped down from the class committee, Xu Sheng felt a wave of relief. He no longer had to hand in morning homework; fewer face-to-face encounters with teachers meant significantly lower risk. He was left with only that vague, nominal post as Disciplinary Committee Member—a title he had only learned about after Meng Guowei re-emphasized it in class, which had finally connected the dots regarding why Shao Zhan had been constantly policing him earlier.

Shao Zhan entered the classroom a few minutes later.

Today he wore a black pullover hoodie. This time there were no exaggerated graphics on the fabric, just two lines of printed text across the back. The material was thin and loose, subtly tracing the teenager’s lean frame as he walked.

Xu Sheng had previously loved curling up in this hoodie to sleep at his desk; pulling the hood up covered half his face while blocking out the sunlight.

“Xu Sheng” still looked entirely out of place in the classroom. Unlike before, however, as he was about to pass the front row, he was met with an apprehensive yet sincere greeting from Hou Jun: “Morning.”

Hou Jun was wiping down the blackboard. Terrified Xu Sheng hadn’t heard—and equally worried the school tyrant was simply too shy—he repeated himself: “Student Xu Sheng, good morning.”

Shao Zhan glanced at him. In silence, the contours of his brow and eyes traced an almost razor-sharp severity, completely overpowering the innate delinquent edge of the body’s features. Only after a beat did he reply: “Morning.”

Xu Sheng had been idling away spinning his pen for a while. Seeing him sit down, he searched for small talk: “Old Meng made you Disciplinary Committee Member before?”

Too much had happened lately; if nobody brought it up, Shao Zhan would have forgotten entirely: “Did you think I had nothing better to do than bust you for playing on your phone in class?”

“…” Xu Sheng remarked, “Who knows? It wasn’t entirely out of the question.”

Shao Zhan flipped open a practice workbook, casually turning Xu Sheng’s vocabulary booklet back to the page he had been staring at previously, before lapsing into silence once more.

Xu Sheng set his pen down, already accustomed to this dynamic where he essentially carried conversations all by himself: “Aside from grinding problems, do you have any actual hobbies?”

“…”

“Your campus life must be so damn monotonous.”

“You’re decent at gaming, and you hold your own in a fight.”

A spark flashed through Xu Sheng’s mind, bringing another matter to the surface: “One more thing: you don’t have a partner, do you?”

Although there had been zero signs of any girls approaching “Shao Zhan” over the past week, in a school as tightly run as Linjiang Sixth High, burying a romance deep underground was standard procedure.

If Shao Zhan genuinely had some hyper-classified underground relationship and someone suddenly came out of the woodwork…

Shao Zhan wished he could install a silencer directly onto Xu Sheng.

Xu Sheng: “Don’t worry. This kind of thing is completely normal during puberty. I won’t report you for early dating.”

Pushed beyond his patience, Shao Zhan snapped, “No.”

Shao Zhan repeated firmly: “No partner.”

A few class reps were bustling around collecting homework, the room loud and chaotic, when the English teacher strode in to cut through the racket: “Alright everyone, I’m borrowing a bit of self-study time. Let’s briefly go over the reading comprehension assigned last week. Class rep, no need to collect the reading sheets; we’ll discuss them directly.”

Xu Sheng opened his mouth, about to add something, but was shut down by Shao Zhan: “Listen to the lecture.”

The classroom went dead quiet in an instant.

Xu Sheng couldn’t make sense of a single word in the reading passage. Staring down at the assignment Shao Zhan had slid over, his only option was to trace the handwriting Shao Zhan had jotted down.

Having finally survived until the end of self-study, Xu Sheng fished his phone out of the desk, preparing to head to the tuck shop for a bottle of water.

Yet the moment his hand closed around the device—before he could even shove it into his uniform pocket—the classmate sitting directly ahead turned around:

“Study God…”

The desk mate ahead held the reading passage the English teacher had just reviewed, clearly looking to ask a question. Yet upon turning around, his attention drifted away from the assignment entirely, locking dead onto the phone gripped in Xu Sheng’s hand.

Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan owned similar phone models, but Shao Zhan would never, under any circumstances, use that kind of loud, graffiti-splattered phone case.